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Re:Debris field found in search for missing submersible on Thursday June 22, 2023 @10:50PM (#36442236)
For whatever reason, disasters are normally covered like this. Death tolls gradually get revised up, survivors gradually get out of hope.

I'd like to believe it's just a natural dynamic of how humans learn information about something sudden and bad, but maybe it's to some extent, deliberate to squeeze as much out of the story as possible.

So this is interesting. I knew cloudflare had bought S2 ages ago (for a lot!), and that S2 developed the SKIA rendering RBI hack:

- use a modified Google Chrome to capture SKIA draw commands (actually you can just use the DevTools protocol these days, I think the LayerTree Domain exposes usable functionality with regard to this)

- Send the SKIA commands over the wire.

- Recomposite and redraw that on the client.

- Profit (clearly) and save lots of bandwidth.

My product (BrowserBox Pro^0) uses a different method: we just capture screenshots, and send them over the wire.

A couple of years back an ex-Googler from the UK approached me about using the Skia method, told me he had some code I could use, and suggested I use it. I wonder if he knew doing so would have been a patent violation? Surely he wouldn't have suggested it if that were the case, haha! Anyway, I didn't go with it at the time because:

- Complexity of maintaining the Chrome fork, and (if you look at the patent, as I briefly glanced at) it appears running Skia rendering at scale like this is quite complex, necessitating lots of caching, suggesting that parts of that pipeline are expensive, validating my initial concerns about it.

- Complexity of doing the composit on the client. Honestly not that complex, but at the time I was a 1-man shop and the rendering code using screenshots, and the adapting code using network measurements, and adapting the screenshot frequency and resolution was already sophisticated enough and good enough for our customers' uses. We stream it over the faster of WebSocket or WebRTC

- Something about the guy seemed off, honestly, and I was a bit reluctant to work toward some avenue suggested by him because of that.

- I also believed that in the long term, trying to squeeze the most out of the bandwidth (at the cost of code complexity) would be a mistake, because bandwidth capacity is trending up.

- There is an alternative that is probably better than Skia: use ffmpeg to create a video stream out of the screenshot frames and stream that over WebRTC. I haven't added that yet because I value the low resource usage on the server, and adding ffmpeg will change that and add some complexity. But we're willing to do so for any clients that really need it.

- There are some edge cases where Skia chokes with regard to bandwidth: complex gradients, or elaborate text effects. These end up producing Skia commands that are larger than the bitmaps they result in.

- It's plausible that at some point in the future the Skia canvas requirements and the DOM Canvas might diverge, making it not possible to use a simple "clientless" web client for rendering anymore.

These things combined to suggest to me significant tech debt risk in adopting that method, possibly some nefarious risk from a dodgy person, and just the existence of better simpler alternatives made this definitely a no go.

Anyway, I'm posting this here to add to some history and also because it's interesting to me that there is this patent. It's cool there is a patent and Cloudflare is presumably doing good with it. I think the patent is also another reason to not go with Skia, because you definitely don't want Cloudflare acting as a patent troll to come after your nascent startup.

I wonder how this affects folks like Hyperbeam who are also using some sort of "tiled" method to stream the viewport to the client? Or Mighty App--? tho they are probably different as last I looked Mighty App were deep in the weeds with ffmpeg (Sahil was posting his nightstand reading of massive ffmpeg academic tracts, lol!).

If Cloudflare did come after a YC company for patent violation would it be taken care of quietly and a deal made in the background, or would it go the court? Would YC companies get preferential treatment? Anyway, interesting!

0: https://github.com/dosyago/BrowserBoxPro

Re:Ask HN: Why is there no GPS in the ocean? on Thursday June 22, 2023 @10:28PM (#36442092)
You were right man! Tragic. I'm hoping you're a navy insider and can feed us interesting tidbits about UFOs. Any stories? Do you know how the Navy detected the anomaly? Was a ship nearby or was it their monitoring grid? It's good they informed everyone--I had a feeling they definitely knew what happened or would be the ones who would find it.
Re:Ask HN: Why is there no GPS in the ocean? on Wednesday June 21, 2023 @07:14AM (#36417018)
Isn't there a way to use the charge conductivity of water to send a signal--like "electrolysis radio"? Alternately it seems a constellation of cheap radio beacons / high powered IR reflectors, that can float to the surface at a constant rate in event of emergency. So you basically end up with a 2D surface trail of reflectors laid over time since the incident. That should be somewhat helpful to pin down a search area, I would imagine, without relying on a single one, or having a long spool line. But I don't know for sure, just spitballing. Those poor people :(
Are there patterns to your low energyness? I don't know your situation but some patterns I notice for me:

- low energy after consuming high-GI / high-sugar stuff: like soda

- low energy after too much caffeine

- low energy when feel overwhelmed / stressed / over-worked

Stuff I do to get back on track is basically:

- sitting in yoga position and doing breathing exercises and meditating

- lying down and doing part-by-part body relaxation (similar technique is progressive muscle relaxation)

Stuff that makes me feel energized:

- breathing exercise, something like Ujjayi Pranayama with box breathing. So breathe in for N, hold full for N, breath out for M (M >= N), hold empty for M. Repeat. Use as much of the Ujjayi technique as you like.

