HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

bux93

1,157 karma · joined February 11, 2021

submissionscomments
bux93··on OpenDLSS: A Vulkan Reimplementation of Nvidia's DLSS 5 Neural Rendering Network
In the US, claiming authorship isn't as protected or significant as internationally; moral rights are only protected for "works of visual art". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights

Which is not to say that uploading something to github is necessarily asserting ones authorship (if you read the front matter of a book, you might see a phrasing such as "[Name] asserts the moral right to be identified at the author of this work."; this is intended for jurisdictions that comply with the Berne convention more fully than the US does.) It is also not an instrument of conveyance (which needs to be signed by the owner of the rights) or the same as registering a copyright. A copyright notice is no longer required since the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 (effective as of 1989), but would involve the copyright symbol and not a git upload.

bux93··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
You could attempt a conversion yourself. People take this up as a hobby (e.g. https://www.diyelectriccar.com/ ) ; presumably to be able to pull up next to a muscle car at the traffic light in their antique 2CV and then out-accelerate them when the light turns green.
bux93··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
The only reason I don't drive an EV is that I live in an apartment building that won't install chargers. Given this limitation, I drive a Corolla hybrid and it's great - it drives smoothly like an EV, and mileage is good (although war in the middle east isn't great for prices). If it was practical for me to have an EV, I would probably stay clear from Toyota. Even though they have a great reputation for reliability of their hybrids, they spent decades bad-mouthing EV and the bz4 is markedly less reliable than their hybrids. Hyundai Ioniq 6 is looking good I guess.
bux93··on F-Droid 2.0
It's a race to the bottom. Users have to anticipate designers making inconsistent apps, so designers feel vindicated in their idiosyncratic and frankly user-hostile designs.
bux93··on Keys Not Included: recovering the signing keys for US driver's license barcodes
Walk into bank? The last time I opened a bank account (2023), I tapped my driver's license to my phone, it got my details+photo via NFC, I took a "liveness check" video and was onboarded. This has been the workflow for many years now for consumer account openings, or installing a banking app on a new phone. I think bunq did it first around 2017. As soon as (EUDI) wallets are more standardized, both neobanks and high streets banks will adopt that too.
bux93··on What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks
Note that the caps were introduced because the EU already had widespread use of bank cards, but local schemes were being replaced with Mastercard/Visa debit - the caps were brought in to prevent the duopoly from profiteering. (Apple/Google pay also use Mastercard/Visa virtual cards in the EU.) Before the cap, credit cards had way higher fees and there were some reward cards, which led to merchants simply not accepting Mastercard/Visa. Local schemes included Mastercard-owned Maestro (used in Germany, The Netherlands and for some reason Brazil) but also local schemes like Belgium's Bancontact/MrCash. It's unfortunate some of those schemes didn't just merge and started competing in foreign countries as well.
bux93··on Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
The fact that Lotus Notes offered attachments with e-mail wasn't as novel as the article suggests, to anyone who had been using uuencode (since 1980) or fidonet (1985).

I have fond memories of filling in time sheets on Lotus Notes. Although it's always an annoying thing to have to do, at least the Notes form that the local IT guy made for it allowed for retroactive changes and comments. Never had any issues communicating with finance over discrepancies or billing. And it synced from basically everywhere, using a 9600bps mobile dial-up connection if needed.

bux93··on Solving the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge
Probably this is just an unfamiliar domain for most non-hardware folks, so it's a nice challenge that might introduce Jane Street to some people they might want to interview for non-hardware roles.

But, they do have a hardware division, and Jane Street has a podcast that talks about some of the things they do https://signalsandthreads.com/?tag=hardware

