Hacker News Reader

lehion A 1960s schools experiment that created a new alphabet

I kept expecting this article about the ITA (Initial Teaching Alphabet, a Latin-based script with new glyphs for spelling words phonetically, now unused) to mention the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet, a Latin-based script with new glyphs for spelling words phonetically, still widely used), but apparently there is no relation?

lehion Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belphegor%27s_prime

"666" with 13 0's on either side and 1's on the ends.

lehion FFmpeg by Example

FFmpeg's filter DSL is so good that I get annoyed if I ever have to fall back to command line switches.

lehion Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

"Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians, UN rights expert says" (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/un-israel-food...)

"Intentionally depriving people of food is clearly a war crime. Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian. In my view as a UN human rights expert, this is now a situation of genocide."

lehion South Korea slaps ₩435M fine on Twitch for suspending service

This was posted first, and the source here is the original reporting.

lehion Salt and salary: Were Roman soldiers paid in salt? (2017)

Chinese astronomical records were extensive, accurate, and continual for more than 3000 years. They believed the Earth was flat and square until the 17th century.

lehion Details on Xiaomi EV

"Both iOS and Android...transmit telemetry data to their motherships even when a user hasn’t logged in or has explicitly configured privacy settings to opt out of such collection. Both OSes also send data to Apple and Google when a user does simple things such as inserting a SIM card or browsing the handset settings screen. Even when idle, each device connects to its back-end server on average every 4.5 minutes...In the US alone, Android collectively gathers about 1.3TB of data every 12 hours. During the same period, iOS collects about 5.8GB."

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/android-sends-20x-mo...

lehion Senator calls for the public release of AT&T 'Hemisphere' surveillance records

It's always the same senator. It should be very concerning that you have only one person in Congress who has fought against mass surveillance over the years.

lehion Marissa Mayer on OpenAI's Board

This is Marissa Mayer talking about OpenAI's board, not (thankfully) sitting on it.

lehion TikTok says it's not the algorithm, teens are just pro-Palestine

"TikTok was slammed for its pro-Palestinian hashtags... But Facebook and Instagram show the same imbalance."

- https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/13/tiktok-...

lehion Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

> I have this strong impression that US conservative Christians have come to believe that the so-called Invisible Hand of the market is actually God sending reward and punishment, which is why it's now ok and even praiseworthy to seek after and accumulate wealth.

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

"Prosperity theology is a religious belief among some Charismatic Christians that financial blessing and physical well-being are always the will of God for them, and that faith, positive speech, and donations to religious causes will increase one's material wealth. Material and especially financial success is seen as a sign of divine favor."

lehion Nintendo filed numerous patents for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom mechanics

> I would be surprised if Nintendo uses any of these aggressively -- do they have a reputation of doing so?

2 years ago, Nintendo successfully sued a game developer for $30 million over a patent on touchscreen virtual joysticks. (https://www.dualshockers.com/nintendo-lawsuit-colopl-white-c...)

lehion Ice core scientists in East Greenland reach bedrock

The Keeling Curve is eye-opening for understanding our current versus (pre-)historical CO2 levels: https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2023/07/introducing-keeling-c...

lehion US Army Physical Fitness Test: Normative Data on 6022 Soldiers (1994)

"In the past decade, every branch of the U.S. military has begun to phase out sit-ups and crunches from their required testing and training regimens, or else they have made them optional, alongside more orthopedically sound maneuvers such as the plank. Spokespeople for the Army and the Marines confirmed to me that these decisions in their branches were made in part to avoid the high rates of lower-back injury found among troops training for speed sit-up and crunch tests."

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/05/sit-ups-c...

lehion FBI chief says TikTok 'screams' of US national security concerns

Something being political does not require it to be partisan. Joseph McCarthy worked hand in hand with then-FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, and Wray was appointed by a president who also tried to ban TikTok.

lehion Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

Posted after tonetheman's link here, in case anyone thinks the follow-up was deliberately elided.

lehion “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter...”

Click through for the punch line.

lehion We found critical vulnerabilities in Hive Social

Hive is a My First App project from a teen who taught herself to code in 2019 (https://www.hivesocial.app/about-us).

Caveat emptor.

lehion Asian faiths try to save swastika symbol corrupted by Hitler

It's not borderline, they're trolling. Check the poster's comment history.

lehion Gaudí's Hanging Chain Models

Here's a good overview of this technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlL6ZHChhQE

lehion We're improving search results when you use quotes

DuckDuckGo's absurd handling of quotes finally forced me back to Google. Adding quotes in DDG gives nonsense results: https://imgur.com/a/2SHpjPG

lehion “Xanadu Hypertext Documents” architecture and data structures, 2019 edition

Jargon game: "Urbit or Xanadu?"

lehion The secret sounds of Dune: Rice Krispies and Marianne Faithfull

I'm curious if the decision to have the Sardaukar speak a different language was made in post-production. The Bashar on Salusa Secundus's lips seem to be forming the English words, with the harsh foreign syllables ADR'd in.

lehion What’s the appeal of deep voices in men?

Culture. Operas originally relegated bass and bass-baritones to comedic buffoon roles, with prominent parts reserved for tenors, falsettists, and the extreme of the castrati. Modern performances often transpose these hero parts to much lower ranges for contemporary tastes.

lehion Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories

You shouldn't expect DuckDuckGo to be better. DDG results have also gotten even more terrible with time.

I realized just today that adding quotes around search phrases in DDG makes it return nonsense (3 screenshots): https://imgur.com/a/2SHpjPG

lehion Fans pour funding into ‘The Chosen’

I wondered at first that Chaim Potok's novel would have so many fans, but this makes more sense.

lehion Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware

Only curbing "abuse" implies that "normal use" of state-sponsored spyware remains kosher.

lehion Optical storage – the future of long term data preservation (2015) [pdf]

Page 13 prompts some questions. 128GB BDXL is positioned before the document's publishing year of 2015, but doesn't appear to have actually been released until 2017. The multi-TB discs extrapolated out to present day seem to still be vaporware. Why did advances in high-capacity bit-rot-resistant optical media apparently stall?

lehion Tanaka Hisashige, builder of the Myriad Year Clock (2016)

Interesting, that was fixed within 20 minutes of the parent comment. The author/editor may be reading this thread.

lehion Quad9 and Sony Music: German Injunction Status

Verizon has also been blackholing routes to ddos-guard for the past few weeks, cutting off access to any sites protected by them: https://torrentfreak.com/why-is-verizon-blocking-pirate-site...