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wcfields

957 karma · joined March 4, 2013

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wcfields··on How to hide from killer drones
Depends on the value of the target. Costs Ukraine $918 to kill a Russian soldier[1] but if you’re using a fully offline automated swarm to destroy a petro system worth billions then what’s a few GPUs strapped to each one to run local models.

[1] https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/ukraine-s-drone-chief-reveal...

wcfields··on I want to live like Costco people
It's only Coca-Cola if it comes from the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée of Atlanta, otherwise it's only a sparking cola beverage.
wcfields··on 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet
It's a catch-22: I already gambled the coin I was going to use for the heads-or-tails bet.
wcfields··on BYD is seeing a flood of new EV buyers
If anyone from Ford reads HN: What's keeping me from a Ford Maverick truck is waiting for the PHEV version.
wcfields··on Jeffrey Epstein's Money Mingled with Silicon Valley Startups
Just take a look at the photos of his residences, it's filled with big black redaction squares of the "artwork" and photos on his walls and the little bits that can be seen lend a huge credence to his prior conviction.

Absolutely bonkers to say he's a "somewhat flawed person" when there's gigs of PDFs of some of the most heinous things imaginable.

wcfields··on MySpace Founder Deletes Post Amid Backlash After Teasing Platform Return
Insane thing to write when the "purity test" is not supporting/investing in a defense contractor with a CEO who begged Epstein to go to the island.
wcfields··on Sony Data Discman
Zip was fairly defacto RW media between ~1997-2004.

I was in College around that time and the blue Mac G3's in most computer labs had Zip drives, and many PC's in the labs had Zip drives too.

wcfields··on Can you slim macOS down?
Can speak for someone who managed a racked [1] Mac Mini racked as a server in 2015~2018:

* Profile Manager / MDM * Caching server for OS updates * Thunderbolt connection to a PCIe RAID HBA for a JBOD for NAS file sharing

All these things/use cases now are depreciated, MDM via JAMF in the cloud, internet is fast enough that caching OS updates isn't necessary, and NAS's are much better suited.

[1] https://www.sonnettech.com/product/legacyproducts/xmacminise...

wcfields··on IP Addresses Through 2025
Anecdotally on how this affects the day to day user experience: I just deployed T-Mobile 5G Business Internet to a temporary pop-up art space (it's only active for a few months) and I'd say twice daily I get a CAPTCHA challenge on Google search.
wcfields··on Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?
On the used market you'll find absolutely cooked (literally) Leafs whose first life was in Arizona and barely have enough range to back out of the driveway.
wcfields··on Thai Air Force seals deal for Swedish Gripen jets
I’m not any sort of analyst but from my understanding the threats Thai faces is Cambodia border skirmishes and Myanmar both of which could be handled with any aircraft.

China is a non starter, even a next gen aircraft is no match for their entire military.

wcfields··on Thai Air Force seals deal for Swedish Gripen jets
“Best” but you’re going to spend millions per missile system to have “the best”.

Israel quickly found out when trying to shoot down “cheap” $30k Iranian drones.

wcfields··on WeightWatchers files bankruptcy
> willpower

I mean, sure, but if it was just willpower for everyone then we'd all speak 10 languages, play piano, be buff as hell, be emotionally stable, and no one would be an alcoholic.

But we're squishy apes that are regulated by hormones and live busy messy lives with cars that are probably needing a tire rotation 3000 miles ago and putting it off a few more miles won't really hurt.

wcfields··on WeightWatchers files bankruptcy
> natural

Yeah, "natural" would be living in constant fight-or-flight fear from being eaten and/or attacked by a neighboring tribe. Probably always quasi-starving and having low-level diarrhea from eating scavenged rancid food and dying before your 28th birthday.

wcfields··on Mark Zuckerberg Says Social Media Is Over
> They don’t really have a monopoly on local events or marketplace.

Yeah, I'd say from 2004 - 2015 was the heyday for me on local events for small bands, house shows, and punk/DIY venues. Eventually FB Events died out socially by not being able to send invites to mass groups of friends/previous attendees, and attrition, and so on... A real shame for non-major venue events and the DIY scene.

Marketplace is semi-useful still, quasi-better than craigslist, but keeps getting filled with a lot of cruft of drop-shippers and scammers.

wcfields··on Everyday life improvements since the 90s (2022)
More food:

- Brussels Sprouts taste much better now: https://www.bhg.com/news/brussels-sprouts-less-bitter/

wcfields··on Pope Francis has died
Not to sound like the oldest person in the room/thread, but the use of "opponent" as 'opps' has gained a lot of traction in the vernacular of Gen-z/alpha. Not so much as an outright enemy, and not so much as a 'hater'.
wcfields··on 4chan Sharty Hack And Janitor Email Leak
Do you have a link or reference to this? I'm going to be thinking about this for weeks now.
wcfields··on MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 still run train dashboards at German railway (Jan'24)
Retro gaming enthusiasts have been creating mini-PCs first starting with industrial computers (386) built for CNC machines, and have recently been getting custom PCBs made like the Pixel x86: https://youtu.be/B8WfiRRvQXo?si=lbDZymYKATkT66pf

You can find some oddball stuff on AliExpress that’s probably made to replace as close as possible 1to1 EOL equipment: https://youtu.be/6bODiZ5bP84?si=GTwF6MOQqm_VLy4s

wcfields··on Everyone knows all the apps on your phone
The author is probably Indian based upon the blogs subtitle of “ tales from indian web rabbit holes. “
wcfields··on Crew-9 Returns to Earth
I mean, if someone is saying plainly "I'm going to ruin your life and critically endanger your health." then one should expect some pushback.
wcfields··on Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update
Burning Reputation?

