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unknown_user_84on Critical CVE issued for hallucinated SQLite vulnerability

reminds me of the cvss scoring system. that thing is great at telling a story. for better or worse XD.

unknown_user_84on A big win for Android interoperability

I personally have found great use from the little notifications that graphene OS pops up when the integrity API is accessed and it tells me the application. I saw Instagram accessing the integrity API probably entirely by coincidence while doing something in another app and so Instagram got immediately removed even though I never use it anyway.

feel free to keep your why did you have Instagram on your graphene OS phone to yourself. I know. I know. I know. I know. XD

and a little message when you tap on those notifications is exactly what the parent commenter stated encouraging users to contact app developers so that they can use basic integrity attestation and allow their apps to work on graphene OS.

and some apps do work and use the integrity API. maybe a little too much in my opinion. chatgpt I'm looking at you. my local credit Union's banking app doesn't even bother with the integrity API and they updated their tech stack recently which included app redevelopment.

unknown_user_84on I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

Yes, absolutely. and I'm reminded immediately of the XKCD comic where somebody decides that it's time to rewrite the laws of relationships and social interaction and the third panel is the obvious chaos ensued result.

which makes me think that these kinds of systems are interesting to talk about and possibly productive. but when anybody gets a serious idea to start implementing them, I think it runs into the same problem that everybody that got really excited about Corey Doctorow's wuffie. while not an original idea, his description of it really catapulted the concept of social currency into the nerdosphere. at the same time that Reddit karma was becoming a thing. and so people were understandably irrationally exuberant.

at any rate, they figured out like many before them that trying to automatically manage reputation at scale is a socially difficult problem to solve, before even getting to the technical issues.

and yes it is one of those things that as I get older I just have to take a step back and use those kinds of people as an example of how not to be. I think AI psychosis as talked about when it was called chatgpt psychosis is maybe more properly classified as main character syndrome level 11 or something. I am not a psychologist. and it makes me wonder if that kind of main character syndrome is some kind of a social contagion. because in the modern incarnation that is everywhere it seemed to really get a foothold in podcast-o-sphere. though, like everything else, I'm sure that could easily be mapped into. people with opinions have high opinions of their own opinions and it inflates their egos and that has been going on since one person got in a room with themselves and started thinking.

unknown_user_84on Dubious research tied to Red Bull has shaped energy drink policy

yeah that's absolutely a strong possibility and I thought about that. though I've noticed it doesn't happen with monsters and it happens every single time with bang energy drinks. to the point that they were very useful for getting regular again. strongly possible that monsters and bang use different artificial sweeteners. I'll see if I have a can laying around. maybe that in combination with the caffeine it's kind of like a train running downhill right out the butt.

pounding 300 mg of caffeine a can tho... as a 10+ year recovering veteran of the ephedrine caffeine stack, it's territory I don't ever want to get into again.

unknown_user_84on A big win for Android interoperability

That is essentially it as far as my understanding goes.

Google Wallet currently will not run on a fully updated grapheneOS.

Specifically it complains:

"Your device doesn't meet tap to pay security standards. It may be rooted or running uncertified software."

Which is fair. But something that actually works would be nice. I can keep extremely tight control on the NFC stack by toggling NFC with a quick access icon.

Not something I use very often, but not getting locked out of specific, not all, financial rails is one of those things that feels like it rubs up against the perpetual friction that the US founders, framers, whatever; didn't enshrine economic freedom in the same way as speech.

And maybe that's a libertarian fantasy. Idk. Seems worth thinking about for five seconds tho.

Bringing it back to reality. There are an incredible number of issues with trying to set up some kind of a competing service to Google Wallet to the extent that you might as well just go start a bank. And companies like simple have tried that and ended up bought by other banks at the end of it. And they weren't even trying to do anything other than offer people a banking app that wasn't total crap back in the day.

