Hacker News Reader

throwit1979on A Drinking Glass That Can Prevent Sexual Assault

Because everything has an opportunity cost, however small.

Utilitarianism, as well as "just good horse sense" suggests that finite resources should be allocated to solving problems that cause greater sum harm than lesser sum harm.

throwit1979on Stripe's list of prohibited businesses

Surprised fortune tellers aren't on there

They are. #27

throwit1979on Encrypted E-Mail Company Hushmail Spills to Feds (2007)

Right. So why didn't they then close the insecure access method, and deny FURTHER content requests?

throwit1979on Lavabit abruptly shuts down

Oh good, because Google will never be subject to an NSL.

throwit1979on Lavabit abruptly shuts down

Which will work fine until countermail gets an NSL too.

Hosting your own, in your physical posession, with mercury-switch or dead-man-switch triggered thermite self-destruct is really the only option left.

throwit1979on Shutting Down a Dream

Relevant to the story earlier today, John Carmack has three jobs and two children. He tweets regularly, speaks at cons, and occasionally blogs on altdev. He also reportedly lifts weights regularly.

It's not impossible.

throwit1979on IRS manual detailed DEA's use of hidden intel evidence

This is news.ycombinator.com, right? Can someone please explain to me how this comment is not [dead], as it ought to be, within 10 seconds of its posting?

I'd also have to question how it's even possible that any thinking human being, aware of even the barest modicum of facts, can continue to maintain that the police state is exclusively the domain of the GOP.

Jesus Christ, what has HN become?

Edit: Disregard this, I just checked the parent's karma score. Popularity goes a very long way in relegating petty things like posting guidelines and reason into the dustbin of irrelevance.

throwit1979on John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

Splitting his time three ways would only seem to exacerbate the problem.

Four ways. The man has a wife and two children in whose lives he's quite active.

I strongly suspect he's managed to obviate the need for sleep.

throwit1979on Kathy Sierra: Your app makes me fat

If I parse this sentence properly, it sounds like you are expressing regret that the trolls were not either killed or physically disabled.

TIL that death and/or dismemberment is an appropriate punishment for trolling.

throwit1979on Groupcache: an alternative to memcached, written in Go

TIL that waiting for a network roundtrip is faster than accessing an in-process hash map directly.

throwit1979on Feds tell web firms to turn over user passwords

Then they'll have to let me know and get a warrant.

Hahahahaha. No.

throwit1979on As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

Do you want to be ruled by Google? By Walmart?

Why is the default assumption by Statists that if the government won't rule us, corporations will?

A novel concept that people may want to attempt to grasp is that there could be no rulers, and as such, there's no need to make up a fictitious "new ruler".

throwit1979on How I Cured my RSI Pain (2010)

While we're discussing anecdotal cures for RSI, I'll disclose mine: deadlifting.

That's it. Consistent, heavy deadlifting has kept it away for years.

I have no medical explanation.

throwit1979on Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys

tptacek is fairly well-known as a government sycophant and a "nothing to see here" type. His position is not at all surprising.

throwit1979on $99 Parallella supercomputing boards start shipping

I'll believe it when I see it. These guys have been pushing off and pushing off, I've all but written off my "contribution".

The fact that they're preselling the 16 core boards before we have even received ours, and that they come with storage( the contributors have to supply our own sd cards ) at the same price point, I'm left with an unpleasant taste.

throwit1979on Jimmy Wales: This is super cool. "I started to learn python..."

I concur. And it's not just mere ability that's at issue, here. Kids who enter computing at a young age are typically motivated more by genuine interest/passion than the later entrants who are more likely just picking a career.

Caveat: we're both dealing purely anecdotal evidence and a fair bit of conjecture. We could easily be wrong.

throwit1979on NSA Chief: Terrorists Using Leaked Info [video]

Quite relevant to your post, although image memes are generally frowned upon by HN: http://i.imgur.com/mW0YHRK.jpg

throwit1979on 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

except to those who have no idea what this poverty looks like.

I think this is a very important observation. Sometimes poverty doesn't look anything like this.

I'd like to note that although I grew up in "technical" poverty, e.g. in a small rural community with a median income of $11,121, very few saw much violence or any of the markers of poverty lifestyle this article talks about.

Although my anecdote is not scientific, I do think this has much more to do with observed culture than with an arbitrary signifier like poverty. Urban poverty and rural poverty are entirely different things, for instance. As is transient and temporary versus chronic poverty.

throwit1979on The Vitamin Myth: Why We Think We Need Supplements

Justification: a typical vaccine volume is 0.5mL. Injecting 5L of any liquid into a child intramuscularly would cause severe health problems, to say the least.

throwit1979on Plug anti-PRISM solution raises half a million dollars in 9 days on Kickstarter

Right, but they have no control over interception rootkits installed on the client. And all of their marketing material suggests that the client in question will usually be your phone. After the VPN software decrypts the data and before it is emitted from the speaker and/or displayed on the screen, there is a cleartext data stream that could be intercepted by a rootkit that the feds could order your telecom provider to silently install.

throwit1979on Plug anti-PRISM solution raises half a million dollars in 9 days on Kickstarter

Um, there's also the client side of this.

You can lock up your data all you want, but with the NSA deeply embedded in telecoms and mobile device manufacturers, once you try to access said data in a manner consistent with the project's marketing, e.g. on an apple-engineered device running Verizon's comm middleware, the NSA gets your data anyway.

This is the same problem projects like Moxie's silent circle have. It's trivial for the authorities to grab data between the device's interface and the software - they don't need to decrypt a damn thing.

throwit1979on NSA Phone Snooping Cannot Be Challenged in Court, Feds Say

tl;dr:

1. The surveillance occurs in secret

2. Due to #1, you can't possibly prove that you, specifically, are a target of surveillance

3. Due to #2, you have no standing with the court

QED. I am speechless.

throwit1979on Why This Hacker Stood Up Against ‘Verbal Abuse’ in Linux Land

Another strange response, seeing as how I never even specified anything about my bullying experiences, other than their effects.

throwit1979on Why This Hacker Stood Up Against ‘Verbal Abuse’ in Linux Land

Well, that's a constructive comment. The strange irony of what you said is that it was exactly the intense bullying I received as a computer nerd in grade school that helped lead to the understanding that I am in full control of how others "make me feel".

throwit1979on Why This Hacker Stood Up Against ‘Verbal Abuse’ in Linux Land

Because we're in control of our emotions and our reactions. We are not entirely in control of the laws of physics. Ergo, physical abuse is not even remotely in the same category as verbal "abuse".

throwit1979on Why This Hacker Stood Up Against ‘Verbal Abuse’ in Linux Land

Abuse? Important lesson that most people of my generation and prior learned at about age 4:

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

Is the self-esteem movement of subsequent generations really putting words on the same level as fists, knives, etc?

throwit1979on Trinity College experiment succeeds after 69 years

Um, not to take away from the achievement of the result, but couldn't this result have been obtained in much less time with higher force than 1G in, say, a centrifuge?

throwit1979on Poll: How old are you?

I don't think Ed has kids, which is partially why his quality of life is so high.

throwit1979on Network Solutions' DNS was down

In general this ought to "work", but most dns check services and uppity sysadmins will complain loudly and bitterly that there's more than one SOA if you don't do a proper primary-secondary with IXFR.

throwit1979on Is Sugar Really Toxic?

Except it takes about 5 seconds for sucrase in your small intestine to hydrolyze sugar into exactly the same substances present in HFCS. So it doesn't matter. At all.