Hacker News Reader

ispon LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

Yes. Another example:

> If no wake word is detected, the audio is processed locally, promptly deleted, and is not transmitted to LG servers.

This statement could still be true when:

* The audio transmission is to non-LG servers (e.g., Alphonso).

* The audio isn't transmitted, but the text transcription is.

ispon Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

Broadly-defined "hostile acts" in UK national security law

Reasoning:

* Original report behind the article: "State Threats Legislation in 2024" [0], i.e., UK national security law

* Article focuses on an example from section 6.17 where developing an encrypted messenger app is given to show how broad the definition of "hostile act" is

* Snippets from the article:

> In his independent review of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act and the newly implemented National Security Act, Hall KC highlights the incredibly broad scope of powers granted to authorities. > > He warns that developers of apps like Signal and WhatsApp could technically fall within the legal definition of "hostile activity" simply because their technology "make[s] it more difficult for UK security and intelligence agencies to monitor communications."

[0] Original report: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69411a3eadb57...

ispon The history of Casio watches

The Casio CMD-40

https://old.reddit.com/r/casio/comments/15n9anq/did_we_all_f...

I am wearing one right now - it has been my daily driver for literally decades

(While it has VCR controls built-in, it can "learn" infrared frequencies for "new" inventions like DVD players - copying from an existing IR remote control. Surprisingly, still compatible with modern TVs - at least for basic functions like volume control.)

It was once "futuristic"; collectors now sell them as "retro" and "vintage"

ispon Replacing cron jobs with a centralized task scheduler

Supercronic: https://github.com/aptible/supercronic

Designed to run in a container, but should equally well work on a single host. However, no option for "high availability" running, where multiple hosts coordinate.

ispon Getting forked by Microsoft

I agree on both points, and with the earlier comment:

> I would love to know what processes MS is considering to prevent this in the future as well as what kind of auditing might be done to look at other projects that started as forks.

In response to:

> ... going to make sure we improve our processes to help us be better stewards in the open-source community.

ispon Getting forked by Microsoft

There are other possibilities, for example, the person may have thought that they were complying with the MIT licence by releasing the new project under the MIT licence too + including a mention of the original project in the README.

This, of course, is incorrect, and a cursory read of the very short licence text would show it to be incorrect.

But I, too, am strongly favouring Hanlon's razor.

ispon Can't Unsee (2021)

Previously:

Can't Unsee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27188989 - May 2021 (126 comments)

Find the Odd Disk - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43745868 - April 2025 (101 comments)

ispon Find the Odd Disk

> I'd like to see a similar study about which text was perfectly kerned, or by how many pixels an element was off-center or misaligned.

> Swear on me mum I saw a game about kerning and alignment years ago on HN

Can't Unsee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27188989 - May 2021 (126 comments)

ispon In 1870, Lord Rayleigh used oil and water to calculate the size of molecules

YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RST_ylwVrUw&t=1m27s

ispon How to Become a Registrar (2012)

- https://portal.whois.ax/register

- https://whois.ax/en/for-registrars/

"Apply as ax-registrar" - seems like .ax makes it especially easy. (This is news to me!)

ispon A Slower Speed of Light (2012)

Related game

Velocity Raptor (2012): https://www.testtubegames.com/velocityraptor.html

Previously discussed:

- "Velocity Raptor – an adventure in 2+1 dimensions" (Mar 2015, 39 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9247460

I am pleasantly surprised to see this still online (ported from Flash to HTML5).

ispon Open Sourcing DOS 4

2038, you say? If your calendar is based on Unix epoch time, then ensure that you have upgraded to 64-bit timestamps before then.

ispon A useful front-end confetti animation library

JavaScript has been about since 1995, and certainly by no later than the early 2000s was used for these animations.

ispon CSS for printing to paper

One of the other examples [0] features a "random number" which might not be entirely random [1].

[0] https://voussoir.net/writing/css_for_printing/#media_print

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...

ispon Boeing wants FAA to exempt MAX 7 from safety rules to get it in the air

- Today - "Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid-air window blowout" (47 comments, so far): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38889774

ispon Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid-air window blowout

Previous related(?):

- Yesterday (Friday 2024-01-05): "Boeing wants FAA to exempt MAX 7 from safety rules to get it in the air" (417 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38882358

ispon Harlequin: SQL IDE for Your Terminal

This is the problem that 'venv' (virtual environments) was designed to solve.

