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curiousObject

1,021 karma · joined February 23, 2023

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curiousObject··on Email obfuscation: What works in 2026?
I believe you’re right. But sometimes, you really have to think about how mad your adversary is.

A dog will keep biting long after that is a disastrous plan.

curiousObject··on Email obfuscation: What works in 2026?
The OP put those addresses on that web page, and only on that web page. Some addresses received spam.

Edit: that’s not to deny that big data leaks are a serious problem

curiousObject··on Everyone Hates iPhone Autocorrect. An Update Fixes One of the Biggest Problems
https://archive.is/g2mWU
curiousObject··on AI Perfected Chess. Humans Made It Unpredictable Again
https://archive.is/o69yu
curiousObject··on Byte Interviews Chuck Peddle, Father of the MOS 6502 and Commodore PET (1982)
Clearly Chuck Peddle is a major designer and engineer. So what went wrong with the new computer he’s describing?

The company filed for bankruptcy protection within a couple years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius_Systems_Technology

curiousObject··on Goodbye to Sora
>If intelligence is necessarily coupled to a desire for self-preservation and self-interest, at what level of machine intelligence do the machines simply refuse to design their own more intelligent replacements,

At a higher level of intelligence than many humans, current experience suggests

curiousObject··on The Resolv hack: How one compromised key printed $23M
If they take too much then confidence in the coin is absolutely lost and the coin fails and it’s price rapidly goes towards zero, so they’re possibly being smart by only taking a small percentage — if that was the hackers decision

Yeah $25m is only little but could still be useful

curiousObject··on A Review of Dice that came with The White Castle (2025)
Maybe a player can learn which dice are biased then choose those dice to throw depending on what result would be best for them at that moment? So they gain a slight edge.
curiousObject··on Global warming has accelerated significantly
Rationally, you apply fines as close to the source as possible. Because they will pass those costs up the stack.

But the source could be the most likely place for corrupt reporting. Or: Maybe the source element is not dangerous but downstream by-products are.

Like you’ve said: It’s a problem.

curiousObject··on GPT‑5.3 Instant
Try asking for jokes about, eg Kenyans, Ugandans, South Africans

I think it might still refuse, but in your original test, German usually means a nationality, but African doesn’t.

I’m sure the jokes were terrible anyways

curiousObject··on AI-generated replies are a scourge these days
>AI-generated replies really are the scourge of Twitter these days

This is a complex problem. But the first step of that problem is Twitter/X

Avoid it, and the next step toward a solution may be easier.

curiousObject··on Signal launches version 8.0 with Signal Secure Backups
The official Signal website is signal.org

Because of the security and privacy focus of the app, it is best to look there for news about Signal.

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=signal.org

curiousObject··on Robert Duvall has died
Actors express the human condition, and that’s more difficult than you think.

To pretend to be a person that you are not, on demand, for months on end, is hard and it demands great empathy and skill.

curiousObject··on The shadowy world of abandoned oil tankers
Your comment hints at another problem, which is that allowing the cargo into a port possibly could be exploited as a loophole to break sanctions.

Yet another big problem is that cargo might be too low in value, or even undesirable. Like the cargo of Ammonium Nitrate that exploded in Beirut a few years ago (it had been taken off the docked ship which then sank in the port. The cargo was stored in the port, then stuck in legal and payment disputes, and the result was horrific).

curiousObject··on Art of Roads in Games
This is interesting, I look forward to reading more. But I think it’s wrong, if you want to represent reality.

Real cities were all built in the past, for older vehicles, which moved at different speeds, and were controlled by drivers with different goals from today’s drivers.

So, if your game has bad and unsafe road designs, which have been partly retrofitted to reduce the worst problems, then that is accurate.

A game with optimal roads is not an accurate simulation of reality.

A professional modern road designer will simulate the expected movement of vehicles through a new or redesigned road, to try to discover major problems.

They look for problems with turning radius, visibility, stopping distances, and interactions with other road users.

I believe that a game designer could offer to do the same.

The game could draw a good algorithmic road shape first. But next offer the player an option to run a simulation of individual traffic movements, to discover serious issues, and let the player know about problems.

To the OP, I suggest this simulation approach, not trying to discover flawless algorithms. That’s not how it happens in the real world.

Several comments have suggested similar issues.

curiousObject··on Spanish track was fractured before high-speed train disaster, report finds
Thank about the change in airflow. The train would use more energy because of having to push air that is trapped by the barrier

Also the issues other comments described, including that any fault in the barrier means a new safety hazard

curiousObject··on Iran Protest Death Toll Could Top 30k, According to Local Health Officials
The simple absence of on the ground reports from a variety of independent sources tells me that these numbers should not be simply ignored.

If there’s nothing happening, then the obvious way for the authorities to prove that is to let observers in, and let independent information out. They do not do this, so I will take these reports of deaths more seriously.

curiousObject··on Ask HN: I'm getting emails about trial accounts on sites I don't recognise
Unless you’ve got evidence to the contrary: this sounds most likely to be spam campaigns that’s being sent to millions of email addresses, from leaked lists or random generated.

One of the emails is yours

curiousObject··on Ask HN: I'm getting emails about trial accounts on sites I don't recognise
“ emails for a few services”

You mean these emails are more than just a first verification step to check that your email address exists and to confirm that you want to sign up as a new user?

curiousObject··on Windows 11 shutdown bug forces Microsoft into out-of-band damage control
There were multi-million device Microsoft BSOD outages in 2024 as well. It was mainly the bad Cloudstrike update debacle, but also a contemporaneous problem with Azure.

Luckily, It sounds like this new failure is recoverable by normal user action.

curiousObject··on Iran is likely jamming Starlink
Is this not only a side effect of Iran doing widespread GPS and GNSS jamming or spoofing?
curiousObject··on 'Bandersnatch': The Works That Inspired the 'Black Mirror' Interactive Feature (2019)
>Hard to describe

But why not try? It is history, and you are a unique witness of it

curiousObject··on Ask HN: Why are Italian cities riddled with graffiti?
It’s been a problem for a while

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_graffiti

curiousObject··on Why do AI Chatbots Use "I"?
https://archive.is/9hy5q
curiousObject··on Ask HN: Can we (technically) extract salt from our sweat?
Extracting is easy, just wait and evaporating, but collecting would be an inefficient process because of scale and topology of surfaces

Why?

curiousObject··on People with personality disorders often use language differently
Some of these language patterns sound like the person is aware they have a personality disorder or some sort of behavior problem. That’s probably good.

Though, they do say “these patterns aren’t usually deliberate”.

But even being aware may not mean you really deeply understand why you have a problem.

curiousObject··on A Cozy Mk IV light aircraft crashed after 3D-printed part was weakened by heat
It sounds like simply running the engine on the ground for a few hours would have been a much cheaper way to debug this issue. Safer, also.
curiousObject··on Tom Stoppard has died
This exact dialogue takes place in real life regularly.

One reason that it is funny is that it plays against that.

We the audience maybe forget for a moment that we are not watching real life. We are watching a drama or entertainment. So we expect something relevant to happen. That’s the convention.

The exchange plays with that expectation. It deliberately forces us out of our pleasant illusion and makes think us about our real experience - we are sitting in a seat and watching a performance, which is happening at that moment.

And nothing happens, just the same as real life

curiousObject··on What's Hiding Inside Haribo's Power Bank and Headphones?
Why these batteries got all the attention - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45322135
curiousObject··on How to Cheat at Conversation
https://archive.is/QjkKQ

This story has used other titles, like - What We Lose by Letting AI Speak for Us

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