Recent submissions

Comment · 7 months ago
I enjoyed this little exchange :)
Comment · 8 months ago
don't forget Sirens of Titan!
Comment · 8 months ago
as a pentester at a Fortune 500: I think you're on the mark with this assessment. Most of our findings (internally) are "best practices"-tier stuff (make sure to use TLS 1.2, cloud config findings from Wiz, occasionally the odd IDOR vuln in an API set, etc.) -- in a purely timeboxed scenario, I'd feel much more confident in an agent's ability to look at a complex system and identify all the 'best practices' kind of stuff vs a human being.

Security teams are expensive and deal with huge streams of data and events on the blue side: seems like human-in-the-loop AI systems are going to be much more effective, especially with the reasoning advances we've seen over the past year or so.

Comment · 8 months ago
Respectfully (not trying to be pedantic but helpful): it's "cease" not "seize" in this context :)
Comment · 9 months ago
Comment · 9 months ago
RIP.

If I may share a memory: I still remember visiting Jungfrau Park with my parents on a vacation to Switzerland back in 2005; as a scifi-leaning kid even back then (4th/5th grade), I had a ton of fun in all the different exhibits. IIRC, different wings of the park were dedicated to different mysteries/monuments, so you'd have the Aztec and Egyptian pyramids, Peruvian (Nazca, and my favorite one) desert drawings, ancient Indian flying chariots, etc. A great time, and I'm honestly quite surprised (in retrospect) that my dad chose to go there, given our time-limited schedule. It was also my first time trying Weisswurst in the JP cafetaria (being a Hindu kid growing up in the UAE, I seized every opportunity to try beef and pork when I could lol) -- I'm sure it was fairly mid, but I thought it was fantastic!

If nothing else, it helped me establish some pop cultural 'throughlines' in that I was able to digest (so to speak) other "aliens were here first and they taught us a bunch of things" trope that cropped up later in my life (like Aliens vs. Predators, Prometheus). I can't say for sure, but it might have been my earliest encounter with the Big Question: "Why are we here? Is there a plan?" -- even though I discounted the alien theory pretty young, it was still an exciting way to get started on the subject (and is still fun to me to this day). I suppose a portion of credit for ongoing interest in science fiction is directly attributable to my time at Jungfrau Park :)

Weirdly enough, I was just in Switzerland a couple of months back and we happened to drive by Jungfrau on our way to Lauterbrunnen -- JP is still there, which stirred up the ^ memory, but I learned on the trip that it had been shut down sadly.

Thanks for being a part of such a surreal memory Mr. Daniken.

Comment · 11 months ago
Added all of these to my Goodreads -- as an Indian, I had no idea that these books existed. Great article (with some really cool UI choices); I'm looking forward to reading more from this magazine! Thanks for sharing.
Comment · 1 year ago
Thanks for sharing! I always love looking at the hand-painted advertisements when I'm back in India. I almost never see it in the cities these days (billboards have taken over), but back in my parents' villages, a lot of older painted advertisements (like Maha Cement) are still there on the walls that run past the main street.

On a side note, I have an HTTP200 license plate and I want to get some nice Indian truck style lettering saying HORN <HTTP200> PLEASE around it :)

Comment · 1 year ago
This is a very tangential comment, but I read the short story (https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8eh2woz05ndfxinbf9vdh/Goldfis...) and loved it (took me around 15 minutes to read).

Went down a bit of a rabbit hole on the original author, Kir Bulychev, and saw that he wrote many short stories set in Veliky Guslar (which explained the name Greater Bard). The overall tone is very very similar to R.K. Narayan's Malgudi Days (albeit without the fantastical elements of talking goldfish), which is a favorite of mine. If anyone wants to get into reading some easily approachable Indian English literature, I always point them to Narayan and Adiga (who wrote The White Tiger).

On that note, does anyone else have any recommendations on authors who make use of this device (small/mid-sized city which serves as a backdrop for an anthology of short stories from a variety of characters' perspectives)?

Comment · 1 year ago
Good luck Vivek, this looks really nice! I was in Bangalore for the first time this Feb and had a great time. You should check out Mecca cafe, it's thoda grimy but a total vibe.
Comment · 1 year ago
huh...til that Raya exists
Comment · 1 year ago
I genuinely can’t remember having laughed at well written prose in a long time, thanks for sharing [0]. OP is gold too.

Takes me back to my high school days when I would have to choke down my laughter as I surreptitiously read Cracked.com articles in class

Comment · 1 year ago
Come to Harry's on 15th on Thursdays (8:30 pm + ). It's where the local hackers (2600 and DEFCON crowd) usually hang out and socialize. Ask Will (the bartender, who's great) for the hacker crowd and he'll point you in the right direction.

I moved up here 6 months ago, and it's been a great group of people to hang out with. The conversations are tech/tech-adjacent for the most part, but I've also spent hours chatting about Magic The Gathering, Seattle Public Transit, and Neal Stephenson. I got my HushCon invite just from showing up regularly enough that people recognized me.

I actually found out about this because of another meetup on Thursdays: Black Lodge Research up in Redmond has an open night from 7:00 pm onwards. Great little makerspace, and a welcoming community. But it's definitely a schlep up there, especially after a workday so I haven't been back in a couple of months.

I'm not a big drinker, but it's nice to have a constant event on Thursday evenings that I can look forward to having a beer or two at (I actually have a custom drink that I came up with Will called "Pondwater" -- building up some lore like that is fun and is a sign of setting down some roots). I'd say Harry's is my "local bar" since I live about a 15 minute walk away. On the note of social drinking, there's a few sober people who come as well, and there's no compulsion at all to drink alcohol to be a part of the in-group. Hope I see you there sometime and I'd be happy to introduce you to the crowd; look for the Indian guy :)

Comment · 2 years ago
https://gwern.net/ is my standard for a great blog experience. Their design philosophy (https://gwern.net/about) is right up my alley.
Comment · 2 years ago
I think that's too granular and is dependent on the apps offering Face ID as a secondary-layer authentication flow -- I think OP is suggesting an entirely different user profile that doesn't even have the same applications that the original (save for the default iPadOS apps, and even those should be logged out from your Apple ID). The cognitive overhead of "did I make sure to enable Face ID on x,y,z apps so that I can pass around my iPad without worrying about any personal data being accessible" is too high for spontaneous + casual device sharing.

Example: "Hey uncle ping00, can I use your iPad real quick to watch something?" "Sure nephew, <switches profile to Guest ,and hands it over> go nuts"

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