You can run pip in an isolated virtual environment, in user mode (not as root) - see https://gist.github.com/saurabhshri/46e4069164b87a708b39d947...

ispon Show HN: CuteVim – Portable Vim with a cute vimrc

The binary was compiled with Cosmopolitan Libc [0], and therefore the binary will execute natively on Linux, Mac, Windows, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and bare metal (BIOS boot).

I would call that portable.

[0] https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan

ispon "I just bought a 2024 Chevy Tahoe for $1"

Counterexample: https://gandalf.lakera.ai/

Discussed at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35905876 "Gandalf – Game to make an LLM reveal a secret password" (May 2023, 351 comments)

ispon "I just bought a 2024 Chevy Tahoe for $1"

This is a very good point, and why I would argue that a human-in-the-loop is essential to pre-review customer-facing output.

ispon "I just bought a 2024 Chevy Tahoe for $1"

A cautionary tale for why not to put unfiltered ChatGPT output directly to customers.

Nitter mirror: https://nitter.net/ChrisJBakke/status/1736533308849443121

Related - "New kind of resource consumption attack just dropped": https://twitter.com/loganb/status/1736449964006654329 | https://nitter.net/loganb/status/1736449964006654329

ispon Secureblue: Hardened Immutable Fedora Images

Ironically, ChromeOS is likely the most security-conscious OS available for developers. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37783081

However, it is definitely not the most privacy-focused OS, due to deep Google integration. This is the main reason that I haven't moved myself over to ChromeOS.

ispon click-web: Serve click scripts over the web (Python)

Context: "click" - "Command Line Interface Creation Kit" - easily create CLIs from Python code, via adding decorators: https://github.com/pallets/click

"click-web" in turn turns the click CLI app into a web app with one line of code.

ispon ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

Thanks - has this changed in the past few years?

A few years back (when I last looked in depth), it was very easy at every boot (not only first boot) to accidentally wipe everything - e.g., https://www.reddit.com/r/Crouton/comments/3be2su/reducing_ri...

I also remember that it made a loud beep on every boot!

ispon ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

Thanks - I had a very brief look at Chromium OS, but couldn't spot answers to:

(1) Is there a de-googled version of Chromium OS?

(2) Is there a non-hacky way to install it to a Chromebook?

ispon ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

ChromeOS is wildly underrated in general, not only for software development.

App sandboxing on standard (non-ChromeOS) Linux distributions is painful and finicky, while it "just works" on ChromeOS.

I wish there was a non-hacky way to use Chromebooks without a Google account.

The hacky options are:

- "Switch to dev mode". But I don't want to be prompted to factory reset each boot.

- "Create a dummy Google account and use that". But I don't want file syncing and tracking to reach Google at all, not even on a dummy account.

- "Create a dummy Google account and use guest mode". But I want persistent storage.

ispon The SHA256 for this sentence begins with: one, eight, two, a, seven, c and nine.

    $ echo -n $'It\'s not too difficult. All you need is to generate many variations of potential words and check whether the sha256 hash matches the wanted leading characters. For example, check this text.' | sha256sum
    182a7c9d2e99162688aaaf3f97638edd7d06f8d295e456c7bb1f16abf3a8f70c  -

ispon The SHA256 for this sentence begins with: one, eight, two, a, seven, c and nine.

    $ echo -n $'Was just verifying your tweet\'s hash, and then...omg!!! I couldn\'t believe what I realised. The SHA256 of THIS tweet starts with exactly the same 7 characters as your tweet\'s hash. What are the chances of that?' | sha256sum
    182a7c9c08b2f0f9333bf23828c5fbf47addf74e815b6a22ca10825450bc2ee1  -

Checks out(!)

Source: https://twitter.com/benoconnor/status/1701057433131421935

ispon The SHA256 for this sentence begins with: one, eight, two, a, seven, c and nine.

    $ echo -n "The SHA256 for this sentence begins with: one, eight, two, a, seven, c and nine." | sha256sum
    182a7c930b0e5227ff8d24b5f4500ff2fa3ee1a57bd35e52d98c6e24c2749ae0  -

ispon The IPv6 mess (2002)

archive.org has a snapshot from 2002-12-03, as further evidence that it was written on or around 2002-11. https://web.archive.org/web/20021203075817/https://cr.yp.to/...