Hacker News Reader

wfjacksonon Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

Rumored to be coming in IE12.

http://www.zdnet.com/how-the-next-version-of-ie-codenamed-sp...

wfjacksonon Lawrence Lessig Interviews Edward Snowden [video]

BitLocker is not the same as Device Encryption. Please stop confusing the two. Also you have been unable to say what you want Microsoft to do in grandma's case.

wfjacksonon Ask HN: How often does HN recalculate rankings?

http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

You might expect that every time you visit Hacker News, the stories are scored by the above formula and sorted to determine their rankings. But for efficiency, stories are individually reranked only occasionally. When a story is upvoted, it is reranked and moved up or down the list to its appropriate spot, leaving the other stories unchanged. Thus, the amount of reranking is significantly reduced. There is, however, the possibility that a story stops getting votes and ends up stuck in a high position. To avoid this, every 30 seconds one of the top 50 stories is randomly selected and reranked. The consequence is that a story may be "wrongly" ranked for many minutes if it isn't getting votes. In addition, pages can be cached for 90 seconds.

wfjacksonon Apple Pay Faces Challenge as CVS, Rite Aid Reject System

>What are they going to do if Apple in particular rejects CurrentC as an app?

File an anti-trust complaint? One need not be a monopoly in order to face anti-trust charges. E.g. See the ebook price fixing charge.

wfjacksonon Apple Pay Faces Challenge as CVS, Rite Aid Reject System

The app got featured on Reddit's Apple and Android subreddits and readers were encouraged to post bad reviews, so I wouldn't read it as "public" reception, although I do agree the app is suboptimal to put it generously. Most reviews in the last few days were most probably posted by people who didn't like Apple Pay/Google Wallet being removed as an option.

wfjacksonon Lawrence Lessig Interviews Edward Snowden [video]

>No it doesn't. The key could be automatically saved in the TPM - locally.

And how does grandma retrieve it if she forgets her password?

Also, does Apple do this for OS X or just iOS?

wfjacksonon CurrentC: The Big Retailers’ Clunky Attempt to Kill Apple Pay and Credit Card Fees

>That is a valid point. I personally offset that $400 with rebates. The remaining amount is totally worth it to me to have chargeback ability, extended warranties, insurance on my rental cars, and all the other perks you can get from credit cards

Now, imagine a poor or homeless person with bad credit that pays in cash, debit or non-rewards credit card. That person is paying more for the same things compared to you at the store and gets none of those perks.

>As a thought experiment, imagine if Apple stopped taking a 30% cut of app store purchases. Do you think that $0.99 games would be priced at $0.69? Probably not.

Even if not, the developer has 30% more to spend on developing the app, resulting in more and better apps. Apple, meanwhile, is buying back stock and giving dividends with all the extra cash because they don't know what to do with it.

wfjacksonon Lawrence Lessig Interviews Edward Snowden [video]

>Edit: Per your comment below you recognize that it is enabled automatically on PCs - and this is supported by the documentation provided. The grandma argument doesn't stack up with the fact that OneDrive/SkyDrive is enrolