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cube13

2,006 karma · joined February 14, 2011

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cube13··on Studies find fast traders get data from SEC seconds early
>Well if it is measured at the 1-second or 1-millisecond level, yes the exchanges are in compliance. At the 100-microsecond, 10-microsecond and nanosecond level, perhaps the exchange is in compliance at the 50th percentile.

And once you hit the <1 millisecond level, it's hard to even get reliable measurements, which makes compliance for "same time delivery" really really freaking hard.

Keep in mind, when you're talking about the nanosecond level, you're at the point where the length of cabling between the systems matters.

Sure, there's a lot of new tech coming out, especially with using GPS to synchronize clocks, but it's still a major issue.

cube13··on Laura Poitras: ‘Facebook is a gift to intelligence agencies’
If you're screaming your information out to the entire world, it's hard to find fault when someone listens.
cube13··on The Great Robocoin Rip-off: How We Lost $25,000 Buying a Robocoin ATM
>An m-of-n transaction with a decent and trusted intermediary (or multiple less trusted intermediaries) could also replace bank guarantees, which is the simplest form of trade finance. There are also other opportunities in using bitcoin as proof of ownership or proof that you hold a product.

So let's replace banks with... banks?

The overhead costs that bitcoin will save are just the wire transfer fees. Beyond that, there's still lawyer time, intermediary escrow fees, etc. Those will not change.

cube13··on Amazon's heavy investing eats into bottom line, shares drop
>They do not turn a profit because they keep sinking their profits back into expansion.

Uh, that's pretty much the definition of "unprofitable".

cube13··on Elon Musk’s Answer To Stephen Colbert’s Vision Of Wireless Charging
I don't know about you, but I don't want football field size anything flying over my head, shooting energy beams.

I like... air, instead.

cube13··on Apple To Abandon Headphone Jack? Beats Deal Suddenly Makes Sense
Man, you can tell it's June, because this stuff is coming out again. :)
cube13··on Apple To Abandon Headphone Jack? Beats Deal Suddenly Makes Sense
30-pin was an Apple-only connector, though. Same with lightning.

The 1.5mm jack, on the other hand, is the standard audio connector for just about every consumer-grade device in the world. Not sure what the upside is for Apple, even with them owning Beats.

cube13··on High Frequency Trading and Finance's Race to Irrelevance
They're been at that point for the last century, at least.
cube13··on Amazon’s Illegal Drugs: Steroids, Muscle Relaxants, Prescription Antibiotics
Worth pointing out that Clindamaycin is used to treat MRSA, and resistant strains are appearing now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clindamycin

So no, it's not a good idea for more of it to be out there.

cube13··on Canada's Pitch to Tech Entrepreneur: We'll Pay 80% of Your Salaries
You're paying sales taxes in pretty much all of the US, though, though not as much(ranges from ~3% to 10%).
cube13··on Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers
Both books are, actually. The paperback edition for Brad Stone's book is going to be released in October.
cube13··on Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers
That's true. However, making a JK Rowling book completely unavailable? That's incredibly suspicious. It's pretty much a guaranteed bestseller.
cube13··on US files criminal complaint against Credit Suisse
Or because they have branches and accounts in the US:

https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/

cube13··on Bitcoin Foundation hit by resignations over new director
So, in other words, you're creating another group with you at the top, pushing your PR agenda for the movement.

I fail to see the difference, other than the fact that you're doing it instead of those people.

cube13··on U.S. Judge Orders RBS Unit Stop Using Software in Copyright Case
If it's a core part of your technology strategy, as RBS/ABN say it is, then your legal people need to make sure that you don't accidentally sell it away.

The problem seems to stem(from a ruling last year linked here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7722956) from the fact that ANB didn't actually specify that the license was staying with it instead of getting sold as a packaged part of one of their subsidiaries.

