Hacker News: dlsa

New comment by dlsa in "Ask HN: Is it still conceivable to remain an anonymous developer nowadays?"

dlsa — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 10:50:51 +0000

Yeah, that comment they don't like? Crazy people will false report some incident to get a SWAT team at your address. Other crazy people will call your employment and start a campaign of attacks to get you fired. Plenty of examples of this out there. Some people, eg youtubers, get swatted multiple times. Police turn up multiple times. These aren't isolated cases.

New comment by dlsa in "Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else"

dlsa — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 09:30:49 +0000

Be more interesting. Ok, is it worth me writing a rebuttal to all this? Seems I struck a chord.

Edit: reading some of the comments and seeing venom and vitriol. They're the opposite of the feedback I've gotten from elsewhere.

New comment by dlsa in "Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else"

dlsa — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 14:45:22 +0000

I didn't take it as a jab. I also received a bunch of messages from people poking fun at me elsewhere for my comment. In the past several physicists have been a source of fine wine when I've won a bet.

There will probably be photos of couches in my office next week when I get back.

New comment by dlsa in "Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else"

dlsa — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 13:04:54 +0000

I've received feedback from some very smart people who laughed out loud and knew exactly what I meant by having a good look. Two of them are physicists and many more are engineers. They said they have found many metaphorical couches and there's a lot of nothing. They've also found quite a few interesting metaphorical paperclips and other debris. But that there's so many more places to look. They also think there's a bunch of metaphorical couches they still haven't found. Its especially hard to look under something when you can't even recognise what it is to look under. Thats part of the difficulty.

They've also assured me they'll let me know when they finally find another metaphorical tv remote.

New comment by dlsa in "Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else"

dlsa — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 12:20:42 +0000

I already did.

New comment by dlsa in "Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else"

dlsa — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 12:13:40 +0000

At least they are finding nothing and confirming they are finding nothing. Less scrupulous operators might be always finding something even if its not there. So that's a sign of good science.

Maybe there's something they haven't found because there's so much data? Mix things up and look again? Change assumptions?

Or as someone I know likes to say to various smaller humans: have you looked around the couch? Really? Are you sure? Have you had a good look? this is how the tv remote usually subsequently reappears as there is a difference between just looking and having a good look.

The best science also happens when you've looked, not found it but now know where not to look. Even better science happens when you know exactly why it shouldn't have been there at all. Surprising science happens when you find the errors in your assumptions and discover it can sometimes be where it previously was not expected to be.

New comment by dlsa in "Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else"

dlsa — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 12:03:07 +0000

Paperclips are important! We need to optimise paperclip production!

some time later

The entire universe is one giant paperclip constructor.

New comment by dlsa in "Cheat sheet for if I'm gone"

dlsa — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 11:39:06 +0000

Good idea. Also needed as part of a disaster recovery or continuity plan. Eg every business should have one.

For those who use a domain with a catchall on it for various purposes... do you have a plan for dealing with what happens if you die and all those many many aliases inadvertantly get handed to some new domain owner?

New comment by dlsa in "Tell HN: Google does not list application permissions in the Play Store any more"

dlsa — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 04:28:57 +0000

The fact you couldn't find that reason yourself implies you could not have made an informed choice. You were effectively compelled. That isn’t permission consent. That was permission coercion. Being forced to consent isn't ethical.

New comment by dlsa in "Tell HN: Google does not list application permissions in the Play Store any more"

dlsa — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 04:23:43 +0000

Trust is earnt. I can reasonably have a default level of low trust for practically any app. This isn’t some blind anger stance. Its not blanket mistrust or some kind of ignorance. It is healthy scepticism. Totally reasonable in today's environment.

Plenty of app developers have muddied the water enough that apps should have a lower level of trust given to them. Stealing data is a reasonable fear now. It is not reasonable to assert otherwise.

It is therefore reasonable for a person to wonder why geolocation is requested but then be suspicious why it doesn't seem to need it. Regardless of the underlying technical reason. Those technical reasons are part of informed consent. If I don't have informed consent, do I really have consent?

Its also not a sad state at all. Its healthy. Its part of the modern landscape that someone can be suspicious and rightly so. If not, you're setting people up for misfortune. Is there some reason you want people to blindly trust like this? That seems almost abusive to me.

New comment by dlsa in "Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs"

dlsa — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 14:41:26 +0000

Musk should dig a pit. A pit. An office in a pit. In the the ground. In a pit. Pit office. Office pit. Yes. In a pit.

New comment by dlsa in "Conway's Game of Life in APL in Forth"

dlsa — Mon, 30 May 2022 14:31:41 +0000

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_%28programming_language%29

Here's their example:

The following expression sorts a list of strings by their lengths:

x@>#:'x

Ooooooookay. Personally, I recommend a lot of alcohol. This will be a very wild and geeky ride. Bring extra pizza.

New comment by dlsa in "I disabled WiFi on the new Samsung fridge"

dlsa — Mon, 30 May 2022 11:41:42 +0000

Its all very interesting as an idea. But in reality when things go fully tracked you'll be fined for not having location data for every trip. It will impact insurance. Your registration. Even basic road usage. People have this idea right now that public roads will always stay free. This is not guaranteed.

Even the coming road taxes are all about constant tracking. How far / which road did you drive? They'll demand the answer. And you put a faraday cage to stop this? Suspicious. The default assumption is going to be fraud. Criminal behavior.

All the EVs will soon enough have some variety of tracking sooner or later. So thats basically all new vehicles. The alternatives will also, whatever they are. Hydrogen?

Transport privacy is likely dead already.

New comment by dlsa in "Conway's Game of Life in APL in Forth"

dlsa — Mon, 30 May 2022 09:12:20 +0000

I might need to learn APL. It seems like I'm missing out on something. Lisp was a gift which helped with my C and Elixir. That was a mini-revelation in itself.

New comment by dlsa in "Workers quitting over return-to-office policies"

dlsa — Mon, 30 May 2022 09:05:36 +0000

I think just wiping the fees/charges off commuting would be a good start. PT / Fuel costs are still a thing as they continue to increase. Not everyone is using EV. Yet.

New comment by dlsa in "Workers quitting over return-to-office policies"

dlsa — Sun, 29 May 2022 16:51:54 +0000

If the office is so great, pay me extra for the commute.

New comment by dlsa in "Qantas ferried an engine on the wing of a 747 (2016)"

dlsa — Sun, 29 May 2022 11:14:52 +0000

Imagine the other team unloading what they were expecting to be a warhead.

New comment by dlsa in "NPM security update: Attack campaign using stolen OAuth tokens"

dlsa — Sat, 28 May 2022 06:34:16 +0000

All of them to at least some extent and several we will soon have names for because they are still emerging.

New comment by dlsa in "PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs"

dlsa — Tue, 24 May 2022 02:27:20 +0000

That would be a useful comparison for ranking. Exactly what is their overhead?

New comment by dlsa in "PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs"

dlsa — Mon, 23 May 2022 17:29:59 +0000

No idea. But aren't those campuses wonderful with their huge buildings, new carpet, great landscaping, and every admin staff member has an amazing office chair and fitout. They even refresh that carpet every year along with brand new seating. The art! Its always changing as well. The university cars are great too. I've seen plenty of amazing cars that researchers drive around. The libraries are constantly changing each month. They renovated that building just last summer, didn't they? That oval is being redone as well. Amazing.

Like I said, no idea. Ok, maybe some idea.