farhaven (u/farhaven)

farhaven commented on OpenBSD is so fast, I had to modify the program slightly to measure itself flak.tedunangst.com/post/... · Posted by u/Bogdanp

rurban · 9 days ago

No, generally Linux is at least 3x faster than OpenBSD, because they don't care much for optimizations.

farhaven · 9 days ago

OpenBSD is a lot faster in some specialized areas though. Random number generation from `/dev/urandom`, for example. When I was at university (in 2010 or so), it was faster to read `/dev/urandom` on my OpenBSD laptop and pipe it over ethernet to a friend's Linux laptop than running `cat /dev/urandom > /dev/sda` directly on his.

Not by just a bit, but it was a difference between 10MB/s and 100MB/s.

farhaven commented on Fire hazard of WHY2025 badge due to 18650 Li-Ion cells wiki.why2025.org/Badge/Fi... · Posted by u/fjfaase

arghwhat · 18 days ago

Assuming decent cells with low ESR (say, <30mOhm), one such cell will deliver hundreds of amps when shorted, making things a little bit more lively than your estimation. :)

(A few hundred amps isn't a lot for a shorted battery, but these are tiny cells so that's what you'll get.)

Two cells was probably selected for one of: Voltage to avoid boost converters, capacity to avoid having to do extensive power optimization to make it run the whole event, balance to make it hang even off your neck.

farhaven · 16 days ago

> Two cells was probably selected for one of: Voltage to avoid boost converters, capacity to avoid having to do extensive power optimization to make it run the whole event, balance to make it hang even off your neck.

It's likely not voltage because they're connected in parallel.

farhaven commented on Infinite Grid of Resistors mathpages.com/home/kmath6... · Posted by u/niklasbuschmann

taneq · 2 months ago

Gee, I hope nobody ever puts you in charge of a train!

farhaven · 2 months ago

Well they can still be a conductor, even if they're not a resistor. Actually they'd be a pretty good conductor. A super-conductor, if you will.

farhaven commented on I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled linkedin.com/posts/jdkaim... · Posted by u/jdkaim

jdkaim · 8 months ago

Update: I immediately took down my class project site after receiving yesterday’s ultimatum. I still don’t think the simple demo site violated the letter or spirit of the registration rules, but I took it down because I always want to operate in good faith.

They followed up today to thank me for doing it, but also indicated that they were putting a hold on my account anyway. As a result, I am not going to be able to register for my final quarter and have been de facto expelled at the end of this quarter.

Unless, that is, I agree to work on a comparable solution for the university focused on solving the underlying problem I was building HuskySwap for. They would presumably own the IP and were clear that I wouldn’t be compensated. But it was implied that they would then remove the hold, allowing me to graduate.

I really love UW and have had a wonderful time here. But this is so demoralizing.

Update #2:

I appreciate you guys for all of your advice.

This platform was never intended to be monetized, and I am not planning to get a lawyer involved as I have faith that UW leadership will make it right in the end.

I'm not planning to pursue this project at this point. If they came up to me at first with the offer to work with them it might be different, but the way they handled it makes me just want to walk away.

farhaven · 7 months ago

Others have already told you that talking to a lawyer is still a good idea. If I may offer a personal story that illustrates that that is _really_ a good idea:

While I did my Bachelor's in CS, I was employed by a university (not the one I attended, but one that the project I worked on moved to after the Prof in charge switched universities) as a "student worker" type deal. My job was essentially a Jr. SWE.

A friend of mine also worked on that project, but he was ahead a bit further in his studies, so he already had a BSc degree, while I hadn't. Universities being universities, this meant that his hourly pay was a tiny smidge more than mine (think 50 cents/hour or something like that). Neither of us was paid very well, we both came out to about 10-12 €/hour.

After 6 months my contract was up for renewal. Along with the renewal, they included a modest pay raise to my friend's level. I naively thought that that meant they appreciated my work or something like that. All went well until the _next_ renewal was up.

The HR person responsible for student workers noticed that my "raise" had been in error because they assumed I had gotten my degree as well. None of their paperwork that I signed originally mentioned that. As "proof" that I "should have known" that the raise was in error, they sent along a scanned copy of a copy of a copy of an internal "wage schedule" that I somehow should've been aware of.

Their solution was to hand me a "new" backdated contract with lower hourly wages and told me to sign that to "just quickly fix this error" and told me to just pay back what I had "erroneously" received (signed contract stating the contrary nonwithstanding).

I politely declined because that's not how I think employment works. As a response they said "ah well, don't worry, we'll just take it out of your next pay check", which they did (without me signing anything).