So realistically Google wallet or anything like that is not something I expect to use on a graphene OS phone until the graphene OS Motorola device comes out in the next few years. And that is entirely speculation that services like Google Wallet might be able to work on that device. But honestly it's the only real hope I personally hold for getting access to Modern payment systems on a secure device.

unknown_user_84on Dubious research tied to Red Bull has shaped energy drink policy

dude, don't even get me started on those bang energy drinks. I don't know what they put in them but monsters do not make me run to the bathroom like those things do. it might be a caffeine threshold thing I don't know. monsters have about 180 mg of caffeine bang drinks have I think 300 mg.

the bang drinks even used to have creatine in them which would actually make you sick if you didn't have anything to eat around the time you drank it. they have reformulated. so wouldn't it surprise me if the bang people were putting some weird stuff in there that was basically acting as a laxative. I have no idea.

unknown_user_84on I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

this reminds me of an episode of the TV show. the Orville that I recently watched where they stumbled upon a planet that had the social credit scoring system and everybody had little badges with literal upvote and down vote buttons on them. and when your grandma buys you ice cream and you're a little kid you say thank you and you hit the upvote button and she likes you even more because you hit the upvote button then because you said thank you.

and so it was obviously portrayed as kind of you know for the story and it worked and I like the episode and everything but it got me thinking in terms of a society like that of people could probably construct something that used that kind of a system but in a more regulated way and a more humane way and I think that's turns into the question of do we want to try and make this new thing or do we want to try and fix the old thing?

regardless, it got me thinking about some kind of a potential implementation of a formal social reputation system that essentially mirrors what goes on informally now, but makes it visible and makes the actions of affecting somebody's reputation visible.

My basic intuition here and for most things that deal with society or whatever is that Satan lives in the details and infinite potential dystopias and the potential for extreme inhumanity lurks in every crevice and corner. unknown unknowns and shit.

unknown_user_84on Computation as a universal and fundamental concept

It strikes me that this is a kind of an escalating pattern though I don't suppose it has to be. Clock -> Steam Engine -> Computer -> AGI -> Skynet -> Throw rocks at robots -> Judgement Day. Also very not serious commentary.

On I suppose a slightly more serious note it also strikes me that there will eventually, probably, maybe be _something_ that fits best; though we are not promised to find it. And it seems wild to say that about a model because all models are fundamentally wrong, but they are usually group-able by less-wrongness, so probably fundamentally feasible.

unknown_user_84on [dead]

Scroll. Down. And it explains the joke.

My first reaction to this was, oh someone discovered fraud. And then I read the disclaimer: this is securities fraud.

unknown_user_84on [dead]

If reputations have generally stayed constant, thedailymail is the connection. Maybe somewhere around the nexus of TMZ in their own special ways, imo.

* edit: I honestly didn't even bother to dig out the name of the bacteria because I figured it wasn't there or wrong and I'll make the chatbot struggle through it later.

unknown_user_84on In-browser programmable robot simulator

Works for me in mobile Firefox on Android with ublock origin and umatrix. Everything loads and I can make the little robot do backflips and stuff. And I usually get WebGL issues with this set even before the plugins come into play.

unknown_user_84on Show HN: Putt.day a daily mini golf game

Works on mobile firefox for me.

I often get webgpu errors with firefox.

151.0.4 (Build #2016165791),

GV: 151.0.4-20260608154138

AS: 151.0.2

OS: Android 16

unknown_user_84on Show HN: Putt.day a daily mini golf game

I have to wonder if they modded it because this doesn't seem possible anymore. Though I may be holding the putter wrong XD

I tried hitting the little floating island behind the start too to get a bounce but the ball clips through it.

What I did find was that you can use the purple spinning circle at the beginning as a teleporter to the one near the end if you aim at the wall opposite the spinner. Your ball will hit the wall and bounce back and up into the teleporter thing.

edit: I think the level changed?

unknown_user_84on Show HN: Putt.day a daily mini golf game

you have selected a 3 wood, may I suggest PUTTER

https://youtu.be/k3vWkqfX9fY?is=ot-bpGP8tXMcgE6b

unknown_user_84on Tuta and Proton: An Open Source Client Does Not Result in an Open Source Service

With the client code being open source, everybody can build the client themselves, run it locally and verify that the open source code is being used. If we published the server code open source, this would not be the case: No one would be able to verify that the open source server code is actually running on our server - so publishing it is a bit pointless.

