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frickinLaserson Why do the children pretend play? [pdf]

Interesting. I don't recall ever using my imagination actively like this. I didn't understand why other kids liked dolls/action figures. I read voraciously, and the words would paint pictures for me, and I spent countless hours with construction-type toys (Lego, Erector sets). But I guess it never occurred to me to want to be someone else.

frickinLaserson Terrorist watchlist exposed via misconfigured Elasticsearch cluster

There have been many third parties, and I'm not aware of any that have achieved even middling success (maybe Libertarian?) since I've been alive. How would this party fare any better?

frickinLaserson Terrorist watchlist exposed via misconfigured Elasticsearch cluster

> I think it is time for a big rethink.

I'm in. Where's the convention, and how do we get our idiot representatives to play along?

frickinLaserson Nerds don't respond to marketing; try technical documentation instead

I see a lot of comments claiming the right kind of marketing definitely works on nerds, and a lot of incensed "nerds" responding with "not me, not fazed by that stuff."

The first type of comment is looking at the aggregate, including all the people who don't read HN and who are somehow labeled as "nerds." The other type of comment draws conclusions from a sample population of one HN reader and their aggregate behavior over recent memory.

I have definitely been moved by an ad once or twice in the past decade, and may have even made a small purchase because I thought the ad was brilliant. But I wouldn't say I generally respond well to advertising. Isn't this the scale of engagement that marketers expect? Something like ten thousand impressions yield one click?

It seems to me both types of comment are looking at the same behavior through different lenses. Or am I underestimating the effectiveness of ads on other markets?

frickinLaserson Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

Yep I earned those downvotes, thanks.

That's a useful website.

Since who drinks tomato juice, really, another way to put it is that you'd need about 20 large Diet Cokes (32 oz each, no ice) per day to get the same amount of methanol as from a diet rich in ripe fruits (1000 mg/day).

https://cot.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/cot/cotstatement...

frickinLaserson Aspartame and cancer – new evidence for causation

Aspartame also rapidly "breaks down into residual components, including aspartic acid, phenylalanine, methanol, and further breakdown products including formaldehyde and formic acid" on ingestion. [1]

Even with no smoking gun for cancer, why would anyone tempt fate after reading that?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame#Metabolites

frickinLaserson After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

They do seem proud, but one of these things makes less sense than the others, given Apple's prior reasoning.

We don't know what goes on in the secret courts these days but we have been assured watchdogs are in place and certain programs are no longer in use [1]. This is all speculation based on past behavior, but I assume new reasoning has been constructed that passes watchdog's interpretation of the law but requires new hoops for three-letter agencies to jump through to get the mountains of data they so yearn for.

[1] https://reason.com/2015/11/29/the-nsa-will-stop-collecting-y...

Now it kind of sounds like I'm playing 5D chess, but since we don't know what takes place under secret Executive Orders...

frickinLaserson After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

That would arouse suspicion as soon as someone (perhaps someone inside the company) figured out what was going on. Here, a key person introduces the idea, says it's "for the children," and people are baffled but the masses will forget about it, even come to accept the logic, soon enough.

frickinLaserson After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations

"Build this. Don't explain why" is not chess. It would be a perfectly logical order from the power structures Snowden exposed.

eta: It makes way more sense to me than Apple actually thinking this was a good idea.

frickinLaserson Internet of Snitches

That username is so perfect.

frickinLaserson Apple says photos in iCloud will be checked by child abuse detection system

Yes, I've thought about it. I was kind of hoping for a better suggestion.

However, I'd rather voluntarily subject myself to a dictatorship like that than believe all my life I have rights that are sacred, only to look up and find myself in an authoritarian panopticon.

I do harbor fantasies of some day collaborating on a new system of government, or at least laying the groundwork. It's not going to be Musk's planet forever, and the first generation of Martians will be volunteers who want the project to succeed. Which makes it more like the 13 original colonies than the Wild West.

frickinLaserson Apple says photos in iCloud will be checked by child abuse detection system

He then suggests a method for going after the creators, i.e people who livestream their abuse over secure connections, or use them to conduct the abuse.

It's a far better proposition than assuming everyone is guilty and mass-scanning photo libraries.

I was in complete agreement with most Apple-related comments until I saw this group of knee-jerk reactions to a reasonable attempt at discussion. wtf

frickinLaserson Apple says photos in iCloud will be checked by child abuse detection system

And I trust Buttigieg to give the issue a solid looking over, but aren't breathalyzers pretty well established as a positive indicator of driver impairment?

Though requiring the driver to blow into a straw doesn't seem particularly "passive"--whatever that means.

frickinLaserson Apple says photos in iCloud will be checked by child abuse detection system

I'd like to subscribe to your blog.

So what's next? There might be some time left to secure our rights on Mars...

frickinLaserson Apple says photos in iCloud will be checked by child abuse detection system

> We would not accept having breathalyzers in every car.

lol, that's not up to us. It's in the infrastructure bill.

https://www.mediaite.com/news/infrastructure-bill-could-requ...

frickinLaserson Apple’s Mistake

> If Apple sees a material difference in their sales, they might consider changing that policy.

I think the problem is that it's too late; they expended the effort to build the engine into iOS 15. As far as we know the FBI couldn't compel them to write code like this (see the case with the San Bernardino shooter), but it's easy to believe they could compel Apple to maintain this backdoor in the future.

frickinLaserson Scanning your iPhone for Pegasus

There's the list of targets we know about: https://cdn.occrp.org/projects/project-p/#/

And the Guardian has some in-depth reporting going on. https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/pegasus-project

None of this really answer how prevalent the spyware is, though.

frickinLaserson Software engineering research is a train wreck

Heh. I entered a topic of interest and found my own minimally cited work at the top of the list.

