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levi_n

101 karma · joined June 5, 2016

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levi_n··on Oracle, it's time to free JavaScript
Lawnmower is gonna lawn mow
levi_n··on What we know about the xz Utils backdoor that almost infected the world
Im curious as to why they picked the commit cadence they did. Why do this over the course of two years and not, say 8 months or 15 months? After committing the first patch, why did they wait x days/weeks/months to commit the second? Were they timing the commits off of release schedules, following some predetermined schedule, or something else?
levi_n··on The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents
When I worked at Qualcomm the inside joke was that Qualcomm is really a law firm that also employs several thousand engineers.
levi_n··on No-Bullshit Games
Thank you for the Disc Brick recommendation. A no bullshit brick-breaker type game was literally what I was looking for.
levi_n··on NPM won't publish packages containing the word keygen
My favorite is Fark's word-changing filters and their unintended side effects. The no-no words are scanned across whitespace and reversed, and any hits get translated to the approved word. "Shit" becomes "Shiat", the N word becomes "nubian", etc

Every so often someone will find their sentence that contains something like "I will have ham or egg in my sandwich" becomes "I will have ham onaibun my sandwich"

levi_n··on Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way
I paid ~$2k (with insurance) for 8 weeks of therapy, with one 45 minute session every weekday.
levi_n··on Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way
I have ADHD, major depression, and I did 8 weeks of TMS therapy last year. In the end it did help my depression some, but it isn't a night-and-day difference.

It did, however, completely change how I see myself, to the point where I feel disconnected and separate from the person in my memory. Likewise, my sense of empathy and how I few the world is completely different, for the better.

I plan to do another round this summer.

levi_n··on Rust Books Grouped by Level
My only quibble with Zero to Production in Rust is that I assumed the title meant "this is a good book for someone who has zero knowledge of Rust". The Amazon page for it also says "Zero To Production is the ideal starting point for your journey as a Rust backend developer," further implying the reader can have zero knowledge of Rust beforehand. The book's "Who this is for" section contradicts this directly by stating (paraphrased) that this book is for someone who has already read The Rust Handbook and is familiar with the basics of Rust syntax and patterns.
levi_n··on Another scientific body has debunked bitemark analysis
"2biteencryption", name checks out
levi_n··on Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?
Anecdotal datapoint to add to the heap: a friend had someone show up to their first day of 100% remote work who was decidedly NOT the person that they interviewed. Obviously that was also their last day.
levi_n··on Asus put out like 40 models of a laptop called the “Eee PC” (2021)
I still have my Eee PC [1]. Haven't used it in forever and a day, but it was awesome at the time, especially with the EeePC specific linux distros that were available at the time.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/XY1IayV.jpg

levi_n··on Ask HN: What has melted your brain recently?
That graphic shows ~44k HNWI emigrating, and ~20k HNWI immigrating. I skimmed the underlying text and didn't see an explanation, so are we to assume the other ~24k HNWI immigrated to the rest of the world's countries in relatively low numbers per country?

I suppose another answer might be that it's easier to track HNWI leaving countries than it is to track them entering other countries?

levi_n··on You need to know what right-half-plane zeros are
Thank you for this article and the follow up. The information is fascinating, and I eagerly await your next installments.
levi_n··on Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider
> ...than by handing that money to the old guard which has produced nothing of significance for the last two generations.

Genuine question from an ignorant layperson: was confirming the existence of the Higgs boson not significant?

levi_n··on Decision: Red Hat, Inc. vs. Daniel Pocock / Software Freedom Institute SA
Incase anyone else was curious why this went to arbitration [0]:

"Disputes relating top-level domain name names may be settled outside of court under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. (UDRP) as adopted by ICANN. Arbitrator in such cases will be appointed by one of the ICANN approved dispute resolution providers.

Red Hat approached the US-based National Arbitration Forum on January 17, 2022. NAF released a document stating that Red Hat’s sole demand was for the transfer of the rights to wemakefedora.org. The reason is that the company’s trademark, the “Fedora”, has been used in the man’s name."

[0] https://bit.ly/3u9tnnP

levi_n··on Fixing memory leaks in popular Python libraries
The way the original try/except was structured meant the close() for the socket would never get called, so py-amqp holds onto the reference indefinitely, preventing the garbage collector from doing it's thing.
levi_n··on Numerics applied to Casimir geometry generates intersection with Alcubierre warp
To your point, even if the theoretical drive is feasible but limited to sub C speeds, a drive that requires zero propulsion mass and where the contents of the bubble don't feel any acceleration would be absolutely huuuuuge for manned space flight.
levi_n··on Don't send your Google phone in for warranty repair/replacement
Given I don't have much experience with the Google ecosystem, how does one know which photos were accessed?

(Not calling her account into question, just curious)

levi_n··on Helion
IIRC, ITER wont be fully operational until 2035, and will only ever be a research reactor. Even if it can produce net energy (I'm skeptical), it's cost and size are way up there.

Even if Helion is behind the tokamaks, perhaps this play is more about reaching an economically viable reactor design? Not first to fusion, but first to scalable fusion?

levi_n··on Learnfun and playfun: a general technique for automating NES games (2013)
Tom's YT channel [0] is a rabbit hole of awesome engineering.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/c/suckerpinch/videos

levi_n··on Hosting SQLite Databases on GitHub Pages
Depending on how often you need to write, you could use a CI pipeline on a cron to collect your updates, add them to a the sqlite file and commit the changes.
levi_n··on Ask HN: What Are You Learning?
This is really cool, and I can really relate to being in a rut. Thank you so much for sharing.
levi_n··on A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
You miss 100% of the shots you don't take

-- Wayne Gretzky -- Michael Scott

levi_n··on Alpha-Gal Syndrome
12 years on, does she still have reactions if she eats beef? Does she (or maybe did she) have any reactions to other mammal proteins (milk, pork, etc)?
levi_n··on If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel (2014)
Love the Female/Male symbols for Venus and Mars, nice touch
levi_n··on Launch HN: Hedgehog (YC S21) – Cryptocurrency Portfolio Manager
Love the look and feel of the site.

I had trouble connecting to Coinbase at first, as I guess the key I generated had too few permissions. It would be helpful if the modal specified exactly which API key permissions were required.

levi_n··on Hypermodern Python
I'd love to more about how you are using lxd
levi_n··on Diving into Go by building a CLI application
While following along locally I got an unhelpful error the first time I ran the program. Ultimately the bug was that I was using a lowercase 'o' instead of a zero '0' in the url builder. The API returned a 404, but the code ignored that and tried to marshal the html error response to the struct and failed.

For your guide, it would be helpful to include a status code check on the response and returning a helpful error message around that.

levi_n··on What’s New in Python 3.8
Though not a language feature per say, I would love if the language would take on the packaging ecosystem and deliver a ground up approach that isn't just a kludge on a kludge on a kludge.
levi_n··on Google’s GDPR Workaround
Another American here:

This definitely happens with some narratives. For instance, some news outlets report that some parts of Europe are no-go zones for non Muslims, where Sharia reigns.

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