Hacker News: wildzzz

New comment by wildzzz in "They See Your Photos"

wildzzz — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:20:04 +0000

I uploaded a pic of some friends at the lake and it guessed a very specific lake 1000 miles away from where it was taken. Obviously it was a very generic background, all you see is trees and water so it could be anywhere. I uploaded a scanned photo from when my parents were my age standing in front of a NASA sign at KSC and it got it right but I think you can read some text on the sign. It can also be tricked really easy. I uploaded a selfie of some friends wearing Halloween costumes of Bill Belichick and his girlfriend (wearing UNC merch) taken in a bathroom with the words "GET OUT" written on the mirror. It thinks the photo was taken in North Carolina (it wasn't) and that the couple would be interested in buying graffiti supplies (they aren't).

The assumptions it makes about religion, politics, income, and biases is kinda lame. It just makes an assumption based on the age and isn't correct most of the time.

New comment by wildzzz in "All elementary functions from a single binary operator"

wildzzz — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 03:29:54 +0000

Dreadfully slow for integer math but probably some similar performance to something like a CORDIC for specific operations. If you can build an FPU that does exp() and ln() really fast, it's simple binary tree traversal to find the solution.

New comment by wildzzz in "We have a 99% email reputation, but Gmail disagrees"

wildzzz — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 15:14:05 +0000

It's the same with app notifications. I get a new app and it asks to turn on notifications. I need to get timely updates on stuff happening in the app so I click yes. Suddenly every day my phone's notification drawer is just full of spam from that app that is not relevant to what I actually need the app for. For most legit apps, they'll break out the notifications settings so you can turn off the marketing stream but leave on the critical stream.

New comment by wildzzz in "Am I German or Autistic?"

wildzzz — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:53:53 +0000

I specifically give people a time somewhere in the middle of a window in which they could arrive that neither disturbs my preparations nor disturbs the schedule I've devised. Everything may not be exactly ready at the beginning of that window but any preparations left to do can be performed while socializing (finish making appetizers, for example).

It also depends on who my guests are. If I know they are consistently late, I give them an earlier time. If they are always early, I give them a later time.

My grandfather was overly punctual. He'd show up 30-60mins early for dinner and my mom hated it. My mom loves hosting people but she can't do that while she's blowdrying her hair or helping her children get ready. So she would tell him a different time than everyone else coming over so he'd show up when everyone and everything was ready.

New comment by wildzzz in "US fired 1k JASSM cruise missiles in 37 days. Lockheed makes 396 per year"

wildzzz — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:56:37 +0000

They'd just add a zero to the quantity to be delivered instead.

New comment by wildzzz in "F-35 Got Hit"

wildzzz — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:46:27 +0000

The AI wrote a shitty article solely based on a single fact: an F-35.was damaged by a heat seeking missile. Then it just made up a bunch of implication to suggest that no one had ever thought about anything other than radar threats before.

This shatterbelt site sucks tbh. It feels like blogspam.

New comment by wildzzz in "My university uses prompt injection to catch cheaters"

wildzzz — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:51:38 +0000

It really depends on the field you go into. If you're a writer and you want a job writing things, you go to college to become a better writer and prepare yourself for working in that industry. If the professors just let you turn in AI slop, how does that benefit anyone? You didn't write anything, why are you here paying tuition? And it demonstrates to the industry that if colleges are handing out degrees to writers for AI slop, why do they even need writers? Just cut the middleman out and they can make the slop themselves.

You go to school to learn. Turning in AI slop doesn't teach you anything. You didn't have to research the subject and commit time to crafting the work into something good. You just typed in a prompt (or copy and pasted it) and then turned in whatever the computer made. The point of learning isn't to turn in assignments, it's to learn and demonstrate your knowledge via assignments. If you want to get a job producing AI slop, don't bother going to school.

New comment by wildzzz in "How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?"

wildzzz — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 02:35:14 +0000

Maybe that's because they don't want people who've never heard of Azure to just let it blend into the wide spectrum of cloud products whereas Microsoft is something almost everyone would recognize.

New comment by wildzzz in "Oracle files H-1B visa petitions amid mass layoffs"

wildzzz — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 22:56:41 +0000

The vast majority of those people are not union.

New comment by wildzzz in "Random numbers, Persian code: A mysterious signal transfixes radio sleuths"

wildzzz — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:32:01 +0000

Well, it's unbreakable if you do everything right.

New comment by wildzzz in "Random numbers, Persian code: A mysterious signal transfixes radio sleuths"

wildzzz — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:30:00 +0000

The recording of a public performance can be copyrighted.

New comment by wildzzz in "Built a cheap DIY fan controller because my motherboard never had working PWM"

wildzzz — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:21:25 +0000

You can definitely make a PID controller just with opamps and potentiometers.

New comment by wildzzz in "Built a cheap DIY fan controller because my motherboard never had working PWM"

wildzzz — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:18:13 +0000

Yeah I was going to say that the presence of a PS/2 port almost certainly means it has a SuperI/O chip wired up. You wouldn't be able to shutdown the PC without the LPC bus talking to the SuperI/O. MSI just didn't write code to talk to the fan controller or just didn't bother with displaying it in the BIOS config page.

New comment by wildzzz in "Swappa.com for GrapheneOS compatible devices – Stay Away"

wildzzz — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:21:41 +0000

I wonder if the person you talked to actually knew what they were talking about. Swappa explains what an unlocked device means in their FAQ and a bootloader is not mentioned.

https://swappa.com/faq/answer/unlocked-device

New comment by wildzzz in "Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music"

wildzzz — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:03:06 +0000

I doubt that. Home video recording, while a new thing in 1981, was not substantially different from making personal mixtapes on tape from radio or vinyl records which had been popular for decades. My grandfather had dozens of 4 track mixtape reels he made in the 60s. You could even go further back and say it wasn't any different than taking a photo of artwork for personal use. You didn't have to be that young in 1981 to understand what home video recording is.

New comment by wildzzz in "Data centers are transitioning from AC to DC"

wildzzz — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:21:50 +0000

DC-DC before the transistor was difficult to do at scale. Vibrators and relays existed but were not reliable long term.

New comment by wildzzz in "Cyberattack on vehicle breathalyzer company leaves drivers stranded in the US"

wildzzz — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 15:59:33 +0000

Either they are alcoholics who can't control themselves or simply just think they are still under control of their ability to drive despite being impaired. Many people just don't know what 0.08 BAC feels like. In college, I got the opportunity to blow on a breathalyzer (not because I was arrested) and found that despite not feeling drunk, I was over the 0.08 limit.

New comment by wildzzz in "Cyberattack on vehicle breathalyzer company leaves drivers stranded in the US"

wildzzz — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 15:20:51 +0000

Having to blow while you're already driving is supposed to be a feature. It's to dissuade people from successfully turning on their car, immediately drinking, and then driving.

New comment by wildzzz in "PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading"

wildzzz — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 23:08:08 +0000

I wonder how much money is wasted just transmitting ads over the internet. Like I get websites are getting paid for displaying them but imagine how much cheaper things would be if ads weren't jacking up demands for bandwidth.

New comment by wildzzz in "Snowflake AI Escapes Sandbox and Executes Malware"

wildzzz — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 04:08:29 +0000

Less guardrails, more like highway lane dividers. The only thing stopping you from crossing a yellow divided line is that someone once told you not to.