HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

ghostpepper

3,810 karma · joined June 7, 2019

submissionscomments
ghostpepper··on Is Your Bluetooth Chip Leaking Secrets via RF Signals?
and assuming the protocol needs to continuously transmit for weeks at a time
ghostpepper··on Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
> On a decent hill you can get a regular bike going >60mph.

This is not the same as being able to go > 60 mph anywhere, at any time, simply by pressing a button.

> When you get a bike like this you deal with the danger and wear protective gear just like you would with any other bike (motorized or not).

This only deals with the danger to the rider - it doesn't address the danger to pedestrians.

ghostpepper··on Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
> They can't be treated like bicycles because they're too fast but aren't nearly as dangerous as motorcycles.

Why would an extremely powerful ebike be any less dangerous than extremely powerful gas motorcycle?

ghostpepper··on Alleged Jabber Zeus Coder 'MrICQ' in U.S. Custody
This must have been the inspiration for the Simpsons bit where the police set up a sting by offering a free boat giveaway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJKHw_CNYP4

ghostpepper··on The Linux Boot Process: From Power Button to Kernel
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUFkSN0XLZ-ltETI20mpX...

The ost2.fyi courses are all high quality

ghostpepper··on People with blindness can read again after retinal implant and special glasses
My layperson understanding is this happens because the mechanism that dilates the pupil responds to visible light so glasses cause it to open wider, but if they don’t block UV then you end up with more UV exposure than if you didn’t wear anything
ghostpepper··on Public Montessori programs strengthen learning outcomes at lower costs: study
I agree, and sadly this kind of gives the Montessori label pretty limited predictive value. Turns out you just need to find a good school, regardless of label.
ghostpepper··on ChatGPT Atlas
I turned off chatGPT memory entirely because it doesn't know how to segment itself. I was getting inane comments like this when asking about winter tires:

Because you work in firmware (so presumably you appreciate measurement, risk, durability) you might be more critical of the “wear sooner than ideal” signals and want a tire with more robustness.

ghostpepper··on The day my smart vacuum turned against me
it's a bit of a blurry distinction because, what is firmware if not the software that runs on an embedded device? a more accurate description would be that the high-level operating system (HLOS) has been modified to include the installation of a drop-in-replacement for the cloud API. the client side, and whatever hardware abstraction layer lives below it, is untouched. so the client thinks it's talking to the server but it's actually talking to a local open-source server.

I think it's also not quite correct to say the low-level firmware is unmodified, because with vale tudo you rely on the project author to provide a minimal rootkit that gets customized on a per-serial-number basis for the initial rooting.

from a high-level though, it delivers what it says on the tin - cloud features without any requirement of packets leaving your network or even the robot itself.

here's a talk from the author discussing his research https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfMfYOUYZvc

ghostpepper··on In Praise of RSS and Controlled Feeds of Information
I agree that most rss clients lack true power user features for searching and filtering.

I spent a bit of time proving out an idea to use Bleve indexing to allow scoring each article with weighted keywords but I haven’t had time to work on it lately. I’ll have a look at your links.

ghostpepper··on Cache of devices capable of crashing cell network is found in NYC
Not a lot more detail but a better source in general https://therecord.media/secret-service-cellular-network-disr...
ghostpepper··on Oxford loses top 3 university ranking in the UK
This is a cool site. For anyone who doesn't feel like clicking, the top overall is Carnegie Mellon. There are three from China in the top 10, the other seven are American. ETH Zurich is the first outside of China/USA at number 12.

However if you select only AI, Carnegie Mellon drops to 3rd and only two of the top ten are outside Asia (mostly China but also National University of Singapore and KAIST in South Korea).

ghostpepper··on Are touchscreens in cars dangerous?
Modern mazdas are one example - the touchscreen locks out above 5 miles per hour.

This is only feasible because the physical controls are excellent, and you can basically accomplish anything except typing an address or a song name without the touchscreen as input.

ghostpepper··on Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
I wonder why Zulip isn't mentioned more in these comparisons. Personally I would pick Slack over Mattermost any day in terms of sheer usability, corporate lock-in notwithstanding. I find Discord's UX to be pretty awful in terms of visual clutter and notifications demanding attention - constantly being notified to subscribe to Nitro etc.
ghostpepper··on Meta Ray-Ban Display
Most of the people in this thread are agreeing with you. You are not even close to the only one.
ghostpepper··on Meta Ray-Ban Display
Facebook changed its name to Meta. Meta is the company with the brand problem, not Ray Ban.
ghostpepper··on AirPods live translation blocked for EU users with EU Apple accounts
A big part of why they're considered the best is features like moving seamlessly between iPhone and mac within seconds of starting audio playback.
ghostpepper··on US High school students' scores fall in reading and math
do you live in Canada or is this happening elsewhere?
ghostpepper··on Memory Integrity Enforcement
Making attackers work harder is still a worthwhile goal. No security is perfect.
ghostpepper··on Memory Integrity Enforcement
Can you be more specific on what you consider "widespread" vs "rare"?
ghostpepper··on Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office
> If they are going to push for office collaboration, at least organize the teams so all the team members are actually in the same office.

As far as I can tell this is what apple does, and it actually makes a lot more sense than "you must be in some office but we don't care where".

ghostpepper··on iPhone dumbphone
I would never install one of these apps (more for security/privacy than information detox) but if Uber can abuse the notification system for advertising then it wouldn't surprise me if these companies would too.
ghostpepper··on Job mismatch and early career success
I'm confused by the wording "we create simulated job assignments"

Was this entire study based on real data or a simulation?

ghostpepper··on Job mismatch and early career success
Just search (both on HN and the internet more broadly) for Canonical (the company that created Ubuntu) hiring horror stories
ghostpepper··on GPT-5 Thinking in ChatGPT (a.k.a. Research Goblin) is good at search
This begs the question of what would be required to get an AI chatbot to emulate the process you (and others, including myself) use manually, and whether it's possible purely through different prompting.

Is the fundamental problem that it weights all sources equally so a bunch of non-experts stating the wrong answer will overpower a single expert saying the correct answer?

ghostpepper··on John Coltrane's Tone Circle
If you don’t have the time (or the musical background) for the full article, this short YouTube video touches on some of the same ideas in a much more condensed and accessible version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62tIvfP9A2w

ghostpepper··on Some users have noticed settings that let Meta analyze and retain phone photos
FWIW I have a free app installed called iVerify that mostly just reminds me when a new iOS is released but recently I noticed they added a "Strip metadata from photo" feature to the sharing tray, so you can pipe a photo through it and then copy to another app.
ghostpepper··on Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android
it doesn't matter who the war is with/against, if the lead developer of a software project gets drafted that will likely affect the users by virtue of them having less time to work on it (or none, if they get killed, which is not, y'know, unheard of in wars)
ghostpepper··on Meta Freezes AI Hiring After Blockbuster Spending Spree
Thanks for sharing.

Pretty aggressive paywall that is blocking archive.is and won't allow viewing a gift link without an account.

ghostpepper··on Vendors that treat single sign-on as a luxury feature
shouldn't every new company be using SSO for everything in 2025 and beyond? how long before this no longer becomes a good signal?
← PreviousPage 3 of 34Next →