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nanis

3,001 karma · joined December 13, 2014

Submissions/comments/upvotes are not endorsements. Opinions my own; they do not represent current, past, or future employers/clients etc.
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nanis··on Show HN: Lathoa, a math app for kids where the AI is wrong on purpose
> if she finds an error to gain more XP

What does this mean?

nanis··on Chat Control 1.0 and 2.0 Explained
Because no one around me understood how to calculate false positive/false negative probabilities, I put together this calculator[1] in 2020.

[1]: https://www.covid2020.icu/false-positive-false-negative-simu...

nanis··on Android Developer Verification: Threat masquerading as Protection
> Governments need to wake up to this insane level of Evil

Governments are made up of people. People who have at best median level understanding of the things they are ruling about but great self-interest in following the biggest purse to which they can attach themselves.

nanis··on Show HN: A terminal spreadsheet editor with Vim keybindings
I was able to test the keystroke-doubling and that works well in Windows Terminal now. I am going to try out the formulas later.
nanis··on Show HN: A terminal spreadsheet editor with Vim keybindings
This looks good, but, I noticed:

> Supported Functions (v1) > SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, MIN, MAX, IF

I would recommend switching to numerically stable algorithms for adding numbers and taking their averages sooner rather than later.

Looking at the code[1], it looks like you are simply summing the numbers and dividing by count. If that is indeed the case, please switch to a stable average[2]. See also [3].

Additionally, I tried to test the executable[4] on Windows, but there is something wrong with input. Using Windows Terminal Version: 1.24.10921.0, characters are doubled on input. Regular Vim compiled using Visual C++ does not have this issue.

When I press `:`, I get `::` in the COMMAND line. Then, every key I press gets doubled. This means I cannot `:q!`. :-)

[1]: https://github.com/garritfra/cell/blob/99b0afc7a60a871b27452...

[2]: https://www.nu42.com/2015/03/how-you-average-numbers.html

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithms_for_calculating_var...

[4]: https://github.com/garritfra/cell/releases/tag/v0.2.0

nanis··on Revocation of X.509 Certificates
Might want to add /sarc just in case someone believes it :-)
nanis··on Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)
> Unfortunately, the rest of the interviews from that event have never seen the light of day - until now!

Not really -- It invites speculation as to why they were not published for 9 years. And, are the words spoken a decade ago still valid?

nanis··on Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)
> 2026-02-22 by GIMP Team

I am confused

> This interview took place on February 4th, 2017

nanis··on Show HN: TinyPDF – 3kb pdf library (70x smaller than jsPDF)
HTML + CSS works great for this kind of thing. Once you get the print scope correct, you really never need to think about it again.
nanis··on Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
> too much punctuation

I thought you were joking. ... After a while, I started expecting a comma after each and every word.

nanis··on The dark side of the Moomins
First time I heard about the Moomins. I thought this was about Mumins[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumin

nanis··on A Farewell to the ArcoLinux University
It is your twist and unjustifiable generalization of the author's words about the author himself:

> "aging is a synonym of cognitive decline"

compared to:

> As I near 60, I’ve come to realize I simply don’t have the same mental sharpness or stamina I used to.

The author did not say anything about anyone else.

Synoym: https://www.bennetyee.org/http_webster.cgi?isindex=synonym&m...

nanis··on Microsoft begins turning off uBlock Origin and other extensions in Edge
This is why Firefox's changes are so frustrating[1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43203096

nanis··on Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
This is pure speculation, but what are the chances this change is simply an attempt to provide legal cover what they might have started doing 50 versions ago?[1]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29082856

nanis··on Calculating the largest known prime in Ruby
1 is 2 to the power 0 ... 0b0001

shifted left once, it becomes 2 to the power 1 ... 0b0010

shifted left twice, it becomes 2 to the power 2 ... 0b0100

shifted left three times, it becomes 2 to the power 3 ... 0b1000

etc until

shifted left 136_279_841 times, it becomes 2 to the power 136_279_84 ... 0b1000...many zeros...0000

subtract 1, it becomes

0b0111...many ones...1111

nanis··on Fearless SSH: Short-lived certificates bring Zero Trust to infrastructure
This was corrected to:

> ... SSH certificates issued by the Cloudflare CA include a field called valid_principals

which indicates it wasn't just the spelling of `principals`.

nanis··on Fearless SSH: Short-lived certificates bring Zero Trust to infrastructure
> the SSH certificates issued by the Cloudflare CA include a field called ValidPrinciples

Having implemented similar systems before, I was interested to read this post. Then I see this. Now I have to find out if that really is the field, if this was ChatGPT spellcheck, or something else entirely.

nanis··on Pretty.c
> if (argc above 1)

I give up.

nanis··on Htmx, Raku and Pico CSS
> I am a simple sole, ... go back to the halcyon early days of the web before Netscape dropped the JS-bomb. You know HTML for the layout and CSS for the style.

