FatalLogic

It's only me or it does not explain how it works?

I'll try my best to explain, according to what I understand:

An electric field can re-orientate the liquid crystal molecules, which changes the speed of light within the liquid crystal, and thereby changes the liquid crystal's refractive index.

This changes the angle of light as it passes from other material (such as air or plastic or glass) into the liquid crystal, and that change of angle changes the focal point of the light ray.

That effect provides the ability to focus incoming light, controlled by electricity.

That's probably not exactly right, but it's better than the explanation in the original story, which is non-existent and also has a very confused reference to ITO (indium tin oxide), like you've noticed.

So true. An evergreen classic

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

https://archive.is/Xu5nk

I'm still on 8.5.8 (Oct 2023) - it turns out I'm actually...safer?

Notepad++ site says The incident began from June 2025.

On their downloads page, 8.8.2 was the first update in June 2025 (the previous update 8.8.1 was released 2025-05-05)

So, if your installed version is 8.8.1 or lower, then you should be safe. Assuming that they're right about when the incident began.

edit: Notepad++ has published, on Github, SHA256 hashes of all the binaries for all download versions, which should let users check if they were targeted, if they still have the downloaded file. 8.8.1 is here, for example - https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/relea...

Your demo video defaults to play at 1.5x speed

You probably didn't intend to do that

This would be a much better link for this post

There's a lot more detail, and delivered in more professional way

The silence of MSM (particularly the BBC) is eye-opening.

Daily reports from the BBC, and the rate of them is increasing

https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cjnwl8q4ggwt

Some of the headlines-

New Iran videos show bodies piled in hospital and snipers on roofs

'I saw people getting shot': Eyewitness tells of Iran protest crackdown An Iranian who got out of the country describes scenes of chaos as security forces opened fire in her home town.

Photos leaked to BBC show faces of hundreds killed in Iran's brutal protest crackdown

particularly on large containers

It's common for people to carry large metal equipment cases (for cameras, etc.) onboard

I wish he'd brought back "Don't Be Evil" to Google, as well as himself.

Press ESC with the C64 window focused to stop the game

After that you can type LIST to see the code, and edit it, then RUN to restart

FAQ: Is it opt in? Yes, they are saying.

You can continue using Firefox as you always have for the most customizable experience, or switch from classic to Private Window for the most private browsing experience. And now, with AI Window, you have the option to opt in to our most intelligent and personalized experience yet — providing you with new ways to interact with the web.

The online edition was edited later.

"This newspaper report was originally edited using AI, which is in violation of Dawn’s current AI policy. The policy is also available on our website. The report also carried some junk, which has now been edited out. The matter is being investigated. The violation of AI policy is regretted. — Editor"

https://www.dawn.com/news/1954574

edit: Text link of the printed edition. Might not be perfect OCR, but I don't think they changed anything except to delete the AI comment at the end! https://pastebin.com/NYarkbwm

Similar article, no paywall: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/electronic-ar...

I didn't check your code worked.. just copied it and ran the inner part of the loop once, but according to https://www.masswerk.at/6502/

It's about 2x faster. Your code uses 44 CPU cycles x 64

Edit: plus a branch instruction, maybe that adds 3 cycles x 64 I guess

https://archive.is/7Eef8

It's a fun idea. Though it would have to be a really small R2-D2 that could work from the inside.

The fictional R2-D2 had a big advantage of being in vacuum so it could work from the outside, without disturbing the airflow, and without having its work disturbed by the airflow.

Envisage what happens at 900km/h in atmosphere, if R2-D2 tries to lift up an exterior wing panel to troubleshoot a blocked line?

but for now there's not really any known alternative

The research in the article does suggest a plausible alternative

You've been baited by a post from 2016

Thanks, I didn't notice the date. So, I wasted my time commenting on it.... thanks a bunch, OP

Yes, I noticed the 'spaceman bad' vibe, but I don't mind trying to discuss it. I'm certainly not on the 'spaceman bad' team, but probably on the 'spaceman getting worse' side.

Edit: thanks for your comment anyway. It's informative

Isn't the SpaceX lunar lander plan to just use the Starship upper stage with some modifications?

