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csn

86 karma · joined June 18, 2015

Tech enthusiast and Go/JS dev from Finland. Degree and ongoing studies in corporate risk management, currently employed in private security sector. Lacking formal CS edu apart from InfoSec, dreaming of a career in IT.

Hacking passionately : https://github.com/ComSecNinja Occasionally blogging : http://comsec.ninja Waiting for your mail : timo@[the above]

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csn··on How Much More Can We Learn About the Universe?
I have a bizarre love for the heat death theory, partially because it goes so well with Lovecraft's "And with strange aeons even death may die" in my mind.
csn··on Future Airplanes Will Fly on Twistable Wings
uMatrix and http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ have completely replaced dedicated adblockers for me.
csn··on Ask HN: How do you decide for a backend language?
This is like asking a group of artisans what is the best kind of timber to make furniture out of, I'm afraid.
csn··on African wildlife officials appalled as EU opposes a total ban on ivory trade
What other interests should the EU have on this topic? Genuinely interested in people's views.
csn··on EU regulations on algorithmic decision-making and a “right to explanation”
Although just like the things you list, I can think of a plethora of ways with which advertising can literally, indirectly change my life by convincing me to purchase a product or service.
csn··on Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control
Yesterday I promised myself to not buy cigarettes anymore nor ask anyone to do it on my behalf. This first step only requires tremendous willpower when visiting a store, as the dispensers are placed at checkouts so I must stand right next to them when I'm in the queue.
csn··on Autoencoding Blade Runner: reconstructing films with artificial neural networks
I was intrigued by this a while back. I think of training a NN as generating a function, an equation, from a training set which, given a specific input, outputs a prediction. If you can come up with an equation-input pair that, when executed, a) accurately enough approximates some data, and b) requires less space than the original file, you have achieved (most likely lossy) compression.
csn··on Understanding the ginormous Philippines data breach
My acquaintance tells me the same. Presidential election being less than a month away I can see it being a big thing there, too.
csn··on Show HN: Natika – Simple PHP Forum for Developers
I would guess one of the reasons to be the fact that there are a myriad of (money-free) hosting providers out there offering plain drag&drop file uploading with PHP support (often paired with a mysql database access). This makes PHP software extremely easy to install.

Not that it would be even possible to run non-PHP server side scripts with majority of said providers...

csn··on The Basics of Web Application Security
This is just a wild guess which I can't verify at the moment, but have you tried setting the evil bit in your outbound packet headers, as per RFC3514?
csn··on The Loophole in the Hedonic Treadmill
That reminds me of solipsism* : the idea that your own mind is the only thing surely existing and might contain everything else; the universe, other minds within.

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

csn··on How to Deploy Software
For now, these decisions will be made for me by our gofmt overlords.
csn··on Turing Robotics Starts to Manufacture Phones Based on the Sailfish OS in Finland
The article correctly quotes 10-20 jobs per 1k units, but the mayor of Salo has apparently said[0] that there's probably an extra zero there, so reality could be closer to one or two per 1k.

[0] http://m.iltalehti.fi/digi/2016022621178689_du.shtml

csn··on Do animals feel empathy? the decades-long quest for an answer
Perhaps the thing we call empathy is just a strange side effect of the negative subconscious feedback a member of group-oriented species gets when their friend is, or is going to be harmed, physically or otherwise. The choice between gaining/saving an ally or gaining a treat can certainly be a selfish one, and in my opinion most likely is.
csn··on Request For Research: Basic Income
"Any sufficiently advanced AGI is indistinguishable from parent" just crossed my mind and I wanted to share.
csn··on Show HN: Read Hacker News in a Pinterest Way
Is the Android version in any free app store?
csn··on How we fought bad ads in 2015
What is up with the popup ads, by the way? I've been seeing them a lot lately when I enable JS, even on my bank's site. They were, in the past, tried with failure and all major browsers got a built-in blocker.
csn··on BART killing exposes security gap – many train cameras are decoys
The way I see it, dummy cameras and real ones have exactly the same pre-crime effect: they both create a sense of security and add to the observed risk associated with committing a crime. With dummies you get really low cost (practically no maintenance) but lose the benefits if and when a crime actually happens. Still net positive, I think.

Like common locks, cameras only really prevent opportunistic crime. And for prevention, dummy is as good as the real deal as long as it's not widely known which is which.

csn··on Google translated Russia to 'Mordor' in 'automated' error
This was happening at the Finnish border, too, but just recently Finnish authorities banned crossing it with a bicycle, officially for safety reasons.
csn··on The discovery of lunar water has changed everything for human exploration
I fantasise that in a parallel universe US, kilometer is considered a singular base unit whereas kilometre is thousand metres. This allows one to write "kph" instead of "kmph" when they want to be consistent with "mph", without getting odd looks from others.
csn··on New Style of Police Training Aims to Produce Guardians, Not Warriors
Don't you have an app for that?
csn··on Study: Type 2 diabetes can be cured through weight loss
I didn't think there was really anyone who actually thinks that the metric system is more complicated than the imperial one.
csn··on Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit
By false positives I meant non-firearm objects which the robot recognises to be firearms, and incapaciting brought tasers to mind.

I am probably looking at this problem through smaller-and-safer-country specs, Here police shootings are really rare, but so are other kinds of shootings. I thought of bots with high mobility due to the recent advancements in that sector, which would in my opinion make much more sense here than installing dozens or hundreds of stationary devices in every public space.

csn··on Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit
False positives would be scandalous. We would also need an unspoofable way for the AI to distinguish intent of the weapon drawing, because law-enforcement et cetera. The bot can't always already be at the scene when something happens.

Anyway I know at least one company working towards this goal as we speak, but I bet they aren't anywhere near that yet: http://gimltd.fi/ (Generic Intelligent Machines)

csn··on Owning materials from an asteroid now legal in United States
They don't, really. This is basically saying they won't take legal action against their citizen for owning or trying to obtain said materials.
csn··on Google Santa Tracker
Not quite, but close: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1401143/ (Rare Exports)
csn··on Google Santa Tracker
The concept has definitely been affected by religions, even having some roots there, but nowadays it's as religious as Easter Bunny. Saint Nicholas is God's earthly avatar: rewarding those who live by his rules and punishing the rest.
csn··on Nokia Tries to Reinvent Itself, Again, by Taking Over Alcatel-Lucent
Maybe they'll buy Jolla (which is not doing great atm), get old Nokia engineers back and continue with Sailfish OS. Alien Dalvik is great for Android software compatibility but a push for official recognition from Google for Play services and such would definitely help.

Independent operating systems is a good thing imo, but interoperability is crucial for them to coexist like browsers.

csn··on Caffeine could limit damage of chronic stress
Finnish people drink a lot of coffee; in my place of work it's a mug (0.2 litres) every two hours or so during a twelve hour shift. Some people there have been doing that for over a decade and apparently their dosage and consumption interval has remained the same, keeping blood caffeine levels quite steady.

Finland has the highest coffee consumption per capita in the world with ~12kg annually; compare to the US with ~4.1kg: http://www.worldmapper.org/posters/worldmapper_1038_coffee_c...

csn··on WebGL water scene
The audio is fine if that tab is not active but distorts when I switch to it. Otherwise very, very smooth.
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