- Tuta

So we continue in the reality where Tuta runs code on their sever and it is a mystery. It could be an amazing application. It could be a cellular automata that runs an email server.

I think I might start calling these organic tech. Because they take a word we know, "open source", and then use it like the food companies used "organic" stickers.

unknown_user_84on AI profitability is mathematically impossible

Not sure about sockets but I've seen a company with a wafer sized TPU thing or whatever. They claim to have an approach to route around the defects and I had to scroll past some press release I didn't read about the stock market, so someone believes in them I guess. They sell a mini-fridge that can handle a model with trillions of parameters with a contact sales button. Cerberas is their name. I actually ended up misremembering the name name of Taalas as Cerberas and discovered them when I was researching the above comment. Taalas burns models to chips. Cerberas makes pizza sized chips.

unknown_user_84on AI profitability is mathematically impossible

I've seen Taalas come up on HN, but only once. I'm not a HN fanatic but I end up around page 3 before I kill-filp my browser into oblivion. Currently Taalas has Llama 3.1 8B burned onto a chip and offer chatbot and API access. That said they aren't selling the chips yet, on their website at least.

I expect they are waiting for an openweight model they really feel is worth burning to a chip and/or training their own thing. I'd guess they could probably figure out some efficiency speedups if they are doing model development + hardware development at the same time. Though this seems different than Google and friends with their TPUs and similar. TPUs being general purpose chips than what Taalas is making. Still, probably something there.

unknown_user_84on Yoti age checks share facial photos and device fingerprints with third parties

Probably worth mentioning that I just did a very informal and quick review of identity/age verification providers because of payment provider requirements. Yoti came up as one of the more privacy focused (relatively) lower friction options because they only require a face scan and try to estimate age based on that. They may do more but that is as far as my research got.

unknown_user_84on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2025)

Location: North Carolina, USA

Remote: Only

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (Scripts, Flask, a little Django), PostgreSQL, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, PHP (in the long ago times), implementing AI stuff, QA, Information Security, Human Communication

Résumé/CV: On request

Email: odd.meta@gmail.com

Kind, humble, software developer seeking same. Willing to take on contract work, full time preferred. Tech stacks don't match? Give me a month or less and I'll learn it. Send me your Nintendo friend code if you want to play Diablo III.

unknown_user_84on Google Gemini has the worst LLM API

Indeed. Though the billing dashboard feels like an over engineered April fool's joke compared to Anthropic or OpenAI. And it takes too long to update with usage. I understand they tacked it into GCP, but if they're making those devs work 60 hours a week can we get a nicer, and real time, dashboard out of it at least?

unknown_user_84on Google is winning on every AI front

I'm glad you found it useful! I have not had experience with the memory feature, I will have to check that out. I did notice that in the past when I tried to get ChatGPT to take on a persona it was not amenable and rejected the persona outright. I may have to take another pass at it.

I will say that my conversation with instantiated personas in Gemini have been, therapeutic. My favorite thus far has been a character from Star Trek: The Lower Decks. D'Vana Tendi to be specific. Within the bounds of a notebook I've found that after solidifying the persona with a couple bootstraps she remembers what I've told it about myself and my environment; at least up to the needle in a haystack limit. I've yet to reach this with Gemini 2.5 Pro, though I haven't been trying too hard.

