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ilitiriton LibreOffice 6.0 released

No, I'm referring to the UI in general. The images just basic examples of poor and inconsistent text spacing and positioning. I didn't even mention the more important issues like the crowded dropdowns, poor layouts and use of space in general.

As I said, I like LibreOffice, but the UI needs work.

ilitiriton LibreOffice 6.0 released

I like LibreOffice, but I really wish they would put more effort into their UI, even just basic things like standardisation of controls and simple text spacing and positioning. This is taken from their video summary of 6.0:

https://imgur.com/a/LB1jt

ilitiriton Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy

The shortage is not entirely because of miners. Nvidia manufacturers switched to using slower RAM in some of their cards. This was actually a very smart move (they should expand it to all their cards IMO). If you want the fast RAM, you have to buy the "mining" version of the cards. So in theory, it should have no impact on the gaming market.

For some of the popular mining cards (e.g. RX 470/80), well they simply haven't been available in many places for over a year now. Their successors aren't that great for mining either because of the increased power usage and RAM "lottery" (you don't really know what type of RAM you're getting when you buy a card). But most gamers don't generally care about RAM speed. This is also why the 5 series is generally cheaper than the 4 series (where you can find them).

However, the biggest problem is that there simply isn't enough RAM. The RAM shortage is being driven by smart phone and GPU production, and suspected price fixing. Samsung said they plan on increasing production (apparently they don't like it their competitors who make inferior RAM are making similar profits), but we will probably only see the effect mid-2018.

https://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResearch/Post/2/4815.html

http://www.pcgamer.com/samsung-to-increase-dram-output-as-ra...

ilitiriton Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water

On the first point 4, it's something that many people don't realise. Water policy in this context is set on a National level. All these Youtubers and Facebook protestors don't understand that a Municipality can't simply shut off water to farms/mines. Various approaches were already discussed prior to the Water Act of 1998:

http://www.dwa.gov.za/Documents/Policies/nwpwp.pdf

But as it says in that document - it's National Policy. The government will need to make the call. There may well be provision for disaster areas, but the government doesn't think CPT qualifies.

On the second point 4, there's a already a health concern with regards to our current water supply. Cracks in pipes in the existing infrastructure allow impurities to enter our water supply. When the pipes are at full pressure this doesn't happen. However, when the pressure is dropped (as what is currently happening in various suburbs), the pressure is not enough to keep these impurities out, and you end up with a contaminated supply in some areas.

ilitiriton Cape Town could be the first city to run out of water

For visitors to CPT, it may not seem like a city that is undergoing a drought. Indeed, CPT still gets a fair bit of rain, if lower than previous years. The problem is we do not get rain in areas where our dams that provide drinking water are situated.

ilitiriton Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

The drama of the Internet is that it has promoted the village idiot to the bearer of truth

- Umberto Eco, on Social Media

ilitiriton Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg

> The thesis statement here is value itself is an arbitrary concept and is such because we say it is.

Depending on how you view the world, this can seem like pretty much a very obvious statement. Before mankind there was no "value". We invented it, and it evolved with us. At some point it even became self-referential ("I am valuable now because I become even more valuable later").

ilitiriton Reading privileged memory with a side-channel

A timing attack is one type of side channel attack. These types of timing attacks can also be used against poor/unsuitable crypto functions, or even some processes involving general computation e.g. If it takes longer to reject input A than input B, you can reason that input A is closer to the answer (similar to someone reading a paragraph until they reach the first error).

Other side-channel attacks can come in the form of analysing network data, power-consumption (CPUs use more power when they are "busier")... even noise (listen for when the fans start spinning up).

ilitiriton UFO Existence 'Proven Beyond Reasonable Doubt': Former Head Of Pentagon Program

https://www.livescience.com/12826-jerusalem-ufo-hoax.html

ilitiriton UFO Existence 'Proven Beyond Reasonable Doubt': Former Head Of Pentagon Program

This does pose a conundrum for UFO conspiracy theorists though. i.e. Why would the Pentagon spend millions on a UFO program if, as conspiracy theorists believe, they've had evidence about them since at least the Roswell incident? Bob Lazar in fact has claimed to have actually worked on these craft and have witnessed humans fly them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lazar

The interviews with him about this are on Youtube.

