hiisukun (u/hiisukun)

hiisukun commented on Sins of the Children asteriskmag.com/issues/07... · Posted by u/maxall4

arjie · a month ago

Adrian Tchaikovsky is really good at these alien ecosystems kind of thing (his Children of * range being quite good). This was a terrific short story. One thing I am curious about is whether there is a different kind of science fiction out there. The driving thread through all of modern English sci-fi is "we shouldn't go out there and do anything; we are the bad that ruins a delicate thing". That's a cool story but somewhat overly tropey at this point I think. This short story, the Avatar series, they have this ecological moralizing. AT is creative enough that the novel ideas (single species life-cycle planet) carry the tale even though the moral thread is the same as the Avatar movie: corporations destroy ecosystems they don't understand in the resource pursuit.

I enjoy the "what if we're the baddies" just as much as anyone else. But are there big stories with these exciting concepts where we aren't the baddies in the Anglosphere?

A thing I enjoy about other cultures is seeing what is unusually different about them. In the Three Body Problem, spoilers to follow for the series, humanity aren't The Bad Guys With Agency. We aren't even The Big Bad or The Big Good. We're sort of just other participants in this universe. The dual vector foil is employed by someone else, the guys who want space back from the pocket dimension to reboot the universe are just someone else, everything is someone else. We are bit part players in this play.

This goes on even to a few movies. The Wandering Earth movie (somewhat different from the short story) has this part at the end (obvious spoilers to follow) where the heroes accomplish the task and reboot their Earth Engine after conquering all odds - only for the camera to zoom out and show numerous other teams also having done the same. This wasn't the only struggle won. Cool alternative tale where it isn't so much One Team Saves The World or One Team Ruins The World.

hiisukun · a month ago

In the sci-fi film Arrival (also based on a short story), humanity are kind of like irresponsible young students. If we get past our focus on war/conflict/us vs them perhaps we can learn new things from the aliens.

I think that breaks the style a little of 'humans bad for aliens' enough, right?

Either way I enjoyed Arrival (and the short story).

hiisukun commented on Cryptography 101 with Alfred Menezes cryptography101.ca... · Posted by u/nmadden

danhau · 3 months ago

What I would like, but haven’t found yet, is a cheat sheet on what up to date encryption method or algorithm one should use for whatever need. A kind of requirement -> algorithm dictionary.

Like, I need to authenticate that a client is a known identity. What algo? How to use it? What to avoid? I need to sign a message or document. How? I need to verify said message. How? I need to store passwords. How?

I know some crypto, but discovering and learning about them is a bit of a pain. For how important crypto is, you‘d think someone would have bothered to teach developers how to choose and deploy these algorithms properly.

hiisukun · 3 months ago

It's not new, and some people would disagree on some minor elements -- but a good place to start was regularly this blog from approximately Matasano/NCC Group members, called Cryptographic Right Answers [1]. It's very clear, gives straight forward answers in clear fashion -- and with multiple opinions often aligning.

It was updated a few times, I wonder if the equivalent exists for PQ?

Edit/Update: Found the PQ one @ [2], definitely check it out!

Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but perhaps the most controversial element was the regular recommendation of AES-GCM. It certainly has excellent security properties, but also a certain brittleness re: nonces.

[1] https://www.latacora.com/blog/2018/04/03/cryptographic-right... [2] https://www.latacora.com/blog/2024/07/29/crypto-right-answer...

hiisukun commented on Language models are injective and hence invertible arxiv.org/abs/2510.15511... · Posted by u/mazsa

fn-mote · 3 months ago

Edit: there are other clarifications, eg authors on X, so this comment is irrelevant.

The birthday paradox relies on there being a small number of possible birthdays (365-366).

There are not a small number of dimensions being used in the LLM.

The GP argument makes sense to me.

hiisukun · 3 months ago

It doesn't need a small number -- rather it relies on you being able to find a pairing amongst any of your candidates, rather than find a pairing for a specific birthday.

