Hacker News Reader

beefokon T-Mobile pays $16M fine for three years' worth of data breaches

AND we get increased monthly bills to pay for the cost of their fuckups.

beefokon T-Mobile pays $16M fine for three years' worth of data breaches

Why the fuck do we have to give out our personal information to any of these big companies if I can't trust that it will ever be safe-guarded? This is just so fucking insane to me to think these companies are just so big that they don't even give a fuck anymore. $16M is equivalent to $1.00 to them.

Our personal information/data should be given HIPAA-level protection enforced by the government. We as consumers should not have to deal with companies who do not compete on securing their customer's data. They should lose a "data protection" license when mishandling it, like a bar losing its liquor license.

beefokon Pixhell Attack: Leaking Info from Air-Gap Computers via 'Singing Pixels'

That just blew me away! I didn't think I was going to hear anything, but yeah, immediately it gave an almost pulse-width modulated high pitch tone. I'm not surprised, but it is also awesome. I'm so many years old yet I can still hear the hum from CRT's, but I'd say that tone is much higher frequency.

beefokon "Frost crack" sounds may come from sky, not trees

I loved this book and have read it a few times now. I was probably 13 too! The movie was okay. It just left a lot of important scenes out. (Like all book->movie things)

beefokon Understanding the design of the the Super Nintendo video system

I love all of your projects, Fabien!

This SNES video analysis one is incredible. I've always had all of this stuff running around in my head for how to explain how weirdly cool video generation for NTSC is, and you have done an incredible job finding a way to do so.

There is yet another reason for the weird frame and horizontal scan rate. When NTSC was originally introduced as a broadcast standard over a single RF modulated signal, the sound carrier and signals were also embedded in the signal as well. [1] Actually, I just found that Wikipedia does a good job of describing this on the NTSC page [2]:

    When a transmitter broadcasts an NTSC signal, it amplitude-modulates a radio-frequency carrier with the NTSC signal just described, while it frequency-modulates a carrier 4.5 MHz higher with the audio signal. If non-linear distortion happens to the broadcast signal, the 3.579545 MHz color carrier may beat with the sound carrier to produce a dot pattern on the screen. To make the resulting pattern less noticeable, designers adjusted the original 15,750 Hz scanline rate down by a factor of 1.001 (0.1%) to match the audio carrier frequency divided by the factor 286, resulting in a field rate of approximately 59.94 Hz.

So yes, yet another difficulty with NTSC -- sound actually splattered visual noise on the screen as well!

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Ntsc_cha... The combined spectrum of video, sync, and audio all on a single RF broadcast signal.

[2] Search for 'sound carrier' in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC#Color_encoding

beefokon Physics-Based Deep Learning Book

I guess considering their group is called the Physics-based Simulation Group [1], I'm thinking maybe that's just the terminology they've always used? Or maybe it's a German->English translation thing?

[1] https://ge.in.tum.de/

beefokon Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

> There’s virtually nothing that unites Federalist Society members (many of whom are Biden voters) apart from an engineers’ commitment to technical accuracy over practical effects.

In what fantasy universe do Federalist Society members vote for Biden? They have been backing conservative and libertarians for generations. Their members are part of the Supreme Court and clearly do not want a democracy anymore. They are the antithesis of liberal political positions. I call utter bullshit.

How do their views even remotely line up with Biden voters?

beefokon Donating forks to the dining hall

I was going to post the same thing. "What does this have to do with concurrent processes?!" :)

It's a good problem to think about, and I hope most people consider it in their work.

beefokon FCC fines largest wireless carriers for sharing location data

Hey, that's okay! At least our taxes pay money towards investigating and building these toothless fines! I don't have a problem with the taxes, just that it doesn't do anything.

beefokon U.S. Department of Defense Launches All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office Website

Sort of off topic, but I got stung by the "AKSHUALLY" bug. I just wanted to say that the term, "fanatic skepticism", isn't a possible outcome. Definitionally, skepticism clearly means you wouldn't be fanatic of anything. In reality this is cognitive dissonance, not skepticism.

Anyway, personally, I think this is a topic that needs serious skeptical focus. I don't just want immediate knee-jerk reactionary opinions on what people saw -- I want honesty as new information is gained. New thoughts on what you saw? Give those updates.

