jloughry

32 ms·

1. 271.▲
   by jloughry 13y ago

   I purposely did not install the drivers, but that's not saying much as the camera, OS, and Skype software are all Microsoft's, so there is no reason to believe Microsoft couldn't run any driver they wanted to in this situatio
2. 272.▲
   by jloughry 13y ago

   Let's make "Langford's parrot" basilisk for NSA that everyone can transmit around when circuits are idle. Make sure it's not compressible; fill up their disk space right quick.
3. 273.▲
   by jloughry 13y ago

   That's how the human eye works; there are denser "pixels" in the foveal (central) region of the retina.
4. 274.▲
   by jloughry 13y ago

   It is a Microsoft lifecam VX-1000. If there's enough room in that little thing for this kind of intelligence, I'm impressed.
5. 275.▲
   by jloughry 13y ago

   Oh, you're right of course. But my machine still has to complain to the other end that it's not getting frames rapidly enough, so there is still some coöperation going on.
6. 276.▲
   by jloughry 13y ago

   I've never seen it do it before today. I wish Skype published release notes with their software updates.
7. 277.▲
   by jloughry 13y ago

   Are you sure this wasn't someone twisting the zoom ring on a camera the other end? I'm sure. I was watching when it happened, twice. Shortly before it happened, I did see some pixelisation, so I know the bandwidth was flaky. It
8. 278.▲
   by jloughry 13y ago

   To achieve the goal of saving bandwidth, it must have been done coöperatively between the remote machine and mine. Their end had to understand that my end was short of bandwidth (remember, this is cheap ADSL, and my broadband speeds are r
9. 279.▲
   by jloughry 13y ago

   I am certain the camera on the remote end was incapable of optically zooming. Skype evidently took the HD frame from the camera on that end, cropped it to something like VGA size, and sent only those pixels across the wire. On my end, it wa
10. 280.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) is a neat looking ship. This rendering (from the cover of a recent IEEE Spectrum ) makes it look like something out of science fiction: http://spectrum.ieee.org/img/08cover2013-1374501406697.jp
11. 281.▲
    Skype does a clever trick when bandwidth is scarce

    115 points by jloughry 13y ago|65 comments
12. 282.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    Use a macro to generate the fully unrolled loop with only addition and iteration. Claim efficiency under conditions of branch prediction and speculative execution on IA64.
13. 283.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    Upvoted because I think the perspective in this article needs to be discussed, but I think the author is going to get some flames.
14. 284.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    In case anyone [else] is wondering, RFC 1035 disallows domain names starting or ending with "-", so there is no registering C--.com, alas: <label> ::= <letter> [ [ <ldh-str> ] <let-dig> ] <ldh
15. 285.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    You made a good point here: I recognised 127.0.0.1 in the value instantly, showing that you can sometimes read this representation by eye, e.g.: 0x0a000001 = 10.0.0.1 0xc0a80001 = 192.168.0.1
16. 286.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    The submission is a little misleading; it's traditional on HN to link to an article discussing the principle, rather than simply a demonstration. However, the OP highlights an interesting point. There are other, analogous, unexpected b
17. 287.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    I logged in to upvote this story because I encountered the same problem on a military communications system once (!) There was an interaction between the system beep() function and message processing throughput. If a large number of alert
18. 288.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    Thirty years ago there was a not-dissimilar problem on the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) project, a pre-LHC particle accelerator (much larger than the LHC; the Higgs field could have been detected twenty years ago if it had been comp
19. 289.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    Close button functionality on pop-up windows could be provided (and enforced) by the OS. The reasoning for it would similar to the "Trusted Path" requirement in multi-level systems. Fake pop-ups would lack some visually noticeab
20. 290.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    I'd like to read a sample chapter, or just a section, or something . Choose a topic relevant to HN, like selecting new employees, or taking control of an existing project team, or pricing your services (or a new app). I'll probab
21. 291.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    The obvious solution to this would be to cycle randomly between fonts every few characters (or keep a running total of the font used for each particular symbol, and ensure it stays below some threshold). This sounds like a useful defence
22. 292.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    THE POLICE HAVE REQUESTED ALL FILES UNDER DIRECTORY TITLE RAND. "Dump it for them at 300 baud." "Art! Are you sure?" "We cleaned Rand's directory first thing. Took out everything not routine, then we added a fe
23. 293.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    I implemented something like this once. The trick is embedding the digital signature into an ebook file format that was not designed to accept it. For instance, the following method is secure, but the result doesn't look like an ebook:
24. 294.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    In the second World War, bombers returning from missions over Germany were carefully examined for battle damage and the locations of bullet holes mapped. Armour plating is heavy and cuts into the planes' useful range and load---where s
25. 295.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    Self-hosted inline images in GitHub markdown are a little tricky, but the syntax that works is:  ...on a line by itself
26. 296.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    Ganssle's book The Art of Programming Embedded Systems (Academic Press, 1991) is an eye opener for software writers. Highly recommended.
27. 297.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    It's cool to see the ".int" TLD for once---by far the most obscure of the original seven (.com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, .org, [and .arpa, if you're old]).
28. 298.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte (Graphics Press, 1983). I typed that citation from memory; it shows how many times I've read that book. It talks about the same kind of things, but the animation linked a
29. 299.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    I posted some notes about my résumé a while ago: https://github.com/jloughry/CV/blob/master/README.md In addition: 1. Put it somewhere findable like GitHub. 2. Consider telling the reader something subtl
30. 300.▲
    by jloughry 13y ago

    Gizmodo beat me to it, with photographs and construction details, even. Nice job! http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/how-to-build-the-miraculous-t...