HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

aurizon

738 karma · joined September 3, 2012

submissionscomments
aurizon··on Foreign visits into the U.S. fell off a cliff in March
The 'sea' of data is huge - I am doubtless entered into it multiple times with all manner of associated data. The ICE casts it's net (with a pack of valid as well as a far number of non-valid associations) through this sea and when it lifts it there are number of 'fish' therein. I will be in there, among the silvery bodies and the attached associations. I am 'by-catch' as I have no crime ever - but millions of tons of bycatch die even if discarded. There is an old French Canadian poem, that says, in essence - 'The wind might roar, and the waves they might dash, but you will not drown on Lac Sainte Pierre - so long as you stay on the shore.
aurizon··on Show HN: Built a textual watermarking tool to catch internal message leakers
Decades ago, I came up with 'micro-kerning' - an added single length gap added to few scattered letters = unique message for each person you send it to. True, you have to keep an index to compare to ID the leaker. Various governments used to do this for this reason in the last few years of the 1980's. Smart people used to copy/paste with a constant width font to defeat this. Then locked pdf helped, but OCR got around this. I think you can use steganographic encoding of scattered dots in a jpg, which laser printer catch money copiers with these days. The dots can be found with a scanner and again needs an index to 'read' the color photo. I have a friend who was an ambassador until he retired = I will ask, but he might consider it sensitive, and not reveal it - likely?
aurizon··on Losing My Nonreligion
Yes, impish9208 is quite correct, as Truman once asked 'how many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Answer = calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg. People can do/act as they choose, but their DNA tells the 'tail'. True there are mutations that affect a few people that create people that create unclear sexual attributes - but that is a code error - as it were, that I hope one day we will be able to correct? This has created a problem in some sports with 'gorillas' competing as women and crushing the hopes and years of work of true women.
aurizon··on Can Earth's rotation generate power? Physicists divided over controversial claim
turn fast enough = we can all fly... while we wear armor like a turtle...
aurizon··on Oracle attempt to hide cybersecurity incident from customers?
Create a 'Wicki-hacks.com', like Wikipedia, where incidents are listed in detail - anonymously and indexed akin to Wikipedia with editors that create and verify an incident is such a way that Horacle etc can not deny or get it taken down
aurizon··on Can Earth's rotation generate power? Physicists divided over controversial claim
We could use this, by adding power, to fine tune the day to eliminate leap years...;)
aurizon··on Accessible open textbooks in math-heavy disciplines
And here I felt he added lubrication to machinery = Oiler and my friend Eugene who's mother called him Oygen does the same. Being from the UK, came to Canada in 1948, I spoke colloquial English in school, but correct London Cockney slang at home to family - on phone calls to friends, if I responded to family mid dialog, my friends would always ask who was that when my slang was over heard.
aurizon··on Musk's xAI buys social media platform X for $45B
Does X owe any $$ to landlords etc? as lesser folks/tradesmen have had to chase for smaller $$
aurizon··on The Pacific's graveyard: The $20T fight over who controls the seabed
