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gusfoo

252 karma · joined October 4, 2011

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gusfoo··on Hackers activate automatic defrosting in supermarket fridges across Europe
Here is the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49508506
gusfoo··on Anthropic AI model submits false tip on unsolved Philly murder, police say
Please, please, stop testing in prod.
gusfoo··on London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces
I assume you're also of the view that 9/11 was entirely the USA's fault, and it deserved it?

And on that topic, most of the terrorism in recent times is Islamic. IRA intercepts are down to about 5/year nowadays.

gusfoo··on London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces
It's laughably naiive to think that that stuff works. Not even the maker thinks it does.
gusfoo··on Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing
https://x.com/garrytan/status/2018368316033946021

"I am currently averaging about 10k LOC per day (35% of the lines are tests) so wow, 15k/day is #goals"

Garry Tan - YC CEO and LLM psychosis victim (but he doesn't realise that yet)

gusfoo··on Security researcher says Microsoft built a Bitlocker backdoor, releases exploit
There is, sadly, no place for non-standard ICs in corpos nowadays. HR will enforce that.
gusfoo··on LinkedIn is scanning browser extensions
In fairness, their privacy policy DOES explicitly say that they collect this information. See https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy?ref=cms.hondas...

> 1.5 Your Device and Location > We receive data through cookies and similar technologies When you visit or leave our Services (including some plugins and our cookies or similar technology on the sites of others), we receive the URL of both the site you came from and the one you go to and the time of your visit. We also get information about your network and device (e.g., IP address, proxy server, operating system, web browser and add-ons, device identifier and features, cookie IDs and/or ISP, or your mobile carrier). If you use our Services from a mobile device, that device will send us data about your location based on your phone settings. We will ask you to opt-in before we use GPS or other tools to identify your precise location.

"including some plugins" being the relevant bit.

gusfoo··on Hacker compromises A16Z-backed phone farm, calling them the 'antichrist'
* Andreessen Horowitz - scammers.

* Y Combinator - vibe coders.

Are there any respectable VC tech companies out there in 2026?

gusfoo··on Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates
> I still hope that one of these days people in general will realize that executable signing and SecureBoot are specifically designed for controlling what a normal person can run, rather than for anything resembling real security

For home/business users I'd agree. But in Embedded / money-handling then it's a life-saver and a really important technology.

gusfoo··on Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions
Nota bene: these aren't "tech" jobs, these are "laptop job" over-hired email people. Not real people.
gusfoo··on Meta Deployed AI and It Is Killing Our Agency
I really tried my best to open a Facebook account, so I could open a developer account. All correct and real info. Instaban immediately after account creation, immediate "go away forever" email after clicking the "appeal" button.

The fact that you have to open a personal account first, in order to start a developer account seems mad to me. I have no interest at all in having a personal Facebook account.

gusfoo··on France's homegrown open source online office suite
Love the fact that you use USA date format, not rest-of-world.

Love the fact that your AI customer service bot takes a question and then asks for an email address for a reply.

Love your incoherently bolded statements: "The Docs app is a note taking and knowledge management software.

Love how the vast amount of emojis really clarify things and help the reader.

s/love/hate/g

gusfoo··on How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA
> The US government is not free to use frivolous sanctions to indirectly make payment processors stop serving a foreigner.

You may regard them as such, but they are not in any sense frivolous. It is the law that if-x-then-y, it's not a discretionary item that one interprets. And to be clear, these are not "indirectly" making payment processors stop serving the person, it is very clearly direct and you do not, as a company, have a choice in the matter.

gusfoo··on How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA
> And how far out is that?

These guys have a 100% market share https://www.asml.com/en/products/euv-lithography-systems at the 'extreme' end and, obviously, everyone else is trying but haven't really shown much promise.

Here's a good background article on the topic: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/03/12/...

gusfoo··on How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA
> For example, accounts with non-US banks have also been partially closed. Transactions in US dollars or via dollar conversions are forbidden to him.

So people don't think this is a new thing; when I worked in retail banking in the (very) early '90s it was made clear to us that any transaction in US dollars is subject to US regulation. The hypothetical scenario was that an Ethiopian arms dealer buys Russian product from a German dealer in Switzerland if they do it in USD it is the purview of the US to prosecute that crime.

