Hacker News: whatevermang

New comment by whatevermang in "Tokyo Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel"

whatevermang — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 04:50:47 +0000

This is one of the best things anyone interested in one of the most impressive engineering marvels ever can go and visit anywhere in the world. I cannot stress enough how good it is and how involved the tour gets (wearing waders to go waist deep in water to view the jet turbines used to pump water).

I strongly advise taking someone who can help translate Japanese with you as there's a huge amount of information to take in and it's a fantastic opportunity for anyone keen on photography as well.

New comment by whatevermang in "Many of the Pokemon playtest cards were likely printed in 2024"

whatevermang — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 22:20:49 +0000

I suppose it'd be easier for someone to buy one of each of the comics, rather than an industrial size printing press used to print comics and hold onto it for 70 years.

I dont think ink, on it's own, has a 70 year shelf life either.

And, aside from having the setup to print stuff with, you still need the source material (presumably printing plates or whatever) which is where the actual forging comes in. Assuming it was printing plates lets say, you'd need to copy them to a microscopic level along with every dot on a matching comic book.

That's probably quite hard.

New comment by whatevermang in "Reverse Engineering Bambu Connect"

whatevermang — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:42:21 +0000

Maybe I'm the exception here, but I slice my files and then load them to an SD card and walk them over to my printer. It's not high tech, but since you can't clear the build plate without physically being there, I don't see much of a change. If I really wanted to monitor the build I suppose I could just point a webcam at it rather than use the existing one. But since it prints flawlessly most of the time it seems unnecessary.

New comment by whatevermang in "Niantic announces “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data"

whatevermang — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 00:04:03 +0000

People complaining here that you are somehow owed something for contributing to the data set, or that because you use google maps or reCAPTCHA you are owed access to their training data. I mean, I'd like that data too. But you did get something in return already. A game that you enjoy (or your wouldn't play it), free and efficient navigation (better than your TomTom ever worked), sites not overwhelmed by bots or spammers. Yeah google gets more out of it than you probably do, but it's incorrect to say that you are getting 'nothing' in return.

New comment by whatevermang in "Australia's 3G Shutdown – Why your 4G/5G Phone is now Blocked"

whatevermang — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 02:23:46 +0000

3G is a legacy protocol. The handsets themselves are irrelevant. They're shutting down a legacy protocol and (for somewhat misguided reasons) blocking handsets because they can't access 000 anymore. Despite it having advantages over 4/5G, I do think it's progress (at least in terms of security).

A load of older IoT devices and POS terminals are likely not working anymore though. That's a harder problem to solve.

New comment by whatevermang in "Australia's 3G Shutdown – Why your 4G/5G Phone is now Blocked"

whatevermang — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 02:18:54 +0000

Correct. You need an existing plan, and clearly the carrier can see what handset you are/were using. It's also the right thing to do because they are imposing a financial burden on people. People with older handsets are (I assume) likely the ones that can't afford newer ones.

New comment by whatevermang in "Australia's 3G Shutdown – Why your 4G/5G Phone is now Blocked"

whatevermang — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 00:28:30 +0000

Okay. 3G is pretty good. No doubt about it. But from a security perspective (which I suspect is what's driving this), I think 4/5G are better. Like many instances in security, supporting legacy devices is not a desirable outcome for the security of the network as a whole.

That said, for telcos/the government to unilaterally decide that people's handsets are no longer working (with little to no notice and no financial compensation) is a bit on the nose.

The correct thing would be to let customers come into store with an existing plan and handset, and give them a new phone and bill that back to the government so there's no interruption to services for them.

RIP 3G, you were pretty good.