samtho

One thing that I can’t help but to lament the loss of is the wealth of information contained within public forums. Everything is shut away in Facebook groups, discord servers, and other such private-by-default means. Most public forums, and many open Facebook groups, are relegated to answering the same basic, ill-informed question from the hopelessly clueless that appear to operate in a universe absent of any sort of critical thinking.

I would bet that one of the main reasons why organic (non-sponsored) Google results are filled with SEO optimized, nearly incomprehensible drivel is because there’s not enough content that’s valuable for its own sake. Going back to the hopelessly clueless, this makes it difficult to ask the right questions because anything they ask will be some word-spun or ai-generated nonsense that talks in a circle with no specificity and totally devoid of substance.

The troubling part is that this is going to get worse before it gets better. This “content” is going to be recycled through the digestive system of LLMs over as over again in the style of “human centipede” until there we reach the singularity of popular thought causing the entire World Wide Web to become somehow less useful than an airport newsstand self-help book.

If you choose to drive around in a public place, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

While I don’t agree with the surveillance state that the US is drifting more and more to, license plates are a valid means to identify vehicles - unless you’re looking to abolish the idea of vehicle registrations.

In the US at least, red light and speed cameras are almost all operated by private companies that police forces utilize as a vehicle to create tickets and boost revenues.

> Why bother?

Because knowing about the presence of a condition is better than not. Depending on the severity, untreated ADHD during the years of life where a child begins to establish good study habits, management of the condition, and other tools that work for them, can lead to issue down the road and into adulthood. We have the ability to address conditions like dyscalcula with little interventions to help the student be successful.

Just because something is imperfect doesn’t mean it should disregarded completely if the benefits (academic, social, and career success) outweigh the drawbacks of being untreated. The stigma argument is just FUD and letting that take over decision making for the well-being of a child is a bad path to go down.

There are often, unknown to the parent, invisible scars that the child with a non-neurotypical condition will carry for the of their life after having found out about a condition they’ve had since birth and was not addressed during the most critical time of their life when early treatment could have greatly reduced the harm caused by this disorder.

Has there ever been a confirmed case of snooping on cellphone traffic for the SMS with the one time password? I hear this argument a lot but the barrier here seems sufficiently high enough to make all but the most motivated bad actors seek other options. Even if this person is able to orchestrate the SMS capture, they ultimately are obtaining a code that expires in 10 minutes and therefore must be used very quickly before it becomes absolutely useless.

This is a dangerous road to travel, as the exact same thing can be said about most other tools that can be abused. Knee-jerk reactions like this are shortsightedly ignorant and do nothing to mitigate actual harm being done.

Flipper zero’s capability is not based on some super advanced technology, it can be replicated. Banning stuff is an easy way to cover the problem up but instead of actually fixing anything, it is sent out of view of the mainstream and into shallow obscurity.

People who steal cars already break the law, breaking an extra one by possessing the tool is not going to be a deterrent. Researchers and security auditors who stay above board will no longer have access to this tool if they expect to exist in a professional capacity, effectively kneecapping their ability as our allies to help us create more secure systems.

That’s fair, I would actually love to have a ‘Symbol.compare’ to implement so instances can be sorted and checked for equality.

The language is good at creating literal objects of no particular type/class/prototype. The concept of a Set is closer to an Array of unique Numbers than one of literal objects:

    const s = new Set([1,2,3]);

The resulting instance of Set can be queried for something existing in the set, have items added to the set, and remove from the set. This doesn’t handle literal objects (e.g. a record) well, which isn’t idiosyncratic to JS as most languages treat objects as reference-ish. The solution be to use a literal String or Number identifier that can be looked up.

I’m genuinely curious, what features from other languages do you want to see in this implementation?

Did Google really say that? It makes sense to treat it as a different category of link. An organic back link from a blog or website is putting the weight of the website’s name/reputation behind it whilst UGC has users putting their name/reputation on it (as it relates to their relationship with the originating website). The latter is not worthless as the website ultimately allows it, it not as strong as a signal as an organic backlink.

Link to project: https://fold.it/

Biochemistry mystifies me in same way that most other sciences to do not. It’s amazing to me that they can, in theory, derive useful insight or scientific leads from people playing.

