HN user
On my mediocre laptop display, I had to set the brightness moderately, and take my glasses off to see the decoy text more easily (easier than squinting). Deleting the custom text also made it easier. The other tip someone posted about moving the window around also helps a lot. Moving further back from the display also helps.
Reminds me of this fascinating video from May 2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCBAqaT4SQc [PortalRunner - This Video is Different at 360p]
Buy a CO2 monitor and note the difference between the car's air conditioner on recirculate mode vs fresh air. Also try the same thing in places such as buses and planes. Think also about what happens with all that shared "stale" air for hours.
Posted Apr 8, 2024 0:29 UTC (Mon) by tridge (subscriber, #26906) [Link] (27 responses)
[...]"I have often worked on the boundary of free and proprietary software, right from when I was dosemu maintainer for a while, to Samba and many other projects. I make all my projects open, usually GPLv3, but I don't mind using closed tools to help me work more efficiently, even though I am creating free software myself. I know some people take a stronger stance and refuse to use any closed tools at all. That is a great choice if that is what you want to do. It isn't how I work, and it never has been."
https://lwn.net/Articles/968732/ "Tridge returns to rsync [Posted April 6, 2024 by jzb]"
Happy to answer questions!
Are you aware that SARS-CoV-2 is oncogenic, and that repeat exposure increases risk?
"Motor vehicles aren't going away any time soon. It might become prohibitively expensive for some individuals but they're here to stay. It's worth trying to get into car ownership early despite your bicycle being much cheaper, healthier, and better for your local community."
You're using the motte-and-bailey fallacy. Pocket and scientific calculators have never caused anywhere near as much grief as current LLMs do as a loss-leader for near-trillion dollar corporations that are primarily responsible for artificially keeping the US economy afloat (at least prior to the latest war/not-war effort).
Calculators have never led to anything like AI-induced psychosis: https://theconversation.com/ai-induced-psychosis-the-danger-...
That's merely one example of a long list of very real unresolved problems. It's not a "pretty clean parallel" in the slightest.
One of my trend-following and easily-influenced sisters was quite locked into the Apple ecosystem (iPhones, MacBooks) with her young family, but just over Christmas last year, I spotted them with a refurbished ThinkPad (T490 or thereabouts), with a plan to buy another refurbished ThinkPad.
I /hope/ to see the slowdown in the new phones market affecting the pumped-up chatbot market. To reference Agent Smith, what good is a chatbot if you can't speak?
alternative: telehack.com
One (not recommended) way to test this statement is to spray some on the kitchen floor and see what happens later.
Well the sub that post is from is called "r/MyBoyfriendIsAI" so who knows how often they try their hand at self-parody.
It does however remind me of all the numbers of novice chess players who would rather play against "AI" or chess bots than face up against humans, for reasons of fear or shame in playing against (anonymous) human opponents, and risk looking "stupid" or being silently judged by someone they'll never meet or interact with.
I once had a similar high outlier blood pressure reading after a somewhat busy day followed by running through the city to my blood donation appointment. Who knew that BP is affected by external factors and doesn't stay constant throughout the day‽‽
Find one that is accurate enough and crosscheck it with the one at the doctor by taking regular measurements so you get an idea of trends rather than absolute values. Doctors do know about white coat hypertension - it's not a myth. There's no reason you can't do your own experiments with consumer-level blood pressure monitors from reputable manufacturers. In fact, it was my mother's primary care provider who recommended she buy one for home use.
This is what I did with a US$10 pulse oximeter (a Contec CMS50M from China) when my dad ended up in ICU last year, and it was pretty much bang-on with its readings. I've also tested my pulse oximeter on plane trips and know it will drop below 90% when the air is thin (and rise up again if I do some deep breathing), and therefore know it isn't always stuck at a high value.
Search PubMed for "The Accuracy of 6 Inexpensive Pulse Oximeters Not Cleared by the Food and Drug Administration: The Possible Global Public Health Implications".
I think it depends on one's true goals and the way it's approached. Compare with http://www.greenfly.org/mes.html (which affects many Arch users too, I feel)
Genuine conversations don't come about through being scheduled for a sit-down interview in a meeting room or lounge room - especially not when notes are being taken or they're being recorded, even if there are drinks and snacks present. Active listening is more than just storming in with a question and waiting quietly for a response before launching the next barrage.