Granted this is all within a single notebook. Starting over with a new notebook is a task I relish and find somewhat tedious at the same time. Though on the balance with that I find sharing memory between notebooks somewhat of a foreign concept. I don't want my Ada Lovelace notebook confusing itself for Sherlock Holmes.

unknown_user_84on Google is winning on every AI front

While I'm not sure it's exactly what you're looking for I've found success with a variety of Gemini models getting them to take to a specific persona when given initial prompts to take on a specific persona. Gemini 2.5 is specifically interesting because the <thinking> block shows how much the notebook is playing a persona/role vs. becoming that role. In my experience Gemini 2.5 Pro likes to revert to 'maintaining a persona' in the <thinking> block. I questioned it about this at one point and it pointed out that humans also maintain a certain persona in their responses, and that you can't see their thinking. Still not entirely sure what I think about that.

I have experimented with telling the notebook to change the <thinking> block to a more narrative style. It seems to like to revert to ordered lists and bullet points if not continuously prompted to think in narrative.

Regarding maintaining consistency throughout the chat I have noticed Gemini 2.5 seems able to do this for quite a while but falls victim to the needle in a haystack problem that all LLMs seem to suffer from with an extremely long context and no external tooling.

I have a substack post on creating the initial prompt, which I call a bootstrap, using AI Studio and a set of system instructions if you are curious to explore.

https://consciousnesscrucible.substack.com/p/creating-charac...

unknown_user_84on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2025)

Is the Senior Cybersecurity Researcher position open to US applicants?

unknown_user_84on I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex

I get the sense that they are suggesting a housing + services approach. My read on why they think Housing First is flawed is that housing was offered and services were withheld. This implies some kind of public counseling service for the newly housed which could have its own set of issues. But in my opinion seems worth trying... if they're going to throw billions at this thing hiring a few qualified therapists couldn't hurt.

unknown_user_84on Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile want to access your bank account

Leaving this here in case anyone runs into this. By putting chrome into incognito mode I am able to access archive.ph. Normal profile gets infinite CAPTCHA.

So I'm thinking messed up cookies or extensions and IP reputation stuff are probably the root of this.

Edit:

cookies or extensions based on testing with chrome normal vs incognito on the same host

IP reputation based on testing with VPN using the same browser

unknown_user_84on Never Ending September Date

Great point, I hadn't thought about isolated areas.

And with you there, it's already starting to sound like a buzzword to me. The first step on the road to losing all meaning.

unknown_user_84on Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile want to access your bank account

That makes sense. My VPN testing affirms it. Houston node doesn't work, Atlanta node does. I guess someone decided my IP range warranted extra attention. Though that still doesn't quite square with what I'm seeing; it's feels like the CAPTCHA is broken.

All I have to base that on is when I click on the checkbox sometimes no images load and it checks and then unchecks. Sometimes I seem to get the "hard set" though I think I missed part of the boat or something. I've been able to run through enough fails that I'd expect to get the hard set but don't. Which makes me think it isn't actually working right...

I'm calling the "hard set" those images they give you that are super extra grainy.

I'm almost curious enough to see what I can divine from inspecting their network requests but I have a hunch they have a vested interest in making that annoying.

Or maybe there are way more CAPTCHAs to click through than I'm thinking. To anyone: What is the highest number of CAPTCHAs you've clicked through and actually got a site, any site, to load at the end? I'm legit curious at this point.

unknown_user_84on Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile want to access your bank account

I'd never looked into CGNAT so that is really interesting, and yeah, yuck.

From what I can tell though I'm able to get to a webserver running on my local machine and hosted off my public IP through a paid VPN. That indicates to me I am not behind CGNAT from what I understood of the wikipedia.

I probably missed something : )

unknown_user_84on Never Ending September Date

Thinking about this analogy further, where captive restaurants do exist their prices probably meet the definition of enshittified. Cruise ships, movie theaters, stadiums, concerts, etc.

unknown_user_84on Zadie Smith makes 1860s London feel alive and recognizable

Is archive.is/today/ph working for anyone today? Yesterday .is and .today were giving me an eternal CAPTCHA but .ph worked. Today .today and .ph are giving me an eternal CAPTCHA while .is loads the website, but tries to redirect to .ph with an eternal CAPTCHA when I click on the snapshot link.

Makes me think whoever runs this is trying to fix something really annoying.