For a core tech requirement, that's amazingly idiotic, no matter what size organization you're in.

cube13··on My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data Made Me Look Like a Criminal
But corporations aren't the only problem with privacy. There are social problems, governmental problems. The author's uncle sent a public message saying that she's pregnant on Facebook. That's not Facebook's fault at all, and it can still be a problem.

Non-out GBLT people have problems with this stuff constantly, not only with Facebook screwing up and accidentally reveling information that was set to private, but with others publicly getting outed by well-meaning friends or family before they're ready to out themselves.

Again, the damage is done when the information is revealed. You have to remember, for a lot of people the stakes aren't just avoiding a pile of baby-related coupons and spam in their e-mail. It is literally life and death for some people. While yes, we can punish the release of the information, it does not stop the damage from happening when the information is released. We should have stricter privacy protections, but at the same time, we need to have a conversation about what privacy actually means, and what the risks are for revealing information to someone else.

cube13··on My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data Made Me Look Like a Criminal
Privacy is like cryptography. You're private/secure until you're not, and there's nothing you can do once it's been broken. So cultural or legal agreements or frameworks might provide some recompense, they will not stop the initial problem, which is the revealing of the information.

The best way to remain private is to ensure that you don't tell anyone else the information you wish to be private at all.

cube13··on My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data Made Me Look Like a Criminal
>This is a false trade-off. Why should people have to make sacrifices to gain privacy? If people believe it's important then they'll advocate for it but that doesn't mean they should become digital hermits to prove a point.

But why would a privacy minded person even be willing to give third parties their information? Once it's out of your hands, it's out of your control. Forget the sale of information by Facebook or Twitter. What if they get hacked, and their entire database gets exposed to the world? You can't control that.

This is why, even before the internet, those who wanted complete privacy turned into literal hermits.

If one is truly concerned about privacy, they shouldn't make that information available at all. So no Facebook, Twitter, or use of Google services.

cube13··on Companies Built on Sharing Balk When It Comes to Regulators
>Is there a difference in impact between a) one apartment dweller renting on AirBnB, and b) a 100-unit motel that charges by the hour? Of course there is. Perhaps the laws will evolve to reflect that. But for now, it's reasonable for long-term residents to be concerned about the latter situation developing if AirBnB is subject to no regulation at all.

The problem is scale. 1 apartment getting rented on AirBnB probably isn't a problem for anyone at all. But if it's 1%? That's a significant reduction in available housing. Given that NYC already has a gigantic housing and real estate problem, anything that can conceivably compound the issue will get attention.

cube13··on C/C++ Fiddle
>That's a perfectly legal optimization. The integer here isn't atomic and if another thread modifies the variable, that would be a data race and those have undefined behavior. Therefore, the compiler can assume that there is no race and move the comparison out of the loop.

In this case, the data race is fairly minimal, since we're talking about a 4 byte integer being used as a boolean flag. Operations like x = 1 for 4 byte ints are pretty much guaranteed to be atomic with x86, and worst case, you go through 1 more iteration of your loop than you would have otherwise(which your code should account for at any rate with locking for critical sections). Any change to the int should cause the while loop to exit.

It should be a volatile(C pre C11) or atomic(C++11/C11) integer if you're passing it between threads, though.

cube13··on Analysis of suspected MH370 pings recorded by Ocean Shield
I think it's safe to assume that someone(US, Russia, China, etc.) has something in the area, but nobody's going to be talking about it to the public.

It's not so much about disclosing capabilities as much as it's just simply operational secrecy. The entire point of a submarine is that it's hard to find.

cube13··on We lost a customer. This is how we found out
Yeah, that's the problem here. The main product page doesn't answer any of this at all, and there doesn't appear to be an FAQ or any actual information about how the process works.

At best, I infer that this is a kickstarter clone for startups, but my major questions as a potential backer, like how does this work legally don't seem to be answered at all. The signup for the email list doesn't actually explain what "curated" means here, and the signup is a 1 field form for my email.

