Hacker News Reader

blantonlon Tao: Open math problems being non-renewably mined by AI

Why was there a prize attached to this problem then? What does humanity get out of this being proved?

Here I was thinking this was OS/2 Warp…

blantonlon Claude Code Unpacked : A visual guide

Exactly. Imagine if Claude Code was a PHP script. Some folks would lose their damn minds

blantonlon StageConnect: Behringer protocol is open source

I use a Behringer X32 rack with a couple digital snakes to route audio between 20 or so radios, software defined receivers, online broadcasts and other audio sources, and it's one of the most powerful pieces of technology in my lab/office.

The quality however of the X32 leaves a little bit to be desired. The power supply died in it due to fault capacitors (I was able to replace them myself) and the rotary switches on the rack unit itself no longer work (I remote control the box anyway) but.. I've been able to look past all this because the sheer power of the tech is unbeatable for my use case. Running a single CAT-5 connection from my detached lab/rack to my office in the house with 32 channels of AES audio is amazing stuff for me.

blantonlon Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year

I agree. If this was Oracle I might not have too difficult of a time believing this is all of the story. But I do think in this case there is more to the story.

blantonlon Monero appears to be in the midst of a successful 51% attack

Or, you need to spend a lot of resources to do the attack even if it's the case that you get that money back when you succeed.

There is a word for this. We call it risk.

blantonlon Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade no-crawl directives

Ask yourself why so many content hosting platforms utilize CLoudflare's services and then contrast that perspective with your posted one. Might enlighten you a bit to think about that for a second.

blantonlon Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

Between this and Hertz's new AI damage detection models, we're seeing the enshitification of business travel reaching a new level, and also doing a great job of really ticking off a group of customers (business travelers) who are already irritated enough.

Rest markets itself as a way to "unlock a new revenue stream"

Leave it to the bean counters to see this as an opportunity to generate new revenue streams from customers while simultaneously pissing them off.

blantonlon DEWLine Museum – The Distant Early Warning Radar Line

BNSF railroad also has an extensive meteor scatter radio system across north america that is similar to SNOtel.

blantonlon DEWLine Museum – The Distant Early Warning Radar Line

meteor scatter communications were even more crazy and impressive (still in use actually)

blantonlon The Army’s Newest Recruits: Tech Execs From Meta, OpenAI and More

I've seen some specialist docs with extensive experience direct commission as an O5

blantonlon The Army’s Newest Recruits: Tech Execs From Meta, OpenAI and More

CEOs are more like high ranking general officers, not O-6 level (Navy Captain, Army/Air force full bird colonel)

O-5 (Lt Col, Navy Commander) would be VP / GM level stuff, GS-13 through GS-14 in the federal government

O-6 equivalent in the civilian world equates to a GS-15 in the federal government, and a senior VP in the corporate world

O-7 (brigadier general) would be an EVP level position, C-level large org

O-8 (general) would be CEO

blantonlon The Army’s Newest Recruits: Tech Execs From Meta, OpenAI and More

The pay scale isn't really equivalent. For military doctors and dentists the typical lure is they will pay off all your student loans for a specific time commitment to the military.

blantonlon Detection of hidden cellular GPS vehicle trackers

RTL-SDRs have a typical usable bandwidth only about 2 MHz, so that is going to rule them out of any real usable LTE related decoding and detection

blantonlon Rohde and Schwarz AMIQ Modulation Generator Teardown

Some of this obscure test equipment is very interesting and amazingly designed.

There are probably only a few electrical engineers in the entire world that actually use this stuff on a day to day basis.

blantonlon I hacked a dating app (and how not to treat a security researcher)

Returning the OTP in the request API response is wild. Like why?

blantonlon The Epochalypse Project

Eh, I've got 13 years to deal with this. No big deal.

The best thing about waiting until the last minute to fix something is it will only take a minute.

blantonlon The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

Informix is the april fools joke.

Does anyone remember the Informix / Oracle wars? What a time to be alive that was.

blantonlon Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

This guy's writing style makes him a worldwide treasure, and probably inspired a few young chemists.

I'll always read and re-read his blog posts when they are posted here.

blantonlon I asked police to send me their public surveillance footage of my car

You can monitor and track these as well with: https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433

blantonlon The FAA's Real Air Traffic Control Crisis Runs Much Deeper

Yes, a number of smaller airports are staffed by contract tower controllers.

blantonlon Over 90% of U.S. airport towers are understaffed, data shows

If there is one thing I've learned in the past few days, acutely so, is that the vast majority of people do not understand the sheer complexity of what it takes to have an aviation industry.

blantonlon Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

Here is the ATC audio between the Tower and PAT-25. Helos that transition DCA's airspace use a separate VHF frequency from traffic landing and departing, but talk to the same tower controller.

https://archives.broadcastify.com/44114/20250129/20250129200...

* At 5:41 - 5342 is given instructions for circling to 33.

* At 6:45 - PAT-25 reports Memorial

* At 7:06 - tower gives PAT-25 traffic advisory about 5342 and PAT-25 reports traffic in sight and requests visual separation

* At 8:12 - tower asks PAT-25 if they have the CRJ in sight and tells him to pass behind the CRJ. PAT-25 again reports traffic in sight and again requests visual separation.

* At 8:28 - crash occurs, exclamations, go arounds issued

blantonlon OpenAI says it has evidence DeepSeek used its model to train competitor

It’s literally a race to the bottom by “theft of data”

Whatever that means. The legal system right now in shambles and flat footed.

Knowing our current government leadership, I think we’re going to see some brute force action backed up by the United States military.

blantonlon OpenAI says it has evidence DeepSeek used its model to train competitor

It’s funny, the Chinese are here innovating on AI, batteries, and fusion, and here in the United States we’ve pivoted to shitcoins and universal tariffs.

At least we have the CyberTruck to highlight American greatness

blantonlon OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole from Us

Otherwise known as a race to the bottom

blantonlon OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole from Us

Nah, those costs were for their doomsday bunkers and crypto purchases, and maybe a house or 3

blantonlon Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

Yeah, really the only thing missing from this initiative was the personal information of the vast majority of the United States population handed over on a silver platter.

blantonlon What we know about CEO shooting suspect

The problem is I don't see any "easy" solution to this issue, simply because there will always be an institution in place to decide about someone else's life our death.

Be it a privately run for profit insurance system that runs on perverse incentives, or a government agency that runs on power and influence and corruption.

blantonlon Passport Photos

Interesting. I have a friend who has been completely unable to upload a photo for his passport renewal online because he has a lazy eye.