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sp0rk

669 karma · joined February 1, 2009

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sp0rk··on Arch Linux disables AUR package adoption
I was just exaggerating for effect. Obviously I wouldn't seriously claim nobody ever did something, just that it wasn't what I would consider common behavior.

That being said, I think the particular example you provided is kind of weak. It's my understanding that the behavior you speak of was driven primarily by the Russian government's unofficial policy of ignoring cybercrimes committed by their citizens so long as the targets were not domestic. They were ensuring their ability to continue operation by banning discussion of targeting Russians. This is how groups like the Russian Business Network have been able to flourish.

sp0rk··on Elevators
This type of system is mentioned in the article under the "Destination Dispatch" section.
sp0rk··on Arch Linux disables AUR package adoption
> I can’t help but feel there used to be honor among hackers. You didn’t go after your own. What kind of jerk would attack Arch Linux?

This has absolutely not ever been the case.

sp0rk··on I admire Fabrice Bellard. He is almost certainly a better overall programmer
> There’s few things I find more pathetic than trying really hard to show who’s best and ranking things that have no business being ranked.

This seems like a strangely harsh response considering the person you're responding to is just restating the assertion that Carmack made in his tweet.

sp0rk··on The buns in McDonald's Japan's burger photos are all slightly askew
You should check out "Counter-claims" section of your link, especially the last paragraph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me#Counter-claims
sp0rk··on The Weather Channel – RetroCast
> Would love to see a metric switch to C en km/h

You can change the units and location by clicking the gear icon next to the city on the screen it shows in between broadcasts.

sp0rk··on What will enter the public domain in 2026?
> Fantasy book are a good example. A Games of Thrones was first released in 1996 but had middling success. It was only after 2011 that the series exploded in popularity. Good Omens main peak was ~15 years after release. Hell, some books like Handmaiden's Tale were published in 1985 but only reached their peak in 2010.

Using your example and the rules suggested in the grandparent post, GRRM's copyright would have been set to initially expire in 2024, where he would be able to pay $100k to renew it until 2038. Handmaiden's Tale works in a similar way, with the initial expiration in 2013.

This still seems very reasonable to me.

sp0rk··on Amazon Rivian electric delivery vans arrive in Canada
> I do wonder though, because I have seen a dozen other brands of Amazon delivery vehicles, is Amazon being 'sponsored' by these manufacturers or just buying cars all the time? I am really confused why there's so many different brands.

Amazon runs a program called "Delivery Service Partners" which basically certifies small businesses to deliver Amazon packages. They are given the option of using their own fleet of vehicles if they don't want to lease the vehicles designed by Amazon.

sp0rk··on Bob Ross paintings to be auctioned to fund US public broadcasting
> Yet when NPR runs non-stop Walmart articles [1], often in a neutral to positive fashion, most are unaware that they've received millions of dollars from the Waltons.

The link your provided has 14 articles written in 2025. Topics covered: listeria outbreak, tariffs raising prices, radioactive shrimp, a stabbing at a store, and a shooting at a store.

Maybe two of the articles could be viewed as mildly positive towards the Walmart corporation, though they are basically just saying that the tariffs weren't impacting prices to the level that many people thought they were, and they were backed up with real-world data. I appreciate you providing an illustrative link to back up your post, but it doesn't really seem to agree with your point.

sp0rk··on Win10 Is Nearing End-of-Life: What Should You Do Next?
> A lot of the news gives the impression that your world is over when 14th hits, not recognising that historically legacy software and hardware is a thing.

There was a lot of buzz in the cybersecurity world near Window XP's EOL about attackers potentially holding on to exploits until after support ended, so as to avoid having them patched. Sure enough, CVE-2014-1776 was found being actively exploited two weeks after support officially ended.

Using a closed source operating system after it will no longer receive security patches is just plain dangerous. I don't really think people should be advocating for it at all outside of the purposes of historical preservation.

sp0rk··on Wikipedia as a Graph
It works for me. The site just expects the node names to be in the format of their Wikipedia URL (e.g. "Binghamton,_New_York".)
sp0rk··on Wikipedia as a Graph
I'm not sure if this is an intentional design decision, but I think the results would be more interesting if it ignored all of the category links at the very bottom of the Wikipedia pages. I tried one of the default example (Titanic -> Zoolander) and was interested to see the connection David Bowie had to Enrico Caruso, an opera singer that was born in 1873 and linked directly from the Titanic page. It turns out that David Bowie is only linked on Caruso's page because they both won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, of which all of the recipients ever are linked to at the bottom of the page.

By excluding the category links at the bottom that contain all the recipients, there would still be a connection, but it would include the extra hop between the two that makes their connection more clear on the graph (Titanic -> Caruso -> Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award -> David Bowie.)

Otherwise, this is a fun little tool to play around with. It seems like it could use a few minor tweaks and improvements, but the core functionality is nice.

sp0rk··on Geocities Backgrounds
This page only contains links to about half of the backgrounds present on the page that is linked currently.
sp0rk··on XMLUI
> These days you've got Gambas for a free and open source VB, including the terrible language, but in my experience the looks are a bit off when you design on one desktop environment and run the application on another.

