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octagons

656 karma · joined October 14, 2021

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octagons··on Visualizing binary files with ImHex's DSL, the "pattern language"
I wasn’t aware that ImHex had this feature - perhaps I’ll try it!

I’ve been singing the praises of 010 Editor for years specifically because of its template and scripting features, the former of which is nearly identical to this DSL.

octagons··on Rapid7 throws JetBrains under the bus for uncoordinated vulnerability disclosure
For anyone trying to understand the issue at hand, this is an excellent summary. Thanks for your comment!
octagons··on Ant Geopolitics
The shadiness largely comes from the fact that transporting insects can be a risk to the environment. Permits to ship live ant queens are not hard to obtain, but there are laws that prohibit certain species from being shipped to certain areas.

The permit also covers obligations for the recipient, such as ensuring that no pathogens are left on the packing materials and that you dispose of the insects properly, if necessary.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-III/...

octagons··on Ant Geopolitics
I’d love to discuss contributing further. Do you have a link to a GitHub repository or organization?
octagons··on Ant Geopolitics
I’ve also experienced this using GAN. Be wary and use common sense. I never bothered reporting it but I’d be willing to bet we’re talking about the same person. They listed the same advertisement in basically every state with a different Google Voice number so as to appear local.

I was under the impression that we would be meeting because they were local, which is how GAN is intended to operate.?Instead, they shipped the queen to me without any USDA permits. The queen also died within a few weeks of arriving. They started a web store not longer afterwards.

That said, I’ve had plenty of good experiences with GAN. This was one bad actor out of many good ones.

octagons··on Ant Geopolitics
If you found this story interesting, you may be interested to know that antkeeping is a rewarding and fairly inexpensive hobby. The Global Ant Nursery (GAN) project run by AntsCanada, a popular YouTube channel, is a great way to obtain new queens responsibly.

Alternatively, it’s fairly easy to find queens on your own. AntsCanada offers a starter guide, and there are many other resources that teach you when and where to find new queens. I keep a few test tubes in my truck year-round, just in case.

Note: I’m not affiliated with AntsCanada in any way.

octagons··on Ant Geopolitics
I am an avid ant hobbyist and use AntWeb regularly to aid in identification and distribution of ant species when hunting for new queens. I’m glad to hear about this change - the site had needed a bit of a refresh for a while!
octagons··on LubeLogger: Self-hosted, open-source vehicle service records and tracker
I would love something like this targeting a broader category of machines. For example, keeping track of when I last changed the oil in my lathe or pressure washer and notifying me to do some kind of regular maintenance. Somewhere to keep track of what kind of oil to buy (for example) alongside a digital copy of the machine’s manuals as well as the ability to log maintenance records.

I used to use Notion for some of this, but they didn’t quite have the functionality I wanted a few years ago.

octagons··on Amon Tobin – Foley Room site (2007)
I wonder if there are any MonkeyRadio fans lurking around HN?
octagons··on [dead]
What’s the point of this article? It cites a paper from 2007 and references another paper from 2010. It’s an interesting factoid, but very dated information and the article adds nothing by way of journalism.
octagons··on Animate Anyone: Image-to-video synthesis for character animation
Nope, but I can see why you’d think that. Honestly, I wanted to choose my words carefully because of the often politically charged tone that can often be interpreted/intended when uttering the word “China.”

I studied Chinese language, art, history, politics, and culture in university and lived in Shanghai after graduating. While I lived there, I helped some friends setup some domains for hosted GMail/e-commerce and learned some interesting things about business there.

I also spend some of my spare time finding vulnerabilities in hardware devices and building my own small electronics/maker projects. This has given me ample opportunities to work with (i.e. get help from or provide feedback to) many different companies based in China.

octagons··on Animate Anyone: Image-to-video synthesis for character animation
Just guessing based on the authors’ names and their affiliation with Alibaba Group, but I think this research was published by exclusively Chinese citizens.

In my experience, it’s difficult to operate a small, personal website from within China because of their regulations in regards to non-government websites. Because of this, you will often find that Chinese citizens will use approved (or at least unrestricted) services like GitHub pages.

Having worked closely with many businesses based in China due to my hobbies, I have noted that services like Google Docs and Drive are favored for this reason.

I would guess there are ways to host content like this more easily on platforms that are only accessible within China or are not navigable without the user understanding Chinese language.

I would also guess that this is part of the reason why services that target customers in China tend to become “super apps” that combine several services that non-Chinese users would expect to find on disparate sites. For example, services may combine a social media style newsfeed/interaction API, banking, email, shopping, and food delivery into a single platform.

octagons··on We’ll call it AI to sell it, machine learning to build it
The worst case of AI marketing that I have seen recently was an interview where the interviewee was describing ChatGPT 4’s capabilities. He was describing the model as having an IQ of 180 and comparing it to Einstein’s alleged IQ as well as ChatGPT 3, which had a lower IQ.