bux93··on EFF to Courts: Don't Rewrite Copyright over AI Hype
It's substantively different. The level of compensation you could expect from copyright needs to be high enough that creators/inventors in general feel that it may be worthwhile to create/invent stuff. That level of compensation may be exactly enough to pay for a musician to make a track. We know this is not the case, it's more like a lottery ticket; some musicians make millions (much more than would be needed to entice them to choose this line of work) and many make almost nothing, but still persist. If you relax copyright provisions so that average compensation is halved, this would presumably have a non-linear impact. Maybe a 50% decrease in expected compensation only results in -10% new works. Maybe in -80%. For example, it is completely implausible that retroactively extending copyright (as has been done) results in any additional works being created at all - just higher profits for existing owners. This also applies to the costs; a higher cost of production (e.g. cost of living) doesn't necessarily need to lead to more stringent copyright restraints, nor lower costs to more lax restrictions.
bux93··on RotaryCell: Making an unmodified rotary phone work over LTE with an ESP32-S3
Cool! But who remembers phone numbers anymore? Maybe a small screen that you can navigate by dialling 1 (down), 5 (up) and 0 (select) would be a cool add-on (after dialling 0 or 411 to reach the operator perhaps).
bux93··on The startling 1960s theory that Stonehenge was a prehistoric computer
It was probably a tribe that later emigrated to Australia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_things_(Australia)

bux93··on “I just chose words carefully”
One advantage in print; pages are often not entirely opaque. So on page 3, you see a bit of the text of page 2 shine through. If page 2 has a jagged right margin, this also makes the left margin of page 3 look uneven.

Meanwhile, the right margin of page 3 looks has a "shadow" that goes all the way to the right because the left margin of page 2 pokes out underneath it - your eye might want to glide to the end of the block, but the sentence stops earlier.

It looks better when it's aligned, which is also why you can specify a left- and right margin that alternates on odd and even pages.

This is obviously only a concern for books and papers, and not so much for e.g. glossy magazines.

bux93··on Casio F-B100W-1A
I complained to the relevant GDPR authority (German) and never heard back. It's blatantly illegal - overprocessing of PII - to require registration for connecting two devices owned by the same person, in the same room. There's no fathomable necessary or legitimate use.
bux93··on Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe
You're not wrong in theory. If you're a small country, your currency's day-to-day purchasing power is influenced strongly by your imports and exports. If you have few things other countries want to buy, there's less demand for your currency, and it will go down in value as expressed in your trade partner's currency. A sustained trade deficit (more imports than exports) might mean your currency goes down and down in value. Certainly if some politicians decide to close the borders, you will export even less, but will probably still need some necessities from abroad, and you have a financial crisis.

The US is a huge whopping exception to this strong correlation between the balance of trade and currency strength. US exceptionalism is usually wrong, but in this case, the US dollar being the 'reserve currency' of the world is an incredible boon. The US has been able to sustain a huge trade deficit for decades without sky high inflation (you think it's bad now, it's nothing). In fact, foreign goods keep getting cheaper and the US dollar and services keep getting more valuable. A lot of this is because foreigners are willing to keep their savings invested in dollars (stocks & bonds, including the magnificent 7) rather than selling off their dollars to buy e.g. Chinese goods.

Also note that the tech companies make up a small portion of imports/exports.

But.. If trade restrictions (or security concerns) make it harder for the magnificent 7 to make money abroad, their profits will go down and there could also be an outflow of capital that puts inflationary pressure on the dollar, just because US stocks and bonds are less attractive - the trade deficit increasing would also contribute a bit, but it would be a much smaller effect.

An economy being propped up by foreign capital is not just a US phenomenon, the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, Turkey 2000, Mexico 1994 - these crashes all were cause by sudden capital outflows. The proximate cause was a short term arbitrage trade, rather than those currencies being in extensive (structural) demand.

This concern is also why China doesn't let foreigners invest directly in Chinese companies. You can only buy weird derivative certificates that trade on a Hong Kong exchange and are subject to tight capital controls if need be.

Things like a domestic tax on imported goods/services (also called tariffs) are unlikely to lower the trade deficit unless there is already an industry domestically to absorb the demand.

bux93··on The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing
Here's a visual listicle of "the 10 best opening title sequences of all time". (Epilepsy warning: a lot of flashing in #10) - they compare and contrast and highlight how their picks stand out against others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8twthdaqB8

Not only is this a better example of film (title) criticism, the titles they pick are also more amazing.

bux93··on The Golden Age of British Ice Cream
Every word in that last sentence is true. Especially the word "was". Shrinkflation has taken a particular toll on the thick mantle, and Magnums now are basically the choc ices they once beat out. Though with optional nuts and berries.
bux93··on Carolina Cloud pays SOFR on unused prepaid credits
A "banking license" is typically for "taking deposits or other repayable funds". (There's other kinds of banking licenses, too.) That can be for 0% interest too, or even negative interest (e.g. taking fees into account).
bux93··on Kill The Cookie Banner
Even if you only use first-party analytics, you're still tracking users and may still pipe that data to third parties, so you still need a lawful basis for processing PII (of which consent is the least useful one).

