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vorpalhex

16,318 karma · joined December 5, 2016

https://vorpalhex.com "me"[at]vorpalhex.com...
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vorpalhex··on Ask HN: My mother was scammed out of all her savings. What should I do?
I'm sorry this happened to you and your family.

1. Get police reports 2. Use the police report to start an issue with the bank 3. Work with a lawyer and escalate through the courts.

Do all of these things. Don't let the bank staff dissuade you from getting a lawyer involved now.

There is a second "thing to do" which is to regather yourself. You seem to feel, justly, as if your house was robbed. Take care of yourself as if that was true. Do a personal security audit if that is the sort of thing that makes you feel better. Journal, meditate, pray, etc as appropriate.

No defense is perfect and complete. That doesn't mean the defenders stop trying.

vorpalhex··on Day laborers protest noise machines installed at Home Depot
All societies eject people who enter illegally.

Go cross illegally into Mexico and you can experience this.

vorpalhex··on Day laborers protest noise machines installed at Home Depot
Last time I got 10 gauge conduit wiring it was literally padlocked and needed a manager to get because the theft issues are so bad.
vorpalhex··on I can't upgrade to Windows 11, now leave me alone
...but then you have to use Windows 11...
vorpalhex··on Making macOS Bearable
Is your mouse too close to the edge of your desk so that your wrist is rubbing or flexing?
vorpalhex··on MIT nuclear science professor Nuno Loureiro found shot dead in home in Mass
When someone is stabbed, would you go find out everybody who has kitchen knives who lives within a two-mile radius?

You'd also be excluding everybody who illegally has a firearm or knife or whatever the murder weapon is.

vorpalhex··on Put SSH keys in .git to make repos USB-portable
Also make sure to put in your user password in a plaintext file in the repo for ease of automation. Add your SSN in case the usb gets lost. A face scan of a blank check could prove useful for future bills.
vorpalhex··on Therapeutic use of cannabis and cannabinoids: A review
Denial
vorpalhex··on Therapeutic use of cannabis and cannabinoids: A review
The study directly discusses the negatives of >10mg thc doses including anxiety and insomnia.
vorpalhex··on Benn Jordan’s flock camera jammer will send you to jail in Florida now [video]
I doubt it, that is a lot of extra cost against an attack that doesn't exist today.
vorpalhex··on I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499956/
vorpalhex··on I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499956/ cites >200,000 from one estimate. Harvard Health throws out 700,000 deaths per year in hospitals total. ~0.28 according to my quick math.

I generally expect such counts to be under-representative. I'm also probably conflating cases of "this person was going to die regardless but the hospital screwed something up" with "this person was not going to die but did die because the hospital screwed up." It's not clear how any source would avoid that conflation though.

vorpalhex··on Making macOS Bearable
Make sure dock is on the bottom, right click, "show on each display".
vorpalhex··on Making macOS Bearable
Do you have a resource you like for "advanced" Alfred use?
vorpalhex··on I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
You've never had "the experience".

I'll share mine.

Unusual severe one sided eye pain. Go to regular doctor's, explain, get told it's a "stye" and do hot compresses.

Problem gets worse, I go to urgent care. Urgent care doc takes one look at me and immediately sends me to the ER saying it's severe and she can't diagnose it because she is unqualified.

Go to ER, get seen by two specialists, a general practicioner and a gaggle of nurses. Get told it's a bad eye infection, put on strong steroids.

Problem gets worse (more slowly at least).

Schedule an urgent appoint with an opthalmologist. For some reason the scheduling lady just like, comprehends my urgency and gets me a same day appointment.

Opthalmologist does 5 minutes of exam, puts in some eye drops and pain is immediately gone. She puts me on a very serious steroid with instructions to dose hourly and visit her daily. Only reason I am seeing out of both eyes today.

As the top comment says, do not just "trust" Doctors. About 70% of hospital deaths are due to preventable mistakes in the hospital. People who are invested in their own care, who seek second opinions, who argue (productively) with their doctor have the best outcomes by far.

Nobody said not to work with doctors, but blindly trusting a single doctor will seriously harm your outcomes.

vorpalhex··on Delivery robots take over Chicago sidewalks
Thank you for sharing.

How do other people you know feel about them?

Do you see them get vandalized or messed with?

vorpalhex··on State Department to deny visas to fact checkers and others, citing 'censorship'
We aren't discussing voluntary moderation.
vorpalhex··on State Department to deny visas to fact checkers and others, citing 'censorship'
And what is your proposed cure? You and your preferred proxy get to limit the marketplace to ideas you agree with?