So either, the US government knew about them but didn't tell the Pentagon; or the Pentagon had no such program; this program was meant to spread misinformation; neither the US gov nor the Pentagon ever had any evidence of UFOs.

ilitiriton Blackbird: Bitcoin arbitrage

BTC arbitrage is very risky due to transaction times, volatility, and volume. And it's often not worth it depending on your region due to potentially high fees. It's not something I would recommend to people who have never done it before.

As an experiement, go on to a site like CoinMarketCap. Click on BTC->Markets. Sort by price. It looks like a ton of arbitrage opportunities, right? Well... now try to take advantage of it.

ilitiriton The ABC conjecture has still not been proved

> It's journalism at it's worst.

Interesting letter. I am aware that there was resistance from certain figures because of its portrayal of Yau Shing-Tung, but I had no idea Richard Hamilton sent them a letter about it (it's been 10 years since I read this article).

However, IMO the piece is still worth reading (along with the objections...) in terms of how it gave exposure to solution of the Poincare conjecture.

edit: Heh... it seems I should have followed the developments more closely. It turns out the Cao–Zhu paper was revised that same year:

> On December 3, 2006, Cao and Zhu retracted the original version of their paper, which was titled “A Complete Proof of the Poincaré and Geometrization Conjectures — Application of the Hamilton–Perelman Theory of the Ricci Flow”[2] and posted a revised version, renamed, more modestly, "Hamilton–Perelman's Proof of the Poincaré Conjecture and the Geometrization Conjecture".[21] Rather than the claim of the original abstract, "we give a complete proof", suggesting the proof is by the authors, the revised abstract states: "we give a detailed exposition of a complete proof". The authors also took out the phrase "crowning achievement" from the abstract.

ilitiriton The ABC conjecture has still not been proved

Things that provide no insight now may have theoretical or even practical applications in the future.

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/116627/useless-math-that-...

I'm not saying that this is the same of Mochizuki's work, but I would not dismiss it solely on the basis that it's "useles".

ilitiriton The ABC conjecture has still not been proved

Every time I read about Perelman and the Poincare conjecture, I feel compelled to link this excellent piece from the New Yorker:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/28/manifold-desti...

It even has a Wikipedia article on it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold_Destiny

ilitiriton Call options used to bet that Bitcoin will go over $50K next year

I personally don't believe in BTC's future in terms of tech. It has already played its hand - see the entire crypto space - so I'm under no illusion about its limited potential (in its current form). However, it has made me a fair bit of money, and I feel that it could possibly still make me more in the short term. I've already withdrawn my initial investment and the capital I'm using to explore this space is basically "profit" from those same initial investments so whatever I lose is basically only opportunity costs.

ilitiriton Languages for online betting: an investigation of Go, Erlang, and Elixir

There are companies that do a combination of things: Real-time trading (manual, semi, auto), pricing (model-driven, or sourced), risk-management, etc. They can either provide their own prices using models, or apply prices from partners. The business is usually separated into discrete units which feed into each other, and outward to partners/customers.

Yes, exchanges support real-time trading, but not every company has all their models running in modern paradigms. It's not uncommon to find companies that run multiple VMs for the sole purpose of... running Excel calculations. Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like. A server that has a several, multi-meg Excel files in memory with external APIs that plug values into cells and read outputs. As I said, within the grand scheme of things, for sports who still run on legacy models, this is a major bottleneck. Remember, many of these companies were started in the 90s, and that's when these models were created. The people who created them are usually swallowed up by the financial industry and now come with a hefty price tag. So the question for the business is "Do we spend millions recreating these proven models and run the risk of them failing? Or do we simply just add another VM?"

At my company things have slowly started changing, but the new models (written in F#) still need a lot of work.

ilitiriton Languages for online betting: an investigation of Go, Erlang, and Elixir

As someone who works in this industry, the biggest issues are (besides like stuff like match-fixing and illegal internal trading/leaks):

1. Highly domain-specific legacy pricing model running on... Excel spreadsheets. These present huge performance bottle-necks and aren't easy to migrate.