The subjectivity of IQ combined with the leading premise of being able to quantify a model’s performance with it is extremely disingenuous.

I can’t find a link, but I’ll share one if I do. I believe it was with someone in the C-suite at OpenAI.

octagons··on Show HN: OpenStatus – Open-source monitoring with incident managements
I'd recommend working on editing any public-facing copy and unifying your message. I'm assuming I know what this tool does, but these examples do not validate that assumption. Is it a platform or a service? In 3 different locations, OpenStatus is listed as the "open source monitoring XYZ with...": "on-call managements", "Incident Management", and "beautiful status page".

Examples copied from the landing page and front page of the GH repo.

> Open-source monitoring service

> OpenStatus is an open source monitoring services with on-call managements.

> The Open-Source Synthetic Monitoring Platform with Incident Management

> OpenStatus is open-source synthetic monitoring platform with beautiful status page.

> The open-source monitoring platform

octagons··on In Digital Ocean, S3-like space keys can access all your buckets
https://buckets.grayhatwarfare.com/
octagons··on Llama 2
I was cautiously optimistic until I clicked the “Download the Model” button, only to be greeted by a modal to fill out a form to request access.

If the form is a necktie, the rest of the suit could use some tailoring. It’s far too tall for me to wear.

octagons··on Easy HTTPS for your private networks
My preferred solution for this is a combination of Traefik and Smallstep StepCA. I run a collection of tools via Docker compose, and new certificates are issued automatically based on the hostname.

The only problem is that I have to maintain a list of DNS entries for the StepCA container as extra hosts. I haven’t found an elegant solution for this part.

octagons··on Ultimate Electronics (2021)
This “book” has been in a “coming soon” state for several years now.
octagons··on Ultimate Electronics (2021)
I recommend looking at “Make: Electronics” by Charles Platt.

I read Electronics for Inventors, and have even pushed myself through respectable chunks of AoE, but Platt’s book really helped to drive home some concepts and spans a mere 350 pages.

octagons··on Ask HN: How can I get into cyber security research?
I work for the Adversary Simulation arm at IBM X-Force Red. Prior to that, I worked at Mandiant and left as a technical manager for the proactive (offensive security) consulting branch.

I’d be happy to chat with you and answer any questions. I have interviewed and hired candidates for these positions many times, and have also been the one in the interview chair. My Twitter handle is in my profile.

In case you’re wondering, Adversary Simulation is a mix of research, implementation, and application of techniques to test security gaps in an organization. Typically, we use social engineering to gain access and must avoid detection by a variety of security measures. The goal is usually to gain access to something specified by the organization without being detected, as the testing is not announced to the security team in advance.

octagons··on Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com
This article touches on search a bit, but it doesn’t quite capture how useful I’ve found its capabilities as a hobbyist.

For example, I needed to replace a bent gear axle for my lathe during the height of supply chain issues in the past few years. The part was proprietary to the vendor, who did not have any spares on hand and was awaiting an order from their manufacturer in China.

The top search results on McMaster for “axle” yielded both axle stock and pre-fabricated axles that would likely be great solutions in other scenarios, but ultimately neither of those categories contained a part that would solve my issue.

However, third on the list of results was a category for “axle bolts”, which makes sense based on my use of one of those strings in my search. But “axle bolts” weren’t a category of things you can find by manually navigating the menus to barrow down your search. Following the link to that category actually presented you with a list of products under the category of “shoulder screws”. Within these, I found a part that fit the bill for a temporary fix!

I found it incredibly useful that it helped me navigate through industry terms that I wasn’t familiar with. It almost seemed akin to Netflix’s highly specific “shadow” categories such as “90s sitcoms with female leads” or similar.

Actually (and perhaps it already can), a ChatGPT model that could help me design projects with specific tolerances by recommending parts from sources like McMaster would be very useful.

For example, I want to build a simple hoist with a working maximum weight of 1 ton. Which grade of steel bolts should I buy that are most effective for that application? What thickness of steel square bar do I need?

There are fairly straightforward ways of calculating what a material is capable of and modeling its performance using simulation software, but a passing grade doesn’t tell me that my choice of grade 12.9 bolts is less cost effective than grade 10.9 bolts, which are significantly cheaper.

octagons··on Some notes on the Stable Diffusion safety filter
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I’m not suggesting any regulation. I’m saying that I agree that “society” (in my case, American culture) has taken the idea of shielding children from viewing pornography to an extreme, where nudity in media, even in a non-sexual context, is often censored.

