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omk

700 karma · joined December 2, 2015

da0b52

Technology Enthusiast. I like building stuff. Distributed Ledgers and Privacy aware SaaS offerings interest me.

https://0x8.in/blog

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omk··on A greyscale iPhone setup that works in everyday life
Have been in using greyscale on and off to reduce my screen time. Due the issues that the author reported I switched back and changed the icon colors to monocolor grey with black wallpaper to atleast keep the phone default UI color free.

The first behaviour it changed is making app logos of Instagram, YouTube, Reddit stand out. Some of these apps became a reflex click when I unlock my phone usually as a fidget. Greyscale takes away the lure of these app icons.

Love the shortcuts tip. Setting it up to see if I can sustain greyscale full time now.

omk··on Neal Stephenson: The Real Threat Isn't AI, It's Us [video]
The number of videos/podcasts I want to watch daily, exceeds the number of hours I could spend each day to consume them.

So ADHD or not, this is a common demand.

omk··on Show HN: I built an interactive HN Simulator
After seeing a synthetic version that mimics the tone well enough, the real HN once back here felt slightly less distinct. When every information style gets a believable AI twin, our usual cues for judging what’s credible start to wobble.

To be clear, the strange part wasn’t that it fooled me, it didn’t. The issue was some form of “signal contamination” that my brain experienced.

omk··on Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026
I think metro trains in countries like The Netherlands and Singapore use this approach where in you tap your cards and entry and exit and you are billed usually somewhere at the end of the day.
omk··on Eliminating Cold Starts 2: shard and conquer
I'm not well versed with CURL design, but curious - is your first connection handling TLS while second relying on the previously established handshake?
omk··on Show HN: Tinder but it's only pictures of my wife and I can only swipe right
This why I love reddit. Oh wait!
omk··on Dave Täht has died
Inspired by his work on buffer bloat like so many others. Rest in peace.
omk··on Open Heart Protocol
I like the way this being proposed in a decentralised manner. Kudos to the author for the effort and thought put in.

However, I am curious what the incentive for publishers is to adopt this standard if those emojis are only relevant for the websites own silo? Use cases like these call for customized deep integrated implementations.

My question is a curious one. I might be missing the big picture and would like to get educated.

omk··on Show HN: Documind – Open-source AI tool to turn documents into structured data
This is also using OpenAI's GPT model. So the same hallucinations are probable here for PDFs.
omk··on Drawing.garden
As relaxing as this experience was, I thought of resolving the itch to write trivial code to control the emojis and creatures with left/right clicks.

    let clickCount = 0;
    document.addEventListener('contextmenu', event => { (clickCount == 0) ? clickCount : clickCount--; event.preventDefault() }, false);
    window.onclick = function (e) {
        return clickCount++;
    }
    function random(i) {
        let emojis = 20;
        let creatures = 14;
        if (i == 1) {
            return (clickCount % (creatures + emojis) < creatures) ? 0.02 : 0.03;
        }
        else if (i == creatures)
        {
            return index = clickCount % (creatures + emojis) ;
        }
        else if (i == emojis)
        {
            return (clickCount % (creatures + emojis)) - creatures;
        }
    }
omk··on Drawing.garden
No lion in the code. Snake yes. https://drawing.garden/sketch.js
omk··on Sell your micro startup for less than 25k dollars
There are ample developers who can build but not sell. You want to look for SaaS in this list that you understand and can scale/extend and sell.
omk··on Entropy in Engineering Processes
In my opinion, the author aims to introduce entropy as a metric to evaluate the stability of processes. Creating room for advocacy against process changes when new additions/changes are likely to increase entropy by introducing new outcomes.

Example - engineering teams can be obsessed with introducing new variables to a sufficiently stable system with the intention to improve stability. But in turn, reduce stability due to inaccurate impressions of stability of the new variables.

This approach generates a bias against change, but in many situations this bias is helpful. This allows engineering teams time to observe process outcome distribution over a longer duration, improving the data backing any process change decisions.

Edit: added explanation

omk··on Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365
Interop compliance should be a thing. Enterprise customers are missing the plot here. Please ask your software vendors to support interoperability. Example - Outlook should support/declare standard interfaces for video calling meeting links from other products. I see the need for a body for enterprise integration standards. Please help me such a body if there already is one.

I look specifically for something of the likes for Enterprise Integration Act of 2002 for software vendors.

omk··on Tell HN: Instagram's API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green
True. The Twitpic story comes to mind.
omk··on Web Design Museum 1991-2006
Funny how most websites between 2008-2012 where filled with bevel styling faking a sense of depth. Then 2012 onwards almost everyone started appreciating flat design.

I wonder if the pixel density on displays played a role here. Flat design wouldn't look great on low pixel density but work brilliantly on retina displays. The opposite is probably true for beveled styling?

omk··on Web Design Museum 1991-2006
Excellent example of how colors have remained a tool for sales funnels. Red is used through out the site to make the user complete a purchase.

