cypherpunks01

My favorite household NFC usage? NFC alarm clock.

Makes me get out of bed and tap my phone on a specific NFC tag placed somewhere around the house, in order to turn off the alarm. Then, I may as well wake up, since I'm already out of bed : )

It's a nice companion to help perform 'habit stacking' as Atomic Habits calls it. Want to do pushups right after waking up? Place an NFC card under your workout mat, so you're forced to the mat first thing in the morning.

NFC Alarm Clock https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nfcalarmcl... is a really great and simple Android alarm. Share if anyone has a good iOS recommendation.

Most people who live in Boston use the reloadable CharlieCard (https://www.mbta.com/fares/charliecard) - these report as Mifare Classic 1k, which is a similar chip

There are single-use fares as well, the "CharlieTicket" that you might've encountered.

More CharlieCard NFC info:

https://medium.com/@bobbyrsec/operation-charlie-hacking-the-...

https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2031/DEF%20CON%2031%20pre...

How difficult is it to clone MIFARE Ultralight EV1 chips? You mention the UID is signed, can you simply copy this signature? Do you just need to buy one of the magical chips of the same design, that allow uid/serials to be written?

What is the actual mechanism behind the DESFire and other secure NFC chips that prevents cloning?

> 2029's visit will be particularly close, with the asteroid coming within 32,000 kilometers (20,000 miles) of the Earth's surface

Wow, that is incredibly close. 20,000 miles is about how far you fly round-trip from JFK to Singapore.

> The OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft will dip toward the surface of Apophis and fire its engines to kick up loose rocks and dust

Just hearing this scares me (knowing nothing about orbital physics). I am just imagining a couple generations down the line astronomers saying, well, this asteroid used to not be a concern, except one time we went up there and kicked some rocks around, which accidentally set it onto a direct course for Earth in 2150..

Wouldn't using a constraint programming solver like CP-SAT be overall a faster way to do this?

Then one would only have to specify the constraints and let the solver optimize a solution, rather than trying to write a customized packing problem algorithm from scratch. I'm sure it'd be fun, but when trying to best solve a real-world problem, I'd think using well-researched tools would be the quickest and safest way to go.

I'd be skeptical that any videos or educational programs would help someone who is in crisis and contemplating suicide. Like you mention, actual support from real people who care is probably necessary.

Suicide hotlines are the primary place to find a real person who can listen, if someone doesn't feel safe seeking support from anyone in their life, which can happen for a variety of reasons.

The effectiveness of hotlines is still under debate I'm sure, but there are tons of studies that I'm sure are worth looking into, if this is an area of interest of yours and you want to do some reading.

Satisfaction and Mental Health Outcomes Associated with a Large Regional Helpline https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8749345/

Like another commenter mentioned, speaking to someone who has volunteered for a suicide prevention hotline would be the best way to get closer to first-hand knowledge of the subjective experience of trying to help prevent suicide.

Yes, the NYC pneumatic tube mail is fascinating!

These tubes were large, 24"L x 8" diameter. You could fit all sorts of stuff in there. It's so interesting to think that food, mail, and small package delivery in NYC could have peaked way back when pneumatic tubes were used (of course only in the optimal case with start/end near one of the 23 tube stations). Also really cool that there was a tube that ran over the Brooklyn bridge for sending mail or burritos between boroughs.

For further reading on unique NYC infrastructure, the New York City steam system is also very interesting and still in operation.

It is stupidly expensive, but the vestaboard is pretty dang cool for home or small business use, if 132 characters will suffice. No affiliation, I just like em

Harvey Weinstein is convicted serial rapist, so likely not the best exemplar of the borderline behavior you're trying to describe.

The whole thing is ridiculous and cartoonish. The main thrust behind the author's litany of complaints seems to be: (and I'm guessing the author hasn't been the subject of a whole lot of discrimination)

Are you gay? Black? Woman trying to prevent sexual violence? Interested in preventing smoking or reducing birth defects? Stop and look around, things are better now! Don't worry or complain any more, those problems were already taken care of!

The timeless "get a job" argument.

Yes, and I'm sure the director had that perspective too - that it would have been weird to show a cutaway scene across the world. I suppose just the lack of depicting any human consequences of the bombing was what irked me, I think it could have been done creatively if he wanted to.

He was shown it, with slides in the debrief scene. He chose to look away, and that's all the camera shows.

Was anyone else bothered by how Oppenheimer declined to show even a single scene of the devastation that was caused by dropping nuclear weapons on Japan?

I otherwise liked the film, but I thought it was wrong to hide it from viewers. The bombing was the central plot point of the whole film. It would have been different if it was a new director, or surprise hit or something, but Nolan knew it would be seen by many millions of people.