Real conversations only happen when there's a mutual understanding of how others tick and when the most appropriate time there is to raise a likely-uncomfortable topic. I'm not going to generalise about women, but I can say that for many men, examples of such situations might include when they're out fishing, cycling, playing golf, or just doing any other hobby that allows one to be "distracted" most times with silence.
Silence is very awkward in sit-down situations where you're "forced" to converse, but not if there's another activity as the main alibi. It's okay to go out fishing and not catch a fish. It's okay to go fishing and not say a word. But it's also okay to start talking freely once both parties are ready for it at a future mystery time and location.
This tweet is ageing nicely: https://twitter.com/troyhunt/status/1640095846095261697
Everything On Medium.com Looks Like An Ad
I'm surprised it's taken this long for more people to realise this. I don't care about reading techbros' opinions on everything when most of the time it boils down to them doing shameless self-promotion.
While I'm on this topic, Quora is pretty bad too. I hope no explanation is necessary.
Note: There are a lot of implementations of KeePass that surpass the original in quality.
KeePassXC is likely the one that's best for most people who wish to go down the standalone application route: https://keepassxc.org/docs/#faq-keepassx
Since quite a while ago now, Tails switched from KeePassX to KeePassXC: https://tails.boum.org/doc/encryption_and_privacy/manage_pas...
So if you're still on KeePass, KeePass2, or KeePassX - consider upgrading to KeePassXC.
Also see the FAQ for various other build options and information: https://cleanaircrew.org/boxfanfilterfaq/
Yes and you should also be aware of how pronounced the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect is here. You'll probably figure it out if you come across any discussion on a topic you're keenly involved in and have some level of knowledge about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
Gold at least is shiny, dense and virtually indestructible, and we humans naturally value things that draw our attention like that. Gold has also stood the test of time as something that most people appreciate when they see/touch it. It'll always be possible in any country to trade an ounce of gold (in any physical form) for /something/ well above $0. Can this guarantee be as easy to make with Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency of one's choosing?
For most normal (non-techy) people, what's the allure of Bitcoin once you remove all the marketing? Perhaps gold indeed still relies on the greater fool, but that fool on average is still less of a fool than the greater fool who has too much "invested" in cryptocurrency.
Redefining percentile or who is considered an active participant as the author did is the greater self-serving misunderstanding. Following from my earlier comment here, this weekly graph already shows active players - those who aren't active aren't factored in: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz
To be active on Lichess requires on to actually be active and have a Rating Deviation below a certain value.
It's all easy to "reaching the top 1% is easy" if you're already at the top. I commented earlier explaining the difference between Overwatch and chess, pointing out how the author's description of what it took to get "good" at Overwatch simply doesn't work for chess. Without trying to slight Overwatch, chess is simply a very very tough game/sport to get very good at.
As Grandmaster Ben Finegold would say, "I'm the best player in this chair!" Yep, so that also makes me in the 100th percentile when in my own chair, just with fancier words.
I'll use a shopping list on the rare occasion where I really need to buy something, and very much am in tune with how to use both digital and paper lists / notes, but with the vast majority of the time, I know what I want to buy or what I want to browse, and that most of the time, having a list makes very little difference to my day to day life.
Sometimes I feel that people try to over-optimise grocery shopping. Basically, my process is simple and works: 1. realise I need more food, 2. grab keys, phone (and maybe wallet) and reusable bags, 3. go to the supermarket, 4. browse the usual stuff I'm interested in and look for what's on sale, 5. grab it off the shelf if I want it.
It's really not that complicated, nor at all stressful to shop without a list. Not everything in life needs a list.
Or, one could be like Elizabeth Swaney or "Eric the Eel", or "Eddie the Eagle" and be the top competitor from their represented country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Swaney
Compared to the best in the world, they were all still not very good. But on the metric of being able to make it to the Olympics, they were all geniuses.
And meanwhile, there's Steven Bradbury who 20 years ago, legitimately won a gold medal in short track speed skating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Bradbury
It seems to me that that "top" is often a nebulous term.
