Hacker News: jschwartzi

New comment by jschwartzi in "This shouldn't have happened: A vulnerability postmortem"

jschwartzi — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 20:47:47 +0000

Autotools is the de facto build system for most of the GNU system programs. The bit about dependency management mostly fits but I would argue that letting us figure out how to build and install the dependencies is fairly UNIXy. It’s also unclear to me that centralized package managers are necessarily better for security, though they’re easier to use. Also a lot of more modern tools I’ve tried to build in recent months do not give a crap about cross compilation as a use case. At least with autotools its supported by default unless the library authors did something egregious like hard coding the sysroot or toolchain paths.

New comment by jschwartzi in "Which brand/fuel/color/plate of car has the most “psychopath drivers”?"

jschwartzi — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 17:33:04 +0000

In Seattle it will often also be a Subaru driver.

New comment by jschwartzi in "Omicron Update: Nov 27"

jschwartzi — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 17:07:57 +0000

Yeah anecdotally I’ve hopped on a couple planes this year where masking is required. Normally my wife and I get sick from the plane. But since we’ve been wearing KN95s the whole time starting when we get to the airport we haven’t been getting sick at all.

New comment by jschwartzi in "I faked tons of Covid passes – “Weak Key Cryptography in real world”"

jschwartzi — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 21:26:49 +0000

In my state the vaccination rate is above 70% and the hospitalization rate has decoupled from the positive rate. The spike this winter ended in October whereas last winter it didn’t end until January. We’ve been on a downward trend even with shows and restaurants open and people having parties. So I would cite that as evidence the vaccine is protecting our population.

New comment by jschwartzi in "A toaster from 1949 is still smarter than any sold today"

jschwartzi — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 14:56:41 +0000

I want legislation that the manufacturer has to publish, online and in a conspicuous place, full board-level schematics, parts lists, and service notes for household appliances no later than the day after the first unit of a model goes out of warranty. Or that such documents are placed prominently in the packaging the product arrives in and that installers are required by law to provide it to the customer. You can sell something that breaks in 3 years but you have to give me the documents I need to repair it including the logic board. My biggest fear in getting a new washer/dryer is that it starts my wife and I on the same junk treadmill everyone else is on.

New comment by jschwartzi in "Parrots will share currency to help their pals purchase food (2020)"

jschwartzi — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 16:46:02 +0000

What proof do you have that enumeration of function is equivalent to understanding? If I encounter a building-size device filled with large cogs and two stones, I can’t immediately tell from looking at it whether its purpose is to grind apples or wheat. So I’m not sure you can say that an animal is or isn’t sentient based on the organization of its cells.

New comment by jschwartzi in "Fingerprints can be hacked"

jschwartzi — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 15:07:10 +0000

I can’t put my finger on why though.

New comment by jschwartzi in "Fingerprints can be hacked"

jschwartzi — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 15:02:22 +0000

In my state prospective teachers are fingerprinted and their prints are run through the FBI database when applying for the certification. My prints are in that database.

New comment by jschwartzi in "The Stroad"

jschwartzi — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 04:10:47 +0000

The other point that’s being missed here is that pedestrians need a bunch of stuff that’s ignored:

* to be able to walk from business to business in minutes or seconds * to feel safe walking across the street * to be able to have conversations with other people outside without having to yell over traffic.

The stroad is also really bad at providing these needs because pedestrians are not considered at all in US roadway design.

New comment by jschwartzi in "The Stroad"

jschwartzi — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 04:04:39 +0000

The US definition sucks.

New comment by jschwartzi in "Proof of steak: a scalable, efficient, protein-rich algorithm"

jschwartzi — Sat, 20 Nov 2021 14:46:50 +0000

I think if it’s water efficiency you’re after you should check out my proof of millet system. It continues to produce new coins even in deserts and historic droughts. And you don’t have to drain Jackson Lake for your proofs!

New comment by jschwartzi in "Ask HN: Why there are no Android mini phones?"

jschwartzi — Sat, 20 Nov 2021 14:31:46 +0000

They hit the ground at the same speed but with significantly more impulse.

New comment by jschwartzi in "10 years of whatever this has been"

jschwartzi — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 14:46:45 +0000

So in other words it’s useful for feeling morally superior.

New comment by jschwartzi in "Xfinity outage leaves tens of thousands in the Bay Area without internet"

jschwartzi — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 17:00:43 +0000

That’s really only been my experience with telecoms. Other companies I’ve called in to have absolutely put me in touch with higher level managers who can actually resolve the problem. It depends a lot on what company you’re calling in to, but I’m not going to stop doing it just because it doesn’t change anything at EG Comcast. And I’m totally fine with you mentally erasing the conversation after I’m done.

New comment by jschwartzi in "Xerox scanners/photocopiers randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)"

jschwartzi — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 16:25:42 +0000

The reason it’s okay to be deterministic and wrong in engineering is because it’s a lot easier to explain the conditions under which the wrong result will be produced and how you can identify those situations in the specific photo. The reason I think a simple resize that deterministically adds misinformation is better than a neural network is because I can calculate the bounds under which the algorithm produces wrong information and label the image. And I can do that without running the algorithm.

New comment by jschwartzi in "Xerox scanners/photocopiers randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)"

jschwartzi — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 15:14:37 +0000

When interpolation goes wrong it’s predictably wrong, which is not true of more complex algorithms using AI. If we can predict how it goes wrong we can extract the meaningful information from it.

New comment by jschwartzi in "Websites should not use dithered images"

jschwartzi — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 15:01:46 +0000

you might get better results with a run-length encoding on a dithered image. I’m not aware of any modern image formats that use RLE though.

New comment by jschwartzi in "Xfinity outage leaves tens of thousands in the Bay Area without internet"

jschwartzi — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:09:56 +0000

That’s not “hassling,” that’s “clarifying criticality.” The notion that we can’t even pass complaints along to support agents isn’t helpful. In my case when I lodge a complaint or turn down a solution it’s not meant as a personal attack. I legit want the company to know that they’re falling short and that I’m probably looking for alternatives.

Obviously don’t start getting angry, but if there’s a point of frustration please pass it along.

New comment by jschwartzi in "Simple SSH Security"

jschwartzi — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 15:14:39 +0000

Also Ubuntu in Azure.

New comment by jschwartzi in "All Those 23andMe Spit Tests Were Part of a Bigger Plan"

jschwartzi — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 14:54:39 +0000

If you did start something like that you could call it Labcorp and make sure it’s the only game in town.