peripetylabs
Re:U.S. charges Edward Snowden with espionage
on Friday June 21, 2013 @09:14PM (#5922105)
The Chinese authorities will hold him until they feel he has given them all he knows, then quickly extradite him to the US.
At that point he will probably try to get to Europe. If he makes it, his appeal to those governments on humanitarian grounds may be weakened by the fact the first country he picked practices capital punishment far more than the US (more than every other country in the world combined):
http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty/death-sentences-and-...
He could have fled to Europe in the first place just as easily. For example, US citizens are exempt from visa requirements for short stays (90 days) in France -- la Patrie des droits de l'homme -- from where he would have had direct access to the ECtHR...
Re:How Browsers Store Your Passwords (and Why You Shouldn't Let Them)
on Friday June 21, 2013 @08:19PM (#5921934)
Every browser seems to implement its own password management scheme. None of them are as good as the same functionality that already exists in the operating system. Browsers should request access to passwords from the OS when needed, perhaps once per session.
Re:NSA whistleblower Russ Tice goes on record with new revelations
on Friday June 21, 2013 @02:30PM (#5920020)
Technically the NSA is a part of the DOD. They assist the ODNI which is civilian, although its leadership role is limited.
Re:Microsoft Said To Give Zero Day Exploits To US Government Before It...
on Saturday June 15, 2013 @11:02AM (#5885166)
I think the US government is not on the list because they don't need this program. The NSA finds its exploits directly from the source code, which Microsoft shares with them and many other governments, not second-hand from Microsoft.
Re:An encrypted message to Edward Snowden
on Saturday June 15, 2013 @10:40AM (#5885121)
I hope Snowden realizes that none of this matters if an FBI agent is sitting beside the reporter as they communicate.
Re:An encrypted message to Edward Snowden
on Saturday June 15, 2013 @10:29AM (#5885098)
An open message to Snowden: this reporter would hand over his private key in a second.
Re:Jordanian citizen was denied re-entry to the US on eve of his PhD d...
on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @08:27PM (#5871625)
He probably pissed off some member of the royal family, whom are more important to the US than intellectuals.
Re:NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers
on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @08:15PM (#5871584)
Although this wasn't news to most people here, keep in mind that the US has always denied doing economic espionage, against China or anyone else. The Snowden leak also revealed that the largest target of US espionage in Europe is Germany -- I can't think of any reason for that other than economic espionage. This certainly raises questions.
Mars north polar ice cap
There exist proof and verification tools for C, like ACSL and Frama-C, [1] or LCL and Splint. [2,3] Not to mention the myriad of static and dynamic analysis tools. You can prove that a piece of C code does or doesn't contain certain bugs -- this is not the case for higher-level languages (except perhaps Haskell and ML). That is why C is used for highly sensitive projects like avionics.
I would say: learn C and high-level languages.
[1] http://frama-c.com/acsl.html
[2] www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/SRC-RR-74.pdf
Re:Python's Hardest Problem (2012)
on Monday June 03, 2013 @08:47PM (#5817053)
I'm glad I came across this article. I'm learning Python and was given that advice to use multiprocessing rather than threading, but hadn't researched why. Very informative, thanks for sharing.
Re:A Framework for Creating Reusable Charts with d3.js
on Wednesday May 29, 2013 @06:48PM (#5789748)
This looks great. It could be the PGFPlots of Javascript.
Re:Thoughts on Matasano Security’s Critique of Javascript Cryptography
on Sunday May 26, 2013 @02:25AM (#5770250)
Without going into the technical details described by other commenters here, this is my understanding of the problem (please correct me if I'm wrong): You receive the code that is run, from the same entity you should be protecting yourself from -- that being the Cryptocat server. This is a big contradiction.
One really should assume that if a service can be compelled to act against the interests of its users, that will eventually happen.
Re:The New York Times Told Me To Take This Down
on Tuesday May 21, 2013 @09:38PM (#5748261)
The fact that their website still doesn't have a viewable demonstration of their software suggests it actually isn't so easy to make interactive content like Snow Fall.
The only thing I could find was this very annoying video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUA62gHzVpA
Re:Ask HN: I'm lost. Please help
on Saturday May 18, 2013 @02:04AM (#5728058)
You can always put the idea on hold for a while, and find regular work until you decide to go back to it. The work you put into it so far isn't going anywhere.
Re:A faster next-power-of-two algorithm
on Saturday May 11, 2013 @06:12PM (#5692300)
To me, the next power of two after 4 is 8, not 4. If you prefer, you can add a line to simply return the input if it is already a power of two:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_of_two#Fast_algorithm_to_...
