2581
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,821 posts.
2582
A simple explanation of how money moves around the banking system (2013)
Twitter went mad last week because somebody had transferred almost $150m in a single Bitcoin transaction. This tweet was typical: There was much comment about how expensive or difficult this would …
2583
Calling NSA to find your encryption key after a few bits were flipped (2010)
I was just alerted to this story by one of the followers of this blog… Last month Voyager 2 began returning some unusual signals. This story is being reported by alternate news outlets as s…
2584
The digital ranging system that measured the distance to the Apollo spacecraft
During the Apollo missions to the Moon, a critical task for NASA was determining the spacecraft's position. To accomplish this, they devel...
2585
The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation (2000)
Good morning. Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7? No, that's not right. Hmmm. Maybe I'll have to reboot. Hold on a minute. Um, my name is Abe Lincoln and I'm your president. While we're waiting, I want to thank Judge David Wills, chairman of the committee…
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My upgrade to 25 Gbit/s Fiber To The Home
My favorite internet service provider, init7, is rolling out faster speeds with their infrastructure upgrade. Last week, the point of presence (POP) that my apartment’s fiber connection terminates in was upgraded, so now I am enjoying a 25 Gbit/s fiber internet connection!
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I stopped working on black hole information loss
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
2588
Crypto, the Left and Technofeudalism
Rare is the person who could expertly comment – in a single interview! – on the rise of NFTs and their origins in the virtual worlds of gaming, the logic of the emerging regime of techno-feudalism, and the folly of El Salvador’s Bitcoin-heavy negotiating tactics with the IMF. Luckily, we have found this person in […]
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Is XMPP any good? Also, let's write a client in Tcl, maybe
I still have my Nokia 5800 lying around. It runs Symbian. That platform is quite different from Android. For one thing the internal storage size is 81 MB - less than what your single android app takes up, even in RAM, and it works faster than modern smartphones - e.g. the SMS app opens instantaneously. Another…
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EU DSA: Industry and government interests prevail over citizens’ digital rights
After 16 hours of discussion, negotiators from the European Parliament and EU governments have just made deal on a new EU Digital Services Act. Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer sat at the negotiating table as Rapporteur for the Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) and summarises: "We were able to p
2591
Tcl the Misunderstood (2006)
In an article recently linked from reddit entitled Tour de Babel you can read (among lots of other nonsense): Heck, people still use Tcl as an embedded interpreter, even though Python is far superior to Tcl in every conceivable way -- except, that is, for the frost thing.
2592
“Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist
TikTok culture can be incredibly toxic, but those on the left refuse to ever condemn it for fear of echoing conservatives
2593
My lazy Wordle strategy: same words every time
TL;DR: After the analysis in this post, I started using SLANT/PRICE/DOUGH/BALMY, but it may not be the best sequence for you.
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Leaked Chats Show Lapsus$ Stole T-Mobile Source Code
KrebsOnSecurity recently reviewed a copy of the private chat messages between members of the LAPSUS$ cybercrime group in the week leading up to the arrest of its most active members last month. The logs show LAPSUS$ breached T-Mobile multiple times in March, stealing source code for a range of company projects…
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Using SNI proxying and IPv6 to share port 443 between webapps
I hate HTTP reverse proxies and want my webapps to listen directly on port 443. How can I make this work in a world of IPv4 scarcity?
2597
TypeScript and Set Theory
How does set theory help to understand type assignability and resolution in TypeScript?
2598
The smallest 256x256 single-color PNG file, and where you've seen it (2015)
Do you recognise these images? There's a good chance you've seen some of them before now, probably several times. Here's a hint: They all depict the same thing.
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What would open sourcing the Twitter algorithm actually look like?
What would “open sourcing the Twitter algorithm” actually look like? In Part 1 of this series, we focus on understanding how Twitter’s algorithmic feed works under the hood.
2600
I can't let go of “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation”
Organizing my thoughts regarding an argument about the Dunning-Kruger study and statistics in general
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2602
Thatcher killed the UK’s superfast broadband before it even existed
Webreturn web design & development, Scotland2022266 points216 commentsSociety, Policy & Culture details
Grrrh! I could get really annoyed about this! Living and working in rural Stirlingshire has its advantages for sure, but fast broadband is not one of them.
2603
The U.S.S. Akron and U.S.S. Macon, America's “flying aircraft carriers”
Akron and Macon were flying aircraft carriers designed for long-range scouting. Both crashed at sea, ending the U.S. Navy's rigid airship program.
2604
Rust9x: Compile Rust code for Windows 95, NT and above
You might remember my old post about the journey to get at least a bit of Rust code working for Windows 98 SE . Well, I'm back, this time with a more ambitious package:
2605
Practising Programming
When we see a world-class musician flawlessly play challenging music, it can be tempting to imagine that they were always able to do so. A moment’s thought makes it obvious that they must have had to spend huge amounts of time practising basic techniques in order to reach that level. What’s less obvious is that they…
2606
What chords do you need?
You famously only need four chords to play everything, or maybe it's only three. But how true is this really? I decided to go look and see what was common. I looked at a large number of transcribed songs, writing down which chords were used. This isn't perfect: some chords are more optional than others, but it's about…
2607
I'm a security engineer and I still almost got scammed
I was in the park with my son and his best friend. I saw 2 missed calls from a number I didn’t recognise. I Googled it - it was my bank. I told the other adults that I should call back in case it was important.
2608
Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security
When the U.S. security state announces that Big Tech's centralized censorship power must be preserved, we should ask what this reveals about whom this regime serves.
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Monetizing hobbies
I don’t know if this is a new trend or if I’m just noticing it now, but more and more the popular wisdom seems to be that you shouldn’t monetize your hobby. That if you do, it turns it into a job, a hustle1; that it sucks all the fun out of it. Putting aside for now the fact that some people might want to turn their…