Perhaps we could jail people who post contradictory ones?

vorpalhex··on State Department to deny visas to fact checkers and others, citing 'censorship'
And frequently they are simply contradicted by broadly available evidence.

Do the following exercise.

In whatever your main field of work is, the thing you are qualified in, go look up and track "fact checked" things. Keep a little tally in your notes of whether the fact checker is entirely correct, somewhat correct, or wrong.

Even on cybersecurity stories, and it's not as if there is a major journalist group pushing for the hackers and scammers, the fact checked stories are simply frequently incorrect. You can confirm this through legal filings or post-analysis in older stories.

It is, as far as I can tell, just a job done badly. The fact checkers aren't evil or malicious, just not good and confused about basic things.

vorpalhex··on You may loose your company email, but never lose your emails and contacts again
Have you considered naming your product "InsiderThreat" for clarity in logs?
vorpalhex··on Quebec to ban public prayer in sweeping new secularism law
How does praying infringe on a public space? Does it leave behind wrappers? Hurt the local wildlife? Ruin the watershed?

Should we ban people quietly playing musical instruments in public spaces to? Perhaps people walking? Certainly people reading books - they could be religious books or even, gasp, depict sex.

vorpalhex··on Quebec to ban public prayer in sweeping new secularism law
Since this contravenes the UHDR which Canada does subscribe to, it likely won't survive court scrutiny.

> Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

vorpalhex··on C100 Developer Terminal
I've been very pleased with omarchy. Most linux distros were "just shell scripts" for 30+ years. Many still are.
vorpalhex··on Brain has five 'eras' with adult mode not starting until early 30s
Your kids are also growing, espressing much more complex emotions.

You have the right goal in your focus, you'll get it with time and practice.

vorpalhex··on Brain has five 'eras' with adult mode not starting until early 30s
Just practice it.

I realize that sounds silly but it really does work. A lot of emotional behavior is muscle like and setting aside intentional practice will lead to longterm change.

1. Set a trigger to engage in the practice like "When I hang out with my kids immediately after the work day"

2. Do the practice. Try to be empathetic to your kids small daily issues. At first, like all newish things this will feel silly but over time it will feel natural.

Obviously try to be genuine. If your kids plight of someone snatching their favorite toy or whatever doesn't move you, don't force it. Just try to practice visualizing yourself in their place. Don't go "fake empathetic kid tone".

vorpalhex··on NSA and IETF, part 3: Dodging the issues at hand
The standard will be used, as it was the previous time the IETF allowed the NSA to standardize a known weak algorithm.

Sorry that someone calling out a math error makes the NIST team feel stupid. Instead of dogpiling the person for not stroking their ego, maybe they should correct the error. Last I checked, a quantum computer wasn't needed to handle exponents, a whiteboard will do.

vorpalhex··on NSA and IETF, part 3: Dodging the issues at hand
We're talking about a landmine in a crypto spec and you're bikeshedding about consensus ratios.

We should talk about the NSA designed landmine.

vorpalhex··on Markdown is holding you back
Most markdown engines allow short tags to stand in for html, so for frequent features you can just use a short tag.

Alternatively you can extend markdown. I wrote a simple text based game engine that was markdown based but I needed some arbitrary additions appropriate for a game.. so I just added a few elements.

vorpalhex··on Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different?
Your entire premise is simply incorrect, through and through. Discard it entirely and begin again.

You have a hundred people, they have a GDP of N. Tomorrow, their productivity doubles because of a technological innovation. Your GDP is 2N.

Prices matter extensively to the rich and poor. The cost of a given compute capacity has gone from "literally the entire United States can't afford it" to "my lightbulb has this much compute because it's cheaper than choosing a dumber processor".

What happens tomorrow if eg ChatGPT 5.1 performance becomes doable for $500 of tech? $50? Swap this for grain harvesting, waste bin collection, etc if you don't like the LLM case.

vorpalhex··on Being poor vs. being broke
Right, the fines don't matter.

What should have happened in the original agreement is that the fed pays for the sewers at a very cheap rate and the municipality does the work and owns it for eg 10-20 years.

That's actually a really common agreement. I don't know why DOJ had such a derp moment here and instead demanded billboards about health risks for people who don't have the money for basic medical care much less exploratory lab testing.

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