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orblivion

4,388 karma · joined February 27, 2009

My latest project, Desert Atlas, fully self-hosted OpenStreetMap for Sandstorm: https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/e5eaqnrqfrhgax1awtgw9uqayg42kcen2gkpynjs3j5mww7w3rp0

Open for hire: https://github.com/orblivion http://danielkrol.com/resume

Also into juggling.

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orblivion··on Mechanical light bulb from 1675 [video]
I don't know much about this genre but it comes to mind this this could fill in the gap in Steampunk for where light comes from without electricity as we know it. At any rate it seems very steampunk but it's 200 older than it needs to be.
orblivion··on LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent
Thank you for the summary. As a Linux user, am I spared because of relative obscurity, or is it that Microsoft is explicitly allowing this to happen?
orblivion··on An American Privacy Emergency
https://theonion.com/american-people-hire-high-powered-lobby...
orblivion··on Is AI Profitable Yet?
Yeah they should also include the power companies for that matter.
orblivion··on Mythos Finds a Curl Vulnerability
Okay so supposing everybody is acting in a benign manner, following their incentives and passions, not meaning to mislead anybody. Do you think that this results in writing a misleading blog post? Because the blog post makes Mythos out to be a big friggin deal. (It had certainly convinced me).
orblivion··on Mythos Finds a Curl Vulnerability
I didn't think Mozilla was like that but duly noted.
orblivion··on Mythos Finds a Curl Vulnerability
This is more in response to my original post, but okay interesting point. (When I said "invested" here I meant invested in finding security flaws.)
orblivion··on Mythos Finds a Curl Vulnerability
Is Firefox less invested in this than Curl? I mean there must be some explanation for this.
orblivion··on Mythos Finds a Curl Vulnerability
Is Mozilla marketing on Anthropic's behalf?

    As part of our continued collaboration with Anthropic, we had the opportunity to apply an early version of Claude Mythos Preview to Firefox. This week’s release of Firefox 150 includes fixes for 271 vulnerabilities identified during this initial evaluation.
    
    As these capabilities reach the hands of more defenders, many other teams are now experiencing the same vertigo we did when the findings first came into focus. For a hardened target, just one such bug would have been red-alert in 2025, and so many at once makes you stop to wonder whether it’s even possible to keep up.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/ai-security-zer...
orblivion··on Google broke reCAPTCHA for de-googled Android users
I imagine GrapheneOS is thinking carefully about their statement on this. I look forward to reading it.
orblivion··on I'm scared about biological computing
Fine, I tweeted something about it.
orblivion··on AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it
Unless people can't think without the AI.
orblivion··on AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it
Compilers are a layer of abstraction that we can ask another human about. Some human is there taking care of it. Until we get to the point where we trust AI with our survival it would be good to be able to audit the entire stack.
orblivion··on Original GrapheneOS responses to WIRED fact checker
I'm thinking about this a bit more.

It may be the case that Daniel and the project are so under siege that they need to take a hostile attitude toward some of the people they interact with as a matter of self preservation. They may have no other option. But taking this posture while also being fair to all of the people around them (i.e. some people who aren't actually attacking them) may be difficult or even impossible. I can see this behavior in myself sometimes. I just don't have the energy to be fair. "F U".

I wouldn't want to see friendly corporate slop either. I appreciate how down to nuts and bolts the communiques are on Mastodon and how deadly serious they take everything. That part of the communication style makes me trust them more.

I think a good step in the right direction might be acknowledging that being defensive necessarily leads to erring on the side of assuming bad faith rather than good, which leads to some mis-judgements. So far you said that GrapheneOS is open to all criticisms, which (though I haven't followed the space very recently so my memory on specifics is hazy) just does not seem to match my interpretation. I think that if we were having this conversation on Twitter or Mastodon, Daniel would have blocked me by now (if he hadn't already blocked me years ago).

orblivion··on Original GrapheneOS responses to WIRED fact checker
Maybe true, but but the flip side is that sometimes what is called an attack is actually criticism. That's how it appears to a lot of us from the outside.
orblivion··on Original GrapheneOS responses to WIRED fact checker
It's not just about being friendly. If they have a bubble around them of employees, true believers, and people just afraid of speaking out that chills free expression of criticism, the truth has trouble getting out, which hurts trust.

