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Show HN: The Meme Vaccine

https://memevaccine.com/

Hi HN,My name is Sapiens. I started learning about Reason and Science well into my 30s. I'd be fair to say that the Skeptic and Humanist communities saved my soul. So I made a mind-calibration tool in service of the cause.It's an app that quizzes the user about myths and misconceptions. By exploiting the resulting cognitive dissonance, it helps retune the user's confidence levels in their...

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Re:Tesla Robotaxi on Friday October 11, 2024 @04:33AM (#41807513)
After predicting that, in the long term, humanoid robots will cost less than a car, Mr. Musk added: "It'll take up a minute to get to the long term".

Please stop trolling, Elon.

Re:Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon on Tuesday September 17, 2024 @12:32PM (#41569495)
"These devices don't appear to be designed to be lethal.[..] They are, for the most part, low charge so not packing enough to actually kill somebody.[..] Let's not forget that this comes on the same day that Israel has extended its war aims to including expelling Hezbollah basically from the border." -- BBC's Security Correspondent Frank Gardner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNEb-dY3tRY
Re:How to Think in Writing on Sunday July 07, 2024 @06:34AM (#40896532)
"Writing is thinking." -- David McCullough
Re:NetBSD Bans AI-Generated Code from Commits on Saturday May 18, 2024 @08:25AM (#40398429)
“Automation has always helped people write code, I mean, this is nothing new at all [..] I see that as tools that can help us be beer better at what we do.” — Linus Torvalds’ on LLM code generation/review (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VHHT6W-N0ak).

NetBSD still has an edge with its memory hardening, NPF, kernel-level blacklist, and “legacy support”. But I fear that this out-of-touch policy might eventually tip it into irrelevance.

Over time, global values are becoming more aligned, particularly around ideals like free thought, free speech, and the open exchange of ideas and goods. Yet, this trend towards universal values is clashing with certain cultures that feel threatened. These cultures respond to perceived existential threats by rallying around authoritarian leaders, implementing stricter regulations.

Frustratingly, the study focuses too heavily on GDP per capita and largely overlooks the devastating effects of nationalism and religion. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-46581-5

Re:Answering Every Question You Have About IMEI Numbers on Tuesday April 30, 2024 @03:40PM (#40215355)
SMS specifications include "Type 0" messages, also known as Silent SMS. These messages don't trigger any even on the phone when received, but they do send back an ACK that includes IMSI metadata. Silent SM, are literally defined in the RFC and primarily used to covertly track user locations without judicial oversight.

GSM, SS7, etc. are massive privacy holes _by design_.

Re:Show HN: I made a programmable computer from NAND gates on Thursday April 25, 2024 @02:53PM (#40161537)
Thank you. First principles FTW!
Re:European police officially opposing E2EE [pdf] on Monday April 22, 2024 @08:04AM (#40113523)
European police chiefs jointly call for laws that force creators of communication tools to provide them with backdoors.

Expect them to go after math once messaging goes decentralized. :-)

Re:Everyone Has JavaScript, Right? on Sunday April 21, 2024 @07:22AM (#40104779)
Thank you. I don’t doubt that certain governments twist the arms of companies for privileged access. From my understanding, however, those practices are not the norm in the west (and certainly not overtly codified). IMHO, 90%+ of the data captured in the “West” is from exploits and such.
Re:Everyone Has JavaScript, Right? on Sunday April 21, 2024 @05:23AM (#40104284)
> Required by law (and corporate compliance departments) in many industries.

Could you please provide details about this?

No, thank you.

"The goal of Gentoo is to design tools and systems that allow a user to do that work as pleasantly and efficiently as possible, as they see fit." https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/philosophy/

And this is what Torvalds had to say about LLM-enhanced submissions to the kernel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7-gJicosyA

Re:Just How Much Faster Are the Gnome 46 Terminals? on Monday April 08, 2024 @06:42AM (#39968327)
I use Tmux. It's a terminal-agnostic multiplexer. Gives you persistence and automation superpowers.

https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki

Re:Blink to Generate Power for Smart Contact Lenses on Saturday April 06, 2024 @08:01AM (#39951860)
Tears contain chloride ions (>100 mEq/L). I'd be worried about chlorine gas generation (a toxic gas that goes after the respiratory system, eyes, and skin). Electrolysis of water starts at potentials as low as 1.23V (the paper reports 2.2-3.3V).
Re:Surveilling Alone on Thursday April 04, 2024 @11:14AM (#39931445)
The quick and dirty method is to point your phone at the suspicious device in total darkness. A modern smartphone will pick up the infrared (your eyes won't). Or get yourself a simple RF detector (or even a Software Defined Radio).

You might find this presentation useful (!PDF!). https://defcon.org/images/defcon-22/dc-22-presentations/Pols...

