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billh

403 karma · joined June 30, 2015

bill-at-helgs-dot-net
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billh··on Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams
I've been saying this for a while now and I think encryption is the solution to the problem.

Instead of having an "Off" button, make the button begin ciphering the data with an officers private key. If the courts discover that there is something of interest in the duration of time that the camera is encrypting, they can compel the officer to turn over her encryption key or face a contempt charge.

This would allow either side (prosecution or defendant) to bring an argument forward and to have a judge decide if there's enough merit to warrant a decryption of the recording.

billh··on Remove auto renew from my account
Capital One has "Eno"(https://www.capitalone.com/applications/eno/) which provides virtual cards and still works. I'm not a huge fan of Capital One, but afaik they are the only credit card company that offers this.

I should note that Privacy.com provides this service as well and I really do like their mission, but they have the limitation of only being able to be used with a debit card backing the account and I've also ran into some issues with their cards not working with some online vendors.

billh··on My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison
My last job application asked not only about felony conviction but also wanted to know if I've ever been arrested before.
billh··on Chromecast with Google TV
I'm confused why they are not pushing the 4k plan as well, maybe that would put it out of a price target they were hoping to hit?

From the terms of the offer, it does look like you can apply the value of the offer to a 4k plan at a reduced duration.

* Offer value may be applied to a different Netflix streaming plan under the same account; exchanges in this manner may alter the duration of the offer. Netflix price plans subject to change and the duration of the offer value may be prorated accordingly.

billh··on Oracle’s BlueKai tracks people across the web – that data spilled online
If you click through to request your offline data it appears that their regex to validate DOB is faulty and it fails the identity check requiring you to have to start a letter campaign to maybe get access to the data they hold about you.

  (0[1-9]|1[0-2])/(0[1-9]|1d|2d|3[01])/(19|20)\d{2}
If the day you were born is between 10-29 it will not validate as a proper day.
billh··on Alcohol breath tests are often unreliable
Tests like the one to "Say the alphabet backwards" are not designed to test intoxication but to elicit a response similar to "I can't even do that sober". This type of reply can then be used as a confession.
billh··on How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch
This is simply not true.

Milk is tested frequently and antibiotics are very rarely found [1]. Milk tankers that test positive for antibiotics are discarded and this milk never enters into the human consumption stream.

1. https://www.fda.gov/federal-state-local-tribal-and-territori...

billh··on Reversing Safeway's private APIs to automate coupon collection
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're using a credit card the bank is only getting a receipt that shows the sum total of the transaction and not an itemized receipt. The club cards are consuming and tracking the data of the entire transaction.
billh··on TP-82 Cosmonaut survival pistol
Even if it does go off, as long as the rounds are not chambered it's really not that big of a deal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SlOXowwC4c

billh··on Why the Amazon Basics Keyboard Is My Favorite Keyboard
Try memoryexpress, it looks like they stock some silent cherry mx switched keyboards.
billh··on What a tweet tells us about spy satellites [video]
Hubble wasn't but a pair of Key Hole satellites (KH-11) were.

https://www.americaspace.com/2012/06/06/top-secret-kh-11-spy...

billh··on Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims
I've had credit card companies call me and straight up say "If you pay this right now over the phone with me and pay the $15 telephone transaction fee, this won't hit your credit report"

Between the "Pay for Delete" scams and the gamifying of your credit score through services like CreditKarma I really questions how close these scores are hitting anymore in relation to relative credit risk.

billh··on Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off
Correct. ARDC (managing entity of AMPRNet) then used the lack of use of the 44 address space as an excuse to sell it off to the highest bidder. Those addresses were indeed unused, but not for lack of want.
billh··on Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off
>These days, less than one third of the address space is assigned and in use. Large chunks of it have almost never been used

This part probably angers me the most as I (and I'm sure many others) have asked for an allocation in this address space and after waiting months without reply was eventually denied the request.

billh··on Known Issue: Charged full price of Fi device after financing
The same-rate international data is what keeps me on Fi. It's great not to have to worry about taking it in the shorts by the phone company when traveling somewhere. A friend of mine has one of the majors as his carrier and they were charging him $10/day for data in Europe, in 2019 that's just insane.
billh··on NPR: New Packet Radio
It's a little bit more relaxed than "no commerce allowed".

Communications in which the operator has a pecuniary interest are prohibited[1]. But, personal communication with a business is allowed. Ordering a pizza via phone patch is allowed but soliciting orders for your pizza shop is not.[2]

There are other issues that would make connecting to the internet problematic that are prohibited by §97.113. Things like cryptography, obscene or indecent words or language; false or deceptive messages ...

1. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/97.113 §97.113(A)(3)

2. http://www.arrl.org/phone-patch-guidelines

billh··on A DIY Cruise Missile (2004)
It has been demonstrated that you can fashion an AK out of a typical gardening shovel. https://www.northeastshooters.com/xen/threads/diy-shovel-ak-...
billh··on Flightradar24 – how it works
If you're interested in that data, https://www.adsbexchange.com will show it. They also have filters available to only show things like Military or "Interesting" aircraft.
billh··on Ask HN: YouTube down?
Along with their live TV product, tv.youtube.com
billh··on Office Life Is Destroying Your Butt
Tissues are not designed to break down in water like toilet paper is.
billh··on Tesla Q2 2018 Vehicle Production and Deliveries
Tesla does a live webcast of these calls on their investor relations site at http://ir.tesla.com/

The next quarterly update will be sometime early August.

billh··on [dead]
Part of the problem begins with jury selection. Prosecutors tend to select jurors who are deferential to authority, since they almost always side with the prosecutor. This plan doesn't work very well when the defendant is the image of authority.
billh··on Predicting, Decrypting, and Abusing WPA2/802.11 Group Keys [pdf]
Here's the CCC talk with the author of this white paper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJWd-_BDC_g
billh··on Welcome to the World of Software Defined Radio (2016)
There is the LimeSDR Mini that is currently being croudfunded[1]. For $140 USD you would be hard pressed to find anything like it that would give you full duplex across that frequency range. I own the full size LimeSDR device and it has been a great piece of hardware for playing around with.

1. https://www.crowdsupply.com/lime-micro/limesdr-mini

billh··on Welcome to the World of Software Defined Radio (2016)
You will need a antenna that is resonant on the frequency you're transmitting on for any hope of the signal leaving the immediate proximity of the Pi. It would also be a very good idea to filter the signal coming out of the Pi to reduce the strength of any frequency spurs accompanying your Pi generated signal and to keep your transmission legal.

This is a pretty good write up of using the Pi as a wspr transmitter: https://github.com/JamesP6000/WsprryPi

billh··on Welcome to the World of Software Defined Radio (2016)
You are correct, ticket is ham nomenclature for license.
billh··on Welcome to the World of Software Defined Radio (2016)
You can also keep progressing in the tests under the same $15 fee. That is, after taking and passing the tech test, you can take the general during the same session (same day) without having to pay another $15.

I did it this way for the Tech/General/Extra, hammered all three of them out in the same session spending only $15 that Saturday morning.

billh··on Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died
This was made into a documentary and is currently available on Netflix. If you can spare 90 minutes check it out, it's a hell of a good watch.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80107656

billh··on Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
This class action will likely be settled in the same way the Ticketmaster case was settled ... with a coupon book good for 2 free credit reports.
billh··on Global hangouts outage?
I'm using Google Fi and I havent been able to send messages through hangouts or SMS for 20 minutes or so now.
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