stacktrust

Osteoarthritis occurs when a joint is stressed by aging, injury or obesity. The chondrocytes begin to release pro-inflammatory molecules and to break down collagen, which is the primary structural protein of cartilage. When collagen is lost, the cartilage thins and softens; the accompanying inflammation causes the joint swelling and pain that are hallmarks of the disease.

Collagen synthesis in the human body can be aided by hydrolyzed collagen, Vitamin C, zinc and copper.

I wonder why nobody has set up, e.g., a good Yocto CI/CD base image pipeline for custom hardware devices

The near-infinite flexibility of OpenEmbedded/Yocto is a blessing and curse.

The Yocto autobuilder [1] covers board families, but hardware-specific layers [2] and BSPs are maintained by vendors and consultants [3].

Wind River Linux [4] offers long-term commercial support for regulated industries, derived from Yocto LTS, https://www.windriver.com/products/linux

Some work was done on a "Reference Binary Distro" to make Yocto more accessible to new developers, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7plHWCHGv1c

Funding has slowly diversified beyond hardware vendors, e.g. https://www.sovereign.tech/tech/yocto

[1] https://dashboard.yoctoproject.org [2] https://layers.openembedded.org [3] https://www.yoctoproject.org/community/consultants/

  What advice would you give to a younger L. E. Modesitt, Jr. at the beginning of his writing career?

In theory, LLMs could review more sources for a personalized risk assessment. But a brief query on this subject yielded generic responses from multiple LLMs :(

Earlier thread (50 comments), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44527484

The smallest capsule of pregabalin/lyrica is 25mg. After reducing to that minimum, it still took months of further tapering by dividing capsules, before withdrawal symptoms ended in one elderly patient. Pregabalin suppresses nausea, which means nausea is a symptom of withdrawal, requiring ginger tablets or other anti-nausea assistance during tapering.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/an-anxiety-drug-killed-m...

An investigation by The Sunday Times has revealed that pregabalin has the fastest-rising death toll of any drug in the UK, based on figures compiled from official data across all regions. It is detected in a third of all drug-related deaths. In 2012, pregabalin was indicated in nine fatalities. A decade later, in 2022, the number had risen to 779, with almost 3,400 deaths in the past five years.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44527484#44529281

The widespread use of Gabapentin and Pregabalin to treat neuropathy is off-label their original function as anti-convulsant and anti-psychotic meds. In addition to the documented negative side effects, withdrawal by elderly patients from extended use can be difficult, even with months of tapering. They can negatively affect memory and cognition.

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

Gabapentin, sold under the brand name Neurontin among others, is an anticonvulsant medication primarily used to treat neuropathic pain and also for partial seizures of epilepsy.. is [ONLY] moderately effective: about 30–40% of those given gabapentin for diabetic neuropathy or postherpetic neuralgia have a meaningful benefit.

Those with peripheral neuropathy should audit the total amount of Vitamin B6 in their diet and daily supplements. Try to keep the daily amount below 10mg. There have not yet been lawsuits to add bottle label warnings, but Australian regulators have issued a safety warning.

https://www.tga.gov.au/news/safety-alerts/health-supplements...

Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) is in lots of multivitamin and mineral supplements that can be bought in supermarkets, health food shops and pharmacies without a prescription. Many people are not aware that vitamin B6 can cause peripheral neuropathy, which results in tingling, burning or numbness usually in the hands and feet. Taking vitamin B6 even at low doses can cause peripheral neuropathy but people are more likely to get it if they are taking more than one supplement.

(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44390781#44396389)

Is there a modern equivalent?

Identify or find objects with Alexa+.. use the camera on Echo Show devices to identify objects and get help with daily tasks. For example, reorder pantry items by showing them to the new Alexa, ask Alexa to identify a type of plant and its care instructions and set reminders for when it needs to get watered, or get fashion or décor ideas. This new feature is particularly game changing for people who are blind or have low vision

This has so much potential, but it will require a workflow for Alexa to learn about specific objects and layout (of multiple objects) within the customer's home. Apple's "live audio descriptions of video" had similar promise at launch, but hasn't evolved beyond the launch demo, https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/iphone/iph32deb9296/18.... Could Alexa+ enable self-service RLHF on home video/images?

It's a testament to the latent market opportunity that Amazon has sold 500+ million devices, despite the obstacles that greet customers trying to customize Alexa for their specific needs. With open developer interfaces, Alexa could have been the "IBM PC" of voice AI, instead of just another walled garden.