And if I were a potential project creator, there's even less information. They mention "support", but there isn't any info about what that support is.

Clicking on the "About" just brings up pictures of the team and investors, which is pretty much worthless information. I want to know about what the company does, not just who's in it. Their "product" page is a kickstarter-style pitch page, but it's not clear that they're actually talking about the product(which they apparently are)... and it appears that they're using it to sell things to raise money for the startup.

cube13··on Sony announces Project Morpheus, a virtual reality headset coming to PS4
>There's nothing a controller can do, that a simple mouse and keyboard can't do better.

Analog control for a flight sim or racing game. Mouse and keyboard is absolute shit for those.

Platformers also really aren't great.

cube13··on MH370: A different point of view
I just blame aliens or a very localized rapture.
cube13··on Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?
This is the kind of target that would have someone claiming responsibility. The plane wasn't from a country that's known for disproportionate responses to attacks(i.e. the US or Russia). I would figure that if any group actually did pull this off, they'd be making public announcements that they took down the plane, or were holding it for ransom.
cube13··on Every Quadrotor Needs This Failsafe Software
Or invest in a simulator package, and learn there.

It looks like Real Flight has quadcopters.

cube13··on Critical crypto bug leaves Linux, hundreds of apps open to eavesdropping
>If I implement a network protocol I will make sure to write automated test involving clients and servers. Setting this up on localhost or on a virtual network using TUN/TAP is not that hard. And this has made me find TONS of bug ahead of time.

I agree that it's helpful, but the problem is coverage. Your test code, most likely, doesn't cover EVERY single possible condition that can happen with a simple TCP/IP connection. Especially once you get out of localhost land, where you're dealing not only with your code, but all the hardware and software between the two systems

The fundamental problem is that even with a rigorous test suite, you're probably going to run into things you didn't even think were possible once the code is out in the wild. For example, we just ran into a scenario where we were seeing corruption through a TCP connection. Knowing the wire, it was impossible for the packets to be appearing in the way that they were(there was some packet level corruption). After going through multiple wireshark logs, we found that the culprit was a hardware firewall in between the server and client. Thankfully, our code didn't crash, but it's also something that we never tested for, because(in theory, at least), it should never be possible for that specific corruption to be sent in the first place.

cube13··on Critical crypto bug leaves Linux, hundreds of apps open to eavesdropping
I'm a firm believer in regression tests for complex systems. Sure, this specific case is extremely unlikely to come up again, but in general, it's always good to have that coverage, especially if a large refactor happens later on.
cube13··on Critical crypto bug leaves Linux, hundreds of apps open to eavesdropping
>What I read him as saying (and agree with) is that he's surprised that GnuTLS isn't tested against known-bad certificates in a simple integration test that doesn't require a Ph.D. to set up, as you imply.

Define "known-bad" in a general enough way that a specific test can be created to cover the entire range of "bad" certs. That's quite difficult, and, probably isn't realistically possible to go through all the "known-bad" if you want your tests to run quickly.

Realistically, all you can do is have regression tests to make sure that the found bugs aren't repeated in future releases.

cube13··on Breaking Madden: The Super Bowl, in which the machine bleeds to death
Assuming a 15 minute quarter(though most Madden games have shorter quarters, especially if they're multiplayer), to get 255 points in a quarter, a team would need to score a touchdown + 2 point conversion every 30 seconds. For a full game, that's every 2 minutes.

Any given play generally takes 10-20 seconds, and you're going to be running, bare minimum, 2 plays per 8 points(1 for touchdown, 1 for 2 point conversion). So that's about 25 seconds per score.

If the teams are remotely well matched(i.e. aren't a Breaking Madden team), they'll take at least 2-3 minutes per possession, since you're most likely going to have 4 downs, which have a play clock of 40 seconds(most teams use around 30/play), so the "average" shortest possession is something like 2 minutes.

The point of all this? The Breaking Madden games are really an outlier that you'd have to specifically code for.

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