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rustyhancock

Re:Life with Down Syndrome on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @09:27AM (#50352409)
Downs syndrome is indeed highly heterogeneous, one of the sadder aspects is the accelerated dementia specifically Alzheimer's.

I've known a few people with Dawn's syndrome and the striking often abrupt and rapid tragectory is shocking.

As much as the slow decline of dementia that it's often incidents months apart before things fall apart. Is sad.

So is it in people with Downs syndrome when at 35 their often bright and cheerful life loving demeanor seems to vanish over the course of a few months.

As I understand it it's because chromosome 21 carries the genes associated with Alzheimer's so they get an extra copy, but also structure issues with the brain, increased risk of sleep apnea and other toxic conditions.

Re:WTF Ubuntu? on Monday November 02, 2026 @11:00AM (#50338701)
Precisely, I really don't follow this discussion. Cutting edge drivers is what I want on my gaming PC.

Is AI changing the game where more people want bare metal and GPUs with proprietor drivers?

A fair few years ago I did run Ubuntu on my desktop and laptop when I wanted some more similarity with my servers which ran Debian.

And similar breakdowns with Fedora/RHEL.

But Ubuntu or Fedora on a server? No thanks.

Re:Ask HN: Which TV do you recommend for privacy? on Monday November 02, 2026 @06:22AM (#50335446)
These would be my preference unless I setup the Kodi box myself. Theres repeated, almost monthly, uncovering of supply chain compromise of cheap Kodi/android TV boxes.
Although there is a third option that's preferable and somewhat what is recommended by the report.

Once failure is identified, it should be understood before deciding if you can delay remediation.

It seems once failing sockets were found they were considered to be random failures and not systematic failures that would accelerate.

Re:Show HN: I've updated my Linux System Call website and API on Monday November 02, 2026 @06:10AM (#50335358)
This maybe unpopular idea if you've avoided AI thus far, but it does seem like an LLM would make short work of that task.
Re:Show HN: I've updated my Linux System Call website and API on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:50AM (#50335227)
It definitely makes sense to have a section "similar syscalls on this architecture" on the details page.
Perhaps easier, now it's identified it can be anticipated.

Like TV pickup, where advert breaks in television cause surges in power demand.

The classic example is everyone making a cup of tea at the same time during the World Cup half time break.

Something as common as predictable as every minute should be simple to model in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

Re:OpenIDEA: The IDE you know, rebuilt in Rust on Sunday November 01, 2026 @05:08AM (#50324140)
The Readme has that first pass vibe coded feel.

Which isn't the vibe I want from my editor.

I know this exact comment is probably becoming tedious on HN, but it's very rare that a tool I pay for is so bad I'll jump ship for 0.1.0 alpha if a clone.

Long story short, I'm keeping my sub.

Re:A/SIDE – Private photo sharing and encrypted messages on Saturday October 31, 2026 @01:58PM (#50318365)
> The free history window limits access; it does not automatically delete older content.

This is mental you mean you keep hold of my photos and messages and I can only see them if I pay a subscription?

Re:Malware uses LLMs to rank victims by how much they're worth on Saturday October 31, 2026 @01:47PM (#50318278)
They certainly do.
Regression tests?

I think people are assuming the worst but AIs most helpful contribution beyond churning out code is explaining the code base.

Who knows if they will do a good or bad job that's down to the engineers and not the tools imo.

It says "legacy" code.

Legacy code is typically a euphemism for old unmaintained code, no one knows how it works so it can be edited, and it probably doesn't align with current work practices.

Not to say a rewrite is necessary right, but avoiding rewrites of working code is how we ended up with more COBOL code than COBOL programmers in 2026.

Re:How Do You Take a Picture of a Black Hole? on Friday October 30, 2026 @08:43AM (#50303120)
Were past what I could confidently answer (if I'm wrong hopefully someone corrects me) but I'm not sure I follow, if the BH grows it would encompass what we see as nearly smeared over it's horizon.

There's also surprising results around what the external gravitation field appears to be for an object.

I.e. no matter how mass is distributed behind the event horizon externally it looks like the spherically symmetric Schwartzchild metric.

That has implications for what will emit gravitational waves.

Eithway, smeared over the horizon but never crossed and crossed the horizon externally look the same from a gravity perspective.

Re:How Do You Take a Picture of a Black Hole? on Friday October 30, 2026 @07:30AM (#50302539)
Both have finite time falling in to the singularity. If you use a point test particle Newton and GR agree on that finite time.

That's proper time I.e. the infalling particles wristwatch time.

In GR, external observers would never see the infalling particle cross the event horizon but that's a coordinate artifact. If using our wrist watch time for that particle.

Re:How Do You Take a Picture of a Black Hole? on Friday October 30, 2026 @06:25AM (#50302002)
One of the most remarkable aspects of physics is that Newtonian gravity calculations are quite spot on for all the parts of black holes layfolk consider important.

