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tephra

1,041 karma · joined November 15, 2011

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tephra··on An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time
There is a quote, I can't remember by whom, going something like "all translation is interpretation" (IIRC I heard it on a great courses course on the bible).

To think that there is some sort of absolute truth of how something ought to be translated is IMHO just not reality. Especially when it comes to texts that not only were oral literature long before being written down but we of course have no copies of the originals (whatever original means in this context), but only transcriptions of transcriptions of...

Take Beowulf for one. While perhaps Shippeys translation is very much faithful to the copy we have, is it "better" (whatever that means...) than Tolkiens? or Heaneys? Could we say what the poet would have liked more had they sat here in 2026 and read them all? Of course not and having a multitude of different translations is what we need to fully enjoy these texts (since not all will be able to learn the different ancient greek dialects, latin, old english, sumerian, etc., etc. I'm saying this as someone who is now studying ancient greek).

tephra··on Spanish legislation as a Git repo
I wonder how true this is, we have the same system in Sweden, that court judgement are not legally binding precedent for lower courts. But in practice lower courts will follow the rulings made by the high court.

Is it not the same in Spain at all?

tephra··on 5,300-year-old 'bow drill' rewrites story of ancient Egyptian tools
Do you have any examples of this?
tephra··on Lördagsgodis (Saturday Sweets)
I can highly recommend the radio documentary https://www.sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/vipeholmsanstalten-min-... it's horrifying (in Swedish of course but hopefully more understandable to a Dane than Danish [to my own detriment and sorrow] is to us Swedes).
tephra··on Bzip2 crate switches from C to 100% Rust
I like Rust and have an ambition to learn it as well (I've had a few false starts...). One of my issues that I have is that every (slight exaggeration) library that I seem to come across is still at version 0.x.y. Take this library as an example. 0.1.0 was released in 2014 and it still hasn't had a 1.0.0 release, is there an aversion to get to 1.0.0 in the rust community?
tephra··on Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain
IIRC CIRA who is the delegated ccTLD manager of .ca is not a government entity (this is quite common in the ccTLD space actually, a lot of ccTLD are being managed by foundations or non-profits).
tephra··on Launching RDAP; sunsetting WHOIS
I think RDAP is going to be adopted by more and more ccTLDs as well. WHOIS is not a particularly well liked protocol (I was at an IETF meeting where ICANN did a presentation on the timeline and people were literally cheering for the demise of WHOIS).

Disclosure: Work in the ccTLD space.

tephra··on Every .gov Domain
There are a variety of ways!

Some TLDs gives you open access to just query the DNS and do an AXFR (download the whole zone), for example the .se and .nu ccTLDs (which I happen to work for the foundation managing those): dig @zonedata.iis.se se AXFR > se.zone.txt

For some zones you could use NSEC traversal https://linux.die.net/man/1/walker

For the new gTLDs (.app, .dev, .xyz, etc, etc) there is the Centralized Zone Data Service provided by icann: https://czds.icann.org/home where you can request access to zones.

tephra··on Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo
IIRC those were dropped by a second plane accompanying the Enola Gay.
tephra··on Ask HN: What happens to ".io" TLD after UK gives back the Chagos Islands?
I have some insight into this domain (pun duly intended), I work for a foundation managing two ccTLDs. Once the ccTLD has been delegated to an entity it is very hard to get that back without the consent of all parties. Meaning unless the entity that now holds the delegation to manage the ccTLD agrees to sell it or give it back they generally won't lose it.
tephra··on COBOL has been “dead” for so long, my grandpa wrote about it
I know two people that spend some of their time writing COBOL for a major bank. They do find that part of the job pretty boring, it is basically just writing down SQL queries in a COBOL file and then trying to get passed their 50 year old development workflow (merge to master, then do testing in a testing environment, then get code review..).
tephra··on HTTP: , FTP:, and Dict:?
If you want WHOIS with a better defined format we have a protocol for that! It's called RDAP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration_Data_Access_Proto...
tephra··on British Museum gems for sale on eBay – how a theft was exposed
The British Museum have somewhere on the order of 8 million objects. Having been collected since 1759 (and indeed before) in various state of being catalogued correctly at the time of collection.

The collection has survived new buildings being built (a time when stuff easily gets misplaced) and of course the ebbing and flowing of funding.

I would say that keeping that large of a collection of such a long time completely in order is a hard problem.

tephra··on Proton Mail discloses user data leading to arrest in Spain
They say quite clearly why in their privacy policy: https://proton.me/legal/privacy (section 2.5: IP Logging).

