Hacker News: nerdsniper

New comment by nerdsniper in "EFF to 4th Circuit: Electronic Device Searches at the Border Require a Warrant"

nerdsniper — Wed, 13 May 2026 02:57:51 +0000

I was under the impression that at the border, no reasonable suspicion was required.

New comment by nerdsniper in "Googlebook"

nerdsniper — Tue, 12 May 2026 18:37:29 +0000

I'm imagining poultry running around clucking: "gBook! gBook! gBAWK!"

New comment by nerdsniper in "Claude Platform on AWS"

nerdsniper — Tue, 12 May 2026 17:57:46 +0000

Generally any W-2 has authority to enter into contracts, strictly from the vendor’s POV. As a vendor you don’t need to get your customer’s publicly listed officer or director to sign off on contracts. The W-2 can also be fired for entering their employer into the contract, but that's not (directly) the vendor's problem.

Once a vendor has entered into a contract, that could change - e.g. "any change orders must be approved by $EMPLOYEE_SET".

It's absolutely wild that every W-2 employee can expose their employer to essentially unlimited liability, but AFAIK, that's the truth.

New comment by nerdsniper in "I let AI build a tool to help me figure out what was waking me up at night"

nerdsniper — Tue, 12 May 2026 17:47:57 +0000

Or very good

New comment by nerdsniper in "The tipping point: what happens when deaths outnumber births?"

nerdsniper — Tue, 12 May 2026 17:46:43 +0000

https://www.today.com/parents/parents/elon-musk-kids-rcna196...

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saud/tree/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenaebarnes/2022/07/10/elon-mus...

New comment by nerdsniper in "Guitar tuner that uses phone accelerometer"

nerdsniper — Tue, 12 May 2026 14:12:30 +0000

Yes, but the computer doesn't have the firmware to "record" that signal from the speaker output pins. Thus, to record from the speakers acting like microphones, would require rewiring the headphone cable, for the vast majority of computing devices.

If you click "record" on your computer, there's no way to tell it to record signal from the speaker output channels, even if you write a custom low-level application directly making OS calls. The OS can't even do it, because it's not supported by the firmware.

New comment by nerdsniper in "Guitar tuner that uses phone accelerometer"

nerdsniper — Mon, 11 May 2026 15:03:07 +0000

Wouldn't you need to rewire the headphones? Headphones use a 3-pin TRS whereas a 4-pin TRRS plug is used when you add a microphone. Regardless if the 4-pin is CTIA or OMTP, it's generally only going to get shorted to ground if a 3-pin TRS plug is plugged into a 4-pin TRRS socket, or if a 4-pin TRRS plug is plugged into a 3-pin TRS socket.

Diagram: https://i.sstatic.net/8rSD2.jpg

New comment by nerdsniper in "France moves to break encrypted messaging"

nerdsniper — Sun, 10 May 2026 06:04:30 +0000

This is generally my opinion on accelerationism as a solution to concerning trends:

https://thebad.website/comic/accelerationism

New comment by nerdsniper in "The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism"

nerdsniper — Sun, 10 May 2026 01:15:21 +0000

ICT is correct. It’s the economic bucket that Facebook, Google, etc are categorized under for export accounting. “Social Media” would have worked in its placed.”

New comment by nerdsniper in "Bun's experimental Rust rewrite hits 99.8% test compatibility on Linux x64 glibc"

nerdsniper — Sat, 09 May 2026 20:37:22 +0000

The quote doesn’t provide warrant for this claim. The developer did a great job investigating the applicability of a new tool and it appears the investigation yielded fruit.

Your kind of negativity is pathological.

New comment by nerdsniper in "A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro"

nerdsniper — Sat, 09 May 2026 09:39:43 +0000

I believe ChatGPT 5.5 Pro access is available for $100/month, is that an unrealistic level of expense for someone in your position and geography? Even if the university won't pay for it, it seems you'd like to use this tool for your own goals.

I'm not trying to shame here, just curious whether this is completely unattainable for most researchers in your area.

New comment by nerdsniper in "AlphaEvolve: Gemini-powered coding agent scaling impact across fields"

nerdsniper — Sat, 09 May 2026 00:03:58 +0000

The biggest limitation I see right now is weak “theory of mind”. It’s why even though AI can generate very decent exposition, it sucks at generating narrative. This also reflects in weak performance at humor, art, and even shows up in exposition (resulting in reactions akin to “cool story bro, but why should I care?”)

It’s why people can identify AI writing even if it doesn’t contain any LLMisms. AI’s generate text that almost looks like a human wrote it, but that no human would ever actually write - when we try to imagine what kind of person would have wrote this, we draw a blank - no one we’ve ever met would have written it like that - not even any archetype we’ve ever built an internal model for.

New comment by nerdsniper in "Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged"

nerdsniper — Fri, 08 May 2026 23:32:07 +0000

I agree on the antitrust issues, but I’m not convinced that’s seen as a serious barrier these days.

New comment by nerdsniper in "Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged"

nerdsniper — Fri, 08 May 2026 23:28:02 +0000

Yep, this feels like a smoking gun. The others are circumstantial, maybe indicative, maybe not. While there’s a chance this is an editing gaff, its overwhelmingly likely to be LLM, ahem, “cruft”.

New comment by nerdsniper in "Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged"

nerdsniper — Fri, 08 May 2026 22:49:29 +0000

Maybe Worldcoin really was the answer after all XD

New comment by nerdsniper in "Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged"

nerdsniper — Fri, 08 May 2026 19:48:13 +0000

Those don't prove that a human is present. A FIDO2 key can be automated by electronic relay. The only way to do this involves device attestation - locking devices down and utilizing hardcoded TPM/Secure Enclave esque chips. The best we can hope for would be an open standard for those chips so that people can use them with their own X.509 certificates that lets them choose their own CA.

New comment by nerdsniper in "Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged"

nerdsniper — Fri, 08 May 2026 18:17:49 +0000

iPhone users will have to install the "reCAPTCHA" app. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/recaptcha/id6746882749

This is detailed at https://support.google.com/recaptcha/answer/16609652

New comment by nerdsniper in "Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged"

nerdsniper — Fri, 08 May 2026 16:19:45 +0000

I think I'd have to be working at Google to afford a family and/or mortgage!

New comment by nerdsniper in "Google Cloud fraud defense, the next evolution of reCAPTCHA"

nerdsniper — Thu, 07 May 2026 02:51:22 +0000

Yes. The technical name for this FIDO2 QR code flow is caBLE (Cloud Assisted Bluetooth Low Energy).

New comment by nerdsniper in "Google Cloud fraud defense, the next evolution of reCAPTCHA"

nerdsniper — Thu, 07 May 2026 02:50:53 +0000

Sometimes, sort of. Most passkey usage doesn’t involve bluetooth. When it does, there’s no real data being sent over bluetooth, just a meaningless hash that can be confirmed using a secret inside the QR code.

So really, it’s like I said, Bluetooth is used to make sure that the device consuming the QR code is actually near the device that’s displaying the QR code.