richarme

This was already a thing almost 3 decades ago. Active Desktop [0] was just a web page displayed instead of the wallpaper image.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop

In my personal experience basically all spam calls in France come from a fixed set of number prefixes. [0]

So phone companies could just offer to block those prefixes - it would be a trivial solution to the problem. But it's not an option [1], so either they make good money from those calls, or there's some other hurdle or legal issue.

Either way the new law could (in addition to making it illegal for companies to make spam calls) also simply have mandated that network operators block the known ones. Too bad.

[0] https://lemagdelaconso.ouest-france.fr/dossier-2418-demarcha...

[1] https://communaute.orange.fr/t5/mon-telephone-par-internet-e...

Cool to see the Invoke getting mentioned!

I was the engineering lead on that product, and built a SW platform from scratch for it (Microsoft provided an SDK to Cortana which they developed in parallel.)

The internal build could actually run Cortana, Alexa and Google Assistant simultaneously and you could e.g. set an alarm with one of them and query it with another, and they could interrupt each other based on priority. Obviously nobody wanted that feature, but it was hella cool that it worked. Oh, and you could make Skype calls from across the room, and the microphone array lived up to Skype's tough certification requirements which took weeks of testing in Microsoft's anechoic chamber for the DSP/algorithm team to fine tune.

I tried to push for open-sourcing the platform but it was tricky because 1) the director of engineering in Harman didn't know what open source meant and for a hardware focused business to understand the value was a hard sell, 2) it used a HW module that came with a SW stack I mostly got rid off but a few parts were remaining that would need to be replaced which would require additional resources, 3) I was burned out at that point and had limited energy left to fight the good fight. Really too bad, it could have been a cool voice agent development platform, and I honestly think it would have sold in large volumes as a developer-friendly device.

Glad you like it, sorry about the remaining Bluetooth bugs nobody got around to fix, since it basically flopped instantly.

The technical term for this is multispectral imaging. Lots of applications across science and industry.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multispectral_imaging

window.top.location = window.location

Disagree. I think adults with ADHD are well aware that they are not "normal" with respect to many of the symptoms, even if they don't know it's due to ADHD. At least that's my personal experience.

Few examples off the top of my head:

- being unable to pay bills/fines on time even with plenty of money in the bank.

- being physically unable to keep sitting in a chair after a while in meetings.

It's easy to see that most people around you don't exhibit such traits.

Nit: Google's project was called Soli.

This is achieved using Acoustic Echo Canellation (AEC). This essentially subtracts the output of the speaker as well as reverberations from the room from the microphone input. Here's a youtube video explaining the basic principle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJKGrheOoY4

Source: worked on 3rd party Alexa speakers

I think it's this one:

https://opg.optica.org/jlt/viewmedia.cfm?uri=jlt-38-10-2741&...

Quantum Limits in Optical Communications

Konrad Banaszek, Ludwig Kunz, Michał Jachura, and Marcin Jarzyna

Eww, I wasn't even aware of that. I thought the filename UI issue was actually kind of a subtle fail and I was proud to find it, but that one is terrible.

Here's another blast from the past.. List of ICQ exploits on neworder.box.sk, the website I learned my first 1337 h4xx0r skills from: https://web.archive.org/web/20040829081726/http://neworder.b...

Good memories from a more innocent time. The ICQ client truncated long filenames in the UI, so you could send "image.jpg (50 spaces) .exe" which would open an embedded picture and install a back-door while just seeming like regular picture.

I do miss casually texting with people on the computer rather than the phone, and I don't think it's only due to nostalgia or having more leisure time back then:

- If someone was online, it would typically be a good time for a casual, interactive chat. Texting someone on the phone is (at least for me) rarely "live", because it usually happens at an inconvenient time for one of the parties.

- Much faster to type, and easier to copy-paste stuff from other places. Can communicate almost as effortlessly as a spoken conversation.

- Easier to multi-task in case of a slow reply.

I don't enjoy texting on the phone. Millennial logging out for the last time. AFK BRB.

Is your mother tongue Finnish? I always found Japanese to have somewhat similar sounds. And as a bonus hint, you're missing a "the" in your first sentence ;)

Ah yes, absolutely agree. You were referring to the EU as a whole, and I was specifically thinking about the parliament.

