News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

Hellion

Re:Spelunking Apple’s Open Source on Friday March 17, 2023 @10:07PM (#35205354)
> and memory on the computer to hold an entire page of pixels. I mean, at 72dpi that's 50KB just for the data!

Fwiw it was common for text editors at the time to render/raster in chunks and then send that off to the printer. For complicated documents, the printer sometimes had to take pauses while the computer worked

Applying the slightest scrutiny to this Twitter thread revealed that the Twitter thread was actually the complete fraud the entire time
Re:Apple's Popularity with Gen Z Poses Challenges for Android on Saturday February 25, 2023 @02:40PM (#34939724)
You can just not donate.
It’s the fundamental claim of the thread, and it casts the rest of the logic into doubt. His correction is just as contrived and also has errors.
It’s worth noting that this tweet thread makes some major mistakes, both in dates and in roles. For example, while she was hired by NASA after Apollo 8, she had already been working in a substantial capacity on Apollo software at the Draper lab at mit, which was contracted/hired to do the work. Much of the software written for and by NASA at that time was not actually written by engineers under NASA’s employ.

Which is to say, by the time, NASA hired her she had been working on the software for many years. And, additionally, she had been working on similar software even before that!

I think that it would be safe to describe that Twitter thread as suffering from a deviation from reality.

Re:Apple's Popularity with Gen Z Poses Challenges for Android on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @02:16PM (#34885565)
The chat landscape is dire. I view Signal as a least bad option for my friends to use.
Re:Apple's Popularity with Gen Z Poses Challenges for Android on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @01:55PM (#34885225)
It’s vastly more complicated than “apple opens an api”. iMessage does a lot more than just messaging, and key components of apples spam and fraud story are tied to individual devices.

For Apple to open iMessage, would require that android manufacturers enroll the devices.

I use an iPhone, and I try to get all my friends to use signal

Re:Apple's Popularity with Gen Z Poses Challenges for Android on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @01:52PM (#34885167)
Feature by feature, and doing a cost comparison, shows that iPhones are very good value. But they don’t have a phone under $400. And even in the developed world that’s a lot of money.
Re:Apple's Popularity with Gen Z Poses Challenges for Android on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @01:51PM (#34885131)
Yeah, you can get an android phone that will take pictures, send messages, play, music, run Uber/maps, and take calls for under $50. Those phones aren’t great, but they are usable. They can do everything that you “need” a smart phone to do.
Re:Burning a NeXTCube (1993) on Monday January 30, 2023 @09:17PM (#34590033)
Considering the Phoenix like rise the platform made, it was accurate at the time but short sighted.
Credit Karma’s Karmanauts. Oof.
Re:What Happened with the Substation Attack in North Carolina? on Saturday January 21, 2023 @07:15PM (#34472505)
Very possibly, the FBI has some strong leads, and are building a case.

This is something on the national scale with lots of federal internal attention - reports likely even having hit the potus desk.

I doubt we’ll hear much about this again unless there’s an arrest.

Re:I hacked Gumroad's API and broke a bunch of tools on Saturday January 14, 2023 @04:36AM (#34378789)
Any shop worth their salt is going to embed the cert chain in their app. In fact, you get that for free with pretty much every drm lib, such as the ones major providers like steam, gumroad, etc suggest

Cert pinning can defeated, but like I said, easier said than done. Not super advanced, but still requires specialized knowledge and a willingness to put the effort in.

Re:I hacked Gumroad's API and broke a bunch of tools on Thursday January 12, 2023 @02:46AM (#34350413)
Gumroad is part of a movement of “friendly” drm. You’re paying for support and updates. Intercepting a tls call is easier said than done, but the ethos is around accepting pirates gonna pirate.
There are significant and effective federal regulations around this. If you are telling the truth, your steering wheel is way too high, and you need to lower it
Mercedes put a bunch of these in the $100k plus EQS.

Car companies: we are begging you, please stop with controls without pressure sensitivity and haptic feedback. Copy apple if you need to, just cut it out!

Re:Ask HN: What happened to Magic, the text-message concierge? on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @11:11AM (#34149890)
If I’m paying them to answer me, yes.
Re:E-ink art frames are a scam (2021) on Sunday December 04, 2022 @04:27PM (#33858079)
The page linked doesn’t say a lot, but it does say “local web interface”
Apple has really set the standard on battery life - 10-11 hours would be considered on the short end for any modem Mac laptop. My air performs on par with some high end ultrabooks, yet easily does 12+ hours on a single charge. I usually have the brightness turned up quite a bit as well.

It’s stunning how far apple is ahead of the pack right now, I really hope the others catch up

While I believe that this is actually a simmering threat to society, I have a lot of trust that the current slew of devices are not eavesdropping on you. I believe smartphones to be a much bigger threat.

I’m more worried about smart phones acclimating people go carrying tracking and microphones. But, we find those tools indispensable now, so instead, we seem to want to focus on smart speakers

I bet that’s at cost tbh. You’d be surprised how cheap things have gotten. However, r&d and every single Alexa request costs money. So from day one, it’s losing money.
Re:Tesla killers: The new wave of must-have electric vehicles on Sunday November 20, 2022 @03:52PM (#33685163)
Teslas are fine(ish) cars, but they seem resistant to forming deals to provide skateboards to niche applications, like Chinese companies are doing. There’s big money there!
Re:U.S. Fines Airlines More Than $7M for Not Providing Refunds on Wednesday November 16, 2022 @11:19AM (#33625617)
When people see small fines like this, they assume it’s a slap on the wrist.

And it is. Because the message is loud and clear: don’t make us pay attention to you and fix your shit.

Re:EVs are the least reliable vehicle type: Consumer Reports on Wednesday November 16, 2022 @09:53AM (#33623959)
> not my experience, overblowing

It absolutely is my experience as well. I suspect there’s a sizable majority of people who have no issues with their Tesla ever. But there are still a lot of us who didn’t have a good experience.

Accusing people of lying just makes you look like a blind fanboy.

My 2015 model s would beg to differ. I had it for two years. The screen crashed about once a month and it leaked when it rained, which is annoying in Monterey. First new car id ever bought , shortest I’ve ever owned a car. Fantastic in a lot of ways but the door leaking and the runaround with the company made me unload it.

He was running scams out of Dubai. Big bad look for them. If you take your winnings and lay low, they’ll probably leave you alone.
They take bribes in the form of local business investment. If you can dump a few hundo k a year into the economy, they’ll let you get away with almost anything
Re:macOS keeps a huge wallpapers cache on Friday October 07, 2022 @03:43PM (#33126001)
It’s an excellent option if you don’t agree with apples ecosystem choices. Start developing for android and using Vegas.
Re:macOS keeps a huge wallpapers cache on Tuesday September 27, 2022 @07:14PM (#33002350)
> Apple’s storage prices are terribly high, the fuller a SSD is, the less it will last, why keep useless files

You knew you were buying soldered flash when you bought a modern Mac. If you want to save money, or heaven forbid, have a user serviceable laptop, the XPS 13 is one excellent option.

Re:Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring on Saturday September 24, 2022 @03:10PM (#32965662)
Still making my point for me, thanks!
Re:Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring on Saturday September 24, 2022 @01:54PM (#32965035)
This comment is exactly what I mean.

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