Does anyone have an ELI5 on why/if this is more efficient than just iterating through combination programmatically?

Even though the direct effects of the pandemic have mostly disappeared, it still does not undo the years of staying at home that we have become accustomed and habituated to.

Rapid inflation didn’t help, either. For those lucky enough to survive layoffs, they doubled down on work either dedicating more of their time or attempted to insulate their risk by becoming overemployed. Those who have time for friend outings may not feel as if they can afford the cost and those who have money for friend outings may not feel as if they can afford the time.

The rapid rise and acceptance of a remote workforce has led to fewer face-to-face interactions among coworkers. Social circles, that would be expanded by crossing different groups of your friends and acquaintances together, are dwindling due to both natural attrition and because people just see each other less often, weakening social bonds over time.

Then when we all get together despite all odds of us actually meeting up, gatherings kind of just devolve to a bunch of loosely connected people looking at our phones. It’s tragically ironic that the device we use for instant communication ended up putting distance between all of us.

I think we need to make more of an effort to spend time that is of sufficient quality with other people, even if that means our social norms need to change, e.g. phone usage when with others, actively reaching out, etc.

Its amusing to think that part of this decision is to save on bandwidth costs.

The industry is very entrenched in regulation that is not going to change anytime soon. I just find it difficult to imagine any room for disruption with an agency like the FAA having full control over who and what gets to pilot an airplane, but also hates to certify experimental aircraft. Autonomous aircraft are going to be a century away at least due in part to red tape because there is almost no on-ramp to enter this industry.

I am also not hopeful for battery technology as, unlike cars, where we are not weight sensitive, commercial aircraft rely on being able to land lighter than they took off due to fuel burn. In small aircraft, battery storage can work for short runs, but we’re going to need to see some sort of fuel cell system for anything commercially viable.

This is hard to say because an alternate universe where the car didn’t exist would be quite different and may have not led to our contemporary understanding and management of risk in the first place.

This is a problem with using metaphors. Blueprints very accurately describe the role of genes by the way the article here describes them. I think they don’t have a precise understanding of what blueprints are, which means now semantics of the metaphor are critiqued rather than the actual content.

> Not really. They are more like incomplete recipes that depend on external factors to fill in the missing information.

As someone who has worked in construction, you have literally described blueprints.

Blueprints specify key elements of a building, what sort of material is to be used, rough locations, routing of utilities, etc, but it’s up to the installer to use their knowledge of building practices and building code to perform the installation correctly. Sometimes materials can change due to availability (or budget).

> I like a lot of what they're saying, but I actually find all of their redesigns to look worse than the original. I don't prefer the typeface they've selected, and their boxy buttons look two decades old.

The actual design was not the point of this piece, if anything, it’s an invitation to re-explore the design of the button. By being hung up on the implementation details, you have missed the forest for the trees.

Back in the early 2010s when I was doing freelance web development, I learned very quickly to stop gathering feedback from the client on specific steps because, for example, if I showed them a greyscale wireframe for page to solicit feedback on the layout, they would say, “the text organization looks good, but I wanted it to be these different colors, also I don’t like the Latin text in there, where is the content that we agreed would be in there? Also the logo is missing, also none of the links in the footer work, I don’t like the font, etc etc.” I thought at this point (and especially on this forum) we were past this sort of ill-informed feedback.

Federally, health insurers cannot use this data under GINA[0] and SB41[1] in California requires explicit permission be granted by the customer in order for the data to be shared with 3rd parties. In general, however, insurance companies are going to be reluctant to trust this information as it’s not established that it has real medical value outside the handful of markers we’ve clearly identified.

[0]: https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/dtcgenetictes...

[1]: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

> Quality seems to be decreasing. I found many similar stories

This is a drum that mass media beats every few years because it’s low hanging fruit.

It all comes down to the survivorship bias. In 10 years, we’re going to see a lot of these currently-new cars and admire how many of them are still on the road. In reality, the lemons were weeded out, poorer-selling models were cut and forgotten, and what is left is solidly in the middle of the bathtub curve[0].

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve

The only protection in the Us is technically “collection of personal information” via COPPA[0] which you can argue would kneecap social media. Any parent can provide consent for their child, however. Children themselves can also just click the button that says they are over 13 if it gets them what they want.

