Friday, January 21
Daily News Stuff 21 January 2021
Antiredecentralisation R Us Edition
I was scrolling through Amazon Prime (I cancelled Netflix long ago but keep Prime for the free deliveries) wondering if they had anything worth my time. They have House but it doesn't have Teardrop as the opening theme so forget that. And then I tripped over Iroduku. And ended up watching it until around 2AM.
Rewatching it, because I've seen it already; it's just that good.
If you don't have Amazon Prime don't fret because somehow the whole thing is also on YouTube.
The three opening themes of House. The first is Teardrop by Massive Attack, and is the only correct theme. The second one is like when your favourite brand is out of stock and you have to buy store brand and you get it home and you find that it's actually not that bad but you go right back to your regular brand anyway.
The third is predigested crap.
So guess which one Amazon is giving me.
Antiredecentralisation R Us Edition
Top Story
- A lot is made of how the blockchain is distributed and decentralised and fault-tolerant and no one person can control it and then a hamster in Hong Kong sneezes and all your NFTs disappear. (ZDNet)
OpenSea's site went down around 6AM and was restored by 8:30AM. And the blockchains themselves - Ethereum, Klaytn, and Polygon are the ones OpenSea support - were working as usual, or in the case of Polygon, completely fucked - again - but still technically alive.
But NFTs were missing from users' wallets another seven hours. What was going on?
Well, you have to understand that blockchain APIs are basically garbage. Writing a wallet that can actually display a user's NFTs on an Ethereum-compatible network using the standard APIs is nightmarishly difficult. It's the mobile app equivalent of making a chicken sandwich from scratch.It ultimately took him six months and $1,500 to make the final product using a thorough 16-step process that required him to grow a garden (step 1), harvest wheat (step 10) and even, yes, slaughter a chicken (step 14).
But OpenSea has an API that makes it much easier. So, not wanting to spend six months only to end up choking a chicken, every wallet developer uses the OpenSea API.
Every wallet developer.
When OpenSea hiccups, every NFT wallet in the world breaks.
Because decentralisation.
Tech News
- C kind of sucks. (Jean G3nie)
Use Ada.
Seriously.
- The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a bill intended to curb the self-promotion of Big Tech. (Thurrott.com)
Basically the companies will be forbidden from promoting their own products over those over competitors. Amazon can't push Amazon Basics higher up in the search results than Random Factory In China.
Whether this will happen and whether it will have any effect remains to be seen.
- Twitter is stupid. (ZDNet)
It just is.
- The FAA says that 78% of planes can safely land and airports with 5G C-band. (The Verge)
By next year they hope to figure out which 78%.
- Samsung has new tablets on the way. (Liliputing)
Ranging from 11" to 14.6" with screen resolutions starting at 2560x1600, so small and cheap these are not, but all models will have Qualcomm's brand new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 with an Arm X2 core.
Pixy Is Watching Video of the Day
I was scrolling through Amazon Prime (I cancelled Netflix long ago but keep Prime for the free deliveries) wondering if they had anything worth my time. They have House but it doesn't have Teardrop as the opening theme so forget that. And then I tripped over Iroduku. And ended up watching it until around 2AM.
Rewatching it, because I've seen it already; it's just that good.
If you don't have Amazon Prime don't fret because somehow the whole thing is also on YouTube.
House Like It's 2022 Video of the Day
The three opening themes of House. The first is Teardrop by Massive Attack, and is the only correct theme. The second one is like when your favourite brand is out of stock and you have to buy store brand and you get it home and you find that it's actually not that bad but you go right back to your regular brand anyway.
The third is predigested crap.
So guess which one Amazon is giving me.
Party Like It's 1980 Video of the Day
Disclaimer: The problem with making a chicken sandwich from scratch is you just can't get good scratch anymore.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:21 PM
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1
Is the first step of making a chicken sandwich from scratch "Invent the Universe," or is that only for making apple pie (from scratch)?
Posted by: Karl at Friday, January 21 2022 07:03 PM (S0kTz)
2
I mean, I know twitter is stupid, but wow: that's some next level stupid right there.
Posted by: normal at Friday, January 21 2022 10:26 PM (obo9H)
3
Having programmed in Ada, and had to deal with the VMS Ada compiler, I'd rather use Rust.
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 22 2022 01:23 AM (Z0GF0)
4
So, someone pointed me to a slashdot account that presents itself as a crazy* Russian living in the UK.
I think it might all be disinformation, but it is more plausibly honest than the head of my local university, so LOL.
His theory is that this FAA push is an information OP. He thinks the FAA explanation is implausible on its face, because allegedly weather radars should be knocking down any vulnerable airplanes that exist.
The motivation he provides is that 5G is itself a PRC information op. Allegedly, the non-PRC members of the standards writing body were not very well paid, and compromised by the PRC.
His explanation of 'what 5G actually is' is a bit esoteric.
Mainstream radar design is something called monostatic. The radar transmitter and receiver are in the same location, it is much easier when you are trying to learn how to design a basic system. When they are in different locations, it is a bistatic radar, etc. These days, there is research being done on 'passive' radars, where you use an existing powerful transmitter, like a TV signal, and use your own receivers to calculate the reflections of the TV signal.
His explanation is that a 5G network can be used invisibly for passive radar collection, that American stealth aircraft are designed to defeat more usual sorts of radar, and thus 5G is a scheme to detect US stealth aircraft.
One of the reasons to think he is an information operation is that he knows how radar stealth design works. There are textbooks on this, the basics are fundamental engineering, but his explanation of 'my mom ran weather radars' does not entirely explain his level of familiarity. OTOH, anyone could find a lot of this stuff out if they wanted to spend one or two hundred bucks on Jenn's Radar Cross Section Engineering from AIAA.
Anyway, the question of what to do if the FAA's allegation is correct is a little interesting.
*by standards of American culture, which is what you would expect.
I think it might all be disinformation, but it is more plausibly honest than the head of my local university, so LOL.
His theory is that this FAA push is an information OP. He thinks the FAA explanation is implausible on its face, because allegedly weather radars should be knocking down any vulnerable airplanes that exist.
The motivation he provides is that 5G is itself a PRC information op. Allegedly, the non-PRC members of the standards writing body were not very well paid, and compromised by the PRC.
His explanation of 'what 5G actually is' is a bit esoteric.
Mainstream radar design is something called monostatic. The radar transmitter and receiver are in the same location, it is much easier when you are trying to learn how to design a basic system. When they are in different locations, it is a bistatic radar, etc. These days, there is research being done on 'passive' radars, where you use an existing powerful transmitter, like a TV signal, and use your own receivers to calculate the reflections of the TV signal.
His explanation is that a 5G network can be used invisibly for passive radar collection, that American stealth aircraft are designed to defeat more usual sorts of radar, and thus 5G is a scheme to detect US stealth aircraft.
One of the reasons to think he is an information operation is that he knows how radar stealth design works. There are textbooks on this, the basics are fundamental engineering, but his explanation of 'my mom ran weather radars' does not entirely explain his level of familiarity. OTOH, anyone could find a lot of this stuff out if they wanted to spend one or two hundred bucks on Jenn's Radar Cross Section Engineering from AIAA.
Anyway, the question of what to do if the FAA's allegation is correct is a little interesting.
*by standards of American culture, which is what you would expect.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, January 22 2022 06:54 PM (r9O5h)
5
Most of the radar altimeter issues are with the smaller non-Boeing/Airbus commuter jets.
Although for a while the 787 was on the list.
Although for a while the 787 was on the list.
Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, January 23 2022 02:13 PM (Ix1l6)
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