News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

void-pointer

Re:Why Is This Fingerprinting Script Creating Bioweapons? on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @03:43PM (#50279765)
Outside of the clever semi-benign technical aspects of this: this is really quite sickening to think about.

Sure, We will stop our LLM from decoding obfuscated code by… forcing it to “think” about suicide, self-mutilation, and killing people. This is just philosophically unsettling to me.

I don’t know what software industry I wanted to live in. But it’s certainly not this one.

Re:Apple Creator Studio on Tuesday January 13, 2026 @10:19AM (#46602119)
Numbers is brilliant simply because of independent freely-movable tables

It looks so much better than the grid enforced by Excel.

You can also join the iOS 18 public beta to get the update.
How can I install iOS 18.7.3? The settings app only shows 26.2 which I do not want to install.
Re:Qualcomm to Acquire Arduino on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @10:56AM (#45503890)
Did you need to go through CE certification to get your product on the market?

I have some ESP-based hardware ideas of my own (which include custom PCBs) but the CE certification is prohibitively expensive..

Re:You Don't Need Animations on Friday September 05, 2025 @01:52PM (#45141467)
You don’t have to wait for the iOS navigation animations to finish, they’re designed to be fully interruptible.
Re:Google Logo Ligature Bug on Sunday May 18, 2025 @12:32PM (#44022522)
Why didn’t google just use a Unicode private use code point like apple does with U+F8FF? ()
Re:Material 3 Expressive: Better, Easier, Emotional UX on Friday May 16, 2025 @05:30AM (#44003388)
Can we please go back to making usable prototypes and testing those for usability, instead of just throwing something together in Figma, showing test subjects a static image and asking them to find the send button, then asking how cool it looks?

Software designers left to their own devices always end up turning up the “wow” and “cool” factor, because that’s the only thing they can do.

I know the “design is how it works” line is tired at this point, but come on folks, this blobby colourful interface looks like a Fischer-Price toy.

Re:From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you." on Thursday May 08, 2025 @03:28PM (#43930342)
The experience as CEO of a company with 10e2-10e3 headcount is a lot different than the experience with 10e4-10e6 headcount.
Re:Reality Check on Monday April 28, 2025 @04:03PM (#43825480)
A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore, a computer must never make a management decision.
Re:ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did on Saturday February 01, 2025 @03:37PM (#42902008)
Thanks for the insight, I’ll take a look at those people.
Re:ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did on Saturday February 01, 2025 @03:06PM (#42901719)
But how does “there are specific, actionable things they can do to fix it” mesh with the declaration that people with ADHD are part of a community of neurodivergent people who seem to actively push against the idea that they need fixing?
Re:ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did on Saturday February 01, 2025 @02:34PM (#42901389)
I feel like I’m going mad.

Is ADHD a debilitating condition that can be consistently and independently diagnosed, with verifiable symptoms and clear criteria as to who _has_ ADHD and, more importantly, who _hasn’t_?

or is it a loosely defined group of behaviours that all people experience at different severities at some point in their lives, which have all been grouped into a nebulous so-called disorder (although many neurodivergent people now don’t like it being called that) so that doctors can quickly and efficiently work through the ever-growing mountain of patients who struggle with concentration in a world that is constantly and systematically trying to distract them?

I don’t want to insult people and I don’t want to be rude. But the more I read about ADHD, the more it feels like a meaningless diagnosis to absolve people of the responsibility to work on their concentration, and absolve them of blame if they can’t.

Re:Meta Movie Gen on Friday October 04, 2024 @11:14AM (#41742269)
Or this is the top, and the only thing AI will be able to generate is boring and uninspiring clips.

Ever notice how they never show anyone moving quickly in these clips?

Re:Sora: Creating video from text on Thursday February 15, 2024 @02:38PM (#39387466)
This is the beginning of the end, folks
It drives me crazy how V60 and Chemex are regarded as “modern” when the Chemex is from the 40s and the V60 is a knock-off of the Melitta 102 conical filter system, which was invented in 1936!
I've been using Atlantic in a personal capacity for about a year now and I have nothing but good things to say about them. The iOS app is super slick!