My memory is hazy, but I don't think that when I was being taught it that it was a new thing.

gusfoo··on The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful
> This is just how I write in the last few years

"We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us", may be the apposite bon mot.

That aside, I did enjoy your article. Thank you.

gusfoo··on Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
FWIW, on old.reddit.com it still shows the cached image view, so no actual need to visit Imgur.com - a site that has had some quite interesting drama for the last few months.
gusfoo··on Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place
> Sharply declining usage? I don't see the stats to back that up on https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats

Odd. Here's another BlueSky stats page, and almost every metric is in the red.

https://bluefacts.app/bluesky-user-growth?t=3m

gusfoo··on EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided
> If it's all very safe and accurate, why is this exception necessary?

Because you'd be massively adding an attack surface on to National Security elements for no benefit to National Security.

gusfoo··on Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?
I genuinely think that large language models are a useful technology in data processing. Being "language models" I find it easy to use LLMs to extract subject, object, quantity, time, verb, amount, user's language code and so on from the input text, and to a fairly trustworthy level. After that, standard Information Retrieval techniques take over.

What LLMs are absolutely not useful for, in my opinion, is answering questions or writing code, or summarising things, or being factual in any sense at all.

gusfoo··on EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy
Russia is running out of money to pay anti-nuclear activists in Europe, it seems. "Atomkraft? Nein Danke!" should be viewed as what it really is.
gusfoo··on Meta just suspended the Facebook account of Neal Stephenson
I made a whatsapp business account yesterday, started a test advertising campaign. Went to log in to the developer area, "Your account is banned, there is no appeal". And whatsapp customer services says "Your account is fine and there are no issues and this ticket is closed"

I really, really don't understand why you have to make a facebook account in order to get access to the developer area, and now I get to watch my advertising spending tick up with no way of accessing anything about it.

gusfoo··on Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears
A trillion dollars of value disappearing in 2 days. We've still got our NFT metaverse shipping waybill project going on somewhere in the org chart, right? Phew!
gusfoo··on Passive Microwave Repeaters
> The cavity magnetron, one of the first practical microwave transmitters, was an invention of such import that it was the UK's key contribution to a technical partnership that lead to the UK's access to US nuclear weapons research.

No, that's not correct at all. The Tube Alloys project[0] was the key, codified in the Quebec Agreement[1], giving the USA access to UK nuclear weapons research.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_Alloys [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_Agreement

It is an item of some irritation to me that many people think the USA was the nation which started nuclear weapons development first. "In July 1940, Britain had offered to give the United States access to its research, and the Tizard Mission's John Cockcroft briefed American scientists on British developments. He discovered that the American project was smaller than the British, and not as advanced."

gusfoo··on Gaslight-driven development
Delete the div called `presence` and the page becomes nicer to read.
gusfoo··on Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first
The UK has also released some details of a new 'in bulk' RF-based drone takedown DEW. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1vY5efYXMQ
gusfoo··on Meta found 'covertly tracking' Android users through Instagram and Facebook
> Do we know how these apps were able to track browser activity? The only clues I see in the article are that it was on a per-website basis, and that it worked in incognito mode.

The App listens on localhost:xxyyzz when backgrounded. You open your browser and go to onesite.com and then differentsite.com the ID you are known as on those two sites is transmitted by having the JS on each site that supports Facebook functionality / ads etc for that site, and runs in your browser, make a request for an asset on your localhost with args <your ID on that website>. The app gets the args, and sends it off to HQ. That ties your signed-in account on the app to your activity on all the websites that was using this. And to be clear, FB Pixel calls are tagged with the 'event' that you're doing like "checkout" "just looking" "donate" etc. While I don't know for sure, I'd assume that the fact you're in Incognito Mode is just an aspect of the data report, I would say. Nothing would stop it.

gusfoo··on SMS 2FA is not just insecure, it's also hostile to mountain people
Nice article, although I despise the "lowercase only" affectation that so many of us techies pass through. Capitalising the first letter in a sentence is a courtesy to the reader, not a stylistic choice you should impose to make yourself feel special.
gusfoo··on Odin, a Pragmatic C Alternative with a Go Flavour
Here is the website: https://odin-lang.org/ - which was not obvious.
gusfoo··on We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]
For balance, I clicked the link and (after a moment of my browser imposing my will) the video started playing. Opera + Ghostery is quite a pleasant experience, at least when compared to mobile browsing (at the other end of the spectrum).
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