[0]: https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/childrens-onl...

I don’t think “blameless” and “shared responsibility” are mutually exclusive, in fact, they are two halves to this same coin. The dictionary definition of “blameless” does not encompass the practical application of a “blameless” culture, which can be confusing.

The “blameless” part here means the individual who directly triggered the event is not culpable as long as they acted reasonably and per procedure. The “shared responsibility” part is how the organization views the problem and thus how they approach mitigating for the future.

It’s unfortunate that the everything really becomes enshitified. It’s a slow march as generational knowledge is lost and we collectively forget what we were trying to escape only to be trapped in a cage made of that very thing - only this time, we made it.

There is such a bias for bad news to surface that people think society is consistently getting worse and it seems like there is this obsession with using law to “fix” every societal ill when most of these “fixes” just pushes the problem out of view.

We have a track record of taking (what we may perceive as) societal issues and turning them into a legal issue, the result of which has contributed to, for example, the United States being a nation with one of the highest (if not, the highest) percentage of its citizens currently incarcerated - a fact we should be absolutely ashamed of, not to mention the treatment of those reentering society.

We live in a pseudo police-state who’s laws are written by people who are affected the least by them or consider (or care) about externalities caused by a direct or indirect consequence of the law. We have turned drug use/addiction (by proxy with “possession”) from a medical problem to a legal problem. Some states have done the same with abortion. The content of libraries are being challenged because, “think of the children!” My county criminalizes working on your own vehicles on your own property, and California’s emissions requirements have created an undue burden on those with little means via a smog exemption date that is fixed and the requirement of specific emissions equipment that is frequently stolen, preventing vehicles from keeping registration current without a very costly, multi-thousand dollar repair. This leads to cars being prematurely scrapped because people just simply cannot afford it.

Most discussions around this argue about the implementation details the technology, perhaps as a proxy for those to signal disapproval of the proposed legislation. I’m guessing it’s because of either not wanting to directly express opposition to this idea at the risk of looking like a Luddite, small-government conservative, or whatever unpopular-in-California group that might happen to also agree, or they may might not have a compelling or logically sound reason to oppose it.

The implementation details are irrelevant. The criticisms of the technology will be met with continued improvements until those who supposedly oppose it are satisfied when it becomes rock solid, i.e. don’t strawman your own argument. You are also entitled to hold your own opinion on this, absent of any evidence or really anything to back it up.

The simple question I ask is:

> If we assume that this technology works every time, all the time, would you still welcome this law?

For me, absolutely not. This actively takes control away from the driver and for that reason, this is an unacceptable solution. This is just an opinion I hold.

Either via RF or line-of-sight IR.

The RF method works the same way ILS for aircraft works: multiple lobes of differing frequencies to a compatible receiver that will only accept the data if both frequencies are present and the interference pattern matches the conditions that it is looking out for.

IR is considerably simpler and would require a receiver to pick up on a well-aimed beam.

For bad actor mitigation, they could put a signature at the end of the speed data that signs the packet with the priority, route, datestamp, and TTL. The priority field could help enforce slower limit around construction zones.

The amount of spent uranium that will need to stored is infinitesimally small compared to the amount of energy that is produced in contrast to the waste that is produced by any other non-renewable source. It will typically get buried deep in the earths crust - deeper than anything save for mining, encased in concrete, and buried over where it would be most unlikely that anything will touch it ever again.

Central sever architecture is dominate because it’s easy. I can buy an IP address within a a data center and it will be routable. The lack of IPv4 addresses made giving every client on the internet an unique IP cost prohibitive for ISPs so we created NAT. The majority of clients who only connect to hosts are behind at least one NAT making them very difficult to address uniquely. The client must initiate a connection for an entry in NAT table to be added and allow for outside entry into the network. Further, more devices are mobile or on very dynamic IP systems that cause them to hop among many different IP address throughout the day or even hour. Trying to establish a connection to devices that have no static IP address is a problem that has no real elegant solutions but always defers to some known authority - the central server.

If we were to solve, once and for all, this ad-hoc, client-client connection system, P2P communication does require trust that many applications simply cannot tolerate. Game servers exist to validate client input, register actions, and distribute them to the players in the game, banking apps verify you are who you are and allow the movement or viewing of money, etc.

