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_xerces_

831 karma · joined March 6, 2020

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_xerces_··on Highest-resolution images ever captured of the sun’s surface
Maybe static vs. dynamic have different meanings when talking about celestial objects that are billions of years old, 864,000 miles across and a million times the size of the planet you're living on?
_xerces_··on Town has no cell service, so the 'electrosensitive' have made it home
If enough of these crazies move to Greenbank it will at least help keep the area a radio quiet zone, so good for the observatory!
_xerces_··on Dell XPS13 RAM Upgrade
I personally just can't be productive on a tiny 13" laptop, though perhaps a lot of people just plug in a monitor and keyboard. I much prefer the 15" XPS with more screen real-estate, upgradable memory (at least when I purchased mine) and trackpad/function keys that actually click. I get how the 13" could be nicer if you're lugging it around a lot or trying to use it on a plane, but is the 15" really that hard to carry?
_xerces_··on Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
Not impossible they modified the firmware to improve battery life - look how sophisticated Stuxnet was.
_xerces_··on Multispectral Imaging and the Voynich Manuscript
Interesting idea, maybe created a medieval-monk Terry Davis. Had he been born 600 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
_xerces_··on UK launches its first Earth-imaging military satellite
That isn't a launcher, just a launchpad.
_xerces_··on Microsoft is killing the Windows Paint 3D app after 8 years
I hate the changes to the regular Paint app. They added stuff like layers and now it is really hard to do simple things like cut and paste and move parts of the image around because now you get a transparent hole in the image. I used to use it a lot to touch up or fix things in images of Excel graphs for slides, etc.
_xerces_··on New research on why Cahokia Mounds civilization left
Cahokia Mounds are great, but I had to pass through the scariest, sketchiest, most bombed-out looking neighborhoods I have ever seen to get to them. This was 20 years ago, so maybe things are much better now, but I never thought I would see such urban blight and devastation in the USA. It makes me wonder about the civilization that used to live in St. Louis 50 years ago with their grand brick warehouses, industrial might and river boat commerce.

Maybe the population of St. Louis themselves also fits the narrative: “They put a lot of effort into building...but there were probably external pressures that caused them to leave,” Rankin said. “The picture is likely complicated.”

_xerces_··on China is slowly joining the economic war against Russia?
That's what the article states, though it emphasizes the influence of banks on those companies wanting to do business with Russia. It is worth a read!
_xerces_··on "Superintelligence" 10 years later
It is as ridiculous as this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk

The main danger is from people losing their jobs and the societal upheaval that could arise from that. AI isn't going to take over the world by itself and turn humanity into slaves, destroy us (unless we put it in charge of weapons and it fucks up) or harvest our blood for the iron.

_xerces_··on Imhex: A hex editor for reverse engineers
Why would I do that unless I have a strong reason to use it rather than just move on with my day? A link is posted on HN for some cool software, it is already annoying to install it due to Microsoft complaining about it, then when I first run it, it opens up a tiny window an is asking if it can upload information. I don't expect to spend time figuring out its issues. I can't be the only one using a 4K display on Windows.
_xerces_··on Imhex: A hex editor for reverse engineers
It is hard to find the link for Windows download, most people (especially us dumb Windows users) want to find a link and download, not scroll a bunch then go to another page then scroll some more and make a decision about which one of 20 links they need. It is not that hard, especially for most people on HN but it does add friction to people trying your software. This is a very common thing with other projects so not just picking on this one.

Finally, when it does load on my Windows machine (using MSI installer and after convincing Microsoft that it is safe to run and bypassing their warning) it loads up super tiny on my 4k laptop screen and is unusable. I suppose I could mess about with the compatibility and scaling settings but I kind of lost interest after all of the above.

I tell you all this because obviously a lot of work went into this tool and from the screenshots it looks beautiful and useful, but is let down by the process involved to get it to run, at least on my machine.

For now, I will keep running HxD.

_xerces_··on DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate
A more accurate following of the Chinese model would be for the US to insist that DJI builds its drones for the US market in the US, insist on a partnership with a US company who would then siphon off the knowhow and IP to start building competing products.
_xerces_··on Commercial perovskite solar modules at SNEC 2024 trade show
Interesting how expensive non-household, portable solar panels on Amazon are where you pay between $1-$2 per watt.
_xerces_··on Adobe employees slam the company over AI controversy: 'Avoid becoming like IBM'
Adobe is terrified that people will start using AI to generate and modify their images and not want/need Photoshop and other tools anymore. There is already a lot of competition in that space with free or lower-cost image editors. Either that, or their customer base of artists will no longer be in business when companies use AI for their artistic/creative needs.
_xerces_··on [dead]
The title seems a little misleading, the support page makes it sound more like they scan incoming, potentially unsolicited images for nudity. I guess if you are in the habit of sending people dick pics, then I can see the title being "Apple can scan your photos or videos to detect whether they contain nudity before the recipient opens them"
_xerces_··on Amazon execs may be personally liable for tricking users into Prime sign-ups
Only things I have seen are items sold by third parties such as used books and Amazon offering to ship same day/overnight for an extra $2.99 (unless you spend over $35). I have had issues in the past though where you get "Prime Free Two-Day Shipping!" but fail to tell you it takes several days for them to actually process before shipping the item.
_xerces_··on A rare 6-planet alignment will occur next month. Here's what to know.
Not that stunning because:

A) Planets all move along the same apparent line called the ecliptic which is the direction of the plane in which all planets move, so they will often appear together.