There is also Lazarus[1], which uses Pascal but feels closer to what I remember of the VB6 experience.

1: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

sp0rk··on Firefox-patch-bin, librewolf-fix-bin AUR packages contain malware
Announcements like this typically contain information that will help users identify if they were compromised, such as the name of files that are dropped or modified when the malware is initialized, startup entry names, etc. Obviously the person with remote access can get in and manually start doing things on individual machines, but that doesn't mean there aren't indicators present from the programmatic actions the malware took before that point or on machines that weren't manually accessed.
sp0rk··on Yet Another Zip Trick
The author explains in the article that they previously gave a presentation outlining various techniques to achieve a "schizophrenic" zip file. The blog post discusses an additional technique that was not present in their previous presentation.
sp0rk··on Fossify – A suite of open-source, ad-free apps
Where are ads displayed in your Google Messages? I have never seen any ads and I struggle to even imagine where they would place an ad within its interface.
sp0rk··on KDE for Windows 10 Exiles – Upgrade your software, not your computer
As somebody that was using Windows XP up to its EoL, I am fairly certain I was in the minority (at least amongst home users.) I don't think anybody I knew was using XP by the time its end came. The only reason I was still on it at the time was a complete lack of income which meant using very old hand-me-down hardware.

The situation with Windows 10 feels quite different, because most people I know that use Windows are on Windows 10 currently.

sp0rk··on The Who Cares Era
> There's a culture of indifference, an embrace of mediocrity. I don't think it's new, but I do think perhaps AI has given the lazy and prideless an even lower energy route to... I'm not sure. What is the goal?

I think pride in work has declined a lot (at least in the US) because so many large employers have shown that they aren't even willing to pretend to care about their employees. It's difficult to take pride in work done for an employee that you aren't proud of, or actively dislike.

sp0rk··on A simple search engine from scratch
The SVG equation is very difficult to read if you're using a dark OS theme because the blog uses the OS preference for dark/light theme (and doesn't seem to give an option to change it manually, either.)
sp0rk··on Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
This is a really bad faith interpretation of what he's saying. I think a more reasonable interpretation is that he's claiming the 2020 election was rigged (a claim he's made many times already), which in turn means he was able to run again for 2024.
sp0rk··on A mole infiltrated the highest ranks of American militias
Do you have any examples of stories where one of the subjects was contacted, wanted to respond, but didn't have enough time?
sp0rk··on Support for U.S. TikTok ban continues to decline
I witnessed a pretty alarming situation on TikTok surrounding the story about the Dalai Lama asking a young boy to "suck his tongue." Traditional news outlets ran the initial story, and then followed up shortly after to provide important cultural context, as well as the Dalai Lama's apology.

My girlfriend's TikTok For You Page, on the other hand, only showed her stuff about the initial story and then she never heard anything else about it. We both walked away from this news story with completely different views of reality.

Maybe it's a coincidence or caused by some less nefarious reason, like an algorithmic bias towards newer news, but it seems very suspicious given China's relationship with Tibet.

sp0rk··on Google took three months to remove scam app that stole over $5M
It's quite possible that the victims were convinced to try the app by the attacker outside of the Play Store and the app existing on the store was just an attempt to give it additional credibility when they were directed to download it.
sp0rk··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2024)
Are there any roles at this company that would be appropriate for a hobbyist programmer with an interest in network security, but without any professional experience? I'm pretty comfortable with Python and I've spent a lot of time goofing around in the network security space over the past several decades. The tools I already work with are pretty limited but I am quick to learn new technologies. KnowBe4 has been on my radar for a while now because I am located right next to Clearwater but I haven't seen any positions that seemed appropriate for my low level of professional experience. Even the technical support role says it expects a minimum of one year experience in a similar role.
sp0rk··on Daylight Computer – New 60fps e-paper tablet
I think the average person (myself included) does not know that something can be considered ePaper without being bistable. The two are married in my head because all of the ePaper devices that I've been exposed to thus far have been bistable. If I were you, I would find a clever way to communicate this fact without making it sound like too much of a drawback.
sp0rk··on Show HN: GPU Prices on eBay
Just looking through the current results, the only other one that really jumps out at me is "-server" to get rid of the server GPUs that can't be used for gaming.
sp0rk··on Show HN: GPU Prices on eBay
The ability to apply a boolean search (as a filter) to the text would be very useful. For example, "-parts" would get rid of a lot of results that I have no interest in.
sp0rk··on The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better
> If you report a minor robbery to the police in any large American city and you aren't a public figure, there is functionally a 0% chance of them following up on it much less solving it.

I have known people that had stolen things returned because the police found the items while investigating/arresting the thief for other crimes. It seems foolish to not bother with filing a report just because they aren't actively investigating every report they receive.

sp0rk··on Mozilla Monitor Plus: automatically remove your personal info from data brokers
I think "partnership" seems like too strong a word for what appears to be the simple use of an affiliate program. Why would OneRep know or care about an individual affiliate and the content of their site, as long as their behavior with regards to the affiliate program is above-board?
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