2002 was more about Nintendo expressing itself to users. 2023 is a deceitful salesman.

omk··on A novel PayPal scam
The solution here is PayPal ensuring that seller notes aren't misguiding. I wondered why PayPal hasn't blocked senders from mentioning "PayPal" or even "PayPal®" as mentioned in the seller note. A justification might be that sellers do legitimately mention PayPal in the note without trying to impersonate.

It seems that an AI based filter might help? Why not ask the new kid around the block ChatGPT.

  > "Dear Customer, You sent a payment of $429.00 USD to Coinbase Corporation. If you did not make this payment or to cancel this transaction, please call our Help Desk number +1 XXX Cancellation after 24 Hours from this email won't be valid for a refund. Have a great day! PayPal Help Desk +1 XXX"

  Who is the author of this message

  ChatGPT> The author of this message is the PayPal Help Desk.
Maybe it is a bit too easy with the signature in place. Scammers might get smarter so I skipped the signature bit. The response was interesting.

  > "Dear Customer, You sent a payment of $429.00 USD to Coinbase Corporation. If you did not make this payment or to cancel this transaction, please call our Help Desk number +1 123 Cancellation after 24 Hours from this email won't be valid for a refund. Have a great day!"

  who is the author of this message

  ChatGPT> The author of this message is likely a representative of a financial institution or payment provider, such as a bank or payment service like PayPal.
On a simpler note, I think it would help PayPal to mention right below the seller note that this message is authored by the seller and NOT PayPal.
omk··on Ask HN: Azure has run out of compute – anyone else affected?
While some may immediately run a comparison between Azure, AWS and GCP let it be noted that any cloud platform facing this and making it to headlines is not good for the cloud industry over all.
omk··on Hash collisions and exploitations – Instant MD5 collision
Have always thought of creating email addresses with colliding MD5 hashes only to see how Gravatar's MD5 URL reacts to it.
omk··on Why isn’t there a decent file format for tabular data?
Excellent posts. Coincidentally couple weeks ago while evaluating a HTTP response for a web service, I noticed that for tabular data, CSV is much more optimal than JSON; yet there is lack of HTTP header support for CSV responses that could provide clients with supplementary information in order to keep parsers adaptable.

If you have a copy of the said RFC, would like to refer.

omk··on Two-minute battery changes push India’s delivery riders to switch to e-scooters
That looks like such a finished user experience.

Just noticed the Gogoro swap logo in the video. Looks very similar to the Arduino logo. Only difference being the +/- positions are swapped.

omk··on Ideas that have been beaten to death
Bookmarking, note taking, todo all have one important characteristic in common. They all require users with discipline and organization skills.

Every indie-hacker is bound to see gaps in existing solutions based on their biased ideas of organizing. Many times these ideas won't work out for the creators themselves as they over-estimate their capacity to maintain discipline over a stretch.

omk··on Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)
You pose a very valid point and I stand by it. Such an argument is often countered with the cost of rapid progress and providing businesses the autonomy without burdening them with bureaucracy.

Cost is also a factor. These pictures seem to come from an era when there weren't many disposable (cheap) materials found in consumer products. Paper, cloth, glass, metal and wood all could be classified as expensive. One could exchange this scrap with a vendor in exchange for a reasonable amount. Plastics simply don't find a place once separated from the utility they packed. Very little incentive for consumers to take it back even if the manufacturer accepted.

omk··on iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo
Few things seem to be at play here.

1. iPhone uses face tracking to adjust focus on subject's face

2. Same face detection can end up detecting faces in arbitrary objects. Very common occurring. Here the leaf.

3. iPhone uses multiple lens to compose a single photo. 1 lens focused on the persons face while another with better focus on the face estimated the face to be within the leaves.

4. The composite photo now has picture of leaf replacing the person's face.

omk··on Teller Reveals His Secrets (2012)
Not a security expert, but I believe security applies too. It is difficult to claim a system as 100% secure. So long as what is being secured is less worth than the effort to hack into, you are good.
omk··on India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman
Not true in case of India either. A report[1] released just a few weeks ago mentions 0.85 million Indians who have surrendered their Indian citizenship in favour of US, Australia or other western countries in last 7 years.

It would be conservative to estimate that the number of migrants who have not yet surrendered their citizenship is 10x.

The brain drain is massive. I live and work in a tech hub and my social circle depletes every year. Every smart friend/colleague/acquaintance I have has either moved, is moving or hopes to move to the west in the next 5 years.

[1] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/over-8-5-lakh-indi...

omk··on India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman
You lost me at "selling their right". It is important to understand that "selling" and "right" should not appear in the same sentence when the said right is being addressed as a basic right. It opens room for abuse even in well administered jurisdictions.
omk··on Apple broke up with me
This is more common than one would imagine. Not all banks provide statements narrowed down to debit card usage. A bank statement does not always show the debit card number making it difficult to establish a link between the provided evidence.
omk··on Fisher Price Chatter Telephone with Bluetooth
I do feel this is market research inspired. The fact that it is sold out between Thanks Giving and Christmas. This makes a brilliant secret santa gift for offices, friends, family.
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