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roxgib

373 karma · joined October 26, 2022

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roxgib··on 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients
Can't speak to pesticides, but lead would have been detected in blood tests
roxgib··on Waymo recalls software after two self-driving cars hit the same truck
This will be interesting to watch. If I bought an autonomous car and the autonomous mode was disabled for a few days or even weeks while a bug was fixed I can always fall back to driving it myself. If that's not possible (maybe because the car doesn't support it or I didn't have a licence or human drivers had been banned) and suddenly it's a whole different situation. Of course owning a car might become less common in itself, if you're just taking them like an Uber you can always switch to a different company.
roxgib··on Waymo recalls software after two self-driving cars hit the same truck
These cars can and do slow down or even stop and wait for human assistance in response to unexpected situations. I'm actually quite surprised this didn't trigger here, although we don't really know much about the specifics of the situation.
roxgib··on Waymo recalls software after two self-driving cars hit the same truck
But autonomous vehicles tend to perform best on freeways, that's where they are most likely to be allowed
roxgib··on Making a PDF that's larger than Germany
I'm a bit disappointed in myself that it didn't occur to me to submit my CV in A3.
roxgib··on Making a PDF that's larger than Germany
I was surprised that the underlying format doesn't implement compression (though I assume objects can be compressed). Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised since I often get text only PDFs with unreasonably large sizes.
roxgib··on Making a PDF that's larger than Germany
It will do that if it doesn't already know what direction you're travelling, which is usually because you've just activated navigation and you aren't moving yet. Unless I happen to know which direction north is or which way to towards my destination I'll just pick a random direction and it will adjust the route if I guessed wrong.
roxgib··on It's official: Smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries by 2027
I bought my iPhone XS at launch and it just reached 80%, although on the latest version of iOS 80% doesn't get you as far as it once did. I'm not a super heavy smartphone user though.
roxgib··on It's official: Smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries by 2027
Five years is much too short, although it's nice to see that it's measured from the date of sale stop rather than start.
roxgib··on It's official: Smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries by 2027
I'll be interested to know if it applies to things like AirPods, those would be more challenging to redesign with replaceable batteries (though obviously not impossible).
roxgib··on It's official: Smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries by 2027
What about AirPods and the like? I'm all for it with phones and everything else, but some devices are small enough that non-replaceable batteries might well be justified.
roxgib··on It's official: Smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries by 2027
Shouldn't that be "in vivo diagnostic medical devices"?
roxgib··on The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone (2018)
What's stopping you learning about philosophy now? Do you not have time, not know where to start, or just don't have the motivation any more?
roxgib··on The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone (2018)
I definitely agree, but I do think for a lot of subjects schools can provide benefits that are hard or impossible to find on your own, such as access to equipment and facilities, dialogue with peers and teachers, group activities, objective measurements of your progress etc.

Edit: the other commenter's example is a good one - you can certainly study medicine by yourself, but without access to labs, cadavers, and clinical training you'd have a tough time.

roxgib··on The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone (2018)
This is all undoubtably true, but are any of these worth four years and a ton of debt? Perhaps for some individuals, but across the board?
roxgib··on The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone (2018)
Credentialism and signalling are well established. At a broader level it's the old 'correlation vs causation' chestnut. Policymakers notice that people with education earn more, and decide that people should do more education so they too can earn more, but it mostly fails because it wasn't just the education that holds them back. Meanwhile, in a world where everyone is forced to see high school through to graduation the value of a diploma is diminished.

In tech, some companies are increasingly willing to captialise on this by expanding their hiring pool and benefiting from snapping up workers that other companies don't want to hire. So there's some hope it seems that we can break free from the credentialist world that we're in right now.

roxgib··on The unsolved mystery of the Brinks jewelry heist
The merchants are lucky no one got hurt. Imagine being a guard, thinking what you were guarding was worth x amount, and it was actually worth 10x that and you get killed or injured because the employer reasonably assumed there wasn't a big risk of getting jacked. This is totally on the merchants.
roxgib··on The unsolved mystery of the Brinks jewelry heist
I don't think that makes a difference, because the shipping company has accepted liability for the stolen goods. The company looked at the value of the goods, and decided on these particular security measures, knowing they'd be on the hook if anything got stolen. Shit got stolen, and now they're paying up. You can't treat every shipment like it's the Mona Lisa, so if there's only $8.7 million of merchandise, you do the maths and optimise accordingly.

Put another way, it was a business decision.

roxgib··on The unsolved mystery of the Brinks jewelry heist
I should really start reading the HN comments before opening the article, it would save a lot of time
roxgib··on Helplessness is not learned (2022)
Requiring them to make their beds doesn't strike me as unreasonably petty, and to the extent that they do make soldier follow petty rules it's often done with a purpose, usually to install obedience. Not that there aren't lots of dicks in the military, but you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the way organisations do things because often there's a good reason.
roxgib··on OpenAI came after our domain because we use GPT in it
"Plain" text can contain hidden characters such as zero width spaces which won't be visible to someone reading it but could be used for identification purposes.
roxgib··on 5G Rollout Disappointments
But it's not like they're dismantling the 4G infrastructure yet right? For a while at least I would have assumed people moving to 5G would steadily free up capacity on 4G bands.
roxgib··on Ask HN: Why are there no 5G USB-C dongles for laptops?
Previously a lot of carrier would lock down the ability to share a phone's internet connection. This was the main reason cellular hotspot devices existed. Nowadays people just use their phone are we're all better off. Would be great if Framework released a module for it though, it's slightly more convenient that connecting through your phone.
roxgib··on AI used photographer’s photos for training, then slapped him with an invoice
On the whole I like the idea that someone sending bogus legal demands has to bear some costs, as doubtful as it is that they'd actually pursue him for costs.
roxgib··on The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise
I suppose it depends on the field. A retired athlete probably still has a lot of useful things to say about their sport, whereas other fields really require you to stay up to date to be useful.
roxgib··on Supreme Court: Will Blocking on the SocialWeb Remain Legal for All in the USA?
It seems like platforms could solve this by making it possible for users to see the content of accounts run by government officials even when blocked, but merely prevent them from otherwise interacting with them.
roxgib··on Ask HN: Is Software Getting Worse?
Please share the link so I can fork it and snag some of these sweet donations
roxgib··on FBI Warns Against Using Public USB Ports Due to Malware Risk
I've received power only cables with a few devices, usually power banks. It annoyed me at the time but now I think I should hang on to them!
roxgib··on Effective Spaced Repetition
The Leitner system is designed with the assumption that you have lots of physical cards you need to organise without going insane, but you can do much better if you're using a program like Anki.

Anki's algorithm is based on an older version of the SuperMemo algorithm, with some evolution since then. The consensus seems to be that while you can fine tune it a bit with the settings, the returns are diminishing at this point.

roxgib··on Effective Spaced Repetition
I've used Anki to great effect on a number of different fields. Using it well it definitely skill you need to learn, but there's nothing quite like it. Strongly recommend.
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