It's so out in the open if you know, or more likely, worked in media advertising.

Their competitor, Vizio, owns iSpot[1] which is, in my opinion, the best in the space.

Samba TV[2] is it's nearest competitor and they have their hooks into 24 Smart TV brands globally[3]. These brands are listed on their website as Philips, Sony, Toshiba, beko, Magnavox, TCL, Grundig, Sanyo, AOC, Seiki, Element, Sharp, Westinghouse, Vestel, Panasonic, Hitachi, Finlux, Telefunken, Digihome, JVC, Luxor, Techwood, and Regal.

[1] https://ispot.tv/

[2] https://www.samba.tv/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_TV#Customers

wcfields··on Samsung bricked their home theater systems through automated firmware update
Their competitor, Vizio, owns https://www.ispot.tv/ which is used for ad delivery tracking.

It's much more reliable and precise than the familiar Nielsen ratings: since you know the total audience of X% TV households in a zipcode (which you know demographics of race/income/household size based upon), and Vizio TVs account for Y% of all TVs sold for households with incomes between A and B, and C and D you can get a confidence interval of how many people ACTUALLY saw your TV advertisement.

Samsung was/is probably trying to do something similar: All sound in your TV pipes through their home theater system, so they can "Shazam" whatever media you're watching, regardless of the source (OTT, OTA, hell even YouTube or a Downloaded Torrent on your laptop hooked up via HDMI) and phone home.

wcfields··on Windows NT for GameCube/Wii
IIRC: There was a bonanza of DEC Multia Alpha's[1] that made it's way to some salvage seller in the late 90's for like $100-ish. The catch was they didn't include RAM and it had to be True Parity RAM which was fairly expensive.

[1] http://www.obsolyte.com/dec/multia/

wcfields··on Dinner at a North Korean Restaurant in Shanghai (2016)
My experience echos this but on a smaller scale, I’ve visited the NK run restaurant in Bangkok in 2019 and found it to be basically any average nondescript very dated East Asian / Korean restaurant, but odd. It was smaller, maybe seating 60-75 tops?

The food was fine, and they played NK music (the kind you’d hear on Korean Central Television) while we ate. The unique thing I recall on the menu was the Pyongyang Cold Noodles which I did not get.

Unfortunately the waitresses did not do karaoke which I heard was the entertainment and the whole experience was notable but not like “holy crap”.

When asked about takeaways they did offer to sell me NK cigarettes and Soju.

wcfields··on White Hat Hackers Expose Iridium Satellite Security Flaws
Their value is the niche of being able to work at the poles, unlike any other constellation, despite being dialup speed.
wcfields··on Spirit Airlines is filing for bankruptcy
Lets not forget that Airlines make a ton of their revenue from co-branded credit cards. [1]

Spirit has a credit card from Bank of America [2], but it's terrible outside of the introductory bonus miles offer, which for an airline card gives you a lot of miles for a low intro-spend. Other than that, you get priority boarding and that's about it. No real other perks. I got it, and was probably flying on Spirit more in a few months than any other time in my life because I was traveling last minute to see my late father while in hospice and Spirit was far and away the cheapest flights for next-day flights.

As for status, you have to basically fly weekly roundtrips to get any perks (free bags, etc.) [3]

On top of all that, most business travelers won't take Spirit, and it's often not an option in Concur/Biz travel middleware because companies know the hidden fees so it's often not worth listing for budgeting against known airlines.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/airlines-b...

[2] https://www.bankofamerica.com/credit-cards/products/spirit-a...

[3] https://www.spirit.com/free-spirit

wcfields··on Cuba's grid goes offline with blackout after a major power plant fails
As an American that went to Cuba for tourism during the Obama years, let me say, once you go to Cuba once you’ll decidedly go somewhere else after.
wcfields··on Love being interrupted when my monitor asks me to accept user agreements
Yup, technical project manager.
wcfields··on Love being interrupted when my monitor asks me to accept user agreements
I’ll keep repeating this but I used to be a TPM for “advance analytics” for a major media agency and we used this data in our reporting for ad reach effectiveness.

From a previous comment of mine:

> … my Insignia TV (best buy store brand) with fire tv built in is basically unusable. Echoing a previous comment I made too, about “smart tvs” and the “streaming sticks”: Hey, have you ever thought of why even the $149 Black Friday loss-leader no-name-brand TVs all have Amazon Fire, Roku, or are now "Smart" in some way? Certainly isn't because they need to incentivise you to connect it to the internet so it acts as a Nielsen-esq measurement device of all media you view on the screen via digital fingerprints that exist in all commercial media and advertisements. [1][2]

[1] https://www.ispot.tv/

[2] https://www.samba.tv/

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