2. Reliance on 3rd Party data. Did a scout just send incorrect data? Did their device disconnect? Did they rollback the wrong information? Is the source lagging behind the TV/online feed? GGs. Suspend the game and refund bets.

The tooling really isn't that important. Scalable software can be written in any software, and while some languages do make things simpler, often you can just also find a suitable paradigm (or middleware) that can provide similar advantages. Having said that, we do make extensive use of RabbitMQ (which is written in Erlang) in our environment. I suppose this is also just an example of my previous point though...

ilitiriton Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

Is that really a "radical" policy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_for_drug_tr...

ilitiriton How do you prove that Earth is older than 10,000 years?

It seems that in his view, simplicity and "usefulness" are correlated, and that's what is important. In fact, he says the "simpler an explanation, the more useful it is". The mechanics of an omnipotent being are infinitely more complex than evolution, so I'm not sure that it would qualify as a "useful" explanation, at least according to his perspective.

ilitiriton A Minimalist Guide to SQLite

Sqlite is great as data store for storing JSON. We receive realtime data from different sources in JSON format. I dump the raw data into MongoDB, but it's still not very easy to query. This is where Sqlite comes in handy. I import the data straight into Sqlite from MongoDB which then enables me to run SQL queries using the JSON1 extension. Currently I'm using it to store data that drive feed simulators. We can extract the data using queries like:

  SELECT json_extract(RawData, '$.sourceId') SourceId
  , json_extract(RawData, '$.messageId') MessageId
  , json_extract(RawData, '$.message') Message
  , json_extract(RawData, '$.message.parties[0].name') Party
  , json_extract(RawData, '$.timestamp') Timestamp
  FROM RawFeed
  JOIN Source
    ON SourceId = Source.Id
  WHERE Source.Name = 'Foo Company'
  ORDER BY Timestamp

ilitiriton Why Are Hearing Aids So Expensive?

Going by what I've heard from a relative who is an MD, the question is rather why low-quality hearing aids are expensive. The thing is, the average consumer doesn't know much about these things and how they are supposed to work. What the general sound quality should be. How long are they supposed to last etc. So you have loads of companies selling low-quality hearing aids at the same cost as the good quality ones. The consumers don't really know better because they are relying on the word of their doctors or consultants. Surprisingly, not many doctors know much about this industry either.

ilitiriton Two scientists quietly revolutionising the study and practice of interrogation

To me - and this is completely anecdotal - is that there usually seems to be 3 criteria that strangers look for before they open up. They are somewhat overlapping, at least in the way that you can use these them to your advantage: Empathy; being impressionable; appearing weak/ignorant in one or more aspects relating to the topic.

So, you don't ask what they did or why they did it. You ask about topics that they may have led them to doing something that they did. Better still, don't ask. Lead the conversation in a way that will make the question will seem more natural.

Then you respond with something like:

"Wow! How on Earth did you handle that? (Impressionable) If that were me (Empathy) I would have [something outlandish]!!! (Weakness/Ignorance)". So now you seem relateable, and somewhat flawed, even moreso than they themselves. Often, they will try to "teach" you about why your reaction is bad, and what a better reaction would be - often with a "real life" scenario as an example.

"Aaah! That's pretty smart! (Impressionable) But I'm not sure I'd be able to handle it as well as that (Weakness)"

From here they feel they are in a position of power. Especially if you seem more impressed by some more arbitrary aspect, than concerned about the more obvious implications (Weakness/Ignorance). They often open up more about other things they've done, which may or not be related to the original question. But you're still gaining their trust. Eventually you subtly stopped being impressed by what they are saying. And this is just by body language, not words. Your eyes don't light up when they are "expected" to (Impressionable). You don't smile wryly before they end their sentences as if to say you know you know where it's heading (Empathy).

