Hacker News: discardorama

New comment by discardorama in "Why Some U.S. Ex-Spies Don't Buy the Russia Story"

discardorama — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 06:36:52 +0000

> VIPS instead surmises that, after WikiLeaks' Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016 his intention to publish Hillary Clinton-related emails, the DNC rushed to fabricate evidence that it had been hacked by Russia to defuse any potential WikiLeaks disclosures.

This is laughably stupid. Why would attributing the hack to Russia instead of Wikileaks or whatever make any difference to the contents of the hacks?

New comment by discardorama in "New SMB Worm Uses Seven NSA Hacking Tools, whilst WannaCry Used Just Two"

discardorama — Sun, 21 May 2017 15:20:29 +0000

That's exactly the mistake that Robert Morris (of the infamous Sendmail worm[1]) made: he kept re-infecting the machines.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm

New comment by discardorama in "Isdal Woman: A mystery death haunting Norway for 46 years"

discardorama — Sat, 13 May 2017 17:49:51 +0000

SO many fake passports... I bet she was an East German spy. People in such a line of work usually don't have labels in clothes, because the labels might not match the rest of the story.

New comment by discardorama in "Tamil Bell"

discardorama — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 13:54:55 +0000

In some languages, it makes sense to add the "bell", otherwise the sentence is incomplete.

In my native Hindi, you would say "X's ship's bell". If you drop the the "bell", it becomes "X's ship". Obviously it's not a ship. And if you drop the "ship", it becomes "X". That would mean the bell's name is "X". So the only complete, logical sentence has to be "X's ship's bell".

New comment by discardorama in "In Berlin, a Grass-Roots Fight Against Gentrification as Rents Soar"

discardorama — Sun, 19 Mar 2017 19:50:45 +0000

s/Berlin/San Francisco/g

Same shit, different place.

From a US perspective: The world is changing. The (American) ideal of a McMansion with a 2.5 kids and 3 cars is gone. People want to live in cities; in particular, tolerant, safe, cultured cities. Old timers in San Francisco (where I live) will blame the "tech boom" and "techies" for this phenomenon, but it's not limited to tech, and is not caused by tech. It's just the cycle we are in currently.

New comment by discardorama in "Amazon Chime"

discardorama — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 06:43:41 +0000

Instead of a chime, you should be hearing a cha-ching!

New comment by discardorama in "Should I learn C++ or Python?"

discardorama — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 03:27:59 +0000

Yes.

On a serious note: these are the 2 primary languages at companies like Google, so it can't hurt.

New comment by discardorama in "A US-born NASA scientist was detained at the border until he unlocked his phone"

discardorama — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 19:52:08 +0000

> The rational was to ensure duties were paid and screen for "bad guys," drugs, weapons, diseased fruit, etc.

There's always a perfectly-sounding rationale for such giving them such powers, but in the end these are always abused.

New comment by discardorama in "Soli: ubiquitous gesture sensing with millimeter wave radar (2016)[pdf]"

discardorama — Sat, 21 Jan 2017 04:43:43 +0000

Given the accuracy, could it read your fingerprints while you're doing the gesture? From the paper, it looks like the average displacement accuracy is 0.4mm. I wonder if that's accurate enough to read your fingerprints. If it could, you could ensure that only your gestures are recognized and not someone elses!

New comment by discardorama in "[dead]"

discardorama — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 14:52:09 +0000

Author is Marketing Director of Dine, one of the apps listed, and a competitor to the other 3. It can't get more biased than this.

And all of submitter's comments (all 3 of them) are on stories to do with Dine.

Flagged for astroturfing.

New comment by discardorama in "Artificial intelligence predicts when heart will fail"

discardorama — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 13:47:24 +0000

Why don't these startups apply it first to countries where the patients are there but the doctors are lacking?

New comment by discardorama in "Artificial intelligence predicts when heart will fail"

discardorama — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:47:34 +0000

I've been interested in application of ML to healthcare for nearly 20 years. In the early days, researchers just refused to share data; they were worried that you (using some fancy math or ML) would upstage them. I actually heard this first-hand from a faculty member.

Fast forward to today, and there is more openness. I did skim the paper mentioned here, but did not see any links to the actual data, which is a shame.

New comment by discardorama in "Artificial intelligence predicts when heart will fail"

discardorama — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:44:29 +0000

The actual paper: http://pubs.rsna.org/doi/pdf/10.1148/radiol.2016161315

New comment by discardorama in "A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France"

discardorama — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 21:00:33 +0000

> I basically got 0 value out it, considering I'm young and healthy I would not have to pay much for insurance, you're mostly footing the bill for the pensioners.

And when you are a pensioner, who will foot your bill?

New comment by discardorama in "The Inside Story of BitTorrent Inc’s Collapse"

discardorama — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 06:10:21 +0000

For some reason, this reminded me of "Pied Piper" of "Silicon Valley" fame.

New comment by discardorama in "Mapping the Growth of Disability Claims in America"

discardorama — Sun, 18 Dec 2016 18:47:00 +0000

SSDI eligibility is based on not where you can do a job or not; but whether you can do a job that's available locally or not.

New comment by discardorama in "Mapping the Growth of Disability Claims in America"

discardorama — Sun, 18 Dec 2016 18:45:26 +0000

People on SSDI are not counted as "unemployed", IIRC. Which makes the actual unemployment rate much higher.

New comment by discardorama in "Verizon Explores Lower Price or Even Exit from Yahoo Deal"

discardorama — Fri, 16 Dec 2016 04:45:00 +0000

Hmm... I wonder if this is Yahoo's way of getting out of the deal?

New comment by discardorama in "NSA Watchdog Removed for Whistleblower Retaliation"

discardorama — Fri, 16 Dec 2016 04:18:07 +0000

On a tangential note:

> Meanwhile, the ICIG’s handling of what began as a whistleblower complaint against Ellard sends an encouraging signal to those who may report wrongdoing at 17 US intelligence agencies

We have 17 intelligence agencies?!??

New comment by discardorama in "Neutralize ME Firmware on SandyBridge and IvyBridge Platforms"

discardorama — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 04:49:42 +0000

> but the system would need to be restarted before the ME would read the changes.

# shutdown -r now