1. Both predict the same critical radius, now called the Schwarzschild radius.

2. Both predict a central singularity with formally infinite density in idealised collapse.

3. Both predict exactly the same finite time to fall into the singularity under equivalent idealised conditions.

4. Both give the same equation for radial free fall, using different definitions of time.

What GR added was meaning to these things (and of course precise calculations outside of very idealised scenarios and symmetric conditions).

Re:Binance-hacker-1029 – $5.6B stolen from Binance on Friday October 30, 2026 @04:04AM (#50301005)
Why couldn't a privacy focus coined, like Monero, be a stablecoin?

You don't need to see where the coins are and move to promise $1 of going for every coin.

Re:NetBSD adds a new beginner-friendly text editor called atto on Thursday October 29, 2026 @09:52AM (#50289071)
Because this isn't beginner friendly it's a new micro Emacs and those are standard libreadline/emacs bindings.
But this proves the point, a simple rule becomes 3 rules immediately.

Depending on the housing market a property price could rise that much while still under mortgage and not everyone pays mortgages off in term.

The fundemental issue with tax law imo, is that tax lawyers write it and the spend years in the dark offering their services to bypass it.

It would be like there being a category of specialist lawyers who openly offer hidden options to murder people.

It really is quite bizarre in my opinion.

Re:Zero click, silent, remote Android DoS on Thursday October 29, 2026 @05:11AM (#50286339)
I think it's a good idea when there is no CVE and a don't fix status.

Before this practice in general you simply released the exploit and see if enough chaos triggers a fix.

Re:Zero click, silent, remote Android DoS on Thursday October 29, 2026 @05:09AM (#50286325)
Looks like the website offers an APK.

But not all SMS are text messages for the user.

Re:A Love Letter to the Super Dimension Fortress on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @04:14AM (#50270539)
If anyone has the money to spare I'd suggest using $36 to get lifetime ARPA level membership to both SDF.org and SDF-EU.org (so a total of $72). Even if it sits idle. As a way to support the service to continue running. For me the email alone is worth it.

And also the Anime that it got it's name from is on Archive.org

https://archive.org/details/Macross-ADV-480i

Re:Genie 4 on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @12:31PM (#50261675)
Is it surprising? Indexing for search is the backbone of Google's business model.

It's why if you search a practical task you will often see results link to specific parts of a video.

The problem of tax law is unintended consequences and subsequent more laws and loopholes and endless complexity to get it "right".

I borrowed against my house to buy it. Why shouldn't I be taxed when I got my mortgage?

Re:Show HN: Encarta 95 Web on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @07:40AM (#50257648)
I kind of wish these fixed large encyclopedia were still going in 2019 to capture a pre AI corpus.

But I suppose that would pre-COVID too.

Still I'd quite have liked something like that.

Some have suggested a Wikipedia snapshot which can be browsed locally - not bad but not the same vibe as curated professionally written Encarta or Britannica.

It'll definitely be a nice data point.

It seems also just enough to say supporting people to have a hobby if they're at risk of dementia and don't have one is important to meeting their social and health needs.

I might be being too cynical. I wonder if there is some funding arguments, I.e. if it's for their health and insurer may fund it.

If it's for their social/cultural and general wellbeing it might be out of their remit somewhat.

Yes of course, anything the requires skills you don't otherwise use. In particular continuous learning is very helpful.

The challenge however is, is it that those who engage in such hobbies have decline slowed. Or are they able to engage in those hobbies due to not declining.

It's not possible to answer clearly without some randomisation and control which is basically impossible.

Still, it's reasonable inference that hobbies and work maintain cognitive capabilities.

Re:F-Zero X on Nintendo 3DS on Monday October 26, 2026 @04:33AM (#50240820)
Really grateful the costs were included - just shy of 5K USD. Really out of morbid curiosity. And they estimate it was the equivalent of 250-400k for human work.

https://hypnotize.works/gdx-3ds/postmortem/cost.html

Re:Show HN: Steal My Bitcoin on Monday October 26, 2026 @03:43AM (#50240408)
Well the bitcoins were taken about 4 hours after he made the setup more realistic.

Those 4 hours the server was barely up due to repeated segfaults from so many people attacking it at once!

I imagine if it'd been setup and there werent so many attackers it probably wouldn't have lasted more than 1-2 hours.

Re:Why Gopher in 2026? on Monday October 26, 2026 @03:27AM (#50240284)
I think your membership would have fallen back to ARPA level which never expires.

As I understand it you would need ARPA membership (currently one off $36 payment) before you can have MetaARPA ($36/year). Even if having to spend time at ARPA is waived for those we a good cause.

If they don't mark the homework, it might be useful to redistribute that time to a viva about the home work.

It would give a more accurate impression of the kids understanding, incentive understanding it, be more pleasant interaction for all involved and build the kid up to Vivas and interviews.

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