Still a user though.

orblivion··on Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
It has modern features. It stores message history. It has a fairly unique feature of letting you create ad-hoc "topics" (that go under a "Channel") that make it easier to manage the flood of conversation.
orblivion··on The PGP problem (2019)
The NSA can't break GPG assuming everything is working properly. This blog post (which to be fair I only skimmed) explains that GPG is a mess which could lead to things not working properly, and also gives real life examples. You may also want to see https://gpg.fail (you can tell they're from the ivory tower by the cat ears). The blog post also mentions bad UX, which you and I can directly appreciate (if anything I might expect ivory tower types to dismiss UX issues).
orblivion··on Gpg.fail
Took me a second but I got your joke
orblivion··on Gpg.fail
Maybe the site is overloaded. But as for the "brb, were on it!!!!" - this page had the live stream of the talk when it was happening. Hopefully they'll replace it with the recording when media.ccc.de posts it, which should be within a couple hours.
orblivion··on Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo
> It will evolve into a modern AI browser

Next time I run into Richard Stallman I should ask him for tips on browsing the web

orblivion··on EFF launches Age Verification Hub
Okay but then if a ZKP solution is presented, that's calling their bluff. They now have one less excuse for surveillance.

EDIT: Actually do one better - tell them that for 16+ websites, you're actually protecting teenagers by keeping them anonymous.

orblivion··on EFF launches Age Verification Hub
How about:

https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/opening-up-ze...

orblivion··on Are you stuck in movie logic?
I think part of the reason I'm "conflict averse" is that airing things out very often doesn't turn out like... well, like the movies. Sometimes the issue I have with someone is just "weird" and socially unacceptable to air out, or maybe the person doesn't turn out to be as reasonable or understanding as I hope they are. Or maybe after enough of these, it just becomes overwhelming to the other person.
orblivion··on Things that aren't doing the thing
So obnoxious. More bullshit to make us self-conscious.
orblivion··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)
Running OpenStreetMap off the grid (self-hosted to say the least) on a Raspberry Pi 500 (and to some extent a Pi Zero 2W) for Internet In a Box:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danielkrol_openstreetmap-acti...

All of the street and satellite tiles are thanks to maps.black. The search uses Nominatim's sqlite3 mode. I was told that it's experimental only because it hasn't been tried in production yet, so I'm sort of testing it in the process. So far I'm only doing administrative boundaries and natural features, but so far so good! I'm going to slowly add a few more types of POIs, I just don't want the database file to get too big.

Note that Internet in a Box has an OSM offering already, but the data is five years old and the tech makes it harder to update. As of today, there are much easier options on the table, and we get cool stuff like 3d buildings. Also, the search was much more limited.

* https://internet-in-a-box.org/

* https://maps.black/

* https://nominatim.org/release-docs/latest/customize/SQLite/

orblivion··on You already have a Git server
One of my favorite tools available for Linux is called gitolite. It's in the Debian repo.

https://gitolite.com/gitolite/

If you think the bare bones example is interesting and want something simple just for you or a small group of people, this is one step up. There's no web interface. The admin is a git repository that stores ssh public keys and a config file that defines repo names with an ACL. When you push, it updates the authorization and inits new repositories that you name.

I put everything in repos at home and a have multiple systems (because of VMs) so this cleaned things up for me considerably.

orblivion··on Ask HN: Our AWS account got compromised after their outage
I wonder if a few cases of compromise right after the outage can also be a coincidence. If we have a lot of reports of the same, then it gets interesting.

(The particulars of your case being strange is a separate question though.)

orblivion··on Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware
Firstly I'd want to see them hash the whole blockchain (not just the last block) with the post-quantum algo to make sure history is intact.

But as far as moving balances - it's up to the owners. It would start with anybody holding a balance high enough to make it worth the amount of money it would take to crack a single key. That cracking price will go down, and the value of BTC may go up. People can move over time as they see fit.

orblivion··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)
Running OpenStreetMap off the grid (self-hosted to say the least) on a Raspberry Pi 500 (and maybe a Pi Zero 2W) for Internet In a Box:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danielkrol_openstreetmap-acti...

All of the street and satellite tiles are thanks to maps.black. The search uses Nominatim's sqlite3 mode. I was told that it's experimental only because it hasn't been tried in production yet, so I'm sort of testing it in the process. So far I'm only doing administrative boundaries and natural features, but so far so good! I'm going to slowly add a few more types of POIs, I just don't want the database file to get too big.

Note that Internet in a Box has an OSM offering already, but the data is five years old and the tech makes it harder to update. As of today, there are much easier options on the table, and we get cool stuff like 3d buildings. Also, the search was much more limited.

* https://internet-in-a-box.org/

* https://maps.black/

* https://nominatim.org/release-docs/latest/customize/SQLite/

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