B) Whether you can see this before dawn and the sun drowns them out depends on your latitude.

https://stellarium-web.org/

_xerces_··on NSA Ghidra open-source reverse engineering framework
People post random stuff on here all the time. Often it is just a Wikipedia link to some topic with no context, no discussion or anything. I think it is lazy karma whoring and it works because people upvote it if they know what it is an like it. I might go ahead and submit the Wiki page for Rust :)
_xerces_··on A 1.3B-light-year-across ring of galaxies has confounded astronomers
I think of it in terms of degrees of freedom and statistical likelihood. If I throw a bunch of marbles on the floor and a few of them form a interesting shape that is one thing as they can only move on a plane. If I throw them in the air it is less likely to form a circle as now they are free to move in multiple directions and are not constrained to the plane. If 4 of those marbles align that is less likely than 20 of them happening to do so in a recognizable shape. 20 marbles in the air, each one being in just the right place relative to the 19 others in order to look like a circle when they can be in any position in space (vs. limited to a flat plane) is exceedingly unlikely.

Even more unlikely is that an arc appears next to the ring, that would make me start to wonder if something is affecting the marbles I throw into the sky.

_xerces_··on A slightly more fun way to disable Windows Defender (through the WSC API)
Defender is a real irritant when doing security research and is near impossible to turn off completely and permanently. Even using the Group Policy Editor or regedits is not reliable. If you do get it to stop, it will randomly reenable itself weeks later (perhaps some timer, perhaps due to some update if you forgot to turn those off).

For the vast majority of people this is a good thing!

_xerces_··on Proposal would have motorists pay by miles driven instead of per-gallon gas tax
They should charge by vehicle weight as well as miles driven as this has an impact on the amount of wear to roads. Heavier vehicles also produce more waste from tire wear.

It would be interesting to see what effects all this would have on other policies though, as removing gas taxes could encourage more driving or more incentive to purchase an ICE car. Taxes based on weight might discourage EVs, but could also discourage large trucks which might otherwise increase if the gas tax was removed. All very interesting.

_xerces_··on Frozen human brain tissue was successfully revived for the first time
Reminds me about an article on ECMO machines I read where they are researching hooking them up to single organs and not just people. If you can keep the organ alive for some time it opens the possibility of making transplants easier, or even removing someone's diseased liver, say and treating it outside the body then putting it back a few weeks later.
_xerces_··on wxHexEditor — a Free Hex Editor / Disk Editor for Huge Files or Devices
Examining binaries for firmware images I built when writing embedded software and for reverse engineering binaries by others to see how they work, make modifications. Fixing corrupted image files or figuring out how they work, examining Windows PE files or DLLs to get an overview of how they work. HxD for example can also do some limited calculations on the bytes as well as show you what CPU instruction they might represent. Sometimes a hex editor is useful for looking at data files stored as binary.

I also used a hex editor extensively when dumping the output of streaming H264 NAL units to figure out why the video was corrupted.

_xerces_··on wxHexEditor — a Free Hex Editor / Disk Editor for Huge Files or Devices
HxD is a fantastic editor for those using Windows.
_xerces_··on Proteins in blood could provide early cancer warning 'by more than seven years'
You're right, these proteins could be associated with conditions that can later lead to mutations that cause cells to become cancerous, but they don't point to a specific cancer. Interestingly they hint at modifying the proteins to reduce the likelihood of getting something, but that could be risk in itself. A lifestyle change could be helpful in some cases.

I suppose if you have enough of these markers they could schedule routine testing earlier than usual, say 40 instead of 45 for colonoscopy, mammogram, etc.

_xerces_··on GPT-4o
You can already change the voice in ChatGPT (in the paid tier at least) to one of 5 or 6 different 'people' so I imagine you can change it in the new version too.
_xerces_··on Polestar eliminates the rear window in latest electric car
Why is there no need to adjust between drivers? If the mirror/screen is set for me, my wife will still need to adjust for optimal viewing.
_xerces_··on Roman Tyrian purple snail dye found in UK for first time
Maybe the beeswax helped preserve it as intended.
_xerces_··on AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules
A video summary of why this research is important: https://youtu.be/Mz7Qp73lj9o?si=29vjdQtTtIOk_0CV
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