I don’t see a future where we fully leave the world of central servers behind but I do see one where we value P2P more and create public routing systems that enable this more freely.

> This wasn’t some clickwrap thing you have to click through to play Angry Birds, it was the agreement for signing up for the developer program.

Both of these operate under precisely the same principle. The same principle is applied when you sign up for a gym membership, a credit card, or install software on your computer. The validity of the shrinkwrap contract is not something I’m challenging here even if I happen to believe they go against the spirit of contracts.

My point is that there are limits as to what you are able to consent to, legally speaking. You can’t typically sue a company for including something in the ToS that you haven’t yet signed which you believe is unenforceable because you suffered no damage and have no standing in the matter. The way to go about this is to agree to the ToS and challenge its enforceability when, specifically, the target stipulations(s) were enforced by the company you made the agreement with. If this stipulation was not legal for them enforce, then it’s perfectly within the rights of the signer to challenge it.

The other dynamic is that the signer is taking on risk by challenging the validity of the contract either as a whole or in part, therefore it’s not necessary asymmetrical.

There are other situations where a “legal contract” can be thrown out, such as being forced to sign one under duress/threat, or even if someone who cannot consent legally signs it.

The ToS isn’t law and we desperately need to stop pretending it is.

A ToS a “shrinkwraped” contract. In Apple’s case, it’s enforceability was yet to be tested. We can agree to a lot of things in a contract, but in general, we cannot consent to letting a party break the law at your expense. A judge determined that Apples practices were unlawful and therefore the problematic stipulation of the ToS was struck.

This is an important tool to combat runaway shrinkwrap contracts that can say literally anything and attempt to enforce it.

This is the real failure. The software is neither smart nor dumb, it’s a machine. In this case, it was broken, but people who actually have the ability to critically analyze and judge situations deferred to the output of a machine that they have no real visibility into the internals of, and took its output as gospel.

Maintenance of bearings was a thing from the mid century up until the 80s when automakers starting putting out parts that had a service lifetime that exceeded the service lifetime of the vehicle. When is the last time you had your ICE vehicle in to get bearings repacked or replaced? Outside of actual damage (collision, premature part failure), these parts are typically replaced as a maintenance only in performance or enthusiasts vehicles now.

Also, many bearings in an ICE vehicle use special high-pressure, long-life, “tacky” lubricants that stick and do not usually mix with engine oil or transmission fluid. The bearings on the wheel hub most definitely do not but that’s also a part that both EVs and ICE vehicles have in common (which is also the easiest bearing to replace).

I’m confused as to the author’s reasoning.

They claim that stoping distance and non-normal driving conditions are an issue but these are precisely the same problems that AVs meant for ride share face but with a difference performance profile. The computer doesn’t care if it’s hauling 20 tons or 2 tons, what matters is we give it the correct performance profile and install adequate equipment to operate the vehicle safely.

The only real argument I see here is the limp mode case where it detects an error and must pull off. I can see the actual freeway being a problem here but then we just make sure the routes they initially travel have been checked prior to deployment - it’s a finite road that can be mapped and tested against. This can be further mitigated by having redundant computer systems and redundant environment sensors than it can fall back on to be able to safely pull off the side of the road or even make it to its next stop. Computers can make faster, more-informed decisions about nearly every driving situation and the challenges with operating heavy machinery are well understood.

The reason autonomous trucking has not been developed is not because of R&D, it all has to do with scale and what the funding is chasing. Running a truck is expensive, especially with a large load. Financing a project would have a lot of money dumped into the just the construction or retrofitting of a truck and it’s operation for roughly the same computer as the smaller vehicle - just with a different performance profile. When the vehicle you are testing has a kerb weight of 1100lbs and is electric, your maintenance costs plummet to almost nothing with fuel being electricity. We don’t have the same luxury with trucking. Additionally, Uber, Lyft, et al, are bullish on this technology because they would rather collect fares and pay a fixed cost for vehicles than having to deal with drivers that want silly things like compensation. The gig companies are also looking down a barrel of a loaded, regularly-shotgun that could drastically cut into their revenue. The dollars they are investing into AVs only care about ride share now.