Monthly Archives: April 2024

Micronics Announces Desktop SLS 3D Printer, Starting at $2,999 [video]

Posted on 2024-04-05 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Ooh. That's less nasty than resin, and in the same price range as other enthusiast benchtop fab tech. Toolchain looks credible. Excited to see SLS maybe coming down to accessible, assuming they haven't over-promised or wandered into a patent minefield.
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Should employers pay for employees’ phones if 2FA apps are required?

Posted on 2024-04-05 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: If an employer MDMs a device, or has root/admin on it, or prevents the owner from having root on it because their B2B security theater crapware takes exception to root and/or running under a VM, they pay for it and any service or upkeep. Gray zones include open standards - like TOTP or SMS - that you can noninvasively integrate into existing tools - and things jailed to VMs on machines the owner controls. I'm still forcing UKY's Duo setup to degrade to SMS mode because it thinks (almost? I have a phone rigged with Knox based pseudo-rootful ad blocking that might pass - I don't care to try) every device I own is tampered. Occasionally I get an automated-looking prompt about it and fill in "You can supply a dongle, pay for a phone, support an open standard like TOTP, or deal." No idea if anyone reads it.
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Roku gets patent for injecting ads through HDMI

Posted on 2024-04-04 by pappp

Source: OSNews

Article note: Fuck _everything_ about this.

Oh boy. Roku has an… Interesting new patent. Thought you could avoid the ads infesting every “smart” TV you buy now by using external devices through HDMI?

Disclosed herein are system, apparatus, article of manufacture, method and/or computer program product embodiments, and/or combinations and sub-combinations thereof, for ad insertion by a display device coupled to a media device via a high-definition media interface (HDMI) connection, where the media device provides media content and/or a control signal. When the media device pauses the media content, the display device can determine that a pause event has occurred and insert an ad shown on the display device. Further, some embodiments include determining the context and/or content of the media content that is paused, and determining an ad that is customized to the determined context and/or content to be displayed on the display device. In some embodiments, the display device can determine additional information from the control signal that may also be used to determine the ad to be displayed on the display device.

↫ Some bullshit patent for a bullshit ‘invention’

My eyes are bleeding. I require medical assistance.

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Kiss High-Availability with OpenBSD

Posted on 2024-04-03 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: It's very BSD. Simple, shell script-y, composed from standard parts. I like the weekly alternation to solve both exercise and certs. The "Linux-y" and UNIX-y methods have really diverged in the last decade.
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The speed of sight: Individual variation in critical flicker fusion thresholds

Posted on 2024-04-03 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Neat! It matches my intuition, and the experimental setup is really solid.
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Amazon’s ‘Just Walk Out’ checkout system consisted of 1000 people in India watching you shop

Posted on 2024-04-03 by pappp

Source: OSNews

Article note: Retail tech _always_ turns out to work that way. Stocking robots turn out to be "some underpaid folks with a camera feed and some controls on the other side of the planet." Delivery robots turn out to be the same (UK has starships which are _semi_ autonomous, but for every several operating there is a human tender remotely "helping" them.) Even Uber's "We'd totally be profitable if we could replace gig workers with self-driving vehicles" investor-bait con is basically the same dumb trick.

Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with.

Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store. Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.

↫ Maxwell Zeff

Behind every Silicon Valley innovation are underpaid poor people.

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OSQI

Posted on 2024-04-02 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: It's not a bad suggestion. It would be a good way to direct a not-that-large chunk of resources at open source projects (which is often the problem; it's very hard as a public entity to give some money to an open source project or pay one of its active devs as a consultant or whatnot, so you get farcical shit like a national lab asking HPE asking some random gcc dev to do something with no way to compensate them). It would be a good way to get some capable software engineers out of the "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads" hole that is eroding our civilization.
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Middle East Crisis: Israeli Strikes on Aid Convoy Prompts Condemnation and an Apology From Netanyahu

Posted on 2024-04-02 by pappp

Source: NYT > World

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “deeply regrets” the strikes that killed seven aid workers with World Central Kitchen in Gaza.

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There were no ancient computers and it’s fine

Posted on 2024-04-01 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Ehhh, They're hammering the "Programmable/Stored Program" requirement real hard. There were lots of useful devices for performing calculations, switching signals, data acquisition, and control prior to full-bore computers (arithmetic aids, telephone switches, etc.), and many of them were necessary preconditions for the stored-program computer. There were also very clearly people who understood the potential of computing machines before they were realizable, which were necessary to their development. I do agree that Babbage and Lovelace get over-emphasized because they are _compelling characters_ rather than because of their centrality. (And I have a pet peeve that the important thing from Lovelace is that she was the first person to write down that you could use a computing machine for something-not-arithmetic, the claims about programming are more disputable and less interesting.
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