idatum

HN will feed more clicks, even in good faith to question this video. The company behind that stupid wallet thing he's promoting is probably happy, at least for now. And GOOG won't pull this, at least for now. Fact checkers? lol

What a f'd up online world.

EDIT: oh, and it was NordicTrack that bought the ad before I could watch the video.

On Signal? Wow, this is bad news because I have my immediate family on Signal and I won't pick up a call unless it's a Signal call.

Regarding the money trail, etc: I can't help but think we'll never really see the "surveillance economy" properly regulated, where our data is profited from. Because there is just too much profit.

EDIT: The context for this thread: I get SPAM calls on my mobile about extending my car's warranty. How do SPAMMERs know about my car purchase? How do they know the exact model and date of purchase? Someone sold this data.

Terrible loss of life, and the thought of these monster tornados striking at night is terrifying. Maybe it could have been worse though.

Most of the warnings issued were accurate, from what I've read [0]. I really hope we continue to invest in these short-term weather forecasts. Clearly there have been recent advances, and we can still do better.

[0] https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-critical-gap-in-tor...

I upgraded from 12.2 today. Flawless. Once 13.1 is out, I'll jump a full version.

FreeBSD, and the BSDs generally, are such gems. I use Linux for work every day (mostly Debian based), and that's all good. And almost 100% of that is working on Linux from a Windows device (WSL and/or SSH remote).

When I SSH into my FreeBSD ZFS server, or my OpenBSD router, it feels so clean and pure. A joy.

HP calculators are such gems. The HP-48 survived my school backpack and always "just worked". Really great products.

Will have to also acknowledge the BSDs along with ZFS for storage.

Somewhat related to injecting unusual characters, in my experience in localization efforts:

Inject a Turkish 'I'. I don't know how to type or paste it here, but picture an English lower case 'i' that is upper case. It is a splendid way among many to shake out some loc bugs.

My laptop was capable of upgrading to Win11 and WSLg was my main motivation. I like the mix of Windows and Linux and having Linux graphics and pulseaudio mixed in with native Windows. This most likely wouldn't be described as a "consumer feature". More important for me are some opencv projects I have: You get access to your GPU compute. I can install CUDA+DNN on my WSL2 Debian. This is compelling IMO.

An option you can consider by sticking with Win10 is to either wait for Win10 21H2 or join the Insider Program Preview to get it now. Win10 21H2 gives you GPU compute access (no graphics or pulseaudio). On an older machine, I was able to build opencv-4.5 and leverage CUDA+DNN just like on Win11.

EDIT: Win10 21H2 should be released this month. The fact that it is in the Preview Channel means it's most likely a final build.

Looks interesting, will check that out!

I enjoyed reading "A mind at Play", Soni and Goodman. There are several of these kind of stories with colleagues. I also like how the book goes into his childhood, including using electrified fence to communicate with his farm neighbors!

Moving my home automation notifications (mix of DIY and Home Assistant) from Twilio SMS to Signal using signal-cli Docker image.

I might even get confident enough in this solution to allow commands to be sent (e.g. lock front door).

Never having explicitly queried fb.com before I never noticed how they (face:b00c) got clever with their IPv6 address:

2a03:2880:f1ff:83:face:b00c:0:25de

+1 on paho-mqtt for python and mosquitto. All of my fun projects such as XBee3 sensors and HA + Z-Wave go through MQTT. It has been rock solid and a joy to develop against.

Maybe the article was AI generated? /s

I use Z-Wave and the key for me is I'm not beholden to some external IoT service that is a potential privacy issue, can update firmware without my consent, or simply goes away. I feel I own my Z-Wave network (aka right to repair).

For light switches I use Z-Wave modules that use the wall switch as a low voltage switch to trigger the module to switch the A/C circuit. This way the existing switch acts just as it did before. My family really doesn't notice, yet somehow that porch light is always on around dusk and off by dawn.

I don't use Alexa or the like but as a developer I easily integrate with DiY equivalent.

That last point is probably a key gap generally though -- as a developer this home automation stuff comes easier to me, potentially.

I also use signal-cli for notifications including my own custom integrations using MQTT. And to connect remotely to the Home Assistant (HA) UI I use an SSH tunnel. But this is how I enjoy using HA, integrating with my own projects.

What I also learned to enjoy about HA is the diversity of the community of users that found success in home automation without completely relying on "cloud" solutions. I think this is the ethos of this project: local control comes first.

