News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

Timja

Re:Hal Finney Was Not Satoshi Nakamoto on Sunday October 22, 2023 @09:58AM (#37975424)
Entries on a blockchain are auctioned of in an auction which allow arbitrarely low bids. So it is to expected that there is a long tail of bids with a low chance to win.

If a mempool clears, that just means there is limited demand to use the chain, even for free.

Re:Hal Finney Was Not Satoshi Nakamoto on Sunday October 22, 2023 @09:00AM (#37974997)
Before lightning was a thing, he anticipated the block size would increase over time. And he changed his mind when the idea of level 2 came up. Which was the right thing to do. But hard to understand at that time.

UX is a problem throughout all crypto. No matter which coin, no matter L1 or L2. It's all still like the internet before the 90s.

Re:Hal Finney Was Not Satoshi Nakamoto on Sunday October 22, 2023 @08:53AM (#37974950)
The question asked on that video does not mention lightning.

But his answer begins by explaining lightning.

Back early on forsaw that lightning is the way forward and not larger blocks. Which is another indication to me, that he is indeed Nakamoto.

It was a great insight very much in line with Nakamoto's thinking. Nakamoto who forsaw so many things early on like the need for a script instead of just transaction data on the chain.

Re:Hal Finney Was Not Satoshi Nakamoto on Sunday October 22, 2023 @08:45AM (#37974882)
Wikipedia says "Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based street artist, political activist and film director whose real name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation."
Re:Hal Finney Was Not Satoshi Nakamoto on Sunday October 22, 2023 @08:43AM (#37974868)
Oh, interesting. So he only keeps his face secret, not his identity?

I remember reading an interview with Ozzy Osbourne who said he refused to work with Buckethead because it spooked him that BH always kept a mask on, even when they talked in private.

Re:Hal Finney Was Not Satoshi Nakamoto on Sunday October 22, 2023 @08:30AM (#37974778)
I think there is some systematic reason why people like Satoshi, Buckethead, Banksy, etc are not uncovered.

In each case, I doubt that it really is hard to figure out who they are.

Maybe it is the way the press and social media work. You get as many clicks for a wild theory as you get for a properly researched opinion.

As for Satoshi Nakamoto: The most obvious candidate seems to be Adam Back. His invention of proof of work, his biography, character, writing style and role as the CEO of the company behind the main wallet software all point to him. Also, his current communication "Bitcoin looks like something that was discovered rather than invented". That's something a creator typically says about a particularly great piece of work they did. Are there any arguments why he might not be the inventor of Bitcoin?

Most servers don't set a CORS header though.

So usually it does not work in the browser.

Try this in your console while not on Reddit:

    fetch('https://www.reddit.com/.json')
Is this Capacitor specific code?

Here it seems the JS code can fetch data from any domain:

https://github.com/kaangiray26/geddit-app/blob/main/src/js/g...

Since that is not possible in the browser, is that something Capacitor provides?

I would love a battery powered 32" E Ink screen that does nothing on its own, but lets me send it images to display.

But for that I guess I would have to give that thing access to my wifi? I wouldn't want that.

Any ideas if such a product exists and how one could use it shielded from the internet?

Ask HN: Threads in Europe?

Everybody is talking about Threads and showing off their new profiles. While I don't see the app in neither the iOS nor the Android app store?Looks like they do not provide it in Europe. Great. So getting important handles related to your startup is not possible to Europeans?Any way to get around this from Europe so you can at least sign up and prevent someone else registers the name of your...

( Read More... | 3 comments | on HN )
Re:Chrome Ships WebGPU on Thursday April 06, 2023 @09:57AM (#35468367)
Chrome and Firefox here are an example for "Two users who use exactly the same hardware but different software".

To distinguish between users between of a larger set, you do more such tests and add them all together. Each test adding a few bits of information.

To make the above code more reliable, you can measure the ratio multiple times:

https://jsfiddle.net/dov1zqtL/

I get 9-10 in Firefox and 3-4 in Chrome very reliably when measuring it 10 times.

Re:Chrome Ships WebGPU on Thursday April 06, 2023 @06:01AM (#35466361)
Not sure if the workload makes a difference.

We would have to make examples of what Computation1 is and what Computation2 is to make a prediction if certain types of workloads will impact the ratio of their performance.

Example:

    s=performance.now();
    r=0;
    for (i=0; i<1000000; i++) r+=1;
    t1=performance.now()-s;

    s=performance.now();
    r=0;
    for (i=0; i<1000000; i++) r+="bladibla".match(/bla/)[0].length;
    t2=performance.now()-s;

    console.log("Ratio: " + t2/t1);
For me, the ratio is consistently larger in Chrome than in Firefox. Which workload would reverse that?
Re:Chrome Ships WebGPU on Thursday April 06, 2023 @05:20AM (#35466099)
There is no way to escape fingerprinting.

