Hacker News Reader

Springtimeon Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

Thanks. Yeah that seems to be the same AVC/h.264 'personal and non-commercial' text the 2010 article I linked centered on. MPEG-LA spoke to Engadget[1] (finally found a working link I could read) and said that a separate license for shooting commerical video isn't required and that distribution of commercial content via licensed providers (Google/Youtube, Apple, etc) is fine.

It seems the one caveat, per the Engadget article, is directly distributing AVC video to end users (I suppose like a direct download link on a personal site) is what requires a license but that license is free to obtain.

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-04-know-your-rights-h-264-p...

Springtimeon Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

> The funnier thing is, you can't use the videos out of your camera for commercial purposes, because the video codecs inside your camera doesn't come with commercial licenses out of the box.

Do you have a link? Could only find a 2010 article[1] that appears to have been debunked by MPEG-LA themselves (per the updates in the blog post).

[1] https://www.osnews.com/story/23236/why-our-civilizations-vid...

Springtimeon Blur Busters Open Source Display Initiative – Refresh Cycle Shaders

That's typically called 'motion smoothing' and yeah that's trying to interpolate frames to manipulate lower framerate video (like 24FPS) into higher framerates in an attempt to make scenes like panning shots 'smoother' at the expense of a soap opera feel and interpolation artifacting.

Whereas what Blur Busters (and similar enthusiasts) are focused on is how accurately frames are (perceptibly) displayed on the screen, so ideally each input frame is perfectly presented without any interference from prior frames (due to limits of panels in keeping up with changing the pixels from one frame to another, very rapidly, causing blurring).

The ultimate goal, in a perfect scenario, is for input from say a video game running at 60 frames per second to have each frame perfectly rendered like individual screenshot stills, one after the other. In reality for most monitors displaying such content there's not enough distinct separation between frames, leading fast changing pixel content (like objects moving) to blend into each other, causing blurring at the monitor level.

The BFI technique, by inserting alternating black frames in the output, mitigates the inter-frame blending issues since instead of the prior frame being various colors (ie: of the prior input frame) it's starting from pure black which dramatically reduces frame blending artifacts and perceptibly makes the motion clarity more distinct.

Springtimeon Blur Busters Open Source Display Initiative – Refresh Cycle Shaders

This is about improving motion clarity, so each displayed frame of moving content looks crisp rather than having blur (something that monitors can struggle with even at high refresh rates / high Hz).

Most good monitor reviews of high Hz displays (eg: 120Hz+) take fast photographs of moving objects (typically from Blur Busters' 'Test UFO' web page) to demonstrate how good or poorly a monitor handles fast moving content.

One technique of significantly improving motion clarity is inserting frames of pure black in the display output (aka BFI, black frame insertion). A downside is some are sensitive to this where it causes eyestrain.

This CRT beam simulating shader is said to be similarly effective to BFI at improving motion clarity but with the benefit of reducing eyestrain. However from what I understand the current version is limited to simulating a lower Hz display and requires a higher Hz monitor.

All this is distinct from the kind of in-media motion blur that can be enabled in games or seen in recorded video. It's instead about the monitor not being able to render fast moving content clearly enough which leads to non-crisp output frames.

Springtimeon What happened to the world's largest tube TV? [video]

As much I appreciated the experience of no input latency CRTs they always gave me headaches after some hours due to the refresh rate flicker. LCDs were an immense relief even despite having very noticeable input latency for the same Hz (eg: cursor movement, which one gets accustomed to).

Springtimeon Google, the search engine that's forgotten how to search

The section near the start about the alleged shadow ban on the author's Youtube video poking fun at Google I wasn't really convinced about and imo detracts from the rest of the article which focuses on user criticisms.

The author started a new channel exclusively for a single video after prompting from some users on LinkedIn but paints the plateauing of views as a shadow ban rather than just perhaps only the moderate follow-through from LinkedIn, lack of existing subscriber numbers to bolster spread, own promotion, etc. This is isn't something unique to that video, it occurs for any number of benign videos.

Springtimeon A Collection of Kaleidoscope Schemes, Sourced from the WayBack Machine.

Mac OS 9 really had a 'personal' feel to it and part of that was thanks to Kaleidoscope. Many authors also designed accompanying icon sets, to complete the look.

Japanese authors were responsible for my favorite schemes/icon sets.

Same developer would go on to make Konfabulator for Mac OS X, a desktop widgets application which Apple directly aped for their Dashboard widgets and Yahoo eventually acquired.

Springtimeon Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s

Reddit is among the range of sites deemed 'social media' per the article. Reddit is practically a glorified forum where users directly influence which submissions rise above others via personal voting and self-curation of communities to follow. There's no voodoo there forcing non-subscribed things in one's feed unless one is logged out (ie: non-participating anyway).

