archive of <https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/us/politics/cyberattack-venezuela-military.html>: #news about the #USA breaking #Venezuela’s computer #security to induce power outages and disable radar. Probably.
#HN debate on, nominally, whether #Briar is useful in #Iran during the current internet #censorshp blackout, but mostly about random other topics related to #decentralization of #communications such as Meshtastic and Bitchat
Altair 8800 clone in an Altoids tin, kit for US$19.95. #retrocomputing
#Whisper.cpp 1.8.3 #speech-recognition can now run 12× faster by using #Vulkan to get #GPGPU speedups even on Intel (?) hardware. #neural-networks
in the “power-limited regime” of the Shannon–Hartley channel capacity C = B lg (1 + S/N) bits per second, ln(1 + S/N) ≈ S/N because S/N is very small. Consequently C ≈ B S/N/ln 2 = B 1.44 S/N, 1.44 bits per second per hertz times the signal-to-noise ratio, so if you have additive white noise (whose power is proportional to bandwidth B) your channel capacity is independent of the signal bandwidth for fixed signal power. You start to lose power efficiency once you cram your transmit power into such a narrow bandwidth that ln(1 + S/N) stops being a good approximation to S/N. When S/N = ¼ (-6dB) you’re still getting 89% power efficiency, which rises to 95% at -10dB. #communications #math
Article from a couple of weeks ago on #AI impact on hiring: 10% less juniors (hired at US$90k/year?), and the BLS predicts 15% growth in software jobs 2024–2034. This article feels like AI slop, with “bottom lines”, “This isn't just”, comma-separated lists of three things, flattering the reader (“grounded in current data and tempered by the healthy skepticism this community is known for”), rhetorical-question subheads like “what to do about it”. “Companies no longer want developers who are either too shallow or too narrowly focused; they want a strong core competency plus ability to work across the stack. Part of the reason is efficiency: a T-shaped engineer can often solve problems end-to-end without waiting on handoffs. Part is innovation: cross-pollination of knowledge leads to better solutions.” However, the evidence for that T-shaped assertion is a Medium post by “Chamith Madusanka” which is definitely 1000% AI slop.
median pay: $131,450 per year, $63.20 per hour. 15% increase in positions expected 02024–02034. 1.896 million positions in the #USA.
#HN discussion with #antirez and #simonw this week about how #AI is changing software development.
#LetsEncrypt #news: “Short-lived and IP address certificates are now generally available from Let’s Encrypt. These certificates are valid for 160 hours, just over six days.” But unstable: “IP address certificates must be short-lived certificates.” #TLS #security
#HN discussion saying Certbot doesn’t work to get #TLS certs for IP addresses, but "lego" does: lego --domains 206.189.27.68 --accept-tos --http --disable-cn run --profile shortlived #LetsEncrypt
#news: “Following the Biden administration’s move to impose 100% #tariffs on Chinese #EVs, Canada implemented similar surtaxes, effectively freezing companies like #BYD, #Nio, and #Zeekr out of the market. (...) #Canada has agreed to allow an annual quota of 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into the country at the tariff rate of just 6.1%.” #USA #politics #China
Criticism of #Cursor’s claim to have built the #fastrender browser with #AI in a few weeks.
#HN discussion of #Cursor’s #fastrender finds that it depends on the html5ever, cssparser, rquickjs, selectors, resvg, egui, wgpu, tiny-skia, and tungstenite Rust crates, so not only doesn’t it build, it’s just wrapping Servo.
#Antirez on programming with #AI, saying, “Don’t fall [for] the anti-AI hype”
Terry Tao on #Mastodon explaining that #AI solved Erdos problem 728. “Interestingly, the proof contained some minor errors in it, but the AI tool Aristotle was able to automatically repair these gaps and produce a Lean-verified proof.” #math #LEAN
#HN discussion of the #AI #LEAN proof of Erdos problem 728, discussing AI and #formal-methods more generally, including the “Lean-language statement of the problem”, which is eight lines of code.
Pierre Rochard’s “Working and Saving are Revolutionary Acts.” I’m not convinced! #philosophy #politics #economics
#history of the "Vehmic courts", secret courts in Early Medieval #Germany (#Westphalia) that meted out death in the name of the Holy Roman Emperor, with the term “Verfemen” used today to mean “ostracism” or “lynching”.
Oh, the bit in the Life of Brian where the crowd urges Pilate to pardon some random person is actually from the Gospels; supposedly Pilate pardoned the bandit Jesus Barabbas instead. The name “bar Abbas” means “the Son of the Father”. But Roman records have no trace of a custom of pardoning one prisoner every Passover.
Ozymandias Brennan explains their path to the #Quakers through #atheism, following a conversion experience at a Cobra Starship concert. “Obviously, there is no such thing as a giant future space cobra. I drew one of two conclusions. One: ‘I am speaking to the Divine’ is a thing my brain predictably does in certain situations, usually involving singing and mythology and a mindful focus on the present moment. Two: the Divine had, for inscrutable reasons of its own, decided to confirm me in my atheism by appearing to me in the form of a giant future space cobra. Either way, I would go through my life as an atheist.” They elaborate, “You can be a Quaker and an atheist. The Inner Light clearly exists—I’ve experienced it. It’s immaterial to the practice of Quakerism whether there is a supernatural explanation for the Inner Light; I believe there isn’t.” Very relatable despite not being particularly vapid.
Albert Nock’s essay about how the prophet Isaiah was unappreciated except by a “remnant” of Judea, apparently in his last few years before becoming anti-Semitic, but apparently already deeply sexist and elitist, condemning the #USA as so worthless as to demonstrate the worthlessness of the masses who ruled it. It’s hard not to think Moldbug was consciously emulating Nock’s prose style. #politics #philosophy
“Chinese #EVs banned from #UK military sites over spying concerns.” “Staff were also advised to avoid having official conversations within electric cars from #China (...) officials are concerned that microphones mounted within the car which are supposed to be used for voice activation systems and phone calls, could instead be used to eavesdrop by the Chinese state.” #security #politics
#video about roof reinforcement for #mining #tunnels #underground. #toread
#video by "ModernHillbilly" about #mining #tunnels #underground. #toread #digging
#Argentina #immigration #video by a Russian #toread
#faircompanies #dwelling #video about an #underground Atlas missile silo. #toread
Hmm, Digi-Key’s cheapest op-amp #hardware #pricing is EVVO’s 1.547¢ LM2902 clone the LM2902DR-EV. Unimpressive 5mV input offset voltage though.
How de Hevesy dissolved von Laue’s and Franck’s Nobel prizes during WWII to keep them from the Nazis. #history