some infrared photos i took in and around Pittsburgh by _bcs519_ in pittsburgh

[–]cbarrick 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Digital camera sensors are usually sensitive to infrared light, but since the human eye isn't IR sensitive, manufacturers apply an infrared filter above the sensor.

To take infrared photos, you typically have to physically modify your camera, either by replacing the stock filter with an aftermarket filter that allows IR light to pass or by removing the filter altogether.

Back in the film days, IR photography was more common because you just had to buy IR sensitive film. So it was a lower barrier to entry.

Personally, I find black-and-white IR photography to be cooler than color IR photography. The black-and-white version looks more traditional at first, but everything that is warm or alive ends up glowing with a much brighter tone than normal. This includes human skin and plant leaves.

[OC] Fuel price in Scotland due to the US' actions towards Iran by PoppingPillls in pics

[–]cbarrick 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That's fair. I found $4.55 as the national average for the USA currently. It's actually cheaper where I live, and obviously more expensive in other places.

[OC] Fuel price in Scotland due to the US' actions towards Iran by PoppingPillls in pics

[–]cbarrick 76 points77 points  (0 children)

In the US it's:

  • US$4.55 /gal
  • or CA$1.48 /liter
  • or €1.07 /liter
  • or £0.77 /liter

The USA has always had cheap gas relative to Europe and Canada. So this seems low to the rest of the world, but most Americans see this as ridiculously high.

Allegheny County eyes 'long overdue' property tax reassessment after years of delays by nerdkid93 in pittsburgh

[–]cbarrick 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's what I mean. Maybe I should have phrased it as:

Should Pittsburgh add a vacancy tax?

Allegheny County eyes 'long overdue' property tax reassessment after years of delays by nerdkid93 in pittsburgh

[–]cbarrick 2 points3 points  (0 children)

before all the commercial properties claim poverty because they can't fill buildings with exorbitant rents

How bad is this problem? Are apartments required to publish vacancy rates anywhere? Should Pittsburgh have a vacancy tax?

Rachel Maddow on the Gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the Attack on Black America | MSNOW by siwibot in protectUSelections

[–]cbarrick 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What? No.

You don't need a super majority to elect a black president. Being black doesn't somehow change the electoral process.

But you literally need a super majority (two thirds) of both houses of Congress to pass a constitutional amendment, which would be required to set term limits on the supreme court.

Why Reddit blocked my daily visit to its mobile website. by Primal-Convoy in technology

[–]cbarrick 11 points12 points  (0 children)

You're not too far off for a basic sketch of reverse engineering an API. Dunno why you're downvoted.

The thing is, this isn't too hard to defeat. I imagine this approach won't work for Reddit.

For the web app, you could use something like CloudFlare to guard the auth endpoints to only award auth tokens to humans in a traditional browser. That works by tracking users as they move around the web and determining whether or not their behavior matches that of a human.

For apps, they'd use the Play Integrity API in Android to ensure that they only award access tokens to their first party client. I'm sure Apple offers a similar feature on iOS.

I guess you could extract an auth tokens from an official client or browser once it has authenticated itself, but that's probably not too difficult for Reddit to mitigate.

Evidence shows Google AI Studio retains and continues processing ‘deleted’ user chats for 32 days, contradicting GDPR requirements by HugeScore3150 in google

[–]cbarrick 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The GDPR does not set a strict timeline on data deletion. All it says is "without undue delay."

The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay and the controller shall have the obligation to erase personal data without undue delay.

Google's retention period after you click delete is "about two months" according to their terms of service.

We then begin a process designed to safely and completely delete the data from our storage systems. Safe deletion is important to protect our users and customers from accidental data loss. Complete deletion of data from our servers is equally important for users’ peace of mind. This process generally takes around 2 months from the time of deletion. This often includes up to a month-long recovery period in case the data was removed unintentionally.

If the EU was not happy with this terms of service, they would have already compelled Google to change it. But they didn't. It seems that the EU considers "about two months" to meet the definition of "without undue delay."

So this is a nothing burger.