Given the timeframe to come up with how it's meant to be practically implemented it's not hard to imagine on various services all users of all ages from the region would be required to submit standard ID rather than an idealized age verification the GP suggests that prevents either storing or leaking identity (in either direction). If it went that way it'd be a major blow to user privacy and data security concerns.

Looking at criticism of the legislation there were a range of organizations pointing out such issues, including UNICEF.

Springtimeon Micron launches 60TB PCIe gen5 SSD with 12GB/s read speeds

It's also TLC not QLC.

Springtimeon I Don't Have Spotify

It wasn't explained officially. I assume some distribution arrangement changed but the artists/releases were so varied and from various labels that I can't determine the relationship. I'd bought a handful of releases there and all of them were affected.

Springtimeon I Don't Have Spotify

Qobuz removed a range of releases a couple months ago at short notice, including from users' accounts. Hopefully their catalog remains strong as it's about the only online-only store with lossless that has a wide variety of mainstream artists.

I'll also mention: Bleep.com, Boomkat, Ninja Tune (label that directly sells), Junodownload.

Springtimeon Misguided Apple Intelligence ads

> Why would Apple want to promote the idea that Apple Intelligence can bail you out from failing to pay attention to the most important people in your life?

I mean, the forgotten birthday/event that's results in a scramble to get/do something is not an uncommon concept in ads, where some product sweeps into the rescue. I'd imagine it's almost a cliche because it's effective.

Springtimeon Ask HN: What would you preserve if the internet were to go down tomorrow?

Wouldn't it be more like $0.07/GB for BDXL? If one got particularly lucky with HDD failure rates perhaps they'd survive running that long in RAID but one would expect some replacements over such a long period.

Some other things to consider are at high capacities all HDDs use helium now, which slowly leaks (WD/HGST have a SMART stat about the level*) and the cost of running drives/associated computers/maintenance over a long span vs the up front cost of passive writable media (edit: for some reason I assumed this was what was meant but they could be left cold which would likely increase survival odds and be cheaper).

* And there isn't much long term data about it that I could find, though some have reported between 1-5 years the SMART stat either remaining at max or dropping a few digits. Even Backblaze outside of their first article a year into using them hasn't seemingly continued reporting on the stat that I've noticed. I get the sense though that other types of failures are expected sooner than leaks.

Springtimeon Ask HN: What would you preserve if the internet were to go down tomorrow?

While my comment wasn't about the feasibility of pressed CDs for a mass blackout event but just an example of long-term integrity of existing digital media, it's unfortunate that a forum (MyCE) dedicated to tracking integrity of user-writable optical discs unexpectedly closed a couple years ago due to the webmaster pulling the plug.

It had users who carefully performed benchmarks on media for more than a decade to see which types and makes held up best over time, along with best practices. Few have the interest or patience for such things so it's unfortunate to just have such info vanish.

I will add though that what's missing from the discussion is Blu-Ray, which allows up to 128GB per disc. (I only vaguely recall reading some critique of BD DL discs so can't say how it might compare long term though, apart from the greater cost at such capacities.)

Springtimeon Ask HN: What would you preserve if the internet were to go down tomorrow?

While I think common digital media outlasting analog forms in terms of integrity over long periods of time is unrealistic I do have 40 year old CDs from 1984 that are still bit perfect as of just a couple years ago (verified against online checksum databases for the same releases), so it'll be interesting seeing how long they last.

Springtimeon Security flaws found in Nvidia GeForce GPUs

Looks like their manual driver search model dropdown only goes back to the Turing generation (20 series).

Edit: found the Windows driver[1] directly via an online search which covers older models, too.

[1] https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/235774/

Springtimeon How the new Raspberry Pi AI Hat supercharges LLMs at the edge

Not to be disparaging but this reads itself like it was written/padded out by an LLM.

Springtimeon NetGuard – rootless Android outbound per-app OSS firewall, like LittleSnitch

At the OS level LineageOS offers per-app network permissions, which I've used and functions as expected.

One quirk from what I understand of this ticket[1] is if there's a proxy set up via a separate internet allowed app it can bypass the restriction via that app. GrapheneOS' implementation is said to prevent this.

[1] https://gitlab.com/LineageOS/issues/android/-/issues/3228

Springtimeon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

I don't think there's any real way around the fundamental flaw of such systems assuming there's an accurate way to detect generated text, since even motivated cheaters could use their phone to generate the text and just iterate edits from there, using identical CYA techniques.

That said, I'd imagine if someone resorts to using generative text their edits would contain anomalies that someone legitimately writing wouldn't have in terms of building out the structure/drafts. Perhaps that in itself could be auto detected more reliably.