That's the paradoxical part: the number of potential pairings for a very small number of people is much higher than one might think, and so for 365 options (in the birthday example) you can get even chances with far fewer than 365, and even far fewer than ½x365 people..

hiisukun commented on Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account theverge.com/news/793579/... · Posted by u/josephcsible

hiisukun · 4 months ago

I view this a little like those Nigerian prince email scams. True or not, once upon a time I heard that they deliberately did not fix the obvious spelling and grammatical errors in the scam emails -- they acted as an excellent first pass filter to exclude scam effort against targets who wouldn't fall for it anyway.

When Microsoft allows local accounts via more complicated loopholes, or activation via massgrave, or the removal of bloat/ad components via scripts or cmdline processes -- they lose little. But what they can gain by having an account for all the 'regular' users is a share of that giant ad revenue pie mostly dominated by google (and more recently a few other companies) in the last 20 years. And if you bypass those processes anyway? Probably worth being filtered out to Microsoft: you likely install an ad blocker later, change your search engine, browser, et al.

Knowing what their users do, being their search gateway, their default AI system (eventually..) and generally having an eye on their whole user experience gives Microsoft a formidable profit line in the future. And maybe the present too, I don't know.

It is a distasteful feeling to have installed windows 95 (or win7 or whatever your favourite flavour) and then try and install windows 11. But for the majority of their customer base (corporate and residential) this isn't relevant.

N=1, but this week my family member asked for advice on a new laptop and their only specification was that it could not have windows on it. They don't have any Apple products but are happy to shift, or use Linux.

hiisukun commented on Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar? · Posted by u/mazzystar

hoytech · 8 months ago

Flamenco can be a very challenging and technical style, but it doesn't have to be. I don't know your background, but if you just want to have fun and sound good quickly, try this.

Get a nylon string guitar. It doesn't have to be a flamenco guitar per-se, any classical will do. But steel string acoustic guitars will absolutely not work for this style. The sound is wrong and the strings are too close together.

Learn the Andalusian cadence. It's the chords A minor, G, F, and E, in that order. This is the characteristic "Spanish" sound recognisable by everyone, and is in fact a fundamental building block of Flamenco style (por arriba). The chords can be played barred or open, your choice. You can instead start in D minor (por medio) if you like.

Practice a basic rumba strumming pattern until it is drilled into your muscle memory. The easiest is to just strum, counting from 1 to 8, and on beat 5 slap the strings instead of strumming.

Do not use a pick. There are several right-hand techniques you'll want to learn. The most important is probably rasgueado ("gypsy strumming"). You essentially flick your fingers so that each one strums the strings in rapid succession. It's challenging at first, but try to make the timing in between fingers roughly even. Next is tremolo: rapidly plucking the same string with alternating fingers, while playing bass notes with your thumb. This is a common classical guitar technique too, but Flamenco takes it further, often using 4 plucks instead of 3. Actually flamenco technique breaks many classical guitar "rules".

Once you want to start mastering more specific styles ("palos"), just get some tabs and work through them. You'll probably want to start with soleares, alegrias, farruca, fandango. Unlike classical guitar, nobody will look down at you for using tabs (or learning by ear) instead of notation. Paco de Lucia famously does not read notation.

Hope this helps. Have fun!

hiisukun · 8 months ago

This is a good comment! But I'll add that many classical learners use tab, and I think there's absolutely no shame there. The music is what counts, and I think rarely would someone look down on a learner.

Guitarists love other ppl learning or playing guitar!

hiisukun commented on Is Robert Frost Even a Good Poet? theparisreview.org/blog/2... · Posted by u/lermontov

jll29 · a year ago

Kevin Murphy's lecture on Frost is the best one I've ever heard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5140uJOUDE

He first recaps the conventional view people have about Frost, then reads "The Road Not Taken", his most famous poem, and then completely takes Frost AND the poem AND THEN the public's misunderstanding of Frost apart.