There is a dark pattern in Android that is tangentially related only, but I need to share it:

The service in Android using (B)SSID for "a better experience" is configured off on my phone, and I explicitly turn off all location services when I don't actively need it. Every time I turn on location, then open Google Maps, Maps prompts me to turn on the "enhanced experience". Picture yourself in a bit of a rush, needing to do some quick navigation using your phone and Maps, and how easy it is to quickly dismiss that prompt without realizing you just offered Google more data.

Note: My default behavior regarding Google is to give them the absolute minimum amount of data.

I also enjoyed "A Mind at Play".

I had forgotten (or never fully appreciated) what Shannon did and what other early pioneers did in computing. I have a better appreciation for all of them now.

One other highlight was Shannon's early childhood and using electrified fencing to communicate with others in his farmland neighborhood.

Projections can be tricky. Early memory I have in college: I walked into my professor's office and she had a curious looking map on her wall. It had Australia at the center and the US was distorted and upside down.

As someone from North America (US) this was a nice lesson in perspective.

Fair question.

This is exhausting.

Put in an old DVD of Dr. Strangelove:... recently in the XBox. It was just a random thought to pop it in and enjoy. (okay, was cleaning up shelf)

I eventually realized I could skip around and enjoy the parts I liked. Freely. Without that feeling of being watched.

Flashback.

There is something about this scientist's style of writing I like. She conveys complex ideas, gives details, and keeps the reader engaged. Bookmarked.

EDIT: And looking at the non-mobile link I realize now it is a transcript. So that crispness in writing came out from essentially a lecture. Nice.

While you're using it on Windows, I recommend giving WSL and Windows Terminal a try. The combination of those with VSCode makes for a nice development environment in my experience.

Here's another test I do with calculator apps (in radians): Pi - 4 * ATAN(1)

These apps really should produce 0 for this and avoid floating point issues. Most of us understand why it wouldn't. To me it's an experience/quality issue.

For what it's worth, the default Android calc app produces 0 (as well as nice RPN apps like Droid48).

I noticed the same thing: I opted out (both analytics and ads options) a few months ago when I switched to T-Mobile. They since ignored my preferences and opted me back in. Unbelievable. I don't even know when they did this.

Do I now have to keep checking on these settings??

Changing privacy preferences without my knowledge or permission must be made illegal. Total FB like move.

Also, I'm generally tired of this concept of "ads relevant to me" BS.

I credit the HP-41CV I had in in high school for growing my interest in programming. Through college it was an HP-48G. My father-in-law recognized my love for these devices later by giving me his old HP-35, complete with manuals and a couple accessories.

One of the more interesting accessories was his special HP-35 hardcore looking security lock. You would securely bolt the base of the lock to your desk, place the HP-35 inside, and connect and lock the cover with a key. Precious device back then!

Related to this history is how calculators used CORDIC, COordinate Rotation DIgital Computer, to compute trigonometric functions in real time with minimal hardware. CORDIC was originally developed by Jack Volder working at Convair corporation in 1959.

Here is a nice explanation (PDF): https://www.qc.cuny.edu/Academics/Degrees/DMNS/Faculty%20Doc...

EDIT: in the HP-35 article it is mentioned in section III. The PDF here goes in to the math and implementation of CORDIC.

Living in the PNW with many consecutive months of damp and cool weather, I've found most humidity sensors to be unreliable. Often their operating range is between 20% and 80%, which misses the very dry summers and very wet winters here. After a few weeks, I start getting bad readings, and finally failures. Lately, I've had better results using a small 5VDC fan within the weather station enclosure, with the hope that dew won't form on the sensor (probably the main culprit). It's a Silicon Labs Si7021 temperature and humidity sensors (I2C). So far so good.

+1 for Az KeyVault. I use it in my Docker deployment scripts using Azure CLI. Example here is a secret, but similar concept for certs using CLI: STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY=`az keyvault secret show --vault-name=<your keyvault> --name=<secret name> --query=value | tr -d "\""` This populates a .env file, referenced in Docker-compose.yml.

Surface Laptop with WSL and Ubuntu 18.04 (or pick your favorite distro) enabled. Run VSCode using WSL-Remote extension. You edit/build/run on the Linux subsystem seamlessly from a VSCode Windows process -- seamless integration. It's a thing of beauty.