Just one example: A script which runs many different types of computations. Each computation will take a certain amount of time depending on your hardware and software. So you will get a fingerprint like this:

    computation 1: **
    computation 2: ****
    computation 3: **********
    computation 4: **
    computation 5: **************
    computation 6: ************
    computation 7: *********
    etc
There is no way to avoid this. You can make the fingerprint more noisy by doing random waits. But thats all.
Re:Databases: 2021 in Review and Predictions for 2022 on Friday November 11, 2022 @04:52AM (#33558814)
My prediction: SQLite will keep gaining popularity.

Especially among pragmatic software builders who run their own business and do not work for the man. A demographic that I expect to grow.

Talking about SQLite: Is there any downside to partitioning an SQLite db into multiple files?

For example one of my systems has a table 'details' which is not vital for the system to work. It's just a nice to have, to have data in this table. And it is pretty big, growing fast.

When I copy the DB over to another system, I don't need that table. So it would be nice to have like primary.db and secondary.db. With 'details' in secondary.db. Any downside to this approach? Are JOINS slower across two files than across two tables in the same file?

I think it's not a distro thing. It's a hardware thing.

Too bad. I was hoping AMD still supported it.

Then you don't have suspend to ram.

The way I read it, s2idle leaves the CPU running. So it is up to the OS if it wants to use it or not.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/power/states.txt

Re:Ask HN: ActivityPub or Mastodon? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @12:04PM (#33494664)
Is that the peers list? Other instance where at least one user follows one user from the given instance?
Re:Ask HN: ActivityPub or Mastodon? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @12:03PM (#33494651)
Then why?
Re:Ask HN: ActivityPub or Mastodon? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @09:24AM (#33492936)
Strange that users have private keys. Is that kinda forward-looking, so that at some point those keys could be moved to the users themselves? So they can keep their identity, even if the owner of their instance becomes malicious?
Re:Ask HN: ActivityPub or Mastodon? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @08:43AM (#33492540)
With "actor" you mean "user"?

Every user has their own private key?

Re:Ask HN: ActivityPub or Mastodon? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @08:30AM (#33492402)
Nice!

283 files

Still crazy many, but I will look a into it in case https://microblog.pub turns out to be not what I am looking for.

Re:Ask HN: ActivityPub or Mastodon? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @08:20AM (#33492290)
I would expect "Open Federation" does not mean you need to talk to every instance out there directly. But that it works like a web where messages are routed around. I could be wrong. But I would expect the "servers_i_talk_to" array is what the instances output at the "peers" endpoint:

https://fosstodon.org/api/v1/instance/peers

Re:Ask HN: ActivityPub or Mastodon? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @08:14AM (#33492235)
Thanks. 153 files. An order of magnitude leaner than the ones I have seen so far.
Re:Ask HN: ActivityPub or Mastodon? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @08:07AM (#33492178)
The download goes to tgz files. No GitHub or GitLab repo?
Re:Ask HN: ActivityPub or Mastodon? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @08:06AM (#33492166)

    GoToSocial: 6849 files plus dependencies

    Pleroma: 2289 files plus dependencies
I might miss my target of 2 files. But I will surely not get the filecount go up to these extremes :)
Re:Ask HN: ActivityPub or Mastodon? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @08:02AM (#33492130)
The trending images have only a handful of likes.

Are likes not federated through the Fediverse? If someone on mastodon.social likes a post on pixelfed.social, will that increase the like count on pixelfed.social?

Re:Ask HN: ActivityPub or Mastodon? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @07:58AM (#33492083)
What do those "HTTP Signatures" do?

If admin of serverA decides to add serverB to the servers_i_talk_to array, they also ask serverB to give them a public key and from then on serverA only accepts messages from serverB if they are signed with the corresponding private key?

Is that so that serverB can change its IP without interrupting the communication with serverA?

Re:Ask HN: ActivityPub or Mastodon? on Sunday November 06, 2022 @07:41AM (#33491953)
Thanks, will look through these. But all of the ones I have looked at so far seem pretty complex with hundreds of files.

I don't know the fediverse protocol yet, but I would hope I can get away with just two files like this:

receive.php

    if (!isset(servers_i_talk_to[$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']]) die();
    $data = $_POST['msg']
    $file = 'log/' + time().'-'.mt_rand();
    file_put_contents($file, $data);
send.php

    $data=$_POST['data'];
    for ($servers_i_talk_to as $server) {
        send_message($server, $data);
    }
Where receive.php is openly accessible and send.php is protected by a password.

Ask HN: ActivityPub or Mastodon?

I am thinking about joining the Fediverse.I don't really understand the difference between ActivityPub and Mastodon yet.If I write my own ActivityPub software (server code with web frontend), can I interact with Mastodon users just as if I also were a Mastodon user? Or would I have to implement some Mastodon specific protocols?

( Read More... | 61 comments | 11 points | on HN )
Re:Mastodon v4.0.0 Release Candidate on Sunday November 06, 2022 @06:55AM (#33491638)
If I register with a Mastdodon instance, then why do I need a "home Mastodon instance"? Wouldn't I just use the web frontend the instance I registered with provides?

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