(Edit: You forgot to subtract one before setting the lower bits and incrementing. If you omit that step, both these algorithms give the same result.)
Actually this algorithm is faster for smaller numbers too, because it always performs less operations in the loop -- one shift as opposed to a shift and a bitwise or.
A faster next-power-of-two algorithm
A ring cut from a single crystal of silicon may be strong enough. Regardless, it would look very nice.
Re:"I can't do math" (2001)
on Monday May 06, 2013 @06:52PM (#5665286)
We were taught sine, cosine and tangent in the context of how they could be used to derive angles from other angles, not what they were and how they worked. They were presented as tools that could be used in particular ways that had to be memorized.
This has to be the worst things you could do to a student in a math class. In engineering they call it "plug and chug" -- students must plug numbers into a formula they've memorized and come up with an answer.
By the way, we learned trigonometry with the unit circle. If we forgot a formula, we'd just draw a little circle and derive it. I'm always grateful for that teacher.
Re:Experimental aircraft speeds to Mach 5.1 in test flight
on Monday May 06, 2013 @06:38PM (#5665224)
Past Mach 10, a layer of plasma is formed on the leading surface of the aircraft, which RF cannot traverse. This is also why atmospheric reentry occurs in a blackout. There's a good explanation of the phenomenon here:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=piercing-th...
Re:Experimental aircraft speeds to Mach 5.1 in test flight
on Saturday May 04, 2013 @08:13PM (#5656859)
Congratulations on a successful test flight. Aircraft that fly up to Mach 10 can still use radio communication. That wasn't the case with the Falcon Project's HTV-2. I guess the Air Force wants a GPS-guided hypersonic cruise missile.
Re:Harder than it looks: rounding a float to the nearest integer
on Friday May 03, 2013 @12:28PM (#5650927)
I'm glad the subject is being studied, it's a very interesting problem. Proper solutions are much more sophisticated than it seems. You have to ensure that the checks you use in the checker functions don't themselves cause overflows. If you're interested, I'll write about an algorithm for your WillOverflow function which has been proved correct.
Re:How a 17 year old girl won a hackathon
on Friday May 03, 2013 @11:53AM (#5650730)
Your question is based on anecdotal evidence. You should instead ask why so few women and girls in your life are inquisitive about their world?
In my personal experience, women are just as inquisitive as men, if not more, as evidenced by the fact that more girls than guys went on to study science after high school. But I wouldn't claim my experience is universally true.
Re:High school student faces adult felony charges for setting off chem...
on Wednesday May 01, 2013 @09:29PM (#5641956)
Shame on this so-called school. We've all done this (probably with vinegar and baking soda) only a million times.
Re:How To Split A Pizza
on Saturday April 27, 2013 @09:59PM (#5619859)
In the case of three people sharing one pizza:
Slice the pizza in four, and eat three of the quarters (the two people who aren't slicing picking first of course). Repeat with the remaining quarter until what's left is not worth being disappointed about.
I would never actually do this, but it's a good illustration of limits of geometric series.
Re:How to eat healthily on £1 a day
on Saturday April 27, 2013 @04:26PM (#5618940)
I've always disliked the perception that poor people necessarily eat poorly. Rice, wheat, barley, oats, beans, and root vegetables are grown in abundance in developed countries and so are inexpensive; they do not spoil quickly; and are very healthy. Most vegetables will keep for weeks in a refrigerator and months in a freezer. Sardines (fresh) and eggs provide much better protein than meat.
I think the cost of "healthy food" is mostly rooted in ignorance and a taste for simple sugars:
"For a Brit, there can be no greater comfort food than a custard cream."
There's your problem.
Re:Feynman called woman “worse than a whore” for not exchanging sex fo...
on Tuesday April 23, 2013 @08:25PM (#5598865)
Wow, I hadn't read the book and never knew that about Feynman. Very disappointing.
Re:Ask HN: Cross platform build testing?
on Tuesday April 23, 2013 @07:37PM (#5598672)
Oh, I see now. The only service I know that comes close is the openSUSE Build Service:
But it is primarily used for packaging, not testing.
Re:Ask HN: Cross platform build testing?
on Tuesday April 23, 2013 @01:05AM (#5593381)
I haven't used it myself, but Buildbot sounds like what you're looking for:
Alternatives include Mozilla Tinderbox and Atlassian Bamboo. If you have success with any of these, I'd love to read about it (I follow your blog) as I've been thinking about the same problem lately.