It could have been shown without losing any narration context at all, in the scene where the protagonist is shown slides of the destruction scenes, and the camera only shows him looking away. The director didn't need to force the audience to look away too.

Takeout for Gmail has usually worked well for me, albeit not exported too many massive amounts this way.

My main use case is backing up Gmail accounts of users in our GSuite org, before deleting an account.

1. Reset password and login as user 2. Initiate Gmail Takeout, export to Google Drive 3. Return to admin, and delete user account, using the option to xfer their entire Drive to admin user

I must have missed this product, it seems incredibly useful, especially for providing remote access to legacy devices like NVRs, or random other gear that is a big hassle to remotely administer.

Huh, didn't realize that was there! Works on stock Pixel, you're right, definitely useful feature to have

I put the steps in a sibling comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40465686

Cheers

I do think it will work on non-Pixel phones, but you do need to enable Secure Settings for Tasker, which probably can be locked down by Mobile Device Management or other admin control methods that a work device could have.

Listed my config in a sibling comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40465686

No root needed, but you first need to grant Tasker the WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS permission, see: https://tasker.joaoapps.com/userguide/en/help/ah_secure_sett...

I granted it via ADB using the command line listed, but the other method with app might work too. If you don't have ADB, It's very easy to install by just downloading the right sdk for your OS, and you run the included ADB binary via command line while your phone is plugged in via USB, and USB debugging is enabled (which is an android developer setting).

Set your Android accessibility color correction type to grayscale if you don't have that already. The below Tasker action simply toggles it off and on.

Tasker config is-

Configure a Shake Left-Right event trigger (I recommend sensitivity 'Very Low' and Duration 'Long' to avoid accidental triggers)

Configure a 3-step action following the trigger:

1. Custom Setting

    Type: Secure
    Name: accessibility_display_daltonizer_enabled
    Value: 0

2. Wait action (I set to 20 sec)

3. Custom Setting

    Type: Secure
    Name: accessibility_display_daltonizer_enabled
    Value: 1

Set the Collision Handling on the task gear/settings to "Abort Existing Task", so that you can extend the color lifetime by shaking the phone again.

Of course, once you have this action in Tasker, you can use any trigger to turn it on or off, like opening a particular app, turning it on when you are only at home or away, etc.

Works pretty well for me, there is one slight issue where some type of android display layout refresh occurs when the color toggle happens, which sometimes refreshes the interface you are on in a slightly annoying way. I tolerate it, it's ok, maybe setting a longer wait period would make this occur less often.

If these steps don't work / too confusing, try using the really great accessibility gesture support setting mentioned in a reply, instead or in addition: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40462366

FYI John Dalton was a scientist who pioneered color blindness research among many other fields, so his name is everywhere in color correction settings apparently.

I'd recommend giving grayscale mode a try not only during bedtime, but all the time! My Pixel has been set this way for a couple months and it has decreased my mindless phone usage by simply making the phone more boring overall, without any new device or major sacrifices.

I became concerned that I'd turn it off when I temporarily needed color and forget to turn it back on, so instead I used Tasker to listen for L-R shake action and make that temporarily disable grayscale mode for 20 secs (in case I specifically decide I want to look at color in a photo or disambiguate something from grayscale). Works decently well, I can explain the Tasker steps if anyone else is interested.

You're saying you'd prefer zero coverage of an AI warfare conference, then?

From the look of these bugs, like this one but especially the other race condition bug that suggested 10x the user's input dosage, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say formal verification appears to be used little or none..

Ahh ok thanks for the clarification, that makes sense

Huh, I didn't really fully understand that about SVG. Thanks for the info.

From what I'm reading, it seems that from inside an SVG script, you can call out to javascript functions of the parent page? That seems kinda surprising, I'm sure there are security policies around it, but it means that there are potential security and performance risks/considerations around hosting and serving SVG files that I didn't realize existed.

Is that your definition of consciousness? Worrying about things?

Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?

Because eventually it becomes your turn to jump first.

The work of checking IDs is mostly done in US venues already, for 21+ drinking wristbands. It would have to be done differently, for sure, but a good portion of that labor is already being incurred.

More likely, the venues don't have much economic incentive, if any, to reduce ticket reselling and scalping.

A much more concise list could be made of members of Congress that don't want to send money towards offensive weapons in Israel.

It's a vanishingly small list. Virtually everyone wearing a (D) or (R) hat is extremely interested in sending our tax money towards this purpose, which fund programs exactly like in this article.

At the risk of asking a dumb question - why do wind turbine blades need to be transported in one single impossibly large piece?

They are all composite materials, right? Can't they be manufactured in a couple pieces and fused together properly on-site, using technology that is a more economical as compared to designing and building new types of aircraft?