Alexa use cases for elderly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41062989

In theory, Home Assistant voice hardware could be integrated with local LLMs for private voice control, https://www.home-assistant.io/voice-pe/

Fully open software, firmware, and hardware.. Grove port for connecting sensors and a 3.5mm headphone jack for connecting external speakers

Nice writeup. iOS Shortcuts can read NFC tags and open links or speak descriptions. One tap, no app, responds within a few seconds.

awesome-vendor-repairability index?

Would you recommend ZFS as a building block for modern "VLFS"?

https://blog.chlc.cc/p/docker-and-zfs-a-tough-pair/

Misguided "simplicity" is the bane of modern UX.

https://github.com/Wenzel/pyvmidbg

  LibVMI-based debug server, implemented in Python. Building a guest aware, stealth and agentless full-system debugger.. GDB stub allows you to debug a remote process running in a VM with your favorite GDB frontend. By leveraging virtual machine introspection, the stub remains stealth and requires no modification of the guest.

It's from the original Xen team. Subsequently cloned by MS as MDAG (Defender Application Guard).

HP business PCs ship with SureClick based on OSS uXen, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41071884

A modern virtualization architecture can be found in the OSS pKVM L0 nested hypervisor for Android Virtualization Framework, which has some architectural overlap with HP/Bromium AX L0 + [Hyper-V | KVM | Xen] L1 + uXen L2 micro-VMs with copy-on-write memory.

A Bromium demo circa 2014 was a web browser where every tab was an isolated VM, and every HTTP request was an isolated VM. Hundreds of VMs could be launched in a couple of hundred milliseconds. Firecracker has some overlap.

Lastly, this approach is almost certainly more expensive. Our instances sit idle for the most part and we pay EC2 a pretty penny for the privilege.

With many near-idle server VMs running identical code for each customer, there may be an opportunity to use copy-on-memory-write VMs with fast restore of unique memory state, using the techniques employed in live migration.

Xen/uXen/AX: https://www.platformsecuritysummit.com/2018/speaker/pratt/

pKVM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9npebeVFbFw

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41062989

If it's not doing what you want, you can remap any arbitrary voice command to a precise Volume setting in 1% increments, via a custom Routine.

Practical Alexa use cases for elderly:

  1. Schedule/ask cooker to start, then stop after fixed time.
  2. Blind person can control microwave with voice.
  3. Blind person navigation via prompts from multiple Echo devices.
  4. Blind person notification when doors opened or motion detected.
  5. Blind person item locator, via Tile + Alexa.
  6. On-demand instructions for caregivers.
  7. On-demand physiotherapy exercise instructions.
  8. On-demand streaming radio and podcasts.
  9. TV voice control via Logitech Harmony or Android Fire TV.
  10. Call PSTN phones via VOIP (10 number limit).
  11. Zigbee devices with USA-based cloud security (Echo4 is a hub)
  12. Arm/disarm Blink cameras.
  13. AC/heat control via temperature sensor in Echo devices. 
  14. Announce notifications from Google Calendar.

The report also highlighted the dire need for this [AI] version of Alexa to make money to keep the voice assistant alive.

The early iPhone left doors open for experiments that could later be supported and productized. Alexa failed to open up devices for experiments that could seed innovation. Look at the failure of the official "Skills" program, compared to the thriving HomeAssistant ecosystem that is an obvious match for smart speakers.

If the device fails, 500K devices should be unlocked for use with generic Linux, instead of being relegated to landfill.

Blink cameras have amazing battery life due to proprietary silicon, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40065319

These would be tough as they are based on a proprietary ASIC which is poorly documented even for internal developers. Ask me how I know.

Teardown thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33683122

We need a name for the phase of innovation curves after IP warlords have completed vision quests, leaving a stable landscape.

This vendor has an array of RFID products: https://gototags.com

You can use these around the house or car for location-tap automation. Tap on NFC tag and mobile phone can trigger a custom shortcut for local action or SSH script to Linux SBC or micro PC. Response time is about one second. Even the iPhone SE2 has an NFC reader.

For vision-impaired people, NFC tags can be attached to objects and the phone can read an audio description when the object is tapped against phone.

There's also Apple DFU mode to restore OS with help from immutable ROM and external device, without depending on installed OS or mutable "Recovery OS" partition, https://theapplewiki.com/wiki/DFU_Mode & https://support.apple.com/en-us/108900

DFU or Device Firmware Upgrade mode allows all devices to be restored from any state. It is essentially a mode where the BootROM can accept iBSS. DFU is part of the SecureROM which is burned into the hardware, so it cannot be removed.

In case the device is rebooted, it just gets infected again in a few minutes.

Can Suricata detect and block known router botnets?

Do ISPs and modem vendors roll their own OTA infrastructure and signing key management, or contract it out?

Apple has a robust recovery mechanism on their laptops, via T2 security coprocessor.

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/25/apple-silicon-macs-new-...

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/