Hacker News: nonce42

New comment by nonce42 in "Gateside by TSA Precheck"

nonce42 — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 04:07:21 +0000

Yesterday, I saw an interesting Lufthansa training film from the 1970s explaining how aircraft crews should respond to hijacking. (In the early 1970s, hijackings occurred weekly.) Most of the recommendations from security experts turned out to be exactly wrong for 9/11: Don't attempt anything against the hijackers. Do everything the hijackers demand. Passengers should follow the instructions of the hijackers and should not try to be heros. On the other hand, they described locked cabin doors with TV monitors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pzIbUW8jIw

New comment by nonce42 in "Full network of clitoral nerves mapped out for first time"

nonce42 — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 04:30:58 +0000

This is nonsense, as one can easily verify by looking at Gray's Anatomy (30th edition, 1985) on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/anatomy-of-the-human-body/page/4...

New comment by nonce42 in "Bringing Sexy Back. Internet surveillance has killed eroticism"

nonce42 — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 18:25:08 +0000

By the way, the author of the article is also the writer of the McMansion Hell blog.

New comment by nonce42 in "Alberta separatism push roils Canada"

nonce42 — Fri, 23 May 2025 20:11:49 +0000

I agree. The sudden influence of the separatist movement does match what that book (Foundations of Geopolitics) says: "Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States and Canada to fuel instability and separatism" (quote from Wikipedia). I don't want to be a conspiracy nut, but I have to wonder how many separatist and protest movements are unknowingly getting external support to produce geopolitical disorder.

New comment by nonce42 in "My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth"

nonce42 — Thu, 08 May 2025 22:06:07 +0000

Agree on the Donor Advised Fund (I use Fidelity). If you have highly-appreciated stock, you definitely should look into a DAF. Another benefit is that it is extremely easy to donate to a charity; click and submit and you don't have to worry about paperwork and putting each donation down on your taxes.

New comment by nonce42 in "A cryptocurrency scam that turned a small town against itself"

nonce42 — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 23:11:09 +0000

Important: If you've received a text from a wrong number, this article describes exactly the Pig Butchering scam that you're being set up for. Have you received a random text like "Shall we grab a coffee soon?", "How have you been lately?", or "Let's go to the new restaurant." You'll find that an attractive, professional woman texted you by mistake, but she thinks you're a friendly person and wants to keep talking. After a few weeks, she'll tell you about all the money she made through investments and offer to help you invest. As you put in more and more money, you'll see huge returns on the (fake) website. When you eventually try to withdraw your fortune, there will be a small fee, followed by a tax payment, followed by more fees. Worst case, you end up like the banker in the article, frantically trying to borrow $18 million so you can recover the mythical $47 million.

This is an extremely common scam; the group https://reddit.com/r/scams is very interesting, with many stories of this scam and others. Key takeaways: it's easier to get scammed than you'd think. Never spend money to withdraw money. Don't respond to wrong-number texts. Anyone who wants cryptocurrency (or gift cards) is scamming you.

New comment by nonce42 in "Tog's Paradox"

nonce42 — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 15:35:57 +0000

A similar paradox applies to interpersonal relationships: in many cases, if you try to reduce someone's workload, they will take on more tasks and end up where they started. E.g. Wife: "I'm too busy; you need to do more". Husband: cleans more. Wife: takes on the PTA fundraising auction. "I'm too busy; you need to do more."

New comment by nonce42 in "A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications"

nonce42 — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 18:22:29 +0000

Midazolam/Versed sedation seems pretty close to a p-zombie. You can have someone who seems completely awake, walking around and interacting normally, but if you ask them later they were completely unconscious from their own perspective. So self-reported consciousness isn't always accurate. And it also seems that consciousness is very closely tied to memory.

(I'm not arguing a particular position, but trying to figure out what to make of this. Also, this is based on what I've read, not personal experience.)

New comment by nonce42 in "Loadsharers: Funding the Load Bearing Internet People (2020)"

nonce42 — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 04:07:29 +0000

Thanks for the research. I did similar (but less extensive) calculations a few years ago and came to the same conclusion that ESR probably got negligible money from VA Linux. Also, having your net worth drop from $36 million to ~0 can kind of mess someone up.

ESR's (slightly smug) post "Surprised by Wealth" at the time when he had $36 million on paper makes very interesting reading now: https://news.slashdot.org/story/99/12/10/0821224/esr-writes-... He implied that he was going to cash out in 6 months when his lockout expired, but that apparently didn't happen. Ironically, he said that he had much more faith in VA Linux than the U.S. economy over that 6 months. Also ironic in light of Loadsharers is his statement "Anyone who bugs me for a handout, no matter how noble the cause and how much I agree with it, will go on my permanent shit list."

New comment by nonce42 in "Is the end of AIDS in sight?"

nonce42 — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 19:39:17 +0000

No. New HIV diagnoses in the US are 67% male-to-male sexual contact, 22% heterosexual contact, and 7% injection drug use. (BTW, I have no agenda here except accurate statistics.)