At that point I called my mom and told her the full story. She immediately went "Alright, how do you want to play this? Should we talk to them or do you want to pull out the big guns?". I was sufficiently pissed off that I told her I want the big guns, she told me the info for my families' "lawsuit insurance" (The German term is "Rechtsschutzversicherung", basically cheap-ish insurance to help you pay for a lawyer in cases like this) and called them after we talked.

I called up a lawyer in town that specialized in employment law, had an appointment with him to tell him the story, he went "I can see roughly 4 or 5 reasons that they can't take that money from you, let me write a letter to them and we'll see how it goes".

The end result was that the university in my next paycheck included the amount they had initially reduced my previous check by, my higher-wage contract was renewed, and we never spoke of any of that again. I didn't get an apology or anything from the HR admin who had clearly messed up my contract and was probably trying to cover her ass, but that's fine with me.

Point being: talk to a lawyer, even just to get some advice or to have them write out a nice letter as to why what they're doing is not OK.

farhaven commented on ShredOS – Secure disk erasure/wipe github.com/PartialVolume/... · Posted by u/arunc

mystified5016 · 8 months ago

There is no way to prove that random data is not actually encrypted data. This is a feature called plausible deniability

farhaven · 8 months ago

"Alright ma'am, you claim this here device contains encrypted data? If you don't mind, we'll keep you here until you provide us with the password."

and meanwhile in an alternate universe

"So you say that this device just happens to contain a bunch of random data? That sounds mighty suspicious. We'll keep you here until our technicians have taken a look at it. Get comfy, it'll be a while."

farhaven commented on Show HN: I 3D scanned the tunnels inside the Maya Pyramid Temples at Copan mused.com/guided/158/temp... · Posted by u/lukehollis

farhaven · 10 months ago

This is very cool!

Can you share the technical background you've used for creating the 3D reconstruction? Like software packages, or algorithms used.

Are we looking at the result of packages like OpenSfM here, or COLMAP?

farhaven commented on Panasonic Toughbook 40 connect.na.panasonic.com/... · Posted by u/fidotron

jedberg · a year ago

Fascinating. I've never run into anyone with a vanity toughbook, but I can totally believe this.

farhaven · a year ago

I have a CF-33 that I got used for about 600€ (plus something like 120€ for a replacement battery).

I use it as my "outdoor/garden/workshop" laptop that I can display CAD drawings on and stuff like that without worrying about getting wood splinters in it, or as a juke box/internet lookup-thing/spreadsheet when I work on a semi truck I sometimes drive (not for work though, purely for fun).

It does also double as my backup laptop in case the XPS13 I use for freelancing ever falls off the table or something, but I don't really see that happening anytime soon.

Granted, most of this I could just as well do with an old T-series Thinkpad, but there's something to having a carrying handle on the thing and being able to pull it off its keyboard base. Also, COM ports.

farhaven commented on Microsoft donates the Mono Project to the Wine team mono-project.com/... · Posted by u/itherseed

RandomThoughts3 · a year ago

That’s the old code base which has been in maintenance mode for 5 years and which Microsoft doesn’t want to maintain anymore. New development still happen in a fork which remains under the stewardship of Microsoft.

Second paragraph of the article by the way, just saying.

farhaven · a year ago

So Microsoft gave the Wine project the software equivalent of a stained mattress?

farhaven commented on Defcon stiffs badge HW vendor, drags FW author offstage during talk twitter.com/mightymogomra... · Posted by u/dmitrygr

wkat4242 · a year ago

Not really. The Dutch hacker camps have been pretty constant (save for 2021 for Covid reasons). Run by mostly volunteers yes but basically every participant is a volunteer. It's part of the fun.

They've not really shrunk or significantly grown and are really opposed to corporate and government interests (as Fox-IT found out in 2013)

farhaven · a year ago

The British are doing good stuff as well with EMF.

farhaven commented on Are animals conscious? New research bbc.com/news/articles/cv2... · Posted by u/boto3

slowmovintarget · a year ago

Dogs definitely have Theory of Mind. There was a study done that placed a treat in a room where the dog was instructed not to eat it. A handler was in the room with the dog. When the lights were turned out, the dogs would eat the treat, because they knew that the human couldn't see in the dark.

farhaven · a year ago

I mean, I'm pretty sure rats also have a theory of mind. My data point is exactly one of the little buggers who used to be my pet. Whenever he was running around my room, he'd peek around to see if I was looking at him before jumping on the couch. If he couldn't see me, he'd jump. If he could, he wouldn't.