Privacy is a human right. Best of luck!

Ironically, Sweden has the world's first Freedom of the Press Act. It's even been designated a "Memory of the World" by UNESCO: https://unesco.se/tryckfrihetsforordningen-utsedd-till-varld...

What you're asking for will not be easy to enact. In a monarchy, the concept of "natural rights" remains somewhat culturally foreign.

Re:Physical Intelligence Is Building a Brain for Robots on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @09:47AM (#39691172)
A 4 year old child has 16k wake hours x 3600 s/hour x 1^6 optical nerve fibers x 2 eyes x 10 bytes/s = 1^15 bytes (approximation by Yann LeCun).

Processing visual input is the current bottleneck for robots that want to make sense of the physical world. Glad somebody's looking into it (no pun intended). I just hope their plan is more sophisticated than throwing more computational power at the problem.

Despite relatively excellent growth numbers, few Nigerians (or foreign investors) are confident in the future of the local currency. Moreover, a full two thirds of Nigerian residents don't trust the judicial system. The "destabilizing" is mostly achieved by a general lack of integrity, widespread corruption and normalized incompetence.

In other recent news, the leader of the Riksbank, the world's oldest central bank located in Sweden, has stated that Sweden benefits from having fewer decentralized financial instruments. https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/bitcoin-not-welcome-s...

Social transmission of behavior in macaques has been documented since the 1950s. See the potato washing studies of Imanishi et al (ref. #9 in the main paper).
Re:Sweden Is a NATO Member on Thursday March 07, 2024 @05:06PM (#39635133)
Retirement was a euphemism. And I think 10 billion dollars should be able to buy it.
Re:Sweden Is a NATO Member on Thursday March 07, 2024 @01:41PM (#39632918)
The largest country on Earth murders people for merely expression an opinion and a massive chunk of our planet's geological wealth is funneled to fund wars of aggression.

This sovereign decision is in perfect alignment with Sweden's value and security needs. Yet, that the decision involved kissing the rings of other no-good men (Erdogan and Orban) tells me we need a paradigm shift.

Is it legal to crowdfund Putin's early retirement? I'm sure there's a number that will guarantee getting him out of office. Asking for a friend. ;-)

Re:Why fake research is rampant in China on Sunday February 25, 2024 @06:41AM (#39500005)
Good point. But please consider that certain cultures may be inherently more transparent and accepting of dissent (see global indices that measure freedom of speech and degree of liberal democracy). Plus, different cultures have different attitudes towards honesty and commitment to truth (e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17160). In addition, the last decade saw the emergence of colossal national programs that explicitly seek to inflate output metrics (e.g. China, Saudi Arabia, etc.).

I’d trust a paper coming out of the Netherlands way more than I’d trust one from China. For the same reasons I’d trust a paper from a reputable publisher over predatory one.

Re:Gender differences in Dutch research funding over time on Monday February 19, 2024 @02:17PM (#39433532)
Overcorrecting after eons of patriarchal dominance is expected and not necessarily a bad thing IMHO. In some countries (e.g. Sweden), prioritising a certain gender over another for research funding is explicit (and widely accepted) public policy.
Re:Alexei Navalny has died – authorities on Friday February 16, 2024 @08:57AM (#39397057)
“Life makes no sense if you have to tolerate endless lies. I will never accept this system, which is built on lies[..]” — Alexei Navalny

Alexei believed in doing what’s right, not what’s easy. In his honour, let’s all do our part to help the truth prevail.

Re:OKRs Are Bullshit on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @02:19AM (#39271721)
> When things are growing, any nonsense is thought to be "the way".

Modeling reality properly is hard. Cargo cults are less cognitively expensive to establish.

The rewards of fraud in this context are orders of magnitude greater than its costs. The article is not wrong when it blames “bad incentives” and “the rampant culture of publish and perish”. The root cause, however, is the steady cultural shift away from honesty, integrity, and other (sine qua non?) values. As a society, we’re way too tolerant of lies and deceit IMHO.
Re:Researchers demonstrate rapid 3D printing with liquid metal on Saturday January 27, 2024 @04:24PM (#39159989)
Title should read “molten metal”. Liquid metals are a thing, and the title is ambiguous. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_metal
Re:Android now lets you transfer eSIMs between your phones on Saturday January 27, 2024 @05:03AM (#39154205)
By "phone", I think OP meant SMS.

Google and Apple could turn modern phones into convenient-to-use security keys/FIDO passkeys.

> “Indeed, the very act of living is by default a cognitive state, Lyon says. Every cell needs to be constantly evaluating its surroundings, making decisions about what to let in and what to keep out and planning its next steps. Cognition didn't arrive later in evolution. It's what made life possible.“

Yes. Cognition isn’t just about solving differential equations and the like. It also refers to the most basic functions/processes such as perception and evaluation.

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