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jand

406 karma · joined November 7, 2014

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jand··on Discovering which parts of the brain are engaged when coding
OK, this may be news not intended for me, but can you help me out?

> What the group wanted to find out was whether the brain signals seen in their study when participants were examining pieces of code resembled the patterns of activation observed when neural networks analyzed the same piece of code. And the answer they arrived at was a qualified yes.

Does this allow meaningful conclusions? I have difficulties to decide whether the article tries make a statement or tries to promote a hypothesis.

jand··on Where has the passive radar code gone?
It would be naive under the assumption that the intended goal is secrecy. If the goal would be simply "legislative control over a subject in case of unforseen events" it works exactly as desired.
jand··on Show HN: A new search engine UX I've been working on in my free time
As this line of comments indicates, there is no consensus upon whether instagram is worth having or not.

Why not let the user decide, which columns to show? You could start with a default, non-intrusive set which the user can expand as liked.

jand··on Turns out half the internet has a Single-Point-of-Failure called Cloudflare (2020)
> This seems like it's some 'muh free speech' post from this new account in response to Cloudflare removing KF's services...

You read over the publishing date (2020).

jand··on Ask HN: How do Glassdoor type websites verify employee status?
What harm would braggy kiddies do?

I see the greatest potential harm in companies trying to "polish" their cracked external image. And for them, "employee-status" verification should be easy to circumvent.

edit: Even disgruntled employee has a legitimate contribution to make.

jand··on Ask HN: How do Glassdoor type websites verify employee status?
My p.o.v. as a user:

I do not sign up at such sites. I do not make relevant decisions based on such websites.

I would be absolutely OK with complete lack of verification.

Again, user perspective: You will never get a grasp of the exact work culture at some potential employer by reading subjective comments. As a user i simply take in hints of red flags which i would validate or negate personally by having a chat with some of the folks.

jand··on Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A...

EU Directive 2009/136/EC

jand··on The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats
> Doesn't the system eat itself in the end?

Well, it does not as long as the (predictable?) self-censorship sets in. After some time users know not to post pics of vegetable soup if those pics tend to get misclassified.

jand··on The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats
While i get the sentiment, you should check the mentioned penalties for abusing the system (once known) before jumping to action.
jand··on How and why I built Japan Dev
And: In order to keep the spirit of protecting the creditors of GmbH/UG - while having only to deposit 1 EUR to the UG (haftungsbeschränkt), the UG has to "warn" all potential business partners by carrying the "(haftungsbeschränkt)" (limited liability) suffix as part part of the company name in all written communication (roughly).
jand··on U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general
This article presents some thoughts on how, if and when the US should or could strike (back) in space after summarizing the alleged current space combat capability developments of other nations.

You can easily replace "US" with other nations and the target audience with their citizens and allies.

By this logic, every nation needs to ramp up space combat capabilities, because their perceived or real enemies could also do so. This train of thought leads to a cold war 'space edition'.

In the long run it will boil down to disaster only preventable by some courageous individuals doing 'the right thing at the right time'. We should better begin stockpiling characters like Stanislav Petrov [1] to make sure we haven't run out of those by then.

Good luck to all of us.

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

jand··on Minimum Viable Secure Product
IPs are personal data.

see https://gdpr.eu/eu-gdpr-personal-data/ section "Identifiable individuals and identifiers"

jand··on Android phones are sending significant amount of user data with no opt-out [pdf]
> System apps on several handsets upload details of user interactions with the apps on the handset (what apps are used and when, what app screens are viewed, when and for how long).

I am too far away from Android development to make any claim about what "app screens" are. Is that android-lingo? Could someone please clarify?

jand··on Closing The Portal App
Enumeration and more - as far as i understood.

My evil website can no longer access the top secret stuff you are developing on localhost.

My evil website can no longer enumerate the http servers in your local LAN.

jand··on 14kb WASM game written in D
This uses webgl, right? Maybe feedback to the user in case of missing support would be useful.

Else folks get stuck at "Initializing..." with an exception in the console. Not everybody checks the console.