I think this ultimately causes more harm to a society instead of benefitting it. I don’t think this is a very unique viewpoint, but my choice of words in that other comment didn’t communicate this point very well.

octagons··on Some notes on the Stable Diffusion safety filter
Nudity? Yes. Pornography? No.
octagons··on LibreOffice blogs about Blockchain, locks comments after negative user feedback
It could MAYBE be used to create an open/libre clone of services like DocuSign, but there are certainly already ways of validating a signature on a document that don’t require inserting a blockchain into an office suite!

Beyond that, I also cannot think of any valid use cases

octagons··on Electric ferry uses a long extension cord [video]
My guess is that there are several possible factors for this reason. Here’s some I thought up off the top off my head:

- It would be difficult to synchronize the movement of the two motors sitting on either side of the river. A single motor whose output is local to the ferry’s impulse is easier to control.

- The ferry can likely move somewhat independently of the cable, and the inverse of its current design makes this more difficult.

- When comparing the two approaches, the one with fewer moving parts in the system is typically the one that is easier/cheaper to build and maintain.

- It might be more difficult to properly maintain the steel cables if they are stressed in this way vs. the current approach.

- There might have been infrastructure already in place that made this approach easier to implement, and parts for a slightly modified boat are going to be easier to find than parts for a proprietary “raft pulled by a steel cable” system.

octagons··on Show HN: TensorDock Core GPU Cloud – GPU servers from $0.29/hr
Totally understandable! Looking forward to trying this out with my $1 of credit!
octagons··on Show HN: TensorDock Core GPU Cloud – GPU servers from $0.29/hr
This looks like a very viable solution for hobbyists, which has me interested in trying it out and I intend to do so.

Some feedback on your landing page: your "Frequently asked billing questions" on the bottom of the pricing page[0] are extremely aggressive sounding even if they are meant to be tongue-in-cheek. For example:

- "I'm a bad customer and want to chargeback" - This doesn't seem like a very common billing question so it seems out of place here.

- "So, don't chargeback or dispute a charge from us, ever" - This is a very aggressive ultimatum that sounds almost threatening. Are you so risk averse that you need to threaten potential customers?

- "We cannot afford to provide services where there is a risk that we could not be paid" - This is an axiom for any business model. Why state it here?

- " Money-back guarantee? Sorry, no. Instead, start off with $5 and scale from there. If you are displeased, we can close your account and refund the $5, nothing more." - This is a fair approach, but you also advertise a $10k/month tier that would receive special treatment. As a business owner, this type of attitude makes me reconsider any kind of partnership when comparing similar services. For example, AWS is well-known for their billing forgiveness in the event of a mistake or other reasonable situations.

- "Credit cards that do not support 3DS are automatically assigned a higher fraud score and are at a higher risk of being placed in a 'fraud check' mode." - It's smart as a startup to try and counteract the risk of fraud in your revenue stream. However, this typically happens in the background and is generally assumed/hoped for by someone typing their credit card number into a website for payment. Combined with your aggressive stance on displeased customers, this smacks of the issues caused by automated punitive measures implemented by YouTube, Twitter, GMail, etc. that often make the front page of Hacker News.

Although this copy isn't necessarily front and center on your landing page, I think TensorDock would benefit from some time spent editing and adding questions that are more likely to be asked, such as, "what payment methods do you support?"

[0]: https://www.tensordock.com/pricing

octagons··on The Evolution of THC Vape Cartridges
I have found that the industry for the production of extracts that go in these cartridges is very widespread, sometimes operating in plain site.

For example, I bought a very large (15 gallon) vacuum chamber system directly from a US-based vendor. My use-case was to off-gas various slurries and compounds I use for my hobbies, such as casting molten aluminum. Although it was not directly mentioned on their e-commerce site, after a few follow-up marketing emails, I quickly realized they were geared towards solutions for businesses performing high-yield CBD extraction processes.

Ignoring all the politics of the related industries, I thought it was pretty interesting to find such a business by accident and that anyone with the right circumstances could potentially perform these processes with equipment available to general consumers - though I imagine there may be some chemicals that require a permit at the necessary concentrations.

octagons··on Hack a satellite
My team and I had a blast the first year this came out. Definitely recommend participating in this, even if you’re not familiar with more traditional security CTF challenges. These challenges tend to draw from the broad set of engineering skills needed for space-faring technology, not just your traditional vulnerable service or configuration.
octagons··on FTC fines Twitter $150M for using 2FA phone numbers for ad targeting
That’s a good point - I hadn’t thought of it that way. Thank you!
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