I am not sure if this is intended as humor, but JavaScript came before CSS.

nanis··on Ask HN: Resources about math behind A/B testing
Early in the A-B craze (optimal shade of blue nonsense), I was talking to someone high up with an online hotel reservation company who was telling me how great A-B testing had been for them. I asked him how they chose stopping point/sample size. He told me experiments continued until they observed a statistically significant difference between the two conditions.

The arithmetic is simple and cheap. Understanding basic intro stats principles, priceless.

nanis··on Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings
Number one criterion for finding a good beach to swim: A prominent sign saying "Swim at your own risk: No lifeguard on duty."
nanis··on Workman Layout for Vim
This[1] links to http://www. workmanlayout.com/blog/ which is a 404. (space inserted to avoid auto link generation).

Going to the main page of that site reveals some articles from the past few years, but also has online casino and crypto links disguised as posts. E.g.:

> is your premier source for crypto insights, covering the latest news, trends, and guides on blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and cybersecurity. Whether a beginner or a pro, you can find valuable information and tips to stay ahead in the Web 3.0 era.

Weird and shady.

I keep seeing all these people fancy keyboards and interesting looking layouts except that it takes them six to 10 attempts to type anything correctly. Don't really get the point, but having got curious about this "workman" layout and regretted trying to find out.

I was thinking of a pane layout manager ... Anything like that around?

[1]: https://axiomatic.neophilus.net/workman-layout-for-vim/

nanis··on Mozilla will be retiring the Mozilla Location Service
The rather troubling part of this announcement in a GitHub issue is that this nugget comes out in a seemingly innocuous comment[1]:

>> Firefox still uses MLS for `browser.region.network.url`; will that also move to Google Location Services?

> This endpoint will be migrated to another service (classify-client) that will return the expected response. We'll adjust DNS entries when it's time to make that move so firefox won't see any difference.

What exactly is this "classify-client" service?

Note also this led me to discover for the first time that this is a thing[2]:

> Geolocation for default search engine

> In order to set the right default search engine for your location, Firefox will perform a geolocation lookup once by contacting Mozilla's servers and store the country-level result locally. This connection happens on the first start of Firefox – in case you want to prohibit that, you will have to preconfigure the browser and set the browser.search.geoip.url preference to a blank string.

Also related is [3].

[1]: https://github.com/mozilla/ichnaea/issues/2065#issuecomment-...

[2]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making...

[3]: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/iq27wa/disabling_l...

nanis··on The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers
A much more logical inference would have suggested that being surrounded with other individuals with familial ties is important, not others who are only there purely based on financial motives.
nanis··on Training for one trillion parameter model backed by Intel and US govt has begun
> [The Queen] granted her charter to their corporation named Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies.[15] For a period of fifteen years, the charter awarded the company a monopoly[26] on English trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan.[27] Any traders there without a licence from the company were liable to forfeiture of their ships and cargo (half of which would go to the Crown and half to the company), as well as imprisonment at the "royal pleasure".[28]

Government granted monopoly.

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

nanis··on Website hosted on ESP32
Also note https://www.nu42.com/2014/12/https-everywhere-and-hr4681.htm...
nanis··on Chess, unlike war, is a game of perfect information
Exactly. In particular, "perfect information" means you know all the strategies available to your opponent. You also know that your opponent knows this. And you know that your opponent knows that you know that your opponent knows that you know all the strategies to your opponent ad infinitum symmetrically.

In this context, a strategy is a function that maps every history of moves by you and your opponent to an action. So, while chess is theoretically a game of perfect information, in practice it is less so.

Real war is not a game of perfect information, because you do not know all the strategies available to your opponent. In addition, you and your opponent's priors may have an intersection of zero measure which makes things very interesting.

War is what happens when a certain kind of people try to play the game of chicken which is usually not taught in the kind of fun programs like master's of international studies for members of the preferred party because it is too sophisticated due to the fact that it admits an infinite number of Nash equilibria ... instead, such programs prefer to focus on prisoners' dilemma which, having a dominant strategy equilibrium, is more suitable to ensure such students can go back to the bureaucracy after having passed their classes with perfect As and get us in to war.

nanis··on Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio
What are the "legitimate" uses cases for this kind of service where they would expect to make money from individuals who want their voices cloned? Dub movies? Audiobooks?
nanis··on macOS Cursors
I don't think they have. It becomes particularly hilarious when you RDP to a Windows machine with the extra large cursor theme/
nanis··on OldLinux: Ancient Linux Resources

    <META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 9.00.8112.16450">
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