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Omni5cience

187 karma · joined December 21, 2009

I was in Recurse Center batch[1]. My (horribly incomplete) website is http://samepstein.com

sam@samepstein.com

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Omni5cience··on Exif Smuggling (2025)
Why is this a link to a random fork that has no commits, rather than the original?
Omni5cience··on Driver accused of DUI tracks missing laptop to Illinois State trooper's house
Doctors regularly have people's lives in their hands and if they make a significant mistake, they are liable. Not that the current state of medical malpractice law is exactly the gold standard, but that's an example of another approach to a similar situation. I do hear that some folks avoid the profession because of that, but I don't think that it's the case that "no reasonable person" wants to work in healthcare.

I don't think most reasonable people want police to be personally liable for every single thing they do, but neither do they want them to have broad and complete immunity from the law. The answer is somewhere in the middle, where police are protected in certain situations, but do still need to think about the consequences of their actions.

Omni5cience··on Driver accused of DUI tracks missing laptop to Illinois State trooper's house
I'm not sure what you're arguing against here, but it seems clear to me that the comment you're replying to was drawing a comparison to the military.
Omni5cience··on Code and Let Live
I noticed the same thing, I suspect it's hallucinated. It seems like the correct package is @fly/sprites --https://www.npmjs.com/package/@fly/sprites
Omni5cience··on Zero Day in Microchip SAM Microcontrollers
Minor nitpick, but Sam in the title should be SAM. (It’s an acronym.)
Omni5cience··on Show HN: 10 teams are racing to build a pivotal tracker replacement
I think this was Capistrano, but you're right I that's quite the throwback as well.
Omni5cience··on Show HN: A fair Product Hunt alternative
I think the parent commenter is referring to a general dislike for target="_blank" (i.e. new tab) links. Probably because there's a way to force a link to open in a new tab, but not a consistent way to force it to open in the same tab.
Omni5cience··on We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger
https://archive.ph/xcad7
Omni5cience··on Show HN: I made a free app to calibrate your turntable by simply playing a song
Basically it's a setting for people who are concerned about being targeted by 0days.

> Lockdown Mode is an optional, extreme protection that’s designed for the very few individuals who, because of who they are or what they do, might be personally targeted by some of the most sophisticated digital threats.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120

Omni5cience··on Show HN: Daily price tracking for Trader Joe's
I think most non-perishable goods are the same across stores. There are regional differences between some perishable goods based on where they come from.
Omni5cience··on FDA approves a CRISPR-based medicine for treatment of sickle cell disease
This feels like the plot to a dystopian science fiction story. You’re effectively arguing in favor of eugenics…
Omni5cience··on Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science
AFAICT The Junk Science at play here is not that SBS doesn't exist, but that the triad of symptoms is enough to definitively prove SBS.

The reference to Texas is because the subject of the article is a particular case in Texas (with references to other laws/cases in Texas like the "junk science writ" and Kosoul Chanthakoummane whose case had nothing to do with SBS). The reference to hypnosis is sort of orthogonal to SBS, it's used as another example of junk science in the article.

This section of the article is probably the most relevant:

Paradoxically, Texas is a leader in countering junk science. In 2013, the state introduced a first-in-the-nation “junk science writ” that allowed prisoners – especially those on death row – to challenge sentences on grounds of misused forensic science. It was under this law that in 2016 Sween saved Roberson from imminent death by securing a stay of execution four days before his scheduled lethal injection.

But the hope generated by the new junk science law in Texas has proven a chimera. There have been about 70 attempts by death row inmates to utilize the law and of those the number that have obtained relief is zero.

Kosoul Chanthakoummane was one of those who appealed through the junk science law. He had been put on death row on the back of three different types of junk science: hypnosis of a witness to obtain identification, bitemark analysis and a discredited form of DNA testimony.

In August 2022, Texas executed him anyway.

Omni5cience··on Alice’s Restaurant: An American Thanksgiving Tradition
FWIW this seems to be a NY focused publication and my understanding is that the tradition started on WNEW. I grew up listening to it, but I have no idea how far it’s spread outside of the NYC metro area.
Omni5cience··on Tough Turban: an open-source design for turban-wearing motorcyclists
I’m not the parent commenter, but I believe they’re making the case that there are negative externalities that come from not wearing protective equipment which are borne by others in some form or another. In Canada, for example, there is a very direct cost to others because of their universal healthcare.
Omni5cience··on Neovim 0.5 is overpowering
You're right, for most simple use cases it doesn't matter. But I once spent an hour on a weird bug that turned out to just be some plugin applying a map that I didn't know about and that I didn't know about map expansion. So I might be biased, but I think a loose understanding is helpful.

The default behavior is to recursively expand and apply your mappings and "noremap" disables this recursion. For example if you do something like

  :map j k
  :map q j
  :noremap w j
q is expanded to k, but w is expanded to j
Omni5cience··on Run Chrome apps in Electron
I think the reasoning is less nefarious, Chrome apps never got that much love on other platforms, and I'm guessing they want to move towards Progressive Web Apps.
Omni5cience··on New Chromecast 2015
I wonder what prompted the new form factor. I rather liked the simple HDMI stick aesthetic.
Omni5cience··on Anderson.vim: Dark vim colorscheme based on colors from Wes Anderson films
It works with the beta version (i.e. 2.9).
Omni5cience··on Tufte CSS
I went to one of Mr. Tufte's workshops several months ago, and I do believe he mentioned Overleaf while discussing LaTeX. I must admit I had forgotten about it until just now, so thanks for the reminder. It looks like a fairly slick interface (and a nice solution for what I recall was a relatively painful problem i.e. installing and using LaTeX).
Omni5cience··on U.S. Bans Trans Fat
I'll just leave this here: https://news.vice.com/article/indonesia-is-killing-the-plane...
Omni5cience··on MasterCard-Branded National eID Card Launched in Nigeria
On a related note, I recently found out that all SIM cards run JavaCard applications. Apparently SIM applications are not uncommon in countries where smartphones still aren't common.