Yep, I'm forever 'amazed' (read: not surprised) that this type of content continually makes it to the top of the front page of this website.
With the way the author described Overwatch, it sounds like the equivalent to 95th percentile for chess would be more 50th percentile for chess, because in order to reach around that level, one would have to put in that type of work as described to purportedly reach the 95th percentile in Overwatch.
Based on my understanding with the Lichess's blitz rating system (which of course can't be directly mapped to any other rating system), I expect that players rated 2175 Glicko in Lichess blitz could roughly be getting close to 1800-2000 Elo with FIDE if they played FIDE classical tournaments and were rated accordingly.
For comparison, FIDE's rating floor is 1000, but newbie players would likely remain "unrated" because they "aren't (yet) good enough" to be 1000 after 5 rated games. Meanwhile, GM Magnus Carlsen currently has a "live" FIDE rating of 2863.9 Elo (live, as opposed to published monthly rating).
As a further comparison, popular Twitch chess streamers WFM Alexandra Botez and WFM Anna Cramling have FIDE ratings of 2020 and 2057 Elo respectively, and Chesscom blitz ratings of 2195 and 2084 glicko respectively. I think they would simply wipe the floor at most (but not all) chess clubs that exist in the world.
There really aren't a lot of players who go through my chess club who are at or near this level. It really takes a lot of work to get anywhere close to that standard. The amount of work it takes for most to get that good would require chess to be their main hobby, if not something more. That, or they have to start it from a young age and also be quite obsessive about it.
Exact numbers aside, this level strength in chess isn't to be sneezed at, and requires significant investments of time - often over a "lifetime" (where lifetime = 10 or more years of a high level of dedication, focus, and good guidance), which for many young players, it is most of their lifetime. Most chess players will never reach this standard of chess, despite following all the basic advice as per the post. So I just find top 5% / 95th percentile being bandied about to be applicable for any field as somewhat laughable or fabricated. Maybe the figure is real for Overwatch, but for things like chess, speedcubing, and instrumental/vocal music, it just doesn't quite work that way as much as many would wish it did. Yes, the overall message of practising and learning is good, but when extraordinary claims such as "95%-ile isn't that good" get thrown about with Overwatch being used as primary evidence, the substance isn't much more convincing than typical clickbait. Survivorship bias?
Both of my hands are quite dexterous, but I still often find myself typing with one finger if it's on a smartphone (I'm still not used to typing with my thumbs), or one hand if I'm on a normal full sized keyboard (such as when I'm eating or snacking). I've owned a split keyboard before (MS Natural Elite) and it was fine, but I'm unlikely to ever buy a split keyboard again.
Facebook has released an official statement which appears to confirm my suspicions about how the data was more or less obtained (i.e., via number search): https://about.fb.com/news/2021/04/facts-on-news-reports-abou... (relevant discussion at https://twitter.com/troyhunt/status/1379579465148157953).
But I too noticed the breach rate in the Middle East seemed unusually high, except my initial assumption was that perhaps the way Facebook was introduced there led to different behaviours in how one finds each other on Facebook. Perhaps it could be even something as simple as small differences in translation that lead to different behaviours when it comes to setting up a Facebook account.
The reason this is my initial hunch (rather than any kind of targeted campaign) is because different parts of the world interact differently with different communications platforms. For example, iMessage is very popular in USA whereas other parts of the world favour WhatsApp, or Telegram, or WeChat, etc. Is there any one concrete reason why one population might choose one "less secure" app over another "more secure" chat app/social network? I'd say probably not and yet, we see large variations depending on which border surrounds a user.
So perhaps a similar 'benign' explanation could explain the high breach rate in certain countries. Perhaps phone numbers are treated differently there too? Other than that, I have no idea. Unfortunately, I know very little about the Middle East let alone the languages there, so this is mostly just a guess.
I think you may have allowed Facebook to allow other Facebook users to search for your profile via your number. Can you check my earlier comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26712835 and let us know whether or not this is/was the case?
"Facebook Settings > Privacy > How people can find and contact you > Who can look you up using the phone number you provided?"
Is/was it set to "Everyone"?
This statistic isn't applicable to me.