Hacker News Reader

There is a fixed timeout: iOS (both 7 and 8) will ask for the passcode if you haven’t unlocked it for 48 hours. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5949

micampeon Apple releases U2 album removal tool

> there was no way to download the files

This statement is not true.

micampeon A Watch Guy's Thoughts on the Apple Watch After Seeing It in the Metal

While waiting for the watch, a lot of people never open the Settings app so they don't realize that the notifications settings for Mail on the iPhone are pretty flexible, with VIP contacts and custom notifications per account.

micampeon Emscripten and asm.js: C++'s role in the modern web

You listed only the positives of one platform, you forgot the other side of the equation: its negatives and the other platform's positives.

micampeon Fitting digital camera components into an analog rangefinder

Well, there is the Tri-Elmar :)

micampeon Fitting digital camera components into an analog rangefinder

> Up until the days of auto-focus, single-lens reflex (SLRs) also used this kind of technique for focusing.

Everything else is perfect, but this is incorrect. SLRs use focusing screens with split prisms and/or microprisms, not rangefinders. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focusing_screen

You can still mount one of those on some modern DSLRs by simply replacing a piece of glass. http://www.focusingscreen.com/privacy.php

micampeon Apple Says It Will Add New iCloud Security Measures After Celebrity Hack

I meant the latter. Turning on backup and having it only do a partial backup by default would be a surprising behavior for users.

micampeon Apple Says It Will Add New iCloud Security Measures After Celebrity Hack

Photos upload is not enabled by default.

micampeon Apple Says It Will Add New iCloud Security Measures After Celebrity Hack

Then sync it to two devices so you have two factor verification ;)

micampeon Apple Says It Will Add New iCloud Security Measures After Celebrity Hack

Security questions are horrible, but I think the best solution is 2b: Put in some secret, highly forgettable information that you save in your password manager as a note together with your password.

micampeon AppleID password brute force proof-of-concept

Yes. You just can't download apps or use iCloud services.

micampeon The U.S. Navy Tests Its Ships in This Indoor Ocean

But you said tests with scale models give wrong results: “a scale model won't behave very much like the full-size craft”.

micampeon The U.S. Navy Tests Its Ships in This Indoor Ocean

So are you saying everyone doing these tests is knowingly wasting their time?

micampeon The Most Symmetrical Objects in the World

The sphere would not be defining the kilogram: it will be used to count the number of atoms it contains, which would allow to redefine the Avogadro number without reference to the kilogram, which would then define the kilogram as the mass of a fixed number of Si28 atoms. See the video I posted in another comment.

micampeon The Most Symmetrical Objects in the World

Interesting video with some historical background about the kilogram and that sphere http://youtu.be/ZMByI4s-D-Y

micampeon Ophal – A Lua web platform

I looked it up because I found your remark interesting:

> awful (adj.)

> c.1300, agheful "worthy of respect or fear," from aghe, an earlier form of awe (n.), + -ful. Replaced Old English egefull. Weakened sense "very bad" is from 1809; weakened sense of "exceedingly" is by 1818.

Turns out the word that actually changed meaning is “awe”:

> awe (n.)

> c.1300, earlier aghe, c.1200, from a Scandinavian source, such as Old Norse agi "fright;" from Proto-Germanic ^agiz- (cognates: Old English ege "fear," Old High German agiso "fright, terror," Gothic agis "fear, anguish")[…]

http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=awful

http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=awe

micampeon The FLIR One, a heat camera for the iPhone, is now available

Pick one: either it is a cheesy gimmick or it makes the sensor vastly more useful. Those are pretty much opposites, it can't be both.

micampeon How I built an audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather

It's a wonderful project. I'm sure you building it makes him a lot happier than if you had found something ready to buy.

micampeon J002E3

Now this is a much clearer title!

micampeon Dear Instagram

> The strange-made-up-word naming trend is annoying

Why? Is it really a “trend”?

Chevrolet, Toyota, Lexus, Microsoft, Kodak, Leica, Nikon, Canon, Nokia, Rolex. Some of these are not entirely made up, but they sound like it if you are not familiar with small Japanese towns.

micampeon Tracking two years of laptop battery use, sampled every minute

He is tracking battery capacity (Current Capacity / Max Capacity), not battery drain. This is useful to track the lifetime of the battery itself, instead of its charge.

micampeon Hermit: a font for programmers, by a programmer

I’m pretty sure that’s just Monaco.

micampeon Elon Musk’s Answer To Stephen Colbert’s Vision Of Wireless Charging

Yup.

Elon Musk’s Answer To Stephen Colbert’s Vision Of Wireless Charging: laughing at Colbert's jokes.

Did anyone who voted this article read it or watch the interview?

micampeon Rome is a dependency-free, customizable date picker

By that reasoning everything is dependency free, because I can just static link all the required libraries, or provide them in a vendor directory in the download.

micampeon Named parameters in C

“[…] so you get optional parameters for free”

micampeon Named parameters in C

Oh right, I misread the previous comment, thanks.

micampeon Named parameters in C

I find your statement puzzling. A GNU extension is by definition not “strictly valid C”, compound literals are valid C because they are defined in C99.

micampeon Named parameters in C

A value of 0 is not the same thing as a missing value.

micampeon On Swift’s array semantics

Why does the syntax matter at all? What would be the difference if Swift had exactly the same features and semantics but a different syntax?