I think you're probably right, but sometimes I wonder if a bit of distance can be a good thing. Perhaps a slight distance can make populism less viable while still being effective at representing the low-pass filtered will of the people in a sense.

And perhaps the lower public mindshare might help insulate against people with ambitions but not people's best interest at heart. Or this is crazy talk, not sure which one it is :)

I'm building something that solves this exact problem, and I'll have an alpha version ready soon. Drop me a mail at marc@ my username .net, if you're interested. I'd also really like to have a chat about your use cases if you're up for it.

Cheers, Marc

I'm building something that solves this problem. I'd love to hear more about your use case, is it something you'd like to discuss or join a beta down the line?

If so, reach out at marc@ at my username .net

Apparently, people are on a spectrum when it comes to this [1]. Super interesting!

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/science/minds-eye-mental-...

REM for comments

My master's thesis from 2008 [0] gives some insight into the early design and strategic considerations (from a Nokia perspective) behind eSIM technology, in case anyone's curious.

[0] http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/pubdb/edoc/imm6812.pdf

Indeed. Cell phones are by definition location tracking devices so data can be routed to the right place. Ukrainian mobile network operators should be able to figure out the exact movement of every single soldier carrying a regular phone, and selectively block service at opportune moments. More trivially, wouldn't they be using russian SIM cards?

I think you are right regarding limiting English teaching to prevent the population from consuming "enemy" media. Definitely also happening in China where they massively cracked down on English language tutoring two years ago. Probably due to the governments ongoing effort to ramp up nationalism and spread increasingly improbable narratives about current events and history.

> Also, there are multiple u-boot binaries with separate environments. It could be done for redundancy or different modes. I’m not sure.

This is typically done in order to be able to safely update the u-boot bootloader, retaining the ability to boot the previous version if the upgrade fails. Also called A/B firmware update. The previous bootloader stage ("SBL" or "TZ", depending on secure boot mechanism) might check a flag in a configuration partition to see which loader should be started and whether a previous boot to that loader was attempted, and will revert back to the previously active one after an upgrade that fails to boot up, or fails to pass secure boot integrity checks.

A failure could for instance happen if the power drops while writing the update to the u-boot partition. Without such a mechanism, an update failure would brick the device. Alternatives are "never update the bootloader", or "hope for the best".

Your comment is factually untrue. 17 people died yesterday. Didn't have this high number of deaths since last winter before vaccines, and from the chart deaths seems to have increased 10-fold compared to a month or two ago. I'd like to see a source for your claim that numbers in hospitals are decreasing.

In my school's case it was 'passwd'. No cracking needed to obtain that one though, the admin had it written on a post-it on his monitor.

What you could do was embedding the BO exe inside another exe disguised as a jpg picture. When executed it would extract and run BO in the background and also display a jpg. ICQ conveniently didn't display the end of long filenames, so you could send it as "xyz.jpg[20spaces].exe" and it would seem like you just shared a picture. Worked like a charm the one time I tested this technique on an unsuspecting friend during a LAN party.

K&R is a common nickname for the book "The C programming language" by Kernighan and Ritchie, and a reference to the authors:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language

Looking for for a co-founder that can help create a business around the concept, ideally with marketing/branding/social media chops | REMOTE / GLOBAL (I’m currently in Denmark).

I’m building a product to replace Google Photos/Drive/Contacts for people who won’t/can’t store their data in the cloud. Self-hosting is currently a pain with poor UX and more worries about security and backups than most people want to deal with. I’m well on my way to creating an MVP proving that an alternative is possible, and just as easy and sleek as mainstream solutions.

I'm a sw/systems architect with professional experience in consumer electronics, and have the ability to develop the product on my own if need be.

Email: username @ gmail

Nokia phones used to have a feature called "AutoSMS" which would silently send back crash reports and various usage metrics. Of course this feature was never included in production releases, only for field/user testing. After product launch, feedback was gathered by surveys and crash reports from service centers. Obviously phones have always had the capability to send covert data, but back then it would have been utterly unacceptable. How times & business models have changed :(

Just a guess, but I would assume the term factory reset referred to clearing user settings before devices commonly had firmware update capabilities. So the legacy name should not be used to imply how the function should work in relation to firmware downgrade.

It's definitely those, and likely also a matter of national security: 3. The CIA doesn't get to know about the private lives of every state and military official and their families.