Check out https://simhacks.github.io/defcon-21/

Omni5cience··on Mapcode – A short address for any location on Earth
I'm reminded of http://xkcd.com/927/.
Omni5cience··on OkCupid urges users to abandon Firefox
Try http://www.okcupid.com/?mozilla_message=1
Omni5cience··on OkCupid urges users to abandon Firefox
The home one only works if you're signed in.

This works for everyone http://www.okcupid.com/?mozilla_message=1

Omni5cience··on Oboe.js: reacting to Ajax/Rest quicker by not waiting for it to finish
One could be forgiven for thinking it comes from SAX, which is probably where Clarinet comes from.
Omni5cience··on A Dark Room - minimalist text-based game
You can! I did the same thing.

If you turn on the remote web inspector (in Settings it's under Safari > Advanced), and then open Safari on a Mac, you can copy the game's save state (localStorage.gameState) to an instance of the game running on your computer.

Omni5cience··on Innovative Game Concept (Done in Canvas/JS)
I would remove the testing code, for instance pressing C caused it to crash for me.

Also, it took me a second to figure out a few things, (I ended up looking at the source to figure out how to drop the key) and the boss battle was weird.

Overall I'd say the game mechanic works and is fun, and I'd like to see the game fleshed out.

Omni5cience··on The Hacker School Experience
The Hacker School logo is a computer [1].

The logo you're seeing with a needle is one from Etsy [2], who by the way, were the driving force behind (and are the primary benefactors of) Hacker School's grants for women.

[1] https://www.hackerschool.com/assets/logo_140.png

[2] http://kongscreenprinting.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Ets...

Omni5cience··on Try APL online
Is this just dead? Is it open source? Is there anymore info? It sounds interesting.
Omni5cience··on Google buys what’s left of defunct search startup Cuil
Me either, if you're not familiar with it this part is worth reading:

One Cuil = One level of abstraction away from the reality of a situation.

Example: You ask me for a Hamburger.

1 Cuil: if you asked me for a hamburger, and I gave you a raccoon.

2 Cuils: If you asked me for a hamburger, but it turns out I don't really exist. Where I was originally standing, a picture of a hamburger rests on the ground.

3 Cuils: You awake as a hamburger. You start screaming only to have special sauce fly from your lips. The world is in sepia.

4 Cuils: Why are we speaking German? A mime cries softly as he cradles a young cow. Your grandfather stares at you as the cow falls apart into patties. You look down only to see me with pickles for eyes, I am singing the song that gives birth to the universe.

5 Cuils: You ask for a hamburger, I give you a hamburger. You raise it to your lips and take a bite. Your eye twitches involuntarily. Across the street a father of three falls down the stairs. You swallow and look down at the hamburger in your hands. I give you a hamburger. You swallow and look down at the hamburger in your hands. You cannot swallow. There are children at the top of the stairs. A pickle shifts uneasily under the bun. I give you a hamburger. You look at my face, and I am pleading with you. The children are crying now. You raise the hamburger to your lips, tears stream down your face as you take a bite. I give you a hamburger. You are on your knees. You plead with me to go across the street. I hear only children's laughter. I give you a hamburger. You are screaming as you fall down the stairs. I am your child. You cannot see anything. You take a bite of the hamburger. The concrete rushes up to meet you. You awake with a start in your own bed. Your eye twitches involuntarily. I give you a hamburger. As you kill me, I do not make a sound. I give you a hamburger.

6 Cuils: You ask me for a hamburger. My attempt to reciprocate is cut brutally short as my body experiences a sudden lack of electrons. Across a variety of hidden dimensions you are dismayed. John Lennon hands me an apple, but it slips through my fingers. I am reborn as an ocelot. You disapprove. A crack echoes through the universe in defiance of conventional physics as cosmological background noise shifts from randomness to a perfect A Flat. Children everywhere stop what they are doing and hum along in perfect pitch with the background radiation. Birds fall from the sky as the sun engulfs the earth. You hesitate momentarily before allowing yourself to assume the locus of all knowledge. Entropy crumbles as you peruse the information contained within the universe. A small library in Phoenix ceases to exist. You stumble under the weight of everythingness, Your mouth opens up to cry out, and collapses around your body before blinking you out of the spatial plane. You exist only within the fourth dimension. The fountainhead of all knowledge rolls along the ground and collides with a small dog. My head tastes sideways as spacetime is reestablished, you blink back into the corporeal world disoriented, only for me to hand you a hamburger as my body collapses under the strain of reconstitution. The universe has reasserted itself. A particular small dog is fed steak for the rest of its natural life. You die in a freak accident moments later, and you soul works at the returns desk for the Phoenix library. You disapprove. Your disapproval sends ripples through the inter-dimensional void between life and death. A small child begins to cry as he walks toward the stairway where his father stands.

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