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titheon It's Hyperobjects All the Way Down

This story originally had several fake comments by a spam bot:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40125197

titheon Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

Yeah, digging this!

titheon It's Hyperobjects All the Way Down

dang, sock puppet posts from user name `2genders...`

(It's sock puppets all the way down!)

titheon Sousveillance

Different intent, but reminds me of "First Amendment auditors" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_audit

titheon VASA-1: Lifelike audio-driven talking faces generated in real time

I get the feeling it's "someone's going to do this, so it might as well be us."

It's fascinating how research can take on a life of its own and will be pushed, by someone, to its own conclusion. Even for immensely destructive technologies (e.g., atomic weapons, viruses), the impact of a technology is its own attractor (could you say that's risk-seeking behavior?)

> Am I going to have to do AuthN and AuthZ on every phone call and zoom now?

"Alexa, I need an alibi for yesterday at noon."

titheon Hello World

https://www.netflix.com/humans.txt

I'll take the open seat in the front row :)

titheon Inside Amazon’s Secret Operation to Gather Intel on Rivals

To my knowledge, the NTA does not list directors or ownership.

METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) has a portal to potentially display that information, but for private companies it may be missing, and thus the results may be no better than NTA's records: https://info.gbiz.go.jp/

Public entities (which Big River Services Japan is not) can be searched through the JPX (Tokyo Stock Exchange): https://www2.jpx.co.jp/tseHpFront/CGK020010Action.do

titheon Inside Amazon’s Secret Operation to Gather Intel on Rivals

Busted:

Japanese business entity search of "ビックリバーサービスジャパン" ("Big River Services Japan") via Japan's National Tax Agency -- https://www.houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp/henkorireki-johoto.html?... -- shows the following address for this entity: 東京都目黒区下目黒１丁目８番１号.

A quick search for this address shows this page -- https://bb-building.net/tokyo/deta/1506.html -- which surprise, is the Amazon Japan HQ.

Interestingly, the address was later changed to a more low-profile building, which doesn't list any corporate tenant.

titheon An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus

Could you share the visualization that you use?

titheon An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus

It gives me goosebumps that this method works with others. I thought it to be very idiosyncratic...but it seems not? Either way, I'm glad it could help!

titheon An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus

I've had a mental visualization I've used to control tinnitus flares for about 20 years now - i.e., "biofeedback".

I image the entire soundscape (what I'm possible of hearing) as a long, thin line which is warbling a bit, as I'm hearing things right now -- like the line in an oscilloscope. The present tinnitus represents itself as a sharp spike in this visualization, the location dependent upon its texture (sharp pings, or a low muffled warble).

I then imagine a giant hand (my hand) on top of that spike, pushing it down, slowly, and as I push it down, the tinnitus subsides (since I know what that subsiding sensation feels like). Sometimes I have to do this pushing motion a few times before the spike slowly attenuates by itself and it joins the surrounding levels.

The entire process takes about 30 seconds, and doesn't work every time. If after a few attempts it fails, I abandon the visualization exercise (lest my brain somehow learns the pushing motion to be ineffective).

It's not entirely clear to me how / why this works: mapping a physical phenomenon onto an abstract mental visualization / picture, and then manipulating that mental picture and thus the physical phenomenon.

I'm also very musical, so these sorts of visualizations tend to come very naturally to me.

titheon Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

I wonder how Usenet would have been different if it had supported profile pictures.

titheon Beeper acquired by Automattic

Due Diligence

titheon Ask HN: Happy 404 Day. Whats your favorite 404 error page?

Expect the good vibes around you to take you in unexpected directions!

(Aside: "vibes" is misspelled in `consultThePowersThatBe`).

titheon Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

Not turning purchasing / procurement into an obstacle course.

A company burns a lot of goodwill by not being direct (which makes me even more suspicious of their offering): if what you have to offer is so great, then SHOW IT.

titheon Ask HN: Happy 404 Day. Whats your favorite 404 error page?

Any one that doesn't say "Oops!"

titheon The speed of sight: Individual variation in critical flicker fusion thresholds

This is fascinating. I often wonder about the different "clock speeds" of various functions in the brain and the mechanisms in play to keep these functions in sync.

Tangentially, I wonder if the brain's "FPS" (sample rate?) in hearing and processing audio differs between individuals in a similar way.

titheon The xz attack shell script

Your best bet may be in the chat (from https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/03/30/26 ):

Matrix: #xz-backdoor-reversing:nil.im

IRC: #xz-backdoor-reversing on irc.oftc.net

Discord: https://discord.gg/XqTshWbR5F

titheon Hunterbrook Media Launch

I imagine this would be a very thin line to walk, legally: proving the investigative portion was induced from publicly available information vs insider information.

titheon Hunterbrook Media Launch

If Apple has a press release stating they're reserving multiple years worth of capacity at a certain fab, but before releasing the statement, buys stock in that same company in anticipation of the stock price going up (presumably from the fab's near-guaranteed earnings and Apple's reputation)...that's legal on Apple's part?

titheon Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

In this case, could he be considered a violent economic threat to society? His defense did try to argue that he was not a "ruthless financial serial killer".

titheon Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

Seems low for what prosecutors consider "one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history."

https://www.reuters.com/technology/sam-bankman-fried-be-sent...

titheon [dead]

Seems too low.

titheon Things I Learned from René Girard

For those who want to "stay a while", Jonathon Bi did a discussion series on Girard's Mimetic Theory:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_xn3B6eWvGsILrh5v5nq...

titheon Engineering household robots to have a little common sense

Indeed, I wonder if natural language is the right interface to this problem.

Reading earlier mathematical texts (eg, Euclid's Elements) and their "natural language" proofs reminds me that a picture is truly worth a thousand words!

titheon Twisted magnetic field observed around Milky Way's central black hole

Interesting, thank you.

The thought that an object is "spinning so quickly that it is warping spacetime" just made my day!

titheon Twisted magnetic field observed around Milky Way's central black hole

Is the apparent lopsidedness of the black hole in the image due to imaging issues (or the angle the image is being taken at)?

I think it's from looking at artistic illustrations why I think that black holes should be perfectly round / symmetrical, but I'm not even sure if these structures are flat, spherical, or something else!

titheon Ask HN: What non-AI products are you working on?

I was wondering where this sort of "business logic" might come from. :)

titheon Ask HN: What non-AI products are you working on?

The "blogsla.sh/anna" text appears clickable (same style as social links / `.has-text-link`), but isn't. Perhaps bold styling would work, instead?

titheon As AI booms, land near nuclear power plants becomes hot real estate

For the same reason HDD companies shipped 100, 200, 300... GB drives instead of jumping straight to 1 TB: there's money to be made in the middle.