Even the use of the word "cookie" is framing by industry to confuse people.

bux93··on I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated
Apparently at least Bluetooth has something called Current Time Service (CTS) (BLE GATT service 0x1805). If you pair a cheap "smartband" to a phone, it'll set itself, even without using any apps. Neat! I guess it uses CTS?
bux93··on I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated
>damned if I could find one with a red seven-segment display that I liked (maybe someone else’s search kung-fu is better than mine?).

The secret to finding an inexpensive radio-controlled clock/alarm/watch of your liking it to be German. They LOVE their Funk-Uhren! Sadly they typically only support Germany's DCF77 signal. You can also trivially find DCF77 receivers as components to use in a project.

bux93··on OnePlus halts operations in USA and Europe
I'm not being pedantic, I'm saying their word salad is hard to read. As demonstrated by half of the messages in here arguing about what actually happened and whether the headline is correct.

It's not hard to say "We will not launch new models of OnePlus phones in Europe and NA. Current models will remain on sale, will still be supported and your warrantee is unchanged."

A pedant might say that telling people to use simpler words is the opposite of being "ostentatiously scholarly".

bux93··on OnePlus halts operations in USA and Europe
>As part of the proactive global strategy adjustment, OnePlus has decided to conclude new product rollouts in Europe and North America.

So.. they will roll out new products, conclusively? They will sell the same new products globally, including in Europe and North America? They will.. stop selling new phones because they can't form an intelligible sentence? That's the one.

bux93··on Bluesky Trademarks ATProto
That's the Hayes command set[1]. Hayes was a registered trademark up until 2022[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_AT_command_set [2] https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-results/73319703

bux93··on What `for x in y` hides from you – From Scratch Code
In the author's mind, it's unexpected/amazing that 'for' can iterate over many types. But it's NOT unexpected/amazing that 'iter' can iterate over many types. I have no idea why.

It's not like 'for' is limited to counting in other languages. The grand-daddy in c does something until some condition is false, and that thing can equally be incrementing/decrementing a number or invoking some function. That's what a loop does in any case, it compiles down to a conditional jump (JNE/JE..)

Maybe his reason for astonishment is obscured by over-use of an LLM to 'enhance' the text.

bux93··on Microsoft has released software updates to plug at least 570 security holes
And teams. And new outlook. And powertoys. Onedrive. SQL Server. The Microsoft store. Winget. I'm also not confident Windows Update actually does update Office, which also retains its own update mechanism.
bux93··on Germany set to restrict its Freedom of Information Act
If you design processes to be open by design, the cost of extracting data (removing sensitive data that is indeed not needed) goes down radically. Governments know this and resist it.
bux93··on Just Let Me Write Digits
IBM CUA (1987) should be required reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
bux93··on Croc: Securely transfer files and folders between two computers
For most people, it is part of the OS though. Windows comes with Client and Server services activated by default even on the Home edition for some reason. The functionality is dumbed down and hidden though, while onedrive - which requires registering a windows account - is shoved in the user's face.
bux93··on Harman and Dr. Sean Olive are reshaping headphone sound (2025)
Well, the dB scale was once created on the basis that 1dB was thought to be the "just noticeable difference". Off the top of my head, I think trained listeners can actually notice differences of 0.3 dB, though this sort of thing is going to be frequency dependent too.

The eq-adjustments you'll find online often have adjustments ranging from 1 to 6dB in different frequencies. That's enough to notice.

Comparing settings/devices, it's very easy to notice. Just play some music on your laptop/phone speakers and move the device around a bit, and you'll hear striking differences in highs and lows.

However in isolation, I think most people wouldn't be able to say if a particular sound source is "good" or "bad". It takes a while for you to clock that, no, it's not the teams/zoom call that has bad quality, it's your headset that's dropping mids.

bux93··on DNSGlobe – Rust TUI to watch DNS propagate around the world
djbdns/tinydns can schedule a change and give out a lower and lower TTL the nearer the changeover time gets - a quick search doesn't show any newer implementations but this is surely a good way to do it.
Page 1 of 13Next →