https://rybicki.io/blog/2023/12/23/promises-arent-monads.htm...

What I find really interesting about this approach is that it's one of the less obvious ways LLMs might be used by the general public to defend themselves against the LLM capabilities used by bad actors (like the more obvious LLMs making finding bugs easier is good for blackhats, but maybe better for whitehats), i.e semantic search.

The reasoning in my head being that it creates a statistical firewall that would preclude eaves-droppers with privileged access from being able to use cheap statistical methods to detect a hidden message (which is effectively what crypto _is_, ipso facto this is effectively undetectable crypto).

ETA, the abstract for a paper I've been working on related to this:

Mass surveillance systems have systematically eroded the practical security of private communication by eliminating channel entropy through universal collection and collapsing linguistic entropy through semantic indexing. We propose a protocol that reclaims these lost "bits of security" by using steganographic text generation as a transport layer for encrypted communication. Building on provably secure generative linguistic steganography (ADG), we introduce conversation context as implicit key material, per-message state ratcheting, and automated heartbeat exchanges to create a system where the security properties strengthen over time and legitimate users enjoy constant-cost communication while adversaries face costs that scale with the entire volume of global public text. We further describe how state-derived proofs can establish a novel form of Web of Trust where relationship depth is cryptographically verifiable. The result is a communication architecture that is structurally resistant to mass surveillance rather than merely computationally resistant.

0. https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.02011

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45233809

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Betaflight (flight controller for drones, which rotorflight is based on) has a similar function called "air mode" which is common to either disable or set to a switch for aerobatic drones so that they'll still have full rotation rates at zero throttle.

In 2016 it was found that if the plane wasn't restarted once every 22 days the 3 flight computers could reboot simultaneously, also in mid-flight[1].

In 2020 it was found that if it wasn't restarted at least every 51 days that the stale data monitoring system, and the stall and overspeed horns all stop operating[2].

Some A350s also had an uptime-dependent fault found in 2019[3].

0: https://www.engadget.com/2015-05-01-boeing-787-dreamliner-so...

1: https://www.pcmag.com/news/boeing-787-dreamliner-bug-fix-req...

2: https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/02/boeing_787_power_cycl...

3: https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/25/a350_power_cycle_soft...

  $ ls -R /{lib,usr,bin,sbin}
  ls: cannot access '/sbin': No such file or directory
  /bin:
  sh

  /lib:
  ld-linux.so.2

  /usr:
  bin

  /usr/bin:
  env

  $ ls -l /usr/bin/env
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 65 Mar 21 23:39 /usr/bin/env -> 
  /nix/store/9m68vvhnsq5cpkskphgw84ikl9m6wjwp-coreutils-9.5/bin/env

  $ ldd /usr/bin/env 
        linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffff7fc4000)
        libacl.so.1 => /nix/store/dyizbk50iglbibrbwbgw2mhgskwb6ham-acl-2.3.2/lib/libacl.so.1 (0x00007ffff7fb3000)
        libattr.so.1 => /nix/store/vlgwyb076hkz7yv96sjnj9msb1jn1ggz-attr-2.5.2/lib/libattr.so.1 (0x00007ffff7fab000)
        libgmp.so.10 => /nix/store/dsxb6qvi21bzy21c98kb71wfbdj4lmz7-gmp-with-cxx-6.3.0/lib/libgmp.so.10 (0x00007ffff7f06000)
        libc.so.6 => /nix/store/maxa3xhmxggrc5v2vc0c3pjb79hjlkp9-glibc-2.40-66/lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007ffff7d0e000)
        /nix/store/maxa3xhmxggrc5v2vc0c3pjb79hjlkp9-glibc-2.40-66/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 => 
        /nix/store/maxa3xhmxggrc5v2vc0c3pjb79hjlkp9-glibc-2.40-66/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007ffff7fc6000)

> Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Dovecot is really great, and a ton of stuff supports using it as a sasl auth backend (postfix being an important one). I made a simple facade service that feeds it and postfix from couchdb via its dict backend[0] and postfix's tcp_tables[1], then point everything at dovecot for auth. Couch document IDs map really well to email/user, domain, and sieve script lookups; helluva lot simpler than setting up and managing LDAP.

0. https://doc.dovecot.org/2.3/configuration_manual/dict/

1. https://www.postfix.org/tcp_table.5.html

0. https://prosody.im/

1. https://modules.prosody.im/mod_auth_dovecot

I've been trying to track down a DNS latency issue in my network and noticed a device doing this and initially thought it was malware, but there is an RFC[0](though expired), and Google announced that they had implemented this for queries from their public DNS servers in 2023[1].

0. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-vixie-dnsext-dns...

1. https://groups.google.com/g/public-dns-discuss/c/KxIDPOydA5M

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42447237

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaAtpAuNN_o

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42111892

Points: 133

# Comments: 19

We know from Snowden that metadata about who is communicating with whom, and when, is one of their most valuable data streams. While signal may not be able to turn over the contents of your messages, they absolutely retain a rich stream of metadata.

I'm watching two companies in this space(I guess 3 now!):

Hill Helicopters[0] is working on a ground-up build of an aircraft, turboshaft engine, and an avionics suite that you can "drive like a car". It's an enormous undertaking, and I'm not sure if they'll pull it off or not.

The second one is Skyryse[1] and their SkyOS. They're focusing on the avionics like you guys, and putting it in an R66 initially, though they plan fixed-wing versions as well. It is also intended to be a single-stick input which can handle emergency situations automatically; they've already demonstrated their first automatic manned autorotation.

I do think that one of the bigger problems in aviation is cost. Most people can't afford an aircraft whether it flew itself or not. This leads to people not flying enough to become excellent and safe pilots. I've been working on my rotorwing addon and the R44 time is $750/hr!?! If you look at the cost of aviation indexed against median income, it has increased over 5x since the cessna 172 era. In cities, another big problem is hangarage, these have waiting lists currently in the decades and costs in the range of a new home.

Another area I'd really like to see more innovation in is aircraft design. Besides Mr Ruttan, everyone just builds tried and true designs and rarely explore the edges of what is possible.

I will also say, while I think that the range you're targetting is smart, and the mass of mostly unused airfields is staggeringly sad to me, there are a lot more issues than just getting there that need to have infrastructure that I'm not sure will be easy to scale.

I think the reason we see gov talking about vertiports now is because in medium-to-large cities they are completely lost on how to solve the traffic issues (hence rich powerful people asking for them). One area that I don't think aviation looks at enough is relatively short-range travel. If you think of a time-topography map of a city, you could make a much larger city, by area, if you can shrink the time it takes to travel (i.e. same QoL if I can go 50mi in 15min vs 10).

0. https://www.hillhelicopters.com/

1. https://www.skyryse.com/