Hacker News Reader

braunsheddon Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'

The Xbox 360 was hacked in a simpler but nearly identical way [1]! Amazing that despite the various mitigations, the same process was enough to crack the Xbox One.

[1] https://consolemods.org/wiki/Xbox_360:RGH/RGH3

braunsheddon GCP Outage

Our GCP workloads are unavailable across several US regions. The GCP console is intermittently unavailable for most pages.

Crossing my fingers for a quick resolution.

braunsheddon My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer

When I was commuting daily in the SF fog, I discovered that putting on of these [1] on my helmet did wonders to keep cars further off my tail. It moves the brake light up to eye level for people in SUVs and also triggers on engine braking.

Wish it were cheaper, but was a worthwhile investment for me.

Also, consider looking into airbag vests if you ride regularly. Also expensive but (supposedly) make a huge difference in crash outcomes.

[1] https://www.brakefreetech.com/products/brake-free

braunsheddon 12 Months of Mandarin

I also use Netflix to great effect for practicing Chinese, especially when paired with the Language Reactor[1] extension in Chrome.

* Note: Netflix has much more Taiwanese content than mainland China content, so do note the difference in the accent / dialect you'll be learning.

[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/language-reactor/ho...

braunsheddon Remember That DNA You Gave 23andMe?

You're probably thinking of "The Island"[1]. Good movie, I saw this myself a long time ago.

[1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/

braunsheddon Unity is cancelling the runtime fee for games customers

TLDR: When electronics burn out, they often release "magic smoke" that is believed to be the source of their power (since they almost always fail to work afterwards).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_smoke

braunsheddon Tesla Recalls 2M Cars to Fix Autopilot Safety Flaws

I just disabled all of these warnings on my Toyota with a third party OBDII reader and the Carista app, which also comes with lots of other fun options to fiddle with. Only thing I haven't figured out is how to disable the chime on startup!

braunsheddon Career Advice (2013)

He's traveling around Australia! (Check bio, great YouTube channel)

braunsheddon SMS traffic pumping fraud

Update: they approved my A2P use case! There is hope yet for using twilio for personal purposes :-)

braunsheddon SMS traffic pumping fraud

I'm actually in this exact same boat (I ported my US number to twilio when I had a long travel stint abroad to retain access, have since built a forwarding system to keep using it).

I registered with the IRS to get an EIN for my "sole proprietorship" (i.e. me), and that seemed to satisfy twilio for the brand registration requirements. Still waiting on a final A2P review for my use case (sending messages to family and friends) so not out of the woods yet, but hopefully that's the last step.

braunsheddon Ask HN: What would you do if you didn't have to work?

I read this and wondered "how many other people could be out there that fit this description besides the road-chose-me guy?"

Sure enough -- it's the road-chose-me guy xD

braunsheddon A bird's-eye view of quantum error correction and fault tolerance

Very interesting! How close are we to achieving said noise threshold?

braunsheddon Ask HN: What's the coolest website you know?

https://everynoise.com

Search for your favorite bands using the bar at the top right corner. Find the associated playlist on Spotify via "The Sound Of X" where X is the genre name.

If you have (or would like to have) diverse musical tastes this is the best way to do it!

braunsheddon Apple announces Self Service Repair

The degradation is the real problem. They hold up for the first tens of charges but quickly lose 20-50% of capacity. It might have to do with the lack of OEM charging circuitry on the replacements, or perhaps just shoddy quality

braunsheddon Apple announces Self Service Repair

Genuine Apple batteries are miles better than any of the secondhand ones I've replaced them with (even the iFixit batteries).

Very exited to get my hands on the OEM replacements and extend my laptop's life another 3-5 years

braunsheddon Soaring lumber prices add to the cost of a new home

If we're using anecdata, I've seen $20 plywood sheets going for $40 which is double the normal price, but not 7x.

braunsheddon Soaring lumber prices add to the cost of a new home

There's essentially no new housing being built in the Bay in general, so I suppose the cost of lumber is moot.

braunsheddon Washington state approves capital gains tax

Definitely sarcasm with 'And stop asking questions.'

braunsheddon Equity guide for employees at fast-growing companies

Exercise windows are a super important issue that are touched on briefly here, but worth expounding on. Early-exercise mitigates some of the issues of a short exercise window but only for employees with deep pockets. [1]

[1] https://cs.stanford.edu/~rishig/90-day-exercise-windows.html

braunsheddon It is as if you were doing work

Ah! This is classic, wonder if this is based on the old flash game...

* https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/186896

braunsheddon Got fired? Ready to start a startup/new project?

I'm curious about how you're tackling some of the problems I've seen with prior recycled-plastic-to-filament projects. IIRC printer filament is very sensitive to moisture and impurities, which are hard to control for when using recycled materials (even when mixing with a proportion of virgin plastic)

braunsheddon Full Autopilot in GTA Using TensorFlow

I'd love to see this done in Forza, although I'm sure that's optimizing for the wrong kind of driving behavior (lol)

Amazing work!

braunsheddon Próspera – Special Economic Zone in Honduras

Próspera Honduras just launched. It's a ZEDE (aka SEZ), the legacy from Paul Romer's time in Honduras. It has a huge amount of regulatory autonomy which they are tackling in an interesting way. They have reciprocity with all OECD countries, enforced via liability.

braunsheddon Show HN: Run the unmodified iOS kernel image on the VIM3 development board

How does one go about gaining the skills to do something like this? Love the demonstration of real low-level engineering and understanding.

braunsheddon China's housing glut casts pall over the economy

I spent ~2 years in mainland China (Zhengzhou, where iPhones are assembled). The number of 15+ story apartment buildings along major freeways was astounding -- all of them seemingly empty.

When in China I was told this is driven by a combination of two things:

1. The average person in China does not believe in investing in intangible assets. This means the stock market is not appealing, so they all pile into the best physical investment around -- housing.

2. Owning your home and a car before marriage is considered 'mandatory' in traditional Chinese culture (for men). If you forego this you have what's known as a 'naked wedding' -- not good. Renting doesn't count.

Excess housing means the average rental yield (rent / property cost) is so low that it's not worth finding tenants. Examples include $300k condos renting for ~200 USD / month.

braunsheddon Wondering about the link between intelligence and meaning

> "Unfortunately, motivation is fleeting. It's as though my brain is hyper sensitive to novelty"

Not to toot my own horn, but I struggled with this myself and ended up 'inventing' my own psuedo life-philosophy 'Experientialism'[1]. You might find this an interesting way of going about the problem.

[1] https://braunshedd.com/philosophy-and-metaphysics/what-is-ex...

braunsheddon US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

Undoubtably. Not a strong protection against doxxing, but might offer some semblance of protection from 'drive-by-lookups'. With a modern smartphone and location services, there's only so much you can do.

braunsheddon US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data

Previously discussed yesterday, and again two days before that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17069459

This is one of the reasons I use a public-facing Twilio number, which forwards to a private number which I never hand out.

This isn't something that people should have to do to opt-out of tracking like this, but it doesn't seem like there are many other reliable options.

braunsheddon [dead]

Is there any kind of timeline on these points? Big difference between next year and a decade from now.