I hope that we're not alone in the universe and, honestly, I think it would probably impact me more if we were alone in such a vast *thing*.

beefokon Senate votes to let people who’ve used marijuana work at intelligence agencies

Wow, is that the only thing you got from my comment? I'm highlighting examples of why it's a serious problem and people need to think for themselves.

We know what group-think does way beyond the experiment. We have a very well-documented history on it. Read Soviet and Nazi history, you'll see what it can do. It's almost universal in big groups of humans.

If a police officer told you to shoot another person, would you do it? If 3 police officers tell you to do it, would you do it? How many police officers will it take to make you shoot the person?

beefokon Senate votes to let people who’ve used marijuana work at intelligence agencies

That sounds dangerous as hell. No one should live that way.

If you aren't allowed to question leadership and are instead expected to do "what you are told", then all the experiments and horrors studies on group think are a reality at a dangerous level [1][2][3] What if you think an order is dangerous and have good reasons why?

Good leadership needs to know what the ground-level knows, they need good input and questioning. Stalin killed anyone who opposed or questioned him, so all of the input and feedback was only positive feedback/intel to avoid being killed. Even when they were setting up one of the worst famines in recorded history [4].

Healthy societies aren't cults, and that is definitely a description of a cult.

I hate a Godwin-Law argument, but the damn Nazi's "did what they were told" [5], and those 'hard-working'-don't-question-leadership lemmings had a blind-eye to/assisted and/or murdered millions of people because they didn't have to deal with the burden of questioning and thinking for themselves. Fuck that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

[2] https://www.prisonexp.org/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown#Deaths_in_Jonestown

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%93...

[5] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/how-the-nazis-defense-o...

beefokon Systemshock: Shockolate – A minimalist and cross platform System Shock source p

I loved the original and the sequel -- this new one is amazing. I'm really enjoying it! It's also nice being forced to play without a walkthrough since it's NEW NEW...

beefokon Giant SpaceX Spiral Appears Amid the Aurora Lights in Alaska's Night Sky

https://earthquake.alaska.edu/event/0234u0lcjp

https://earthquake.alaska.edu/event/0234u01ap5

Would it have been around this time? I'd be interested to know if their seismographs can be used to detect non-earthquake recordings.

When I was little I lived less than an hour from Cape Canaveral and damn, when those shuttle missions launched, you'd feel it in your bones. I'm not sure how it would feel if it were just in the air crossing my path though.

beefokon Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

Still to this day (since it was released), I listen to the soundtrack. I love it so much. :)

The game idea itself is so original too!

beefokon Writing a C64 Asssembly Demo (2019)

This looks awesome, nicely done! I'll have to try it out soon. :)

beefokon Little languages are the future of programming

I've always enjoyed reading this book that espouses this same idea:

Constructing Language Processors for Little Languages 1st Edition by Randy M. Kaplan [1].

It's no longer being produced, but used it's $6 or less.

It's dated, from 1994, but it is a fun enjoyable discussion on the benefit of tiny specific languages. It also has a nice tutorial on the use of lex and yacc.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471597546

beefokon A secret Apple Silicon extension to accommodate an Intel 8080 artifact

Yeah agreed -- though that's what I meant about the zero flag: NOR instead of XOR combinatorial complexity, but same prop. delay critical path, only simpler circuits per bit if purely NMOS or PMOS! :) I think the 1970s Intel were doing MOSFETs then?

Technically parity could become a stable value before the zero flag could! ;)

Oh but I did forget that a single multiple input NOR could be large but without exponential amounts of gates

beefokon A secret Apple Silicon extension to accommodate an Intel 8080 artifact

While I know you already know this, technically all of the flags have large prop. delay and nothing is for free. :D

Computing any of them is equal amounts of delay if you want to mux/select any of them to output, and then on top of that you have to sequentially NOR-chain (and/or some hierarchical manner) the result for zero, and waiting on the adder carry chain for the carry flag. If you were sequentially (and/or some hierarchical manner) XOR-chaining for parity in parallel, is it really that much more delay? Especially if XOR uses domino logic etc.