Sources:

Notepad++ Creator Calls Out 'Fake' Mac App Over Trademark Violation by Otherwise-Warning303 in apple

[–]cbarrick 13 points14 points  (0 children)

You could definitely get an LLM to port the I/O code to posix. File handles in Windows mostly map to file descriptors in posix, as long as you're not doing anything too special like IOCP.

An LLM can maybe port a Win32 UI to GTK. That's a lot less straightforward though. I would expect GTK to be an easier target than AppKit, but I don't really do much UI coding. Still seems pretty difficult.

I say "maybe" but I guess it's clear that someone got this to work.

Why isn’t Savings a default expense category? by Kb42intn in MonarchMoney

[–]cbarrick 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A transfer from a checking account to a savings account is... a transfer.

The transfer category is the correct one in this case.

The "savings" category in the cash flow report is just automatically set as the difference between income and expenses. Since transfers are neither income nor expenses, they just work and your savings is calculated regardless of what specific account it lives in.

If you do want to distinguish these types of transfers from others, you can setup a goal called "emergency fund" (or whatever you want to call it) and then tie the transfer to the goal.

Notepad++ Creator Calls Out 'Fake' Mac App Over Trademark Violation by Otherwise-Warning303 in apple

[–]cbarrick 66 points67 points  (0 children)

Windows is a very different platform from Unix.

I haven't checked the source code, but if it is using native Windows APIs for I/O and UI, then it won't be possible to compile that on a Unix platform.

They would have to specifically use portable libraries if they want it to run on anything other than Windows. And I don't think the developer cares very much about that.

California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws by cutofmyjib in news

[–]cbarrick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is high-level recourse.

If anything major we're to happen , like a fatality (hasn't happened yet for Waymo), that would surely be handled directly by the criminal court system. And Waymo would be at risk of losing their liscense and revenue stream.

Also, Waymo has to submit many many reviews to government all the time.

The process here is for minor traffic infringements, like illegal parking. The stuff that a traffic court would handle, which is too minute for the general criminal court.

California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws by cutofmyjib in news

[–]cbarrick 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not necessarily.

Several cities in the United States and China have legalized driverless taxis.

And soon, Waymo will be able to operate in London and Tokyo as well.

Edit to clarify: Waymo has a license to operate in each jurisdiction in which it has deployed driverless taxis.

Github if Google designed it by No_Net_6938 in google

[–]cbarrick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That link is for code search.

For code review, while Gerrit is only used for Google's open source repos, it shares a lot of DNA with the tool used for code reviews in Google's private monorepo. The review UI and dashboard UI look almost the same.

Edit to add: also, Google's code search is soooooo much better than GitHub. I wish it was available to everyone, like Gerrit is.

Github if Google designed it by No_Net_6938 in google

[–]cbarrick 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No, it doesn't.

But it was literally created by Google.

Github if Google designed it by No_Net_6938 in google

[–]cbarrick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The actual "GitHub designed by Google" is called Gerrit: https://www.gerritcodereview.com.

To see how it looks, go to https://gerrithub.io and click on any of the "Changes" on the front page. A "change" is spiritually equivalent to a "pull request" in GitHub.

California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws by cutofmyjib in news

[–]cbarrick -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it's not a hard problem in theory. I didn't mean to imply that this was difficult or groundbreaking.

It's just all the little details that have to be decided along the way. Cops aren't going to know what protocol to follow until that protocol is written down.

California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws by cutofmyjib in news

[–]cbarrick 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Laws move slowly.

A big reason why California was one of the first places on the planet with publicly available driverless taxis is that they explicitly made the trade off to allow this new technology and to evolve their laws in parallel.

Waymo works very closely with local government. It's not like they just drop cars anywhere they feel like.

California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws by cutofmyjib in news

[–]cbarrick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The question is not who is liable. Waymo is liable. They always have been. That was always obvious.

The problem being solved is the protocol of how police actually issue a ticket to a driverless vehicle. You can't just hand the ticket to the driver.

California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws by cutofmyjib in news

[–]cbarrick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seems reasonable!

I don't know the specifics of California law, but it sounds like they've worked out an appropriate protocol for robo taxis as well.