Don't get fooled by the bare visual appearance of Murphy, his empty blackboard (no PPT, no bs) - this lecture is a fantastic, suprising and deeply disturbing (regarding what is revealed about Frost and his public misappreciation). Simply priceless teaching - thank you, dear colleague.

EDIT: If you ask ChatGPT for a "10-20 sentence interpretation of The Road Not Taken", it falls right into the trap that Murphy warns about.

hiisukun · a year ago

I watched the lecture and did not find it compelling. It was a very literal interpretation, discussed alongside the evidence presented in the text of what was and wasn't more or less traveled by.

There was an interesting series of points made about American culture, and their sense of need for an affirmation / self-deception -- but I don't find his actual critique of the poem's words particularly enlightening.

So if you are interested in American cultural thought, involving over-rationalisation of choices, the lecture might have value. If you are particularly interested in the poem itself outside of that context, I don't recommend viewing.

hiisukun commented on AMC Theatres will screen a Swedish movie 'visually dubbed' with the help of AI engadget.com/ai/amc-theat... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

hiisukun · a year ago

I would love a way to regularly discover and watch some top, 'hit' TV shows or movies from outside of America or Australia (my home country), or sometimes England. I have no issues watching things with subtitles, but it is quite difficult to organically find things to watch, that perhaps have 'not English' as their primary language.

For example, I will now look up the UFO Sweden show to see if I might like to watch it -- because I discovered it through here.

I have tried subscribing to a few different regular streaming services, but none seemed to work even if I pointed them in the right direction. I'm really not particular about which country of origin the production has, so long as it's "the best" or "very popular" in recent times from that place, it's worth me checking the genre and style to see if it piques my interest.

Any advice on this? [ nb. I have a similar issue with podcasts! ]

hiisukun commented on I set my phone to 'do not disturb' three years ago – and have never looked back theguardian.com/lifeandst... · Posted by u/jethronethro

stevage · a year ago

>I’ve still had to work on my self-discipline, so that I don’t spend all my time checking my phone to see what I’ve missed. This is, arguably, the hardest part – the lure of a potential unread message can be profound

Yep, you can either poll, or you can respond to interrupts.

Me, my phone is usually not on DND but it's always on silent. I turn off notifications for everything except messaging apps. Most apps end abusing them sooner or later to send you marketing nonsense, or "you haven't used me in a while, I'm lonely" crap.

I'm amazed anyone can get anything done with noisy/vibratey notifications.

hiisukun · a year ago

I'd love for a half half solution here.

Where the phone collects notifications silently for an hour, then if there are any meeting the "alert" bar, it just buzzes or tones on the hour. Or whatever interval I choose.

I think a few times a day is plenty for my notifications, except for a couple of close friends and family -- but they're all in the same bucket. An app I installed yesterday who's messages I need but are not urgent, and a lifelong friend? Same value to the phone OS.

I'm thankful for the star contacts on Android working through dnd, but would love an aggregate/timed system for bulk stuff.

hiisukun commented on Gold Is Worth More in New York bloomberg.com/opinion/art... · Posted by u/ioblomov

hiisukun · a year ago

I clicked this by accident, but then read the full thing after noticing the author was Matt Levine! I'm sure there are other readers here who might appreciate his knowledge and writing style, so I mention it.

[ To those who post opinion pieces: Is it against the site rules to have the author listed after the actual title? It would help me in this case and others ]

hiisukun commented on Show HN: I designed an espresso machine and coffee grinder velofuso.com... · Posted by u/smeeeeeeeeeeeee

hiisukun · a year ago

Lovely design. Just a quick note to say that here in Australia, people are coffee crazy and would probably find a home for your kit. That includes individuals at home, but also cafes and hotel foyers etc.

Might be worth considering an AU plug as an option (we run off 240v).