cynwoody

12 ms·

61.
by cynwoody 12y ago
And Keyhole was named after the original US spy satellites, the KH series†, dating from 1959. High-res imagery download was via parachute-net. † http://fly.historicwings.com/2013/02/kh-1-the-first-spy-sate...
62.
by cynwoody 12y ago
If you are predominately adding entries to a dictionary, the standard dict will be faster. Where defaultdict shines is the case where you hit an entry a bunch of times, but you'd like to automate initializing an entry the first time it
63.
by cynwoody 12y ago
A few years ago I got an email advising me my account had been compromised, and I needed to follow a link to get the matter resolved. Mousing over the link, I saw https://www.bankofamerica.com/[lots of gobbledygook followed
64.
by cynwoody 12y ago
I do the same thing, and high school was long time ago for me. As for typing URLs, I do that, too, but autocompletion takes over after one or two characters. E.g., 'ne' suffices to get me to the HN front page. Navigation for me
65.
by cynwoody 12y ago
That's very likely.
66.
by cynwoody 12y ago
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/comput...
67.
by cynwoody 12y ago
In the sixties, the IBM time-sharing system CP-67† would physically punch an "accounting card" on one of its card punches whenever a user logged off or did some other billable event, such as printing a listing. CP-67 ran on the 36
68.
by cynwoody 12y ago
It's interesting that the 1964 CTSS manual† linked from the article (OCR'ed by Google††) uses "login", one word, no blank. See page 6 (page 14 of the PDF). I knew about ships' logs, but I didn't know that the w
69.
by cynwoody 12y ago
What's really fun is, you bought a stock a long time ago, it spun off some other companies which got acquired by yet other companies, such that you now own several stocks, all attributable to the purchase of that one stock a long time
70.
by cynwoody 12y ago
Wouldn't that be the pessimist in you? The narcissist in you would be bullish on you and neutral on Apple.
71.
by cynwoody 13y ago
According to the Wikipedia†, the aircraft in question had a 200 kw transmitter, but the article is a bit vague about VLF in particular. The idea, of course, was that while, hopefully, the ground stations would get the message out, there was
72.
by cynwoody 13y ago
Which is why, during the Cold War, the US maintained very powerful long wave transmitters, both land-based and airborne. Using VLF†, they could send the nuclear launch codes to the nuclear missile submarines without the subs having to break
73.
by cynwoody 13y ago
I find it annoying that the media call this thing a "pinger". To ping means to send out a signal in expectation of maybe receiving an echo or reply. It's a two-way process. The device's manufacturer calls† their product
74.
by cynwoody 13y ago
Very nice. If you make the generator always return a string, then you can make it print, thus: print '\n'.join((not x % 3) * 'Fizz' + (not x % 5) * 'Buzz' or str(x) for x in range(1, 101))
75.
by cynwoody 13y ago
For those who haven't seen it, Barack Obama opined on this topic around the same time as Brendan Eich, and over a much bigger megaphone than $1000 will buy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6K9dS9wl7U tl;dv: "I bel
76.
by cynwoody 13y ago
In 2008, when Prop 8 was on the ballot, Obama was for civil unions but professed to believe that marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman. "I'm not somebody who promotes same-sex marriage, but I do believe in civil uni
77.
by cynwoody 13y ago
Because infrared doesn't work very well in water, and crashes in water are the biggest challenge for finding wreckage. Airliners also carry emergency locator transmitters† (ELTs), which, when activated by a crash, transmit radio signal
78.
by cynwoody 13y ago
They didn't need to fly test flights. That would be big $$ and take time. But apparently, their hardware is installed on plenty of airplanes, so they just needed to study normal flights north and south in the region to establish a base
79.
by cynwoody 13y ago
The Doppler stuff is new (as of the 24th). What I had understood before was that the airplane carried an Inmarsat satellite transceiver which remained active, even though certain subsystems that use it (notably ACARS) were disabled. While a
80.
by cynwoody 13y ago
So I tried "apply color blindness to photo of jonti roos" but got no useful results. However, "apply color blindness to http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1717717.13945547... worked. Original:
81.
by cynwoody 13y ago
Lasing a car driver would seem to be even more likely to cause injury, given that the amount of time between vision impairment and actually hitting something is likely to be much shorter. Airplanes have been known to fly for hours with slee
82.
by cynwoody 13y ago
There was a short window in the early years of the Cold War when US spy planes could overfly the Soviet Union with impunity. But by the time the SR-71 came into service, that era was over, having ended in 1960 with the shooting down of a U-
83.
by cynwoody 13y ago
I just tried 'putty download' on DDG (what I would have probably used on Google). putty.org was first, followed by chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html (but lacking any indication this is the right o
84.
by cynwoody 13y ago
I have found the Click to Remove Element extension useful in Chrome. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/click-to-remove-el...
85.
by cynwoody 13y ago
Try the cache text-only: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Frz8Fde...
86.
by cynwoody 13y ago
In the Bradley Manning case, the prosecution laid a computer fraud charge on top of the espionage and other charges, based on Manning's use of wget.† They argued that, although Manning was authorized to access the files he disclosed, t
87.
by cynwoody 13y ago
That ratio is just an interesting coincidence. From page 38 of the report† (page 13 of the PDF), it's plain they are asserting a reduction in frequency from 4.8 times per month to 3.2 times (a delta of 1.6, not 1.5, as in the article):
88.
by cynwoody 13y ago
> The delivery took 9 days. This never happens on Amazon. I ordered something on Amazon Prime on 24 Jan. It shipped† on the 26th, but still hasn't arrived. 12 days and counting. † http://wwwapps.ups.com/WebTracking&#
89.
by cynwoody 13y ago
Who ultimately bears the loss is a complicated microeconomic question, which depends on price elasticities and the like. At one extreme, the payment industry and the merchants could end up eating the entire loss in the form of lower profits
90.
by cynwoody 13y ago
My point is that the fraud losses are so far not heavy enough to move the payment processing industry off the dime towards a really secure solution. A secure system might use your phone as its platform. E.g., the merchant's POS present

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