(TypeError: can't access property "createBuffer")

Edit: stuck at "Initiating..."

jand··on WhatsApp – Security of End-to-End Encrypted Backups [pdf]
I am neither the authority to define "encryption at rest", nor am i saying "encryption at rest" is good wording in this case.

But from my understanding, "encryption at rest" is not disk encryption.

If you have a database with disk encryption, once the disk crypto key is entered an attacker could try to "do hacker stuff" and exfiltrate the WAL files.

If you have "encryption at rest", the WAL files are written encrypted and are decrypted on read. An attacker may get your WAL files, but they are still encrypted.

jand··on Paid influencers must label some posts as ads, German court rules
I did not read netcan's statement as the thesis that there is no legislation regarding "big corps" in the EU. I read it as a statement about speed and willingness regarding the establishment of new laws or law changes.

Whether the statement i interpreted is true i cannot tell, but it would be interesting to have data points on it.

jand··on Australian Police get online account takeover, data disruption powers
>> How is adding or altering data different than planting evidence?

> Does this break the chain of trust of evidence? How can any evidence, therefore, be admissible?

Just as advocatus diaboli: If you add a message to a bigger scale drug supplier in the name of one client, you could request an earlier delivery to some location of your choice. This would add content, but not plant any evidence - as the evidence would be the supplier handing you "the keys to the truck". I know nothing about australian law, but i am tempted to think that courts could burn serious time on such a case.

Of course this is dangerous b.s. to have in legislation.

jand··on Google infringed on five Sonos patents, according to preliminary ruling
8,588,949 - Method and apparatus for adjusting volume levels in a multi-zone system

9,195,258 - System and method for synchronizing operations among a plurality of independently clocked digital data processing devices

9,219,959 - Multi-channel pairing in a media system

10,209,953 - Playback device

10,439,896 - Playback device connection

jand··on Facebook took our election ad money then bulk-deleted our pages
> It’s not that simple, behind the company are people.

I get your sentiment, really. But where is the tipping point? When does it become the responsibility of an employee to quit? Which atrocity has to be committed after which i cannot claim personal innocence as an employee? (in a general sense, not only facebook)

jand··on My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”
> That's difficult, as technology is here mostly because of greed.

I am not sure if by technology you mean products or ideas. In case of the latter, that does not sound right. Smart driven persons do not have to be greedy in order to devote their live to something.

jand··on All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot
Not a github user (*lab), also not a lawyer, so please excuse my ignorance.

As this boils down to legal arguments, are there any clauses (maybe disputed) in the ToS allowing github/MS usage of public repos for such purpose?

Would it even be legally possible to override a software license as a repo provider like "by using this service, you agree to..."?

jand··on Web developer's guide to AVIF images
note for the next person, i had to search:

Firefox AVIF experimental support is disabled by default but can be activated via "image.avif.enabled" flag.

jand··on Huawei was able to eavesdrop on Dutch mobile network KPN: Report
This article contains no new revelations on top of previous articles:

"Huawei’s says it never acted inappropriately by abusing its position in the Netherlands. KPN says in a response that it has no indications that lines were tapped or that customer data was stolen."

jand··on A campaign to make environmental destruction an international crime
@light bulb cartel:

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

jand··on Ask HN: Does Linux kernel covered by unit tests?
see: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/dev-tools/kunit/index...

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/tools/testing/...

jand··on Navy Footage of Alleged UFO Confirmed to Be Real by Pentagon
The term "alledged UFO" from my point of view implies something else than the technical term "unidentified flying object", more precise: Aliens.

Short version:

DOD says footage is real. Nothing more, nothing less.

Jeremy Corbell, a filmmaker, is the only one putting the footage into "alien" territory.

Why is this on HN?

jand··on Systemd Inhibitor Locks Deep Dive
Here you go:

https://blog.golang.org/using-go-modules

Your v5 question should be answered by "part 4":

https://blog.golang.org/v2-go-modules

jand··on 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online
Well, you did not mention a password before. With a password, you introduce a new 'security feature' which changes your argument in a non-trivial way.

This might work better than your proposal before.

jand··on 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online
I stand by your SSN only for social security point.

But the rest sounds plain wrong to me.

Your phone might get stolen, your name might change due to marriage, your address might change because you moved/got evicted. What now?

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