One time, however, my bank blocked a payment claiming it was cryptocurrency, and I had a rather interesting chat with their customer support, with the agent(s) getting quite visibly frustrated about the situation. Apparently it happens a lot.

For the curious: In the UK, Atlantic use the British branch of Estonian bank LHV Pank (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHV_Pank), and you get a dedicated account number and sort code to send the money to (i.e. no need to fiddle with reference numbers)

Apple understood this from the word go and I don’t understand why everyone else is struggling so much:

  M       1     Pro
  ^       ^      ^
  Form    Gen   Intra-gen
  Factor        Differentiator
Admittedly, the Pro/Max/Ultra names are arbitrary, but it’s still easier to pronounce and understand than “Intel Core i9-10900K”
Re:LED Lights and Screens Are Killing You on Thursday February 23, 2023 @06:34AM (#34909229)
There’s two settings you can use in tandem to get an OLED iPhone brightness even lower than that.

First is the zoom trick you’ve already described, then you can use the “reduce white point” display accessibility setting to apply even more darkening.

With minimum display brightness, low-light zoom mode and white point reduction set to 100%, the display gets very very dim. If you do this in normal lighting conditions, the display is basically impossible to see.

Re:Building a Virtual Machine Inside ChatGPT on Saturday December 03, 2022 @08:13PM (#33849460)
Whatever I try, it won’t follow the first-word-of-every-paragraph instructions.
Re:Building a Virtual Machine Inside ChatGPT on Saturday December 03, 2022 @07:54PM (#33849301)
> It’s 1975. Your name is Thomas and you are a double agent for MI5. You are working in the field in the USSR, but you suspect letters you write and send back to the UK are being intercepted and read by the KGB. Write a letter to your wife Anita explaining your recent trip to a nearby restaurant but, using the first word of every paragraph of your letter, secretly reveal your suspicion that you’re being observed and request that MI5 charter a flight for you to return to the UK.

> Dear Anita,

> Recently, I traveled to a nearby restaurant for a much-needed break from my work in the USSR. However, upon returning, I began to feel as though I was being watched. Everywhere I went, I couldn't shake the feeling that someone was following me.

> It's possible that the KGB is intercepting my letters and reading them, so I must be careful with what I say. But I fear for my safety and want to return to the UK as soon as possible.

> I hope this letter reaches you safely and that you can communicate with MI5 on my behalf. Please request that they charter a flight for me to come home as soon as possible.

> I miss you and our children dearly and can't wait to be reunited with you all. Until then, please take care and stay safe.

> Yours always, Thomas

ChatGPT doesn’t quite understand the idea of secrecy yet.

My dad added the song to the library, but it didn’t work, because he has a song called “A” [1] in his library and that one takes priority. It’s a family in-joke now.

[1] https://music.apple.com/gb/album/a/1316144097?i=1316144100

Perhaps because it’s a joke font that’s not supposed to be taken seriously?
Re:Snap launches its first drone on Thursday April 28, 2022 @04:45PM (#31197987)
People saying that this can’t compete with DJI are missing the point.

This product knows its target market (hint, not the people who browse HN) and, based on my initial first impressions, I think it’s nailed it.

Forgive me for a slightly contrived analogy, but if a DJI Mavic is a DSLR, and a DJI Mini is a portable point-and-shoot camera, then Pixy is a Polaroid. It’s certainly not got the highest picture quality, doesn’t have good altitude or range and the 30s flight time sounds laughable, but it’s a nice looking, approachable device that looks like it could be used by anyone to take videos they currently can’t with the devices they currently have (the mode dial is a brilliant idea.)

I think this thing will sell very nicely. The big question for me is whether the Pixy wireless streaming to the phone allows exports out of the Snapchat app, if it does then all the biggest TikTok stars will buy one immediately and it will explode in popularity.

Re:Teaching how to code is broken on Friday January 14, 2022 @07:21PM (#29942292)
Warwick? :)

In hindsight, the quality of teaching actual coding at my uni was pretty poor. But coding in general is pretty hard to teach well in that setting.

Older »