- squeeze your lower jaw gum using your thumb and forefinger below the canine tooth. This is some sort of meridian point that I find wake me up.

- do some burpees or other HIT for 20 seconds.

Good luck!

Re:Ask HN: Why is there no GPS in the ocean? on Wednesday June 21, 2023 @06:27AM (#36416738)
These are all good answers by the way thank you. Isn't there like an "emergency transponder beacon" or something (like aircraft have?) that ships and submersibles must have? Why can't this be used?

Ask HN: Why is there no GPS in the ocean?

I'm not an electrical engineer so please forgive my ignorance. I guess I could just ask ChatGPT but figured there may be a more interesting response here. Why can't the ocean have something like GPS? Also, if a nuclear submarine (those ones whose exact positions are classified) identified the location of this submersible, would they tell the relevant authorities? Or would they not, in order to...

( Read More... | 13 comments | on HN )
Re:2023 UFO Claims by David Grusch on Sunday June 18, 2023 @10:34PM (#36386706)
I like how some of the keys on your keyboard don't work, ha ha! :)
Re:2023 UFO Claims by David Grusch on Sunday June 18, 2023 @10:34PM (#36386704)
Hey, ha ha! I retired my graderjs account so I'll reply you with this one: yeah, definitely it's got to be testable! But you got to be open to it, you know?
Re:Nothing to See Here on Sunday June 18, 2023 @04:46AM (#36378423)
Chronology of US government disclosure of advanced alien life:

1. Tom D meets with Secretkeepers who express wishes for disclosure and want to use Tom to initiate the process.

2. Elizondo and Mellon "leak" 3 UAP videos and get the New York Times to print a story about AATIP and Lue's resignation.

3. Eric Davis talks about crash retrievals on podcasts and states in a New York Times article that the "U.S. is in possession of off-world craft not made by human hands."

4. First public UFO study in 51 years is published, concluding that UFOs are real.

5. Former Presidents Obama and Clinton, former CIA Directors Brennan and Woolsey, and former DNIs Clapper and Ratcliffe state in a coordinated campaign that UFOs are real. They translate UAPTF Study results into understandable jargon.

6. Brennan suggests that "another form of life" is the most likely hypothesis.

7. Mellon posits that the "alien hypothesis" best fits the facts.

8. Elizondo, Davis, Semivan, Ramirez, and Nolan reveal a host of disclosure items between 2018-2022 on podcasts. These include claims that Roswell happened, we have alien biological samples, we can shoot UAP out of the sky, some NHI are non-corporeal, and aliens have abilities such as telepathy and moving through solids.

9. Further claims include: UAP can activate and deactivate nuclear weapons, Italy's UFO crash in the 1930s was real, humans are in the middle of the food chain, our origin story is incorrect, abductions and implants are real, Earth is not our original planet, whistleblowers are ready to testify about cover-ups, and crash retrievals of alien crafts, bodies, and technology have occurred.

10. A House Intelligence Hearing on UAP takes place.

11. UAP Legislation is passed into law for the first time, with Whistleblower Protections. This includes an order to get files dating back to 1945 and a new UAP office named AARO.

12. A Senate Hearing on UAP takes place.

13. A Public NASA Meeting on UAP takes place.

14. Space Force admits that UAP occurrences are global.

15. Air Force admits it sees UAP.

16. AARO admits to seeing anomalous metallic spheres globally.

17. More than 30 whistleblowers provide testimony to Congress/AARO in the first 5.5 months.

18. The first whistleblower, David Charles Grusch, goes public and states a 90-year cover-up of NHI, first crash in Italy in 1933, "quite a number" of UFO crashes, injuries and deaths caused by radiation and NHI, insinuates Roswell happened, and suggests agreements with NHI.

19. Grusch also states that humans have been killed to maintain the cover-up, theorizes about the interdimensional nature of UAP, confirms that bodies have been recovered, and states that a sophisticated disinformation campaign is operating against the populace.