The other person starts thinking:

"Why is he/she impressed any more? Is it because they're really that ignorant? Or maybe what I'm saying isn't really that impressive to them? Perhaps I should fill in more details, and maybe I'll tell about some other thing I did"

Now I'm not saying this will work interviewing terrorists/criminals. But this has been my own experience for as long as I can remember. People tend to tell me their darkest secrets (even without me asking) within about 30 minutes of meeting me for the first time, especially when alcohol is involved. I rarely ask directly. People just end up telling me things.

ilitiriton Don't mine Bitcoin, mine Altcoins

You can't "mine" using Proof-Of-Stake (POS). I don't know which algorithm they will choose when/if they eventually do switch to POS, but one method is that the wallets that store the most ETH have a higher chance of being selected to perform some inexpensive computation. You get paid for performing these computations.

So to answer your question, you could potentially use your old PC to host your POS wallet and earn ETH. The amount you will earn will depend on how much you currently have and how long your are connected to the network.

ilitiriton Don't mine Bitcoin, mine Altcoins

Nicehash is slightly more stable but you end up in a similar situation since the price per Mhash fluctuates in the same way. If you examine the profitability chart it's all based on historical prices:

https://www.nicehash.com/?p=calc

That's usually fine for the bigger, more established alts (since the known alts use the known algos - DaggerHashimoto, Equihash etc), but not for the alts which can potentially generate the most profit in shorter periods of time. So if a coin that uses some obscure algo gets pumped for a few days it's going to skew the chart.

The real benefit of Nicehash is that it's more accessible for people who are new to crypto mining. If you work out the numbers, mining ETH (for example) directly is almost always more profitable than using Nicehash. Nicehash is just simpler and more convenient.

ilitiriton Don't mine Bitcoin, mine Altcoins

The problem with these exchanges is you can never be sure what your actual return is going to be (this is true to an extent for all coins, but the effect is not as big for the more established coins that you mine directly).

Suppose there's altcoin called ALT which can be mined very quickly and is worth let's say $0.00001 per coin. Mining a block takes 5 minutes and the payout is 10000 ALT coins or whatever. The 10000 coins are distributed across the pool, and you determine that on your setup you should be able to mine $3 USD in terms of BTC a day on the pool. You get wind that ALT is about to get pumped hard, which means your potential earnings could reach $20 per day (or whatever).

What's the problem (ignoring exchange fees) with going "all in"?

Firstly, ALT coin may have a confirmation time of several hours or even days. You can't sell unconfirmed coins.

Secondly, the exchange has to sell these coins elsewhere (usually another exchange). Because of the low value, this other exchange may have a rule that you can only sell in batches of 1 million. So even though you've mined X amount of coins, you still have to wait for the batch to be fulfilled.

Thirdly once the batch is fulfilled, you still have to wait for it to be sold on the other exchange.

And finally, the BTC <-> ALT exchange rate may fluctuate independently of known factors.

By the time this happens, your ALT coin will almost certainly be worth a different value to what they were when you first mined them.

It could be worth more or less, but the point is you can't efficiently forecast on most alt-coins when you use exchanges like Zpool and NiceHash. This is why they usually have several values for your "earnings" - Total, Unconfirmed, Confirmed, and Sold. It's also why "profit switching" algorithms and techniques are kind of a silly idea for most alt-coins - you cannot calculate profit based on current market values.

ilitiriton Don't mine Bitcoin, mine Altcoins

You can mine alt-currencies on some exchanges which pay out in bitcoin. This allows you to "mine" bitcoin on unfeasible hardware.

I used zpool.ca for a while when Blake2s alts were highly profitable. I don't know what the best alt-coins are these days. It tends to fluctuate quite rapidly.

ilitiriton Metal Slug 2 – reducing the slowdown (2015)

The slowdown in MSlug2 was basically a bug. The game is "supposed" to slow down in some situations, but not as much as it does in the original.

ilitiriton Show HN: Musikcube, a terminal-based music player, library, and streaming server

Really easy fix.

https://github.com/clangen/musikcube/issues/120

That section of code should be refactored though.

ilitiriton Show HN: Musikcube, a terminal-based music player, library, and streaming server

This is a Show HN...

And before you ask, I'm actually not only preparing the issue details, I'm looking to fix it myself.

ilitiriton Show HN: Musikcube, a terminal-based music player, library, and streaming server

Added a folder location, then it crashed. Now it crashes on launch:

http://imgur.com/a/Sb2hQ

http://imgur.com/a/fKUXO