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nothacking_

387 karma · joined February 26, 2024

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nothacking_··on Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage. Our team is investigating
I'd bet on a bad update or configuration change. (likely one that prevents the affected systems from reaching the internet and being automatically rolled back)
nothacking_··on Why you can't color calibrate deep space photos
That's really just photography in general. Mapping an analog input (photocurrent) to a pixel brightness.
nothacking_··on Why you can't color calibrate deep space photos
> Are the bands too wide for this to work?

For wideband filters used for stars and galaxies, yes. Sometimes the filters are wider then the entire visible spectrum.

For narrowband filters used to isolate emission from a particular element, no. If you have just the Oxygen-III signal isolated from everything else, you can composite it as a perfect turquoise color.

nothacking_··on Why you can't color calibrate deep space photos
Fixed.
nothacking_··on Why you can't color calibrate deep space photos
The problem with hyperspectral imaging is that it ends up throwing away 99.9% of all the light that hits your camera. It's been done for the sun and some very bright nebulae, but really isn't practical for most of the stuff in space.
nothacking_··on Why you can't color calibrate deep space photos
That's common in high end astophotography, and almost exclusively used at professional observatories. However, scientists like filters that are "rectangular", with a flat passband and sharp falloff, very unlike human color vision.
nothacking_··on If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)
Importantly, the planets aren't actually lined up nicely like on the site. Right now, Mars is ~5 times further then shown.

That's why so many people were taking pictures of Mars back in January, when it was actually possible to take see detail. Right now it just looks like a red orb.

nothacking_··on The scientific “unit” we call the decibel
Except finding '-45 dB' is frustratingly common. Have a look at this random microphone datasheet from DigiKey: https://www.sameskydevices.com/product/resource/cmm-3125at-4...

They do state the test conditions "at 94 dB SPL, 1 kHz", but don't specify the units attacked to the actually measurement. It's given as a ratio to an unspecified quantity.

nothacking_··on More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals
As they should. More often then not, going into academia means horrible working conditions and horrible pay... and there's job satisfaction when your instead of doing things you like or ones enrich society, you spend most of your time in a never ending fight for grant money.

Leaving is completely logical for anyone that wants to actually do impactful research, or wants to make a living wage, and wants sane hours and sane management.

nothacking_··on Investigating an “evil” RJ45 dongle
> 1) downloading Windows exe files from Chinese forums

VMs exist. I highly doubt the author daily drives windows XP.

> 2) the USB storage provided by network card can still contain malware

Well yes, but so can any other drivers. Downloading from the manufactures website isn't any more secure. Even signed drivers have been caught doing nasty stuff.

> 3) or can be accidentally booted from

True, but again this is quite a convoluted, noticeable, and unreliable way to compromize a system. Just injecting a handful of keystrokes will do it, and once the dead is done, the device can hide all evidence of malicious intent.

> 4) it has universal USB controller, so can become any HID device: keyboard, mouse...

This isn't wtf: a lot of devices nowadays are just microcontrollers hooked up to a USB connector. Quite a few normal USB drives can be reprogrammed to act as keyboards, and be used to get up to all sorts of shenanigans, including ones made outside of China.

nothacking_··on What happened to the world's largest tube TV? [video]
Another day, another LLM generated blog post on the front page.

I'm not opposed to AI tools on principle, but why does this article exist?

It's not because the author had anything interesting to say. It's not because the AI had anything interesting to say. It's a summary of a Youtube video because... clicks or something.

nothacking_··on The meme-ification of the "Demon Core"
Just about all humor derives from some degree of suffering. Compared what the core could have done, the three deaths from the accident are nothing. Even things that are joked about often have much higher death tolls like wars and natural disasters.
nothacking_··on The bucket brigade device: An analog shift register
This is just a 185 stage device, but later ones would have thousands of stages, and could be chained together for even longer delays. Sample rates could also be much lower then 40 kHz as low as 6 kHz was used for echo effects.
nothacking_··on The rise of the U.S., the rise of China
Competition is generally good for consumers, forcing companies to make a better product then the other guy, rather then the crappiest thing people will buy.
nothacking_··on Making a rickroll laser: A parametric speaker
I'm not an expert on this, but there don't seem to be any reported cases of hearing loss from sounds above 30 kHz, but there are documented cases of unpleasant effects. In any case, I'd keep some distance, just to be safe.
nothacking_··on The physics of airplane flight
Easy, the natural angle of attack is determined by the elevator position. Flying upside down is totally possible with the right inputs.
nothacking_··on The physics of airplane flight
Almost none of this is intuitive without hundreds of years of hindsight. The more subtle aspects of stability, such as avoiding oscillation mostly had to be determined experimentally. Then there is also the matter of actually constructing a plane, if you want it to be useful, it's going to need to be a lot more then some folded paper.

Thrust was definitely also a problem, a glider is not particularly useful unless it has a huge lift-to-drag ratio, which is only possible with modern materials and a solid understanding of airfoil design, which is a whole other can of worms.

Even things that seem so basic that we don't even think about them, like high were not at all obvious: just look at Sir George Cayley's gliders.

nothacking_··on Inside a $1 radar motion sensor
That's the trick, you invert the logic. If you hear the word vegan, assume the person saying it is not.
nothacking_··on Ask HN: Is anybody getting value from AI Agents? How so?
NVIDIA and one step down the chain OpenAI are making lots of money, mostly by convincing people that LLMs solve all problems.

LLMs are perfect for this, super flashy, with a ton of hype. In reality, LLMs are really bad at most applications, they are a solution in search of a problem.

nothacking_··on Image formation with multiple wavelengths – simulation [video]
Very nice.