News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

Timmmmmm

Re:What will C++17 be? on Sunday April 26, 2015 @10:40AM (#9441912)
They are hacks that paper over the lack of good package management. Plus they are too much extra work, and OS-specific. No build system integrates with them as far as I know.

I think what people want is something like go, where you add a single line to your code and it magically downloads and compiles the referenced library. C++ doesn't have anything like that (and I doubt it ever will to be honest).

Which is why I use Lyx - best of both worlds. You get to use latex equations, the final document is pretty, and the document is readable while editing (i.e. not filled with commands and other crap).
Re:MozJPEG 3.0 on Sunday December 28, 2014 @03:23PM (#8807316)
I have a feeling that nobody would really bother with WebP for its compression, but does JPG/PNG have:

* Lossy compression with alpha channels. * Efficient lossless compression of photo-like images. * Efficient compression of photo-like and diagram-like images in the same format (and in the same image, e.g. screenshots containing photos). * Good lossy compression of diagram-like images.

No.

Re:Neo900 – Crafting the private phone [pdf] on Sunday December 28, 2014 @09:05AM (#8806279)
Nice to see someone is attempting this. Physical keyboard and resistive touchscreen seem like pretty odd decisions though. I guess this is going to be as enthusiast-only as the previous Neo phones which is a shame.
Re:SS7: Locate. Track. Manipulate [video] on Saturday December 27, 2014 @07:32PM (#8804591)
This is pretty shocking. Shame it is technical enough that it will probably not become mainstream news.
Re:Deterministic Lockstep for Networked Games on Saturday December 27, 2014 @04:14PM (#8803952)
Not in this case - packets can be dropped by the route and the game player doesn't care as long as his connection is good enough to play. When it gets really bad the player will likely quit and the packets will stop.

If it is really desired you could implement throttling according to packet loss, but not in the way that TCP does it - by buffering and waiting - instead you'd just send packets every N frames. You can't do that if you're just using TCP since you don't know when packets are dropped.

Re:Roadster 3.0 on Friday December 26, 2014 @04:54PM (#8800564)
That's actually pretty significant. I doubt anyone would want to drive more than 400 miles in a day. You can almost get between any two points in England with that range.
Re:Ask Stack Overflow for Atom on Monday June 23, 2014 @11:05AM (#7932324)
I agree. I mean, I can see it being useful for things that you "know" how to do but just forgot the syntax... But the chances that a random javascript snippet on SO are right seems pretty damn low to me!
Re:5 all-time domain expirations in Internet’s history on Monday June 23, 2014 @07:46AM (#7931368)
That title makes no sense at all. Perhaps they meant "5 all-time worst domain expirations"?
Re:CDN for JavaScript libraries on Monday June 23, 2014 @07:41AM (#7931343)
Agreed, especially a third party provide of javascript! It would be absolutely trivial for them to inject highly invasive tracking code into your site, or worse.

I'm not saying they will, but really it doesn't make sense to take the risk.

Re:Go support for Android on Saturday June 21, 2014 @08:41AM (#7924823)
Yeah writing java for Android is a pretty awful experience. But it's not going away soon - this Go release will only have access to the things you can already do in C++ on Android. Namely, OpenGL, audio, and touch input. That's about it.

Anything GUI or system-related you have to do in Java. You won't be able to use Go to run other apps, enable wifi, receive GPS locations, communicate over bluetooth, etc. etc.

Qt is worth a look, but it's still not quite ready.

Re:SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All on Monday May 05, 2014 @07:59AM (#7698004)
Probably - BLE is usually very easy to reverse engineer.
Re:Kevo – Bluetooth Electronic Deadbolt on Friday April 25, 2014 @06:11PM (#7649349)
How do you run power into the door?
Re:Did removing lead from petrol spark a decline in crime? on Monday April 21, 2014 @05:56AM (#7620435)
Yeah pretty sure that's because of other more obvious factors:

* Greater anonymity in cities * Higher population density * Juxtaposition of poverty and wealth

Re:Ask HN: Negative OpenSSL sentiments on Saturday April 12, 2014 @09:34AM (#7577787)
Part of the reason people are annoyed it that this wasn't a complicated "crypto is hard" bug!

It was a stupid, "really? again?" type bug that is typical of low-level badly written C programs and a common cause of security vulnerabilities.