gottebp (u/gottebp) - Readit News

gottebp commented on Donald Bitzer has died computerhistory.org/blog/... · Posted by u/sohkamyung

gottebp · 9 months ago

Ah this is sad news. I came to know of him by way of UIUC's Engineering Open House. Back in 03' or 04' a rag tag group of us put together an "asymmetric capacitor" exhibit -- a sort of simple ion thruster. A kind hearted TA put our project in for an award Bitzer had sponsored, and it went in our favor.

It was not a large amount after dividing it up, but it was so rare in the college days to have any spare change for anything, and it sure meant a lot at the time. https://ece.illinois.edu/academics/ugrad/scholarships-and-aw...

gottebp commented on Shapeways Files for Bankruptcy hackaday.com/2024/07/04/s... · Posted by u/Luc

gottebp · a year ago

Here is a personal anecdote that I cannot help but extrapolate on this sad day:

Back in 2016 I made an impossible to get replacement part [0] for the Breville BCG800XL SmartGrinder and sold it through ShapeWays. It paid for all my coffee up until ~2022 when another company popped up and began selling an injection molded copy of my part on Amazon, Walmart, etc. ShapeWays' marketplace always let you easily see the top sellers in each category. I somewhat wonder if outside firms simply caught on, bought one of each, copied it, and made an injection mold to mass produce everything cheaply. This is great for the consumer but I have no idea how ShapeWays could have defended against it. I am thankful it lasted the few years it did. 3D printing was a fun way to make a little while helping folks keep their stuff out of the landfill.

[0] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG800XL+Grinder+Jamming+due+to...

gottebp commented on Apple just made your app obsolete? You've been 'Sherlocked' text.npr.org/g-s1-4912... · Posted by u/everybodyknows

gottebp · a year ago

Every idea seems obvious to add to the OS in hindsight, yet we all lose. For a small shop these apps are their lifeblood and so they get constantly nourished. For a large corporation, this taking candy from babies moment constitutes a blurb in a keynote followed by minimal attention or innovation from then on.

Copyright and patent law were intended to prevent this, but software has no real moat from this. The little plants in the garden get to prove the concept just before the giant redwoods draw all the water from the soil and block the light -- and the legal system is setup to favor this.

gottebp commented on Smoking has long-term effects on the immune system pasteur.fr/en/home/press-... · Posted by u/gmays

gottebp · 2 years ago

Radioactive Polonium-210 is the most potent carcinogen within tobacco, and it is not intrinsic to the plant. It is a result of past use of phosphate fertilizer [0].

[0] https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactivity-tobacco

gottebp commented on An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs arxiv.org/abs/2307.12108... · Posted by u/vincent_s

hosh · 2 years ago

If I remember correctly, Google’s CAPCHA’s test isn’t in correctly identifying images, but the behavior of the runtime system (mouse jitter, for example) while the capcha is presented to the user. The image identification was not the real test and serves as training data. It has been like that for years. (But with agent-based behaviors from say, Q*, mouse jitter alone won’t help; there are probably other signals like fluctuation in cpu or battery life expenditures)

You could already see the writing on the wall with image identification years ago, when the obscuration techniques became more elaborate. It was an arms race. I was having trouble with them. I can see less technically inclined being able to use them. I imagined how much worse it was for people with color blindness, disabilities, or people forced to use them at public library computers because that is all they have.

Open source capcha projects have either not been clued in, or don’t have the resources to pull this off. Google didn’t just switch out which signals they tested, they also wrote an obfuscating virtual machine executing within the browser environment (if I remember that article taking about this correctly). That was years ago and who knows what they do now — for all we know, the “byte code” running the test is now a neural net of some kind.

gottebp · 2 years ago

I have occasionally wondered if they were fingerprinting users based on that mouse jitter. Most likely certain aspects of the mouse motion and timing would be unique.

gottebp commented on Apple's new iPhone security setting keeps thieves out of your digital accounts theverge.com/2023/12/12/2... · Posted by u/kristianpaul

gottebp · 2 years ago

I really wish there was a feature to lock the phone upon rapid movement, such as when a thief snatches the device while it is in use. It seems like an obvious mitigation to a common problem by way of the built in accelerometer.

gottebp commented on The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free? wired.com/story/the-cloud... · Posted by u/samwillis

gottebp · 2 years ago

Before it was called "local first" it was known as "subsidiarity". Seeing the principle applied to food, politics, software is exciting to me.

"Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority".[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity_(Catholicism)

gottebp commented on Study finds elevated levels of toxic metals in some juices and soft drinks news.tulane.edu/pr/study-... · Posted by u/elorant

gottebp · 2 years ago

Does the FDA not randomly sample and test for this sort of thing? Why does it take a university study to discover it?

gottebp commented on Ask HN: What are household items that can be repaired but people often replace? · Posted by u/trwhite

lopis · 3 years ago

Then why would you recommend a device that breaks and the company offers no support for repairs?

gottebp · 3 years ago

Well, I do not. It is one of the most popular grinders on Amazon though. Many of us are already stuck with it!

gottebp commented on Ask HN: What are household items that can be repaired but people often replace? · Posted by u/trwhite

gottebp · 3 years ago

Breville coffee grinders. The company does not sell parts, and so 3D printing was necessary to bridge the gap when mine broke a few years back. It ended up being one of the small victories over entropy for me, and I wrote it all up on iFixit here[0]

[0] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG800XL+Grinder+Jamming+due+to...