I approve of this tool! It's a shame I hadn't heard of it before.

frickinLaserson Software engineering research is a train wreck

It is usually possible to do this (a digital journal can include links to cited/citing papers), but citations happen for a variety of reasons (background information, a single statistic, boosting a colleague's work...). Every citation applies to a different sentence or paragraph in an article. To understand the content and whether it is relevant, we still need to digest the text.

There are also less-cited papers and journals that can be just as relevant--every article starts with zero citations, and the vast majority of good work out there isn't exciting enough to be accepted for Nature.

Further, the process is rather incestuous: Previous person solved X problem with Y approach because that's the first thing someone came up with and it's just how it's done in our field, so let's continue doing this inefficient thing and citing that paper, maybe working on a better way to do things. Meanwhile in some other field, a mathematician or whatever came up with a far better solution to a similar problem long ago, but nobody in this field ever knew that, so it goes unnoticed.

I do want to see what is highly cited because it's probably interesting, but I also want to see things that don't get that kind of attention but are applicable to my work, and things that I wouldn't know are applicable to my work.

Another example: Currently, authors enter relevant keywords when they submit a paper. Maybe that works when someone searches the right combination of words, or maybe it doesn't because the search engines suck. Or because in one part of the world the topic has a completely different vocabulary, and we miss a whole library's worth of useful papers.

I speak from a background in STEM. I can't vouch for other disciplines, but I imagine they have similar pain points. Heck, I don't even know what others in STEM think, other than "that's just how research works."

I don't think it's an easy problem, or we wouldn't still be sifting through mounds of crap to find a few relevant, reproducible works worth reading and citing. I think it would involve figuring out the overarching themes and important methods in a paper and sorting them by their importance, and a little bit of fuzziness to say "hey, this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but it sure seems useful." This could even allow un-cited works a second chance.

I think I'm describing two separate goals, and the fuzzy part could wait until the relevance problem is addressed. I don't think the problems are particularly easy, or Google Scholar would have solved the problem and monetized the solution already. But it seems like they're solvable problems.

frickinLaserson Software engineering research is a train wreck

| Search engines for papers suck, bad.

This screams the need for an intelligent search engine, with summarizing features that point out relevant parts of the paper, and (imho) a UI and algorithms that reach across disciplines and encourage discovery. So, for instance (I'm making this up), someone looking for a way to understand interferometry data might stumble on a useful regularization technique from image processing.

I imagine academic libraries would pay really good money for that. Of course, it would help if a mostly complete body of scientific literature was available to crawl--like SciHub.

frickinLaserson Don’t Let Police Arm Autonomous or Remote-Controlled Robots and Drones

PBS on Ruby Ridge:

"The Weavers wouldn’t go near the robot — even after they took off the shotgun that had been strapped to the front of it."

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/ruby-ri...

frickinLaserson Under the skin of OnlyFans

fyi, explosive "ordnance" is spelled without the i.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/506723/how-did-o...

frickinLaserson Don’t Let Police Arm Autonomous or Remote-Controlled Robots and Drones

My bad, dude. The ambiguity has been addressed in other people's replies.

frickinLaserson How NSO's Pegasus Is Used to Spy on Journalists

Without commenting on your comment...why on earth is that video age-restricted in the US? That's the most chilling thing I've encountered in a long time.

Here's an unrestricted version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb2z0XwMtH8

frickinLaserson Don’t Let Police Arm Autonomous or Remote-Controlled Robots and Drones

And that appears to be the first case on US soil where a robot was actually used to kill.

frickinLaserson Don’t Let Police Arm Autonomous or Remote-Controlled Robots and Drones

The primary purpose of that shotgun is IED/UXO disruption, ostensibly. It's unfortunate that the robots have been used as weapons, and that people aren't in prison for it. But I think arming AI-equipped drones specifically to kill is a much more worrisome threat.

frickinLaserson Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

I had not thought of that. I'd still rather see it on a local billboard, but as the sibling post says, my opinion is irrelevant anyway.

frickinLaserson Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

Not a mom, but if I want to learn about a better [photographer/plumber/mechanic/whatever] I will use the tools that list and attempt to give accurate information about businesses (yelp, angi, BBB, ?), inadequate though they may be. My brain doesn't register your ad. If it does, I'm probably less likely to consider your business, because you shoved an intrusive internet ad in my face.

frickinLaserson Please commit more blatant academic fraud

Okay, I got a little off track. Let's say you're an HR person (or whoever is at legal risk if an employee decides they've been taken advantage of), and someone come in with just such a complaint.

How would you, an outside party, determine whether the superior was really [infatuated, in love, whatever], and not simply taking advantage of their situation? Or how would a judge determine that? Is it worth it to the company to work through that process every time it happens? What about the people who really were victimized, but the evidence is circumstantial and the court says otherwise? Isn't it easier to exclude the small pool of people that are subordinates and tell the supervisor to find romance anywhere else?

frickinLaserson Please commit more blatant academic fraud

They're saying people are assholes. For instance, in some American cultures (see my previous comment for which culture), it's a given that perhaps 40-60% of married individuals are cheating on their spouse. That's not love--that's doing what feels good, and then doing someone else that feels good.

Where there's a power imbalance, it's easier to ban a class of abuses than to figure out the small percentage of cases where both parties are genuinely afflicted by mutual biological imperatives.