Hacker News: Wingman4l7

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "Show HN: PanicLock – Close your MacBook lid disable TouchID –> password unlock"

Wingman4l7 — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 16:18:42 +0000

An opportune time to mention the real-world example of when the authorities really wanted to gain full access to a computer but did not want to resort to legal compulsion or "rubber-hose cryptanalysis" -- they simply waited until the target was logged in, staged an altercation in the immediate vicinity, and then snatched the open laptop away from them.

You can read about the sting, here: "How Did Investigators Catch the Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR) in San Francisco?" https://www.forensicscolleges.com/blog/forensics-casefile/si...

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "Claude Opus 4.7"

Wingman4l7 — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:45:18 +0000

That's a big assumption that this patent, a technology quite relevant to a massive media company, was filed only for future patent troll purposes. Plenty of seriously-intentioned ideas never materialize for a multitude of reasons.

The point is that the idea is now out in the wild and cannot be unseen, and however stupid or morally bankrupt it is, someone in the past did (and someone in the future will) think it was a good idea. And if and when it finally gets implemented for real, we all suffer.

The soda can validation 4chan meme isn't just a dumb joke. It's a warning.

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "Claude Opus 4.7"

Wingman4l7 — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 14:24:31 +0000

Stupid? Hardly.

Sony was granted a patent in 2009 "for an interactive commercial system that allows viewers to skip commercials by yelling the brand name of the advertiser at their television or monitor." : https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sony-patent-mcdonalds/

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "Roulette Computers: Hidden Devices That Predict Spins"

Wingman4l7 — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 22:08:27 +0000

There were also some early shoe-based devices I have read about, which used earpieces (difficult to avoid breaking the thin wires necessary to hide them, and prevent damage from sweat). Some of these stories unfortunately weren't documented super well -- I think I came across them from the original participants chatting on a long-defunct forum or newsgroup -- but it is mentioned in passing here: https://jimsudmeierstories.com/adventures-with-a-concealed-b...

> Then around 1976 came “David,” using the Z80 microprocessor, oriented towards team play (the Big Player making the big bets) with hand keyboards operated through holes in pockets and transmitters to signal the Big Player. Later came “Thor,” a computer to track the shuffling (and possible clumping) of multiple decks. One of his inventions involved networking players together with fine wires about 3 feet long. Then there were “Magic Shoes” in which 12 batteries, computer, and all were hidden in “Frankenstein” shoes. Later still there was “Narnia, the sequencing computer.”

The inventor Keith Taft talks about it in more detail in an interview here: https://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/gambling-with-an-edge/interv...

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "Reboot: Rebuild civilization by reinventing lost technologies"

Wingman4l7 — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 17:46:27 +0000

This does appear to break your "streak" of correct answers, though.

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "MuMu Player (NetEase) silently runs 17 reconnaissance commands every 30 minutes"

Wingman4l7 — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:40:08 +0000

No, because this particular attack is (as far as I know) a new concept, but in general, China being a major state sponsor of all sorts of large cyberattacks is very well-known (in security circles, at least) and has been extensively documented. The current likely scenario is that attacks would be performed against the US in the event that they tried to help defend Taiwan against Chinese invasion.

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "MuMu Player (NetEase) silently runs 17 reconnaissance commands every 30 minutes"

Wingman4l7 — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 04:58:44 +0000

Perhaps because foreign governments with a known antagonistic stance would happily sell or hand over your data in order to cause large-scale economic instability via account attacks, political instability via fostering the prosecution of minority groups (as identified by said data)... get creative. Large-scale data on your enemy's citizenry is a new weapon in the modern arsenal, and we haven't seen anyone really try to use it yet, but I suspect the results when they do will be ugly.

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "I'm a laptop weirdo and that's why I like my new Framework 13"

Wingman4l7 — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 19:13:27 +0000

Yeah, but is it OEM? Even big names like Dell don't support their parts for that long, and you have to resort to getting sketchy third-party parts from China, or rolling the dice on a used OEM part.