From https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/statistics.html

New comment by nonce42 in "What did Mary know? A thought experiment about consciousness (2013)"

nonce42 — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 16:28:11 +0000

What I find interesting is that this seems to be an obscure philosophical thought experiment, but it's actually highly political and turns up all the time on, say, Twitter. Specifically, how do you compare "factual knowledge" and "lived experience", and which is more important, and who is the "expert" on things.

To make this concrete, consider expertise on England. Suppose Prof. Smith has never been to England, but has studied it in detail for decades. And suppose Mr. Chav has grown up in England, but is uneducated and isn't even sure who is the Prime Minister. Who is "allowed" to talk about England? Smith, who knows all the facts, or Chav who lives there and knows what it's like? Can Smith tell Chav that he's wrong about England, or does Chav's lived experience matter? (I'm using England as a less controversial example, but this usually happens in discussions of race or gender.)

New comment by nonce42 in "Long-term risks of surgery: ‘It gives people’s brains a hard time’"

nonce42 — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 16:42:06 +0000

I had no problem getting my colonoscopy without drugs, and I recommend considering this route. It's very cool to see what's going on—how often do you get to see your appendix? Discomfort was minimal; I get more pain from my abdominal workout at the gym. (Although I suspect my doctor was unusually good.) For the most part, it was kind of like watching a procedure on TV, with occasional reminders that I was the subject: "You're watching in Cramp-O-Vision!" It was nice to have zero recovery time and drive home.

New comment by nonce42 in "John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US"

nonce42 — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 21:30:16 +0000

I came across a Wired article on McAfee from 2012 describing his life in Belize, and it's quite a story. Starting an antibiotic lab, hiring armed guards with automatic weapons, trying to clean up drug crime in a small town, sleeping with 17-year-olds (one of which tried to kill him), pointing a loaded gun to his own head, getting raided by the police and jailed, lots of paranoia, and that's just the highlights. It's worth a read.

https://www.wired.com/2012/12/ff-john-mcafees-last-stand/

New comment by nonce42 in "Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook"

nonce42 — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 23:41:07 +0000

> The riots were most likely political AstroTurf before an election

I noticed that that the BLM protests happened a few months before the 2016 election and then vanished. Then the same thing happened before the 2020 election.

To make this quantitative, here's a Google Trends link: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

New comment by nonce42 in "Archivists Are Preserving Capitol Hill Riot Livestreams Before They’re Deleted"

nonce42 — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 23:14:11 +0000

That guy is not a BLM activist, but a provocateur called out in November for trying to infiltrate the Seattle protest community. A detailed thread from November (so this isn't post hoc): https://twitter.com/RebellionBaby/status/1331902008765206528

New comment by nonce42 in "Microsoft says it found malicious software in its systems"

nonce42 — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 05:47:42 +0000

Microsoft's statement confirms that they had malicious software in their environment:

“Like other SolarWinds customers, we have been actively looking for indicators of this actor and can confirm that we detected malicious SolarWinds binaries in our environment, which we isolated and removed. We have not found evidence of access to production services or customer data. Our investigations, which are ongoing, have found absolutely no indications that our systems were used to attack others.”

https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/12/17/cyberat...

New comment by nonce42 in "A newly discovered body part changes our understanding of the brain (2016)"

nonce42 — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 04:01:54 +0000

There's been lots of confirmation about the brain's lymphatic system in the past 5 years, so you don't need to worry about reproducibility. E.g. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/brains-fluid-drai...

On the other hand, the existence of the G-spot has been controversial for almost 40 years so reproducibility can't be taken for granted.

New comment by nonce42 in "Earnestness"

nonce42 — Sat, 12 Dec 2020 18:53:02 +0000

I read the linked paper out of curiosity. It's a theological paper arguing against forms of Christianity that are based on the world-view of whiteness; instead Christianity should move toward a "decolonial option". The paper's arguments are based on the famous theologian Karl Barth and his commentary on Romans 2, so it's not easy reading.

Is this bogus? If you consider theology bogus, then yes. But the paper is highly relevant to current US politics with the influence of evangelical churches and their embrace of a white-centered model of the world. (Although it doesn't explicitly get into politics.)

One irony of linking to this paper is that religion is highly marked by earnestness, and this paper even more so. The paper's author is clearly genuinely interested in this subject as a "theology nerd". She is writing not for personal gain but to make the world a better place.

New comment by nonce42 in "Poor Sleep Linked with Future Amyloid-β Build Up"

nonce42 — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 17:58:14 +0000

I hesitate to support HN's obsession with random Alzheimer's theories, but there's been a lot of research lately on the glymphatic system, vessels that clean waste protein out of the brain during sleep. This study is in line with that research.

The wikipedia page gives a good background on the glymphatic system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6512/50.abstract https://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/373

New comment by nonce42 in "After simple dental surgery, a man lost his ability to form new memories"

nonce42 — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 22:10:17 +0000

The strange thing is that I also had a sigmoidoscopy 25 years earlier and it matched your experience of being very bad; I was about ready to confess if it would help. But the drug-free colonoscopy was pretty smooth. I think the second doctor was a much better "driver". But maybe endoscope technology also improved, smaller diameter perhaps? (One might also wonder why I went ahead with a drug-free colonoscopy after my sigmoidoscopy experience. I guess I don't learn from experience.)