Hacker News Reader

7786655on String length functions for single emoji characters evaluate to greater than 1

>calculating the total size of the string to allocate memory

In some languages this is 90% of everything you do with strings. In other languages it's still 90% of everything done to strings, but done automatically.

7786655on The Worsening State of Ransomware

No, but the alternative is that they would have stolen the data anyway. So it's either neutral or positive.

>let's sanction crime against them

If it were legal it wouldn't be a crime.

>Are you sure kindergardens are punished reliably enough for lapses of security?

Given that I rarely hear about children being kidnapped out of kindergartens, I would assume so. I'm not well educated on this, though, since I don't have a personal stake in the matter.

7786655on The Worsening State of Ransomware

Game 1: Every time offence scores, they get $100 of defense's money.

Game 2: Every time offence scores, they get $100 of my money. Defense loses nothing.

Neither is fair to defence, but game 2 is unfair to me, and that's what's important.

7786655on The Worsening State of Ransomware

Schools, kindergartens and parents have a legal responsibility for children under their protection. However it has been repeatedly proven that businesses who allow enormous amounts of user's personal and financial data to be leaked will suffer no meaningful consequences. See: Yahoo!, Target, Experian, etc.

7786655on Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online

And the sharer is just going to trust you to throw away that information? I don't think so.

7786655on When did generic grocery brands get so good looking?

Looks like you get through once and then it blocks you. Ctrl-F5 fixes it.

7786655on How useful should copy_file_range be?

>The copy_file_range() system call looks like a relatively straightforward feature; it allows user space to ask the kernel to copy a range of data from one file to another, hopefully applying some optimizations along the way.

7786655on Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

Yes.

7786655on WhatsApp alternatives that respect privacy

>it's entirely possible that Telegram sends everything to some government entity somewhere even for private chats

No, private chats use end-to-end encryption, and unlike WhatsApp the Telegram client is open source so this can actually be verified.

7786655on VideoLAN is 20 years old today

I assume tomjen3 was referring to browser extensions that block ads on the YouTube website.

7786655on Future Plans for Autotools

Why? You need Python to run Meson anyway, might as well install Ninja too.

7786655on Firefox Relay

How on earth is that anonymous? All of your emails are on the same domain, and nobody else is using that domain. As soon as I see an email @jamesboehmersdomain, I know that it belongs to jamesboehmer.

7786655on The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire

They should leave it up, obviously.

I mean they have the right to take it down, but if I were running YouTube I wouldn't.

7786655on Qt 6.0

To do what? Use the fluent design widgets? Why would anyone want that?

7786655on Winamp Skins Collection

Winamp skins can also be used in Audacious.

7786655on I Made a Self-Quoting Tweet

Was able to pull this off on 4chan, kinda: https://boards.4chan.org/b/thread/841284283

7786655on “Microsoft Pluton Hardware Security Coming to Our CPUs”: AMD, Intel, Qualcomm

Python uses UCS-4.

7786655on Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

You can absolutely use Android without having the Play Store installed.

7786655on Microsoft urges users to stop using phone-based multi-factor authentication

If you are switching authenticator apps, I would suggest switching to one that respects your freedom, such as Aegis, andOTP, or KeePass.

It's worth also noting that Authy also has no official way to export your secrets, although there are workarounds: https://tij.me/blog/migrating-your-one-time-passwords-from-a...

7786655on I Still Use Vim

You can have multiple files open in multiple panes in Vim. It even has a built in terminal emulator, which removes most of the reasons to use tmux.

7786655on Microsoft urges users to stop using phone-based multi-factor authentication

This is a problem with Google authenticator, not with RFC 6238 TOTP in general. Plenty of authenticator apps support backing up your secrets.

7786655on No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

0. The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.

1. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

2. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others.

3. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

7786655on There was a clear winner on election night: Marijuana

Personally I would very much be in favor of banning public smoking, especially if such a law extended to tobacco as well.

7786655on Google users locked out after 15 years' use

I've had good results with LineageOS-microg. Obviously I would prefer a 100% free OS, but you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Make sure you back up the stock rom first, you might need it later.

7786655on GitHub Warns Users Reposting YouTube-DL They Could Be Banned

I use it to watch YouTube videos in MPV. I have a machine where Chrome won't start and Firefox can't reliably display video without dropped frames, but MPV runs perfectly.

7786655on FFmpeg Drawtext Filter for Overlays, Scrolling Text, Timestamps on Videos

  -c copy

7786655on My chatbot is dead – Why yours should probably be too

This page works by hiding the mouse cursor and displaying an image that looks like it. So it's not like the browser developers deliberately added a feature to make this possible.

7786655on Ask HN: Will devices keep getting hotter, uncomfortably so?

s/devices/Apple devices/?

7786655on Stop the Earn IT Bill Before It Breaks Encryption

There is no situation in which the spread of "content" should be a crime. Any encryption that allows LE to track content is broken.

7786655on USB-C was supposed to simplify our lives, but instead it’s a total mess

USB C would be as if we could already plug arbitrary lamps into arbitrary sockets, but then someone decided the same socket that powers lamps should also be able to refuel a car and now you have to plug and pray with five different cables before your lamp will work. Also if you use the wrong one it will spray gas all over your lamp and catch fire.