As I see it, the spreading at the deep ocean rifts brings fresh magma to or close to the surface and water under very high pressure penetrates extracts minerals. The spreading zone is where these black smokers = minerals dissolved under high temperature/pressure exiting this hydrothermal fluid at which point some minerals can not stay dissolved = black/dark particles that resemble smoke in the water. There are many minerals that stay dissolved in a mixture of oxidation states that are very nutritious to certain bacteria = a bacterial mat which supports a variety of worms/crabs/fish on an ecological chain. The minerals stop flowing 10-50 km?? from the spread and the smokers gradually cease us the minerals stop. The life exists as a variable band away from the spreading zone and after some distance it reverts to a dead zone with little life or smokers. These mineral nodules are formed close to the rift and no more minerals flow after 50-100Km - I expect the zone varies. If they mapped the zones are gathered nodules outside this 50-100 Km zone - could they gather minerals while not hurting any life forms - bacteria/worms/fish? This spreading has been ongoing for millions of years = stay 500-1000Km away and gather minerals as well as hurt no life. I have seen videos of the plumes from the nodule gathering tests and they make a plume of fine sediments, but they could gather nodules with a screen and filter out the fine stuff and allow metals to be collected with little or zero harm to deep life as long as they stayed far from the vents. Of course = deeper sediments = more filtering needed. It seems to me way to do it is possible.
aurizon··on Male octopus injects female with venom during sex to avoid being eaten
In Russia, China, Japan and many other countries, women are choosing sex with birth control as well as zero sex = forced demographic decline. China just purchased 300,000 fertile young women from North Korea - I wonder if they are allowed birth control or if this is a domestic forced breeding experiment?
aurizon··on Can a Geothermal Startup Vaporize Rock to Drill the Deepest Holes?
at 10,000 feet in a thermal area the rock is very hot. Hot rock is ductile and holes will gradually close. Some deep hard rock mines in Northern Ontario encounter this problem where mine working gradually close under extreme pressure over time. The closure can be instant = rock-burst = a local micro-quake. Often there is lateral shear as well. The deepest gold mines in Witwatersrand in South Africa are over 160 degrees in places and workers wear vented/cooled suits. They also have refrigerated cold rooms they can jump into to get cool and get back to another work session.
aurizon··on Raising Screen-Free Boys
I think a limit on screens - 1-2 hours day, plus the screen homework they are exposed to at school - to do via screen/net is reasonable as a balance to zero/saturated as the extreme
aurizon··on Elon Musk claims 'massive cyberattack' on X originated from the 'Ukraine area'
Russia knows just how to muddy the water with a cyber attack that seems to come from Ukraine. Ukraine has no motive to harm Musk, but Russia does.
aurizon··on Hudson's Bay, Canada's Oldest Retail Chain, Nears Bankruptcy
I walked through their Toronto store at Queen, yesterday and it was a 'dead man walking'. No people shopping, a vista of high end inventory - all untouched. Not sure how active they are online. Sad. They were an old time mail order operation, sold via catalogs and some news paper ads. Essentially a US style mail order in Canada - depended on the border/customs barrier to capture a Canadian client base.
aurizon··on The Birth of Chipzilla
Yes he was. I was the person who suggested he hook up with the BOFH, years ago. Sadly, Mike passed in 2024
aurizon··on Larry Ellison's half-billion-dollar quest to change farming
One of the early proponents and perhaps a driver, was Dickson Despommier, who just passed.

