Hacker News Reader

tpmxon US citizens with permanent disabilities get free lifetime pass to National Parks

So, I'm relatively speaking politically aligned towards the right - in Sweden, which means I'm on the average somewhat more to the left than Joe Biden.

I agree with that law. Owning the land does not give you the right to abuse it. The land is forever, you are temporary.

Note that there are exceptions for actual forestry use.

tpmxon US citizens with permanent disabilities get free lifetime pass to National Parks

Sweden offers everyone who are are allowed to stay in the country and abide to simple courtesy rules access to pretty much all of its land for free. 24/7/365.

This is regardless of who owns the land in question.

tpmxon The Level1Techs KVM Switch [video]

created by a knowledgeable YouTuber

Sigh.

tpmxon Google Cloud Spanner is now half the cost of Amazon DynamoDB

I sort of agree, and I also posted other aspects, but please note this:

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-public-ipv4-address...

We are introducing a new charge for public IPv4 addresses. Effective February 1, 2024 there will be a charge of $0.005 per IP per hour for all public IPv4 addresses, whether attached to a service or not

tpmxon Starlink Direct to Cell

The inverse square law effect can be remedied using similar tech as in the Starlink consumer antennas. You aim the signal to where it's consumed.

> Problem with slow data rates is that they clog up the channels.

Yes, we must protect the tubes! :)

tpmxon Starlink Direct to Cell

To summarize (please correct me if I'm wrong here):

You see this being deployed to service every customer of the partnering mobile networks, wherever they may be.

I see this being deployed to service those customers who aren't covered by existing and much cheaper land-based LTE-coverage from the partnering mobile networks.

tpmxon Starlink Direct to Cell

> and Starlink’s direct to cell won’t either

I could see it kinda working, at low frequencies. They are not that far away and there's not many things blocking the signal besides your roof.

tpmxon Starlink Direct to Cell

Couldn't each sat easily/cheaply ignore clients whose IDs are not in a whitelist?

And again, wouldn't this primarily be activated in very desolate areas?

tpmxon Starlink Direct to Cell

Those several-GHz bands don't really work indoors.

tpmxon Starlink Direct to Cell

unmodified LTE and 5G seem way too verbose to be able to handle the constraints of a much higher number of devices per base station

That's a matter of pricing, isn't it?

Also, won't this primarily be used where very few people roam? Otherwise they could just use the regular land-based LTE infra.

Remember: SpaceX can't just magically offer cheaper mobile coverage globally; they don't own any rights to use 4G/5G frequency bands. These are typically very expensive.

It makes a lot of sense for SpaceX to partner with mobile operators who own these rights but don't utilize them very well in sparsely inhabited areas.

tpmxon Starlink Direct to Cell

Apple/Google don't hold any RF spectrum rights worldwide...

This is presumably about 4G/LTE, so mostly between 0.4-2.5 GHz or so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_frequency_bands

tpmxon HAProxy is not affected by the HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Attack

Please write a blog post about this and submit it to HN!

tpmxon Starlink Direct to Cell

I suppose they need to piggyback on each mobile operator's licensed frequency bands, per country/region.

tpmxon Google Cloud Spanner is now half the cost of Amazon DynamoDB

That one caused a week of work for me... (redesigning something slated to go live in a few months)

tpmxon Google Cloud Spanner is now half the cost of Amazon DynamoDB

GCP has seen price increases:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/14/inflation-is-real-google-c...

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30671997

tpmxon HAProxy is not affected by the HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Attack

It's primary focus is/was being a web server - a faster Apache. This shows.

Also (after the acqusition by F5 in 2019?) more features are kept away from the open source version compared to HAProxy.

tpmxon HAProxy is not affected by the HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Attack

Yeah. Stringency and rigor are words that come to mind.

tpmxon HAProxy is not affected by the HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Attack

I'm quite impressed with HAProxy.

It takes a little effort to fully understand the configuration file format (hint: you've got to read the documentation, not just look at examples to fully grok it), but it's so worth it, IMO.

It's also a nice treat to have the founder and technical leader (Willy Tarreau) of the HAProxy company being so active in the community, so many years later (the initital release was in 2001). I regularly see him answering e.g. newbie questions.

(HAProxy docs: https://docs.haproxy.org/ - pick 2.8/LTS)

tpmxon AI girlfriend encouraged man to attempt crossbow assassination of Queen

Yes, for sure. This one seems more practical (tactical?) than the stereotypical Robin Hood image most people probably imagine since it's a lot more compact and less unweildy, though.

tpmxon AI girlfriend encouraged man to attempt crossbow assassination of Queen

A few notable aspects:

- It happened almost a full two years ago, well before the LLM explosion.

- The AI girlfriend startup is a YC company: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/replika

- This is the first person convicted of treason in the UK for 40+ years

- Edited: That crossbow is and looks like a serious weapon.

tpmxon Fresh curl tomorrow will patch 'worst' security flaw in ages

Opportunity:

Write a tool that can fetch a URL over HTTP/1.1 (and nothing else). Use a memory safe language. Support the most commonly used curl CLI options. Come up with a suitable name for the distribution but make sure that the actual installed binary is called curl.

tpmxon I helped select the Nobel laureates in physics

The Committee’s proposal is discussed in a larger body, the Physics Class of the Academy, who may suggest a modification or forward a different proposal to the Academy. Finally, additional proposals may be raised at the final Academy meeting. It is in principle possible to suggest that no Prize be given the current year, but that is a seldom used choice.

(https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/physics/)

tpmxon US moves closer to underground testing of nuclear weapons without any explosions

(Twice.)

I find it somewhat incredible from a pure engineering point of view that Trinity worked in the first test and that both Little Boy (Test #2) and Fat Man (Test #3) also worked.

tpmxon US moves closer to underground testing of nuclear weapons without any explosions

You'd imagine they have a learned a bit since then. And it's underground.

tpmxon US moves closer to underground testing of nuclear weapons without any explosions

Scientists call it “tickling the dragon’s tail," Custer said, because the experiment approaches but stays below the stage at which the fission of nuclear materials sustains an ongoing series of chain reactions.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core Feynman was the person behind that expression.

Scientists referred to this flirting with the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction as "tickling the dragon's tail", based on a remark by physicist Richard Feynman, who compared the experiments to "tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon".

tpmxon OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

Except they're not releasing the source of the core parts. They say (or at least very heavily imply they are), but they aren't. See other comments.

tpmxon OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

Seems like e.g. (most of) the sensor drivers are binary blobs.

Some examples:

Ambarella S3L: https://github.com/OpenIPC/firmware/tree/master/general/pack...

Some HiSilicon chipset: https://github.com/OpenIPC/firmware/tree/master/general/pack...

Edit: A smaller subset of sensors have some code here:

https://github.com/OpenIPC/sensors

tpmxon A new basic taste joins sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami

The paper:

The proton channel OTOP1 is a sensor for the taste of ammonium chloride