I see a parity in the same realm as the adder carry chain as far as prop. delay goes (for computing sign/carry at the end.) Of course carry chains can be made more efficiently than a direct sequential chain, but you could be hierarchical about xor-chains for parity too..

beefokon The CD’s Rise in the Music Business: An Oral History

This is a testament to how well Reed-Solomon encoding/decoding [1] can detect and correct errors! I remember even heavily scratched cd's would work if you cleaned them with toothpaste of all things (?) [2]

This is unlike blowing an NES cartridge, which actually had a detrimental effect due to blowing spit on the pin contacts and oxidizing them.. [3] I do remember Babbages/KB Toys/etc did actually sell NES/SNES/Gameboy cartridge cleaning kits though [4].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-interleaved_Reed%E2%80%9...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=clean+cd+rom+toothpaste

[3] https://www.denofgeek.com/games/nes-cartridge-blowing-air-ur...

[4] https://www.thevintagegamers.com/2012/11/vintage-gaming-clea...

beefokon Wonkey: A cross-platform programming language

I was a teen when Blitz3D came out (to be fair, there's actually a demo sample from the Blitz3D CD with my real name on it!) Seeing all of his work [1][2] in an open-source release is amazing to see. All I have to say is that Mark Sibly has done incredible things for many years now. I'm excited to see how this progresses.

Side note: I didn't have an Amiga growing up (I had an Atari ST), so I missed the original Blitz Basic (known for instance for use in the original Worms game), but just knowing that he's still working on game design software is awesome!

If you read this Mark, Zenith says hey!

[1] https://github.com/blitz-research/

[2] https://github.com/blitz-research/blitz3d

beefokon An ARM Server That Is Banned in the US

It's not paranoia when foreign adversaries actually DO attack national security.

beefokon Scientists discover new “origins of life” chemical reactions

The Discovery Institute's only purpose[1] is to push creationism into public education under the guise of 'Intelligent Design'. Of course they never specify 'what' or 'who' the 'designer' is, but we all know what they are pushing.

Their only way of providing 'evidence' for an Intelligent Designer is fallacious at best [2]. Like all creationists, they can only provide bad faith arguments of ignorance and the god of the gaps. They can't even differentiate between what is 'designed' and what is 'natural', what's worse, they think everything is designed in the first place.

Let's say the modern synthesis of the theory of evolution is wrong, and the evidence put forth is wrong (160+ years of evidence.) If this were the case, neither creationism nor intelligent design is suddenly the alternative.

Intelligent design does not have any scientific merit. It does not explain anything about the abundance of evidence we actually have. It cannot make predictions, nor can it be falsified. It's a worthless unscientific mess that should have been put to rest many times over by now.

If there was ever evidence of 'design', that's evidence of 'design', not evidence of a designer. Before anything, you would first have to meet the burden of proof on the designer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy

[2] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-flaws-in-intell...

beefokon Satellite Detects Largest Release of Methane in the World

> Maliciousness entails knowledge

Wouldn't using fans to blow off the methane require knowledge?

beefokon Philips dropped the ball in sleep apnea machine recall

I've never used the cleaning stuff they are talking about that would damage the foam, but just in case, I've placed a filter[1] in the tubing. It actually makes breathing with it a bit harder -- which is kind of stupid of me to do, considering the CPAP is made to make breathing easier. But I'm only doing this because I fear the thought of just inhaling toxic fumes every night.

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B098X8TPQQ/ref=ox_sc_act_t...

beefokon Philips dropped the ball in sleep apnea machine recall

Yeah, my machine was up for replacement BEFORE this recall due to aging (7 years old.) I've been waiting forever for what Philips stated in the recall will be a 'refurbished' machine.

beefokon Master of Orion

I meant more that I like the original Civ still to this day, but I also love Civ 4+ as well. They definitely streamlined it!

beefokon Master of Orion

I feel the same way, but I also feel the same way about Civilization. I pop open a virtualbox + windows XP just to play Civ for windows edition..

Something I still really enjoy is Deadlock by Accolade, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlock:_Planetary_Conquest

You can get it off gog for $7! I recommend that version over the Steam version. It can be finnicky, but again, I play it on the XP Virtualbox!

beefokon Raspberry Pi update removes the default user

I used to tell people that there was an easter egg if you reached the highest score, so they'd just sit there counting

beefokon To my surprise and elation, the Webb Space Telescope is going to work

Yeah and when it is calculated over the period of time it was dispensed, that is hilariously cheap.

The defense budget for 2022 in USA is $768 billion for just one year. The budget for the entire development of the telescope was 1.351351% of that budget.