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "I'm a laptop weirdo and that's why I like my new Framework 13"

Wingman4l7 — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 19:12:15 +0000

They're really not -- Mac scissor switches are pretty delicate, and it's easy to do damage to the tiny plastic nubs on the keycaps or the switches... and if you damage the metal retaining frame in any way, you're toast (Mac laptop keyboards are virtually unreplaceable, being buried in the "bottom" of the unibody chassis).

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "Carice TC2 – A non-digital electric car"

Wingman4l7 — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 19:40:26 +0000

...through the subscription fee.

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "Cheese Crystals (2019)"

Wingman4l7 — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 03:28:24 +0000

Not the first time I've seen it organically recommended, and I'm not surprised. A buddy has some of this stuff, he usually ages it for a minimum of a year, ideally 2+, in the fridge. Will sometimes have fantastic crystals, and even if it doesn't it's still exceptional sharp cheddar.

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "People with blindness can read again after retinal implant and special glasses"

Wingman4l7 — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 23:55:34 +0000

Unfortunately, documentation simply isn't sufficient. In addition to parts or components not being manufactured anymore, you also would have the likely bigger issue of clinicians being hesitant or unwilling to work with the hardware, and / or insurance not covering the doctor's time or procedures. I believe such things already happened with the Second Sight fiasco.

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "People with blindness can read again after retinal implant and special glasses"

Wingman4l7 — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 17:46:08 +0000

Came here to post this in case it hadn't been.

This case is very infamous in the disability & tech academic research community -- kind of their version of the Therac-25 in terms of ethics, damage to people, etc.

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "SpaceX disables 2,500 Starlink terminals allegedly used by Asian scam centers"

Wingman4l7 — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 16:36:17 +0000

Next they need to disable the Starlink terminals being used on narco-subs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44477601

Reverse-engineering the Friend AI pendant

Wingman4l7 — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 16:30:54 +0000

Article URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20251023082520/https://binhsarchive.substack.com/p/reverse-engineer-friend-by-avi-schiffmann

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45683836

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "DoorDash and Waymo launch autonomous delivery service in Phoenix"

Wingman4l7 — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 15:45:04 +0000

Zipline's platform 2 is VTOL and is essentially a quad rotor + 1 rear swivel motor, during delivery. A fixed wing won't help you much if you have a failure while hovering. Google's Wing is a very similar design (6 hover motors on a boom, two booms, one along each wing). The key is flight system redundancies, something consumer drones simply don't have, and Zipline also has a ballistic parachute in case of severe failures since their aircraft is fairly large.

Maybe they won't ever become a "big thing", but Zipline is already delivering food directly to consumers in TX and elsewhere.

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "DoorDash and Waymo launch autonomous delivery service in Phoenix"

Wingman4l7 — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 23:46:40 +0000

Drones don't just "fall on people's head[s]". Zipline, the only US-approved BVLOS drone operator I know of besides maybe Google's Wing, had to show the FAA millions of accident-free flight miles they did overseas in other countries, in order to get regulatory approval.

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "DoorDash and Waymo launch autonomous delivery service in Phoenix"

Wingman4l7 — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 20:11:04 +0000

It's already happening -- Zipline partnered with Walmart and has been actively performing deliveries in TX and I think a few other places. Google's Wing may also be doing commercial deliveries but I don't know as much about their current status.

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia"

Wingman4l7 — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 22:27:33 +0000

Long overdue. At some point, these scam operations are so large that they have to be operating with tacit approval of their host countries, who have been given no incentive to stop the virtual cold war against the personal finances of foreign citizenry that is bringing in millions of dollars into their economy.

New comment by Wingman4l7 in "Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot"

Wingman4l7 — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 21:25:56 +0000

It's the only way this kind of robot will ever be successful. It's a bit like the driverless car approach -- get the hardware out into the real world with minimum viable performance, then desperately snaffle up as much real-world training data as you can to feed into your model, and hopefully your model will improve enough before your VC funding runs out / your product fails on the market / your product gets regulated out of existence / etc.

Simulation isn't sufficient for ML in robotics -- and they simply don't have enough training data.