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firmnoodle

81 karma · joined April 10, 2020

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firmnoodle··on Germany: Police seize bitcoins worth €2B
The US Government is already one of or the largest know holder of Bitcoin. And that is without the assumption that the US Government owns the Satoshi coins. It would be fine if governments decided they want to hold Bitcoin. I see no issues.
firmnoodle··on I need more USB power
Why not use 110V AC for a hotplate and the soldering iron? USB seems silly.
firmnoodle··on Stéphane Graber has left Canonical
What kind of student were you in high school. Tell us in 5,000 words or more.

Now take this personality test. Now do this other crazy thing.

firmnoodle··on NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts
AirTags will report their last known location. This is very likely to be the point it was driven into a container. If the container wasn't moved or loaded onto a ship yet it could be found. Additionally, while containers do a really good job and of blocking RF, they aren't perfect and they only need to get a little Bluetooth to a phone nearby. So even an iPhone on a crane operator could expose the stolen car's location. It may not be perfect but it could help. I use them on a classic car and on hidden on two trailers I own.
firmnoodle··on Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech
"The loin changed me far more than my presence changed it - for the better. It taught me compassion and empathy and how to avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway."

I 100% agree. I lived 5 blocks uphill from the Tenderloin and would walk though the loin to go to Bourbon & Branch or while coming back from the theater late at night. I learned all three of those lessons as well. It was rare that I was scared but I was always hyper alert.

firmnoodle··on Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
In most cases it's both. Like the people who were early to the Internet, they believe in a better world and they hope their early participation will be rewarded.
firmnoodle··on Tesla to open some superchargers to other vehicles
I couldn't find that Tesla will receive "billions" anywhere. Only that the US Federal government is giving $5B to states and Tesla is applying for some of that money. Where do you see that Tesla won't reliably allow third party cars to charge?
firmnoodle··on Investors conclude that Tesla is a carmaker, not a tech firm
It's really a different approach that will yield different outcomes and experiences. Super Cruise works on "pre-mapped divided highways". That suggests it's more like hard coding most of the environment and working with HD-maps. While I don't know what Tesla Autopilot does, Tesla FSD is designed to drive with interpolation of the current input. It's a much harder problem for Tesla to solve but the results mean that it can deal with changes and unusual situations without something like massive case statements pre coding those exceptions.
firmnoodle··on Investors conclude that Tesla is a carmaker, not a tech firm
I have a dedicated glove box button in my Tesla S. It's one of the few dedicated buttons.
firmnoodle··on Supermicro throws its weight behind Arm servers
Totally agree. While it's hard to get hands on a physical box, you can always get bare metal Ampere servers from the Packet guys aka equinixmetal.com. They have them in a few regions.
firmnoodle··on Is this the end of crypto?
I look forward to the day when The Economist and FT don't conflate Bitcoin with all the crypto tokens out there.
firmnoodle··on FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows
I think he's talking about the domestic operations. I would agree that the CIA and their sister organizations who operate internationally fit the description as well. Can't torture someone, well, take them to a friendly place where your buddy can torture them. Need to plant some FUD on a person? "an anonymous source in the intelligence community said that X did Y in Z." Unelected, Unaccountable and unchecked in every way.
firmnoodle··on Snap launches its first drone
If they can put a dog nose and tongue on a video with AI, I would guess maybe removing the sound of the drone is possible.
firmnoodle··on Spotify deletes 70 Joe Rogan episodes
This is exactly my concern for today's content and it puts us in a place where future content is at risk. Removing select episodes of sitcoms because they aren't politically correct means current shows self censor before creation. Removing back episodes of podcasts can cause a chilling effect on newer content and new creators. There is additional concern when the government is encouraging private companies to silence content. We need to decide if we want to live in a monoculture of thought pushed down from the political leaders or if we want to live in a diverse culture of thoughts and ideas pushed up from the individuals.
firmnoodle··on Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials
I think you may want to revisit your 80%. The vaccine efficacy for sterilization of the virus ended up dropping more quickly than expected and that's even with pre-Delta variants. Look at the Israel data. When you don't understand, I suspect what you are encountering isn't bad faith actors, but more informed people.
firmnoodle··on Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study
Agreed. But I don't hear anyone talking about making a old style COVID vaccine that prevents infection, disease or transmission. That's what's different in this case. We don't currently have what we many of us used to think of as a vaccine.
firmnoodle··on Apple pays out millions to student after repair techs shared her personal images
Apple stores require this for screen repair or even battery replacement. I won't get my aging iphone X battery replaced for exactly this reason. It's too much work to erase my phone and restore it.
firmnoodle··on Wuhan lab staff sought hospital care before Covid-19 outbreak disclosed
The same thing happened with Ivermectin as a prophylaxis. All of a sudden anything that was years old with a history of safe use in humans was off the table. They all also happen to be old enough that patent protection is gone. It's almost like people wanted this to be more dangerous and less treatable for some reason.
firmnoodle··on The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
The argument is that Bitcoin not only has a provable total fixed supply & rate of future supply and that it has more utility than gold because it's easier to transfer and harder to fake.
firmnoodle··on Voltswagen of America
Why didn't they wait until April 1st to make this announcement? Clearly they haven't learned enough about the internet culture from Elon.
firmnoodle··on Gen X emerging from pandemic with firmer grip on America's wallet
I miss when we were called slackers. Then we built the Internet and modern world but nobody gives us credit for that.
firmnoodle··on Spy agency ducks questions about 'back doors' in tech products
> - They've stolen Realtek's driver signing keys.

I have been to Realtek's offices in Hsinchu many times. While the other efforts may have taken major resources I don't think getting their private keys would have been hard at all. Especially back then. IMHO the building and some people could be easily compromised and I suspect they didn't really care much about security.

firmnoodle··on Low-dose Hydroxychloroquine Therapy and Mortality in Hospitalized Patients
Down voted for stating facts...
firmnoodle··on US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days
I didn't know about Popper before. This rings so true today more than ever. I often joke about my home town of San Francisco that we are very open minded as long as you believe exactly the same things we believe.
firmnoodle··on Bonneville can be a tough place (2008)
I can confirm. I was there a couple of times over the last month and none of this mess is remaining. It was all white and flat with a fire burn marks from tires and fire pits.
firmnoodle··on Starlink WiFi Router FCC Approved
but how were those pings to game servers in North America? I'm guessing they take too long no matter the bandwidth to the local exchange.
firmnoodle··on Starbucks pauses Advertising on all Social Media
This is a great step at stopping not just the spread of hate speech but also at stopping hate itself. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook have done and continue to do too much to encourage and then monetize rage.
firmnoodle··on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it
Yeah, I'm confused as well. I just tried Calc on win10 for the first time in weeks or months and it opened before I could count 2 seconds. This is from a SSD where it won't have been in cache.
firmnoodle··on A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Series FPGAs
It's more like access to replace the bitsteam. It's a complicated and expensive new attack vector.
firmnoodle··on A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Series FPGAs
No. It means people will be able to copy FPGA's like was possible in the 2000's. It also means that the design in an FPGA could be altered by an unauthorized 3rd party without having to physically replace the device.