finnw

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301.
If Cops Don't Know What You Encrypted, They Can't Make You Decrypt It(forbes.com)
10 points by finnw 15y ago|3 comments
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Microsoft Office 15 apps to include 'touch mode'(zdnet.com)
2 points by finnw 15y ago|0 comments
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by finnw 15y ago
Even if you program using data-flow graphs with pretty icons, they still have to be stored in files don't they? Probably XML or JSON (which are themselves plain text files and some people will still insist on editing them that way.)
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by finnw 15y ago
I don't think you can simulate your own future, even if you accept #3. Either #3 is false (and there are no simulations) or #3 is true (and the vast majority of sentient beings live in simulations, which means those running the simulation a
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by finnw 15y ago
My money is on #2. Once they have switched on an ancestor-simulation, it's probably illegal to turn it off. So it would mean committing the hardware and electricity to the simulation forever. Whatever they gain from running the simulation
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by finnw 15y ago
> The carbon based forms are not very durable (80 years ? c'mon), they break easily, and don't perform very well... Actually it's hard to build machines to last that long (how many 1932 cars are still functional today?) The real advan
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by finnw 15y ago
It has been discussed on HN more recently: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3324152
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by finnw 15y ago
This article makes the naive assumption that you can only use one language per project. If I could pick one combination of languages for all my projects, I would rather have the combination of C++ and Lua for example (and maybe also C#, i
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by finnw 15y ago
"Integrity dollars" are not like the other three. 1. There is no limit to how many you can spend in a lifetime. 2. They are non-linear: the more you spend, the lower the integrity cost of everything you do in the future. 3. The effect of #2
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by finnw 15y ago
Even if I did not care about programmer well-being, I would be reluctant to use torrents and pirate sites because of the threat of malware. But then I have one Windows PC that I use for both games and online banking. Maybe that's rare amon
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by finnw 15y ago
In some branches of the civil service in the UK (I do not know exactly which ones but HMRC is one of them), we've had a system to deal with this for about 20 years now. All accesses of personal data have some random chance (I think it's 5%)
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by finnw 15y ago
> Design a cheap energy efficient way to to turn cellulose into something close to gasoline The closest match is probably thermal depolymerization ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization )
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by finnw 15y ago
You're right, sorry (too late to edit)
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by finnw 15y ago
I have seen a variant of this (but cannot remember where I saw it): A duck is in the center of a circular lake. A fox is on the bank. The duck only needs to reach the bank (without simultaneously being caught by the fox) to win. The fox
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by finnw 15y ago
There's also NameCoin ( http://dot-bit.org/ ) I don't think it has any chance of being widely adopted in its current incarnation because of two major flaws: 1. The early adopter advantage is too high (the designers took steps to limit this,
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by finnw 15y ago
FWIW multiplying two exponential functions together gives you another exponential function (not a superexponential one.)
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by finnw 15y ago
But swombat specifically referred to obesity , which suggests that you eat too much, not just that you eat the wrong foods. If you are already eating too many pies, you can afford to replace some of them with cabbage or sprouts (at least h
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by finnw 15y ago
So what would you do if their parents objected on religious grounds?
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by finnw 15y ago
Not at all. We do teach people how to eat decent food, but many choose not to.
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by finnw 15y ago
> It often has stories about [...] a new programming language [...] That's something I think could be automated (at least for me.) I can (and do) guess whether I am likely to be interested in a new programming language, based on what
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by finnw 15y ago
Or maybe we'll see malware distributed in source form. That could be nasty if the development environment gets compromised. Probably more dangerous than a compromised website.
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by finnw 15y ago
Yes, and that would be as simple as disabling HTTP in the commercial browsers (allowing only HTTPS.) The remaining handful of nerds who compiled their own browsers would require far fewer resources to track. Note to self: don't buy a SSL c
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by finnw 15y ago
That won't help. Everyone in the area will likely be travelling to work around the same time.
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by finnw 15y ago
Nearly all websites mail out replacement passwords (or password reset tokens) in plain text. That is not good but is hardly unique to HN. I was about to say "HN doesn't do SSL" but just tested and it does. I wouldn't make a habit of this
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by finnw 15y ago
I don't know how similar online password managers work, but I use PassPack. They store your whole encrypted password file in one field in their database, and the encryption/decryption is done only on the client side. The key is never tr
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by finnw 15y ago
> I responded by sending them the consent form from the Asimov estate, and explained that it was a student project, not a commercial venture worth litigating. I turned over our script, our shooting notes, our shot list, copies of our t
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by finnw 15y ago
It's this part: int i; { int i; } Java does not allow you to shadow one local variable with another. This is ok: { int i; } int i; because the scopes do not overlap. This is ok too: in
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by finnw 15y ago
I disagree. It's also what allowed the "IE-only web" to persist for about five years. It might have been a good thing until about 1997, but at that point there was no shortage of people creating new web content, and raising the barrier to
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by finnw 15y ago
The first code sample in the article is wrong: > In most curly-braced languages, blocks delineate lexical scope. For example, in C or Java: { int i = 13 ; { int i = 42 ; print(i) ;
330.
by finnw 15y ago
I really wish people would stop calling Java "JAVA".

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