Then, they are working on it by working on Starship

Edit: 'two years' is unlikely, but Mars does have an atmosphere, so something like a Dragon capsule could land there with a parachute. That's not going to work so well on the moon

I can't edit my comment now, but here's a good review of the Tilt Five

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbjjCn1zJq8

In the class action case[0], which was allowed to go forward by the court last year, it is claimed that Valve told someone:

"This includes communications from Valve that “‘the price on Steam [must be] competitive with where it’s being sold elsewhere’” and that Valve “‘wouldn’t be OK with selling games on Steam if they are available at better prices on other stores, even if they didn’t use Steam keys.’” Dkt. No. 343 ¶ 158, 160 (quoting emails produced at VALVE_ANT_0598921, 0605087). "

(This is a new case, not the 2021 suit, which was rejected by the court, then amended and refiled, later with an additional plaintiff added)

[0]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.29...

"they pretty much killed off our project.” That project was CastAR — augmented reality glasses which Jeri Ellsworth is now working on as a separate project, having been handed the legal rights to do so by Valve.

But how many billion-dollar companies would do that? Just give the rights to the ex-employees? I think most other companies would have not. So, in that sense, Valve is unusual, even if it's not the oranizational utopia that was promised.

After she left Valve, she and partners did get at least $15 million funding from outside investors to develop the AR technology, but after several years of trying, it didn't work out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CastAR

Try https://archive.today

Are you sure that Bitcoin payments work much better because the amount of payments has dissipated?

I don't know. On the base layer, payments are all just transactions on the Blockchain, like any other. So it's not easy to see whether a transaction is a payment or an "investor" speculating, or something else. Then there's also other layers, like Lightning.

My guess is the relative percentage of retail Bitcoin payments, compared to speculative transactions, is now lower than 2017, when Steam accepted Bitcoin. I don't know if absolute amount of payments has reduced. Maybe?

You could look at historical charts of average Bitcoin fees[0], which gives you an idea when retail Bitcoin payments are practical, and when the fees are too damn high. Fees often got above $4, sometimes much higher, in 2024 for example, which would unacceptable for something like buying a game from Steam. Though, still, that doesn't show what impact Lighting is having on retail payments.

[0] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...

Steam did support bitcoin at one point but decided to end usage because the price fluctuations made it to unpredictable on their end.

Valve knew that there would be price fluctuations. Everyone knew that, and knew how to deal with it. They just priced the games in dollars, with a conversion to the Bitcoin value at the moment of sale.

But what Valve did NOT expect was that the Bitcoin blockchain would suddenly grow so popular and congested (which was a result of massive publicity from events such as Steam accepting Bitcoin). So suddenly, to Valve's surprise, the average fees to be sure that a payment would soon be processed on the blockchain fluctuated wildly upwards during that period, up to tens of dollars. The Blockchain congestion and high fees were exacerbated by technical and ideological arguments about how the Bitcoin network should function. The "small block" faction won, but Bitcoin quickly became a laughing stock as a method of payment, because second layer solutions to the network congestion weren't ready.

The high fees were a huge problem in themselves for Steam customers, and there were other support issues caused by Steam customer difficulty understanding how to use Bitcoin (and who can blame them?). Customers were angry because they had paid for a game, but their payments were delayed for days unless they paid an indeterminate Blockchain transaction fee which might be more than cost of the game they were trying to buy.

After a few months of that chaos, Steam dropped Bitcoin. So did many other retailers.

Ironic, Bitcoin payments work much better now and fees are lower, but it lost of a lot of goodwill from retailers like Steam during that period, and most of them have not come back.

Thanks, for adding the joke that I thought was too boring and obvious to say

But I should be more careful when making jokes on this site. Thanks for your comments.

peak manufactured drama

That's largely true. There is at least one, wonderful, reward from all the rule-fiddling, though it might be orthogonal to the issues you've highlighted, but driver deaths and severe injuries are much less common than they used to be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_fatalities

A cynic would say that, if the arena no longer offers us the ever-present possibility of death, then the drama needs to be enhanced in other ways, even if they are artificial.

(To be real: if they had not undone the transaction immediately, then the price of Bitcoin would have collapsed, and probably that would have been the end of Bitcoin)

Yes, Bitcoin does not have sufficient trade volume, and it was a joke anyway. Bitcoin would probably not have survived even one more month in 2010, if there were 184 billion new "fake" bitcoins added in the mix.

Even ignoring all the problems about the Bitcoin software being proven to be seriously broken, those 184 billion extra bitcoins meant that every other Bitcoin was suddenly worth about $0.0000000000000001

I think it's US$21.7 trillion? That's now about 15% of the total global money supply.

So, it's good that the transaction was undone, or 15% of our planet would now be owned by some hacker.

(To be real: if they had not undone the transaction immediately, then the price of Bitcoin would have collapsed, and probably that would have been the end of Bitcoin)