> 2.5 IP logging: By default, we do not keep permanent IP logs in relation with your Account. However, IP logs may be kept temporarily to combat abuse and fraud, and your IP address may be retained permanently if you are engaged in activities that breach our terms and conditions (e.g. spamming, DDoS attacks against our infrastructure, brute force attacks). The legal basis of this processing is our legitimate interest to protect our service against nefarious activities. If you enable authentication logging for your Account or voluntarily participate in Proton's advanced security program, the record of your login IP addresses is kept for as long as the feature is enabled. This feature is off by default, and all the records are deleted upon deactivation of the feature. The legal basis of this processing is consent, and you are free to opt in or opt out of that processing at any time in the security panel of your Account. The authentication logs feature records login attempts to your Account and does not track product-specific activity, such as VPN activity.

tephra··on Sweden has long opposed nuclear weapons, but once tried to build them
The problem for Ukraine was that they didn't have that much control over the weapons.

The ability to launch them was only something Moscow could do (they might have been able to reverse engineer control and remove safeguards and the might not). They needed to have tritium replaced every 12 years and IIRC many of the nuclear forced remained loyal to Russia.

That's their bargaining position at the time and that's before we add the international pressure to get rid of them.

tephra··on Show HN: Flash Notes – Flashcards for Your Notes, LLM, iOS/macOS Sync
I think everyone working in this space (i.e spaced repetition learning, tools for thought etc) should read Andy Matuschak (https://andymatuschak.org/). There is a lot to learn from his work.
tephra··on Not all TLDs are Created Equal
If you'd tried going to fnac.nl or say use curl for a http request you'd see that it is in fact correct. Ping does not a http request make as they said in the olden days.
tephra··on In 2023 operations for the .GOV TLD transitioned from Verisign to Cloudflare
Those are all part of the DNS.
tephra··on In 2023 operations for the .GOV TLD transitioned from Verisign to Cloudflare
While there are certainly complex and weird stuff in the DNS world. The basic of how the DNS works is really not that complicated.
tephra··on Pornhub, XVideos, and Stripchat hit with tough new EU safety regulations
The DSA has already been passed and there are no "prohibited" services (the digital service coordinator can under some special circumstances request a limited suspension of service in a member state but not a permanent if I'm not missing something.).

Now I do think the DSA goes to far in many aspects (with some good provisions sprinkled in there) and I'm hoping it will not do to much damage.

As for what one can do I'm not sure, VPNs are great and will continue to have a market I expect ;) (We probably ought to vote in better people as MePs as well...)

tephra··on Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act
This is just wrong. In many EU countries the free speech protections are quite extensive (and some of us live in countries that have protected speech longer than the U.S have been around).
tephra··on Swedish painters trade union to stop all work with Tesla brand cars
Indeed you can. All Swedish unions will publish annual reports that include information on what they've done and what the money has been spent on. Here are all the reports for the largest union in Sweden for example: https://www.unionen.se/filer/broschyr/unionens-verksamhetsbe...
tephra··on List of experts advising the EU on CSAM has been published
Microsoft also has financial incentives with their PhotoDNA software [0].

[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna

tephra··on Gunung Padang
I certainly didn't say that Wikipedia claims he is a loony conspiracy theorists (I am though implying that the scientific field of archaeology thinks that) and I didn't mock you, but if anything Graham Hancocks ideas (which are distinct from his person, something you ought to remember).

If you think my comment was toxic, well then I don't really know what to tell ya. I find it more toxic for our society to spread pseudoscience like Hancock does (which also has the effect of diminishing the accomplishments of other cultures, making it even worse).

tephra··on Gunung Padang
It's of course cool to see these places. But do remember that Hancocks "theories" are, if we are being nice today, utter nonsensical pseudoscience.

If you want some real archeology I recommend Milo from the miniminuteman YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@miniminuteman773

tephra··on 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed
In some cases you can also use luminescence dating[0], which can tell you the last time a mineral was exposed to sunlight.

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

tephra··on ProtonMail Complied with 5,957 Data Requests in 2022 – Still Secure and Private?
Yes https://proton.me/blog/security-audit
tephra··on Meta fined $1.3B over data transfers to U.S.
No. Were do you think I did that? I'm just saying this is not the case of a U.S company being fined for breaking EU law (which many seem to think) but a EU company breaking EU law.

And further that there are probably a lot of GDPR violations going on in the U.S but those are obviously harder to actually enforce (GDPR enforcement is already a big issue _within_ the union).

tephra··on Meta fined $1.3B over data transfers to U.S.
They could be (and probably are), but remember, this case is about a EU company (Meta Platforms Ireland Limited) breaking EU law and subsequently being punished for that, with fines proportional to the revenue of the parent company (a US company).
tephra··on €1.2B GDPR fine for Meta
It's actually worse since the company that this opinion talks about is an _EU_ company (Meta platforms Ireland Limited). The fine is based on the global revenue but the company being targeted here, and the company that didn't follow EU laws, is an EU company.
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