Springtimeon A Simple open-source Phone programmable with Arduino

I like the little phone UI showcase above the fold. Reminds me of those Flash-based interactive UI demos that phone makers had on their sites back in the early 00s.

Springtimeon A Simple open-source Phone programmable with Arduino

The 3G and 4G versions of that phone are Android-based, for context.

Springtimeon PhotoDNA

Yeah Hacker Factor's multi-post critiques are where I first saw it analyzed. For reference they run the popular fotoforensics.com image analysis site.

They also have scathing critique (eg [1]) about the Adobe-led C2PA digital provenance signing, having themselves been part of various groups that seek solutions to the provenance problem.

[1] https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/1013-C...

Springtimeon Ask HN: Founders, what was the major sourcing channel for your first 100 users?

I think too though for some submissions there's a discrepancy between readers vs commenters, I think in part because HN as a site is attractive to certain types of users (text only, more web 1.0-y and refreshing vs gamified forum experiences), which leads to some skew in the demographic of who choose to register as users and engage.

See for example the disproportionate number of comments on HN from users who disable Javascript and or (all) cookies and remark about a site experience based on it (can't read article, some aspect not working, etc), yet from general statistics represents a niche minority.

(Which isn't to say that any such critiques are invalid either, just an observation on perceived audience)

Springtimeon "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"

Brave is an odd one. They've publicly stated[1] they plan to support parts of Manifest v2 for a handful of popular addons (uBlock Origin included) by making limited patches, but they make no promises.

It seems Shields was their main focus for MV3 mitigation, much like Vivaldi's now native content blocker made for the same reason (though Vivaldi has said[2] they won't be supporting MV2 past the last Chromium build that includes it).

[1] https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/

[2] https://vivaldi.com/blog/manifest-v3-update-vivaldi-is-futur...

Springtimeon Internet Archive: Security breach alert

An issue is for most sites/services an email has just become a standard authentication method, rather than something that can easily be more unique per account. So any usernames across sites/services that share it identify that user as being the same person (for data broker profiling, doxxing, etc), which is the privacy issue (not the email address per se, unless it perhaps contained one's real name).

For contrast truly unique email aliases for example aren't possible on common services like free Gmail*, only things like self-hosting/certain paid email hosts, which makes less feasible for many. So from a privacy perspective while in an ideal world everyone would be able to freely create entirely unique per-account creds we're mostly stuck with the email implementation.

* One could create entirely separate accounts but it's high friction and IIRC the same phone number (now a requirement) can only be used for 2-3 accounts.

Springtimeon Internet Archive: Security breach alert

Just in terms of privacy, it's worth noting that anyone who has uploaded something on IA already has their email address publicly viewable.

This isn't something that commonly known (even judging by comments here) but in the publicly viewable metadata of every upload it contains the uploader's IA account email address. So from a security perspective it's bad but from a privacy perspective a lot of users probably weren't aware of this detail if they've uploaded anything.

Springtimeon Leak claims RTX 5090 has 600W TGP, RTX 5080 hits 400W

I saw someone who used two humongous, external watercooling radiators to cool both their GPU and CPU. Apparently these are now available to buy.

Springtimeon The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

I'd add too that often on such sites the range of submitted subjects are broad enough that those voting don't necessarily have domain familiarity or expertise, so when a comment reads like it has a solid argument readers may upvote it to test the robustness of its premise by way of seeing if others make more compelling counter-arguments or strengthen/agree with it.

Ie: the voters themselves may not hold any personal opinion on the matter.

Springtimeon How de-Googled is Lineage OS?

One caution about changing the captive portal as described in various de-Googling guides is you can shoot yourself in the foot, as ime the entire cellular (and even Wi-Fi) connection can fail to work if the captive portal domain doesn't return the correct 204 status code (which can happen when some independent servers randomly fail or their HTTPS cert isn't renewed), which becomes frustrating to troubleshoot as the issue can be intermittent.

Additionally the guide I've seen referenced the most (from Reddit, which a popular Youtube video is directly based upon and which this article covers the main points of) suggests an outdated HTTPS URL which no longer works. I'd imagine many are just blindly copying adb settings and encountering problems (the burden of which often falls onto LineageOS community support as people spend time trying to identify an issue).

Springtimeon Window-Switcher: Alt+(backtick) same-app window switching for Windows 10/11

For years I used a freeware utility called VistaSwitcher for this. Could similarly customize the hotkey and also allowed changing the Alt-Tab menu to be a quicker-to-parse text based list instead of the giant thumbnails Windows uses by default.

The Mac way of cycling within the same program is very useful and one of the things I like borrowing when using Windows, as accidentally Alt-Tab'ing to a different program when there are multiple windows open from one source (eg: text editor) becomes annoying.