nano9's comments

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: Python 2 removed from Debian

I welcome Python3 just fine. Character data no longer being automatically ASCII might be a bit annoying, but it's fine if that's what it takes to support a more global developer base.

I just wish they would stop iterating on the minor version so quickly. Why are we on python 3.11 (for workgroups, just kidding)? Is there that much of a difference compared to 3.7? 3.7 even has dicts with stable key insertion order and type hinting, so it seems pretty loaded if you ask me.

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: Time to redefine normal body temperature? (2020)

> [One key possibility] ... Lower metabolic rate: One of the biggest determinants of body temperature is your metabolic rate. Like a car engine that’s idling, your body expends energy just keeping things going, and that generates heat. A lower metabolic rate in modern times could be due to higher body mass (some studies link this with lower metabolic rate), or better medical treatments, preventive measures, and overall health.

I know it's not exactly "thinking with statistics", but it strikes me as too coincidental that the obesity epidemic has only exploded in recent decades too.

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

I have a similar tale to tell. Ever since I've taken activated charcoal regularly, I have felt considerable improvement in my digestion and overall well-being. I feel happier, even. The charcoal is "sourced from non-GMO coconuts" which I don't necessarily believe but I take it as a sign that it's a higher quality product instead of repackaged industrial waste (like a lot of the market probably is).

I take 1000mg of activated charcoal per day and feel better. It is paradoxical, because all charcoal does is absorb. It makes me think that everything we put into our bodies nowadays is poison. And if all charcoal does is absorb, maybe most foods are a net negative. My interest in fasting has piqued as a result.

I think we are entering an era of rampant industrialization wherein the products (food, soaps, cookware coatings, packaging materials, etc.) are not necessarily the best products on the market, but simply cost effective enough to put on the shelves--meaning if waste can get on the shelf through clever marketing and engineering then it will.

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: Would You Work for Elon?

Yes, absolutely. I like his candor, and honestly I get fairly demoralized when I have to work alongside underperforming peers. Nobody likes to talk about the form of workplace toxicity that manifests in the form of lazy coworkers who ride off your successes, pigeonholing you into being the team workhorse.

If Elon is getting rid of those people, more power to him.

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: I record myself on audio 24x7 and use an AI to process the information

> There's nothing I do that I think anyone would be especially interested in spying on, other than to try and sell me things.

Do Uyghurs have something to hide and are worth spying on? How many times are we going to hear this argument? It comes only from a position of privilege. You're only uninteresting to be spied on as long as it's allowed by the security apparatus you depend upon. There's a reason we have sayings like "power corrupts"; dismissing the potential for abuse of a cloud-based unencrypted surveillance system is narrow-mindedness at best and subversion at worst.

Note: the above hardly represents me politically, it is just a counterargument against the perennially repeated "I have nothing to hide."

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: YouTube Premium price increased by nearly 30%

I will never pay for YouTube until I'm guaranteed a way to opt out of the recommendation algorithm. It's not so much a recommendation algorithm as much as it is an adversarial search on my behavior to see what cheap content I'll actually engage. Every so often I'll notice a video from a clickbait-ey channel in my sidebar about a topic I care little for, like expensive luxury items or epic pop star moments.

So, I can't trust YouTube to be objective in its recommendations. It's very likely attempting to train me to seek deeper pools within their content graph so that I use YouTube more. Which is fine if it were a free model ("freemium", really), as I would implicitly agree to be mined in exchange for a hosted service with plenty of content. That I would PAY for that, however, is not something I would feel happy about. It would feel like paying for the privilege of receiving a slap in the face.

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: MAR1D: First-Person Mario

> This is a really clever and thought-provoking idea, and I believe that is the spirit in which it is intended (rather than as an "actual" game).

It seems more like an elaborate joke to me. I can see people being annoyed after being teased with the notion of a new game, only for it to be a gag.

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

One interpretation I've been entertaining: In the modern world, we have recently realized that speech is more complicated than people exchanging ideas in a civil manner, and that speech has the power to influence consensus reality through second order and higher effects. (Think: phenomena such as "self-radicalization"). This leads to decisions to simply restrict speech rather than deal with the complexity.

I am not entirely convinced that restricting speech is the right move. I think if anything it creates division. Either way, we'll most likely see how it works out in the next few years.

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: SSH Now

Why not just redirect bash -i to /dev/tcp/$HOST/$PORT on your local net if you're red teaming? Rather than using someone else's server. Good idea as a persistent backdoor though.

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: Use TouchID to Authenticate Sudo on macOS

The same could happen with a hardware token like Yubikey, if it were to suffer from an irrecoverable software or hardware error. It's still useful, because spoofed authentication prompts will no longer get a chance at plaintext access to your password.

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: Remote scan of student’s room before test violated his privacy, judge rules

I understand what the halting problem implies, what complexity is, what Turing machine means and why they are an abstraction for algorithms, and the basic common memes of programming such as using a stack and a heap, IEEE 754 floating point numbers, 2s complement binary numbering, and so on and so forth.

Yet I don't know a lick of Go. If I were to open up a Hello World tutorial for Go during the interview, would I honestly still have a shot?

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

I can see this degenerating into some sort of efficiency metric that will be engineered around. For instance, it wouldn't be too hard to take the Google logo and make it a proper "light" with some LEDs. Or simply write out the name in white LEDs.

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: The Age of Distracti-Pression

If you're not being sarcastic and this piece is a native ad, why would Prozac be targeting youths? Are the youths depressed?

nano9 | 3 years ago | on: Apple expands Self Service Repair to Mac notebooks

It's not all due to mass production. Modern industrial design has made it so that accidents are expensive.

If you involve yourself and in a minor automobile collision and damage one of your front headlights on your Lexus with adaptive lighting, your total repair cost for the headlight itself will exceed $1000. A new headlight will require removal the front bumper and calibration of the adaptive sensors, both of which add labor costs. It's not just headlights; if you have lane-keeping technology in your vehicle and this is achieved via a forward facing camera, then a windshield replacement exceeds $1000 as well. If you smash your rear bumper into a mailbox and need to replace the whole bumper, you need your parking sensors re-calibrated. And this is with a maintainable car make like Lexus. For the more ostentatious luxury makes, the costs will be significantly more.

You might think, I'll buy a truck then. But trucks also have windshield-integrated forward-facing cameras, backup/parking sensors, and adaptive headlights. You wouldn't save much versus the Lexus.

page 1