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lightbyte

1,727 karma · joined July 1, 2016

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lightbyte··on NASA completes full-power tests of small, portable nuclear reactor
I misunderstood what you were saying than, I thought you meant the rocket was exploding when it was already far into space away from Earth.
lightbyte··on NASA completes full-power tests of small, portable nuclear reactor
>If a rocket explodes with nuclear waste on board, the waste would spread over a large area.

Space is very big. Is it actually likely that said waste spreading would even be noticeable?

lightbyte··on AT&T updates firmware to block access to 1.1.1.1
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16727869
lightbyte··on Artificial intelligence is being used to predict gambler behaviour
I think it's more accurate if you replace it with "statistical analysis" instead. The computers are just computing very complex equations with your data as an input, but technically you could try doing it by hand.
lightbyte··on Two Koreas Agree to End War This Year, Pursue Denuclearization
The only thing that drives him is praise, seems like an easy way to suck up to him regardless of what he actually did
lightbyte··on 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies
>Some people who work in the city live in Pennsylvania.

That isn't really saying much. Easton, PA is almost exactly 90 min from NYC (though it has tolls).

lightbyte··on JavaScript Pattern Matching Proposal
Elixir's multiple function heads are just syntax sugar for a case statement.
lightbyte··on JavaScript Pattern Matching Proposal
However Erlang does include a static analyzer (dialyzer), which every production system should be using.
lightbyte··on AWS Route53 is down
Is it actually possible for any system to have 100% uptime? Or do they just use that as a marketing gimmick and give out credit whenever there is downtime.
lightbyte··on Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video
That's not how averages work. If 9 people have an IQ of 100 and 1 has an IQ of 10, the average is 91. 9/10 people are still above that.
lightbyte··on Just About Everyone with Bitcoin Is Lying to the IRS
>but there's a big difference between using legal loopholes that are available to you and deliberately not reporting things to pay fewer taxes.

Legally that's true, but I think the average person upset about this sees zero difference at all. Myself included, in my opinion using legal loopholes to get out of tax is morally just as bad, if not worse than deliberately not reporting things to pay fewer taxes.

lightbyte··on How North Korea’s Hackers Became Dangerously Good
Alternatively, save the following as a bookmark and click it on the article page:

    javascript:location.href='http://facebook.com/l.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)
lightbyte··on Show HN: IP Geolocation and Threat Data API
They aren't using a copy of Maxminds DB, see:

https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip2-precision-demo?ip=185.10.6... (No data)

https://api.ipdata.co/185.10.68.114 (lots of data)

lightbyte··on This is the new Gmail design
>A new snooze feature also lets you temporarily remove emails from your inbox until a certain time, so you can avoid certain email threads until you’re ready to reply.

How is this a feature worth developing? Is leaving the email unread until you want to read it too difficult? I can't think of a single use case for this.

lightbyte··on Credit Card Signatures Are About to Become Extinct in the U.S
I do this, and I was very confused to find out that if you try to do this at some government buildings (post office for me) they will completely reject your card and not let you use it.
lightbyte··on Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic
>it will protect someone who made a stupid mistake when they were younger having it haunt them for the rest of their careers or lives because it would otherwise have been the top hit when you google'd their name.

I don't agree that this will protect anyone, or that they need to be protected in the first place. This is just hiding the problem that someone would judge you for whatever the content is.

In my opinion the real solution here is to be more understanding to stupid things people have done in the past. Nobody is perfect, so why are you letting whatever that story on Google is affect your judgement of the person, assuming they learned from whatever it was.

lightbyte··on Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic
Why are we only forcing Google to remove this information when, as you say, it will still be in the public record. Why are journalists allowed to report on something that we aren't allowing a search engine to show?
lightbyte··on Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic
It sounds like the actual problem is

>This makes every person they might do business with to withdraw.

Hiding information from people sounds like a bandaid to the issue of people being overly judgemental. Maybe we need to be more accepting to rehabilitation.

lightbyte··on Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic
"Right to be forgotten" just sounds so ridiculous to me, how did this become a thing? Are people going to want to burn the history books at their local library next because it contains some information they don't like reminding people of?
lightbyte··on The FBI could have broken into San Bernadino shooter's phone without Apple
>I have a very close friend that works for the clandestine service, Mussolini.

Do you mean the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad? Mussolini was the name of the fascist Italian dictator.

lightbyte··on Why I Don't Sign Non-Competes
Sounds like this [1] case where a man received a credit card offer in the mail, re-wrote some terms and sent it back, and the bank accepted it without reading it. He did win the initial lawsuit from the bank.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/borrowin...

lightbyte··on Chinese Companies Are Buying Up Cash-Strapped U.S. Colleges
It's also a sure fire way for the public to have to spend even MORE on social programs since you'll be even more likely to reach retirement with zero money.

What good could possibly come from intentionally banning someone from saving for retirement?

lightbyte··on Chinese Companies Are Buying Up Cash-Strapped U.S. Colleges
We have a system like this in the US.

>The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program forgives the remaining balance on your Direct Loans after you have made 120 qualifying monthly payments under a qualifying repayment plan while working full-time for a qualifying employer.

[1] https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancell...

lightbyte··on Chinese Companies Are Buying Up Cash-Strapped U.S. Colleges
It was an episode of Last Week Tonight a few years ago. They noted that you can not buy individual debt, just large blocks of it. So HBO let them buy a large block of it and they told everyone they wouldn't be collecting.
lightbyte··on Sudan, last male northern white rhino, dies in Kenya
An invasive species is by definition something not native to an area.

>if Kudzu somehow (perhaps a form of geological change happens in thousands of years like a land bridge, or continental shift, or maybe the seeds are simply moved by some migrating population of bird) reached these new ecosystems by it's own means, it would still be an invasive species.

If the plant migrated on it's own than that area is now its native area.

lightbyte··on Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
2006 - AOL search data scandal [1]

>The release was intentional and intended for research purposes;

Sounds pretty damn close to this event with Facebook

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

lightbyte··on Ask HN: Why is PayPal's password length limit still a thing?
A common method I've seen to get around that is to first hash the password with something like SHA512 before applying bcrypt. This allows you to use longer passwords as well as setting them all to a constant length for bcrypt (which can potentially remove a ddos vector).
lightbyte··on Anti-Immigrant Ads Aimed at Tech Workers Are Running on Public Transit
I think the name of the organization that is running the ad is also a problem. They seem to be trying to co-opt the "progressive" label for something that is completely opposite to what it is supposed to (over the last few years) stand for.

I can't tell if they are intentionally doing that for nefarious reasons. Imagine seeing a "Conservatives for repealing the 2nd amendment" ad. I would assume they have some ulterior motives there.

lightbyte··on Tesla caused accident because “it didn't do what the driver requested”
Has the article been updated? I used google translate on it and the last line is

>According to him, the accident is not caused by the autopilot system, with which the car can be controlled without the help of a person. "This system was not in this car."

Seems this is just a regular crash caused by a regular driver in a regular car.

lightbyte··on 'Not welcome here': Amazon faces growing resistance to its second home
> If the state can just clamp down however it wants on private enterprise, then eventually all private enterprise becomes state enterprise. See China.

The leap you just made from cities not being able to be extorted by corporations for tax cuts to all private enterprise becoming state enterprise is so massive I have no idea how you even did it.

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