https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-1195/

Part of the problem was excess automation. Another problem was taxes in some cities who wanted the industrial taxes of the abandoned buildings of yore to be asserted.

It had promise and some success, as they could exclude pests have 24/7 optimal LED light. Many focussed on fast salad crops = fast cycle and the high volumetric cost of freight to northern cities in winter. For those interested, youtube has a list of failed startups and some promotional ones https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=vertical+farmin....

aurizon··on Penn to reduce graduate admissions, rescind acceptances amid research cuts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy-P17UwK4A
aurizon··on Electronics Teardown: Stelo Continuous Glucose Monitor (2024)
Thanks for that +
aurizon··on The Birth of Chipzilla
I recall when Mike Magee of the UK inquirer coined the term 'Chimpzilla'(AMD) as Intel's(Chipzilla) perpetual rival
aurizon··on The Birth of Chipzilla
Once accountants started to run this ship, they sailed onto rocky shores. Profits should be used for research, instead they wasted ~~100 billion on stock buy-backs to keep the funds happy. Those billions, if spent on research, might have kept them off the rocks.
aurizon··on Electronics Teardown: Stelo Continuous Glucose Monitor (2024)
Is depletion of the glucose oxidase reagent the limiting factor, versus the ~~17 week estimated battery life? One would expect an item with a 17 week battery that also has the glucose oxidase reagent electrode that also lasts ~~17 weeks to have a higher service life - since it does not, I expect the electrode is the limiter and it might have perhaps 30 days? Of course, it has a clock and a limited life to guarantee correct service beyond the 15 day clockout. It will take a better hacker than me to amend the software to explore these electrode limits in a safe manner. One would expect a foreign body might face attack by the body that inexorably acts to cover/passivate this foreign body.
aurizon··on Energy transition: US Secretary of Energy spreads misinformation about Germany
Typical misinformation the new admin promotes, with some core truth. Germany did have unwise and costly nuclear choices that were enabled by access to cheap Russian gas = now Germany has to choke down their bitter pill(s) engendered by their foolish choices. The greatest economic cost to the loss of cheap gas was the loss of the concomitant feedstock this gas provided that underpinned the German economy - LNG is much more expensive with all the transport as well as liquidation and vaporisation costs making LNG a lot more expensive.
aurizon··on US Postal Service Announces Tenure Plan of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy
Here in Canada, we have a thing called the 'Postman's Walk' and postal delivery person is paid by it. If he has zero mail for a week = a week's pay. As you may suspect, with email, invoices by email etc, the amount of delivery walking has fallen off a cliff. Not so salaries, benefits and pensions. I am unable to see these details online as they are jealously guarded by the postal unions. Unions in general guard this data, esp the actual costs of assorted benefits, as they rightly judge that the public might get outraged at these details. When I see the USPO and it's huge deficit = probably a similar outrage lurks in the USA. Once the USPO is (if??) made private - will this data emerge? I suspect it will emerge as many standing nails that need to be hammered flat?
aurizon··on "I won't stop until I have my £620M of Bitcoin back."
Offer half of the bitcoin to the local electorate to elect new local government if they allow the search.
aurizon··on The deadly lottery of the snakebite antivenom industry
I think it is possible to create an RNA template anti venom for snake bites because often people did not know the snake species they were envenomed by = it would also be good to create a venom test kit, or to create an RNA multivariant anti venom. Sadly, most bites are in poor countries, with many species = a low profit potential in many cases - but India and perhaps Nigeria might be able to assess the potential, as they are the leading snake envenomed countries.
aurizon··on Cheap blood test detects pancreatic cancer before it spreads
fixed annual, I agree, but symptom/test based assessments are useful
aurizon··on Cheap blood test detects pancreatic cancer before it spreads
The fact that there are huge costs in the USA to even periodic medical checkups has severely impacted longevity in the USA to the point it ranks close to Cuba in longevity. Those with a health plan are close to the highest ranked nations. The poor without a plan at all are around ~4-5 less long lived. There is a nice rabbit hole in this data. https://www.google.com/search?q=longevity+charts&rlz=1C1CHZN...

This has a huge GDP cost in the USA, that needs to be addressed. The causes are big pharma/hospo/AMA/insuro/lobbyo.... One wonders why the AMA is there? - they limit the numbers of doctors trained in Universities/training hospitals to forestall price competition among doctors by various means. Dentists do the same.

aurizon··on Thomson Reuters wins first major AI copyright case in the US
It is valuable, but it should not be extortionable
aurizon··on Thomson Reuters wins first major AI copyright case in the US
At the heart of this is a very greedy racket:- court reporters who 'own' the copyright to every word spoken by anyone in court that they transcribe to a transcript that they do not own the source to (judges/witnesses/lawyers/defendants in truth own it) They then milk huge fees for these transcripts and limit use/access/derivative works with huge fees. An AI verbatim transcriber would up end them, so that will be prevented, as will anything that shakes the tree.
aurizon··on Firing programmers for AI will destroy everything
I have an image of 10,000 monkeys + typewriter + time = Shakespeare... Of course, these typed pages would engender a paper shortage. So the same 10,000 LLM's will create a similar amount of 'monkeyware' - I can see monkey testers roaming through this chaff for useable gems to be incorporated into a structure operated by humans (our current coder base) to engineer into complex packages?. Will this employ the human crews and allow a greater level of productivity? Look at Win11 = a huge mass full of flaws/errors (found daily). In general increased productivity has worked to increase GDP - will this continue? or will we be over run by smarter monkeys?
← PreviousPage 6 of 34Next →