riQQ's recent activity

  1. Comment on Correlated randomness in Slay the Spire 2 in ~comp

    riQQ
    Link
    Random number generation was not working properly in Slay the Spire 2. This was patched with the latest patch acknowledging this blog article about the problems.

    Random number generation was not working properly in Slay the Spire 2. This was patched with the latest patch acknowledging this blog article about the problems.

    Why? The culprit is unexpected correlation between different random number generators -- knowing the first output of one of the game's RNGs gives information that helps predict the first output of all of the others.

    The phenomenon of "correlated RNG" (or "CRNG") is already known in the Slay the Spire community, because Slay the Spire 1 had a similar issue, described in detail in Forgotten Arbiter's blog post.

    7 votes

  3. Comment on How much of Thermo Fisher’s antibody data has been manipulated? in ~science

    riQQ
    Link

    TL;DR: As of 3 June 2026, we have identified more than 450 images bearing signs of manipulation in verification data advertised by Thermo Fisher Scientific in its online primary antibodies catalog (+1 by Abcam).

    7 votes

  5. Comment on How the datacenter boom is exacerbating Chile’s mega-drought in ~enviro

    riQQ
    Link

    The Andes mountains frame what was once a wetland – now a stretch of dry, yellowed grass. Rodrigo Vallejos, a final-year law student, noticed the change five years ago while observing the Quilicura wetland, on the northern outskirts of Santiago. One of Chile’s largest swamps, spanning 468.4 hectares (about 1,200 acres) and partially protected, was drying up right before his eyes.

    4 votes

  7. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of May 18 in ~society

  9. Comment on Almost half of EU’s busiest flight routes are ‘hard or impossible’ to book on trains in ~transport

    riQQ
    Link
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/13/eu-proposal-cross-border-europe-train-bookings

    Asked about the timing, he said: “Before the end of this commission mandate [in 2029] we will have this new era of rail on the ground working.”

    Under the plans, major railway companies, such as Deutsche Bahn, SNCF and Trenitalia, would be forced to sell competitors’ tickets on their websites, and share data with booking platforms enabling an offer of single tickets for long cross-border journeys.

    In an expansion of consumer protection laws, passengers would be entitled to help in the event of a missed connection: the operator that caused the delay would ensure the passenger has the right to hop on the next train, or reimbursement, food and accommodation, depending on the circumstances.

    The plans have to be agreed by EU member states and the European parliament before they become law, and they already face stiff opposition from train operators. The Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) said: “Underneath the surface of this rosy vision lies unprecedented and unjustified regulatory interventionism.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/13/eu-proposal-cross-border-europe-train-bookings

    1 vote

  10. Comment on AI is breaking two vulnerability cultures in ~comp

  11. Comment on Behind the scenes hardening Firefox with Claude Mythos Preview in ~comp

    riQQ
    Link

    Two weeks ago we announced that we had identified and fixed an unprecedented number of latent security bugs in Firefox with the help of Claude Mythos Preview and other AI models. In this post, we’ll go into more detail about how we approached this work, what we found, and advice for other projects on making good use of emerging capabilities to harden themselves against attack.

    Just a few months ago, AI-generated security bug reports to open source projects were mostly known for being unwanted slop. Dealing with reports that look plausibly correct but are wrong imposes an asymmetric cost on project maintainers: it’s cheap and easy to prompt an LLM to find a “problem” in code, but slow and expensive to respond to it.

    It is difficult to overstate how much this dynamic changed for us over a few short months. This was due to a combination of two main factors. First, the models got a lot more capable. Second, we dramatically improved our techniques for harnessing these models — steering them, scaling them, and stacking them to generate large amounts of signal and filter out the noise.

    6 votes

  13. Comment on Almost half of EU’s busiest flight routes are ‘hard or impossible’ to book on trains in ~transport

    riQQ
    Link

    Europe’s “stone age” system of booking train tickets makes it needlessly difficult for travellers to avoid polluting flights, a report has found.

    Booking equivalent train tickets is “difficult or impossible” on almost half of the EU’s busiest international air routes, analysis from the Transport & Environment (T&E) thinktank shows.

    The European Commission plans to publish a single ticketing package on 13 May as part of a promise to allow Europeans to travel across the continent more easily and enjoy consumer protections as they do so.

    22 votes

  15. Comment on We heard you: the new Framework Laptop 13 Pro in ~tech

  16. Comment on Lufthansa axes CityLine fleet early over strikes, fuel costs in ~transport

    riQQ
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Looks like there are more measures this year: https://newsroom.lufthansagroup.com/en/lufthansa-group-accelerates-strategy-implementation/

    Looks like there are more measures this year:

    • Capacity reduction in three steps:

      • (a) During the current summer flight schedule:
        Immediate and permanent removal of Lufthansa CityLine's capacity from the program
      • (b) At the end of the summer flight schedule:
        Retirement of the last four A340-600s and grounding of two B747-400s
      • (c) During the 2026/2027 winter flight schedule:
        Additional capacity reduction of the Lufthansa core brand's short- and medium-haul program by five aircraft

    • Accelerated allocation of nine additional A350-900s to Discover Airlines

    As a first immediately effective step, the 27 operational aircraft of Lufthansa CityLine will be permanently removed from the flight program starting the day after tomorrow, in order to reduce further losses of the loss-making airline. The Canadair CRJ aircraft are nearing the end of their technical operational capability and have comparatively high operating costs.

    https://newsroom.lufthansagroup.com/en/lufthansa-group-accelerates-strategy-implementation/

    4 votes

  17. Comment on Lufthansa axes CityLine fleet early over strikes, fuel costs in ~transport

    riQQ
    Link

    Germany's Lufthansa says it will retire older CityLine aircraft earlier than planned in response to strikes and rising fuel costs. As unions stage walkouts on two fronts, the Iran war has sent kerosene prices spiraling.

    Germany's national carrier Lufthansa on Thursday said its regional subsidiary Lufthansa CityLine will suspend operations of its 27 older aircraft starting Saturday.

    The move marks an immediate cost-cutting step as Lufthansa faces mounting pressure from labor disputes and higher kerosene prices.

    4 votes

  19. Comment on Tesla's supervised self-driving software gets Dutch okay, first in Europe in ~transport

    riQQ
    (edited )
    Link

    Dutch regulators approved the use of Tesla's (TSLA.O) self-driving software with required human supervision on highways and city streets in a European first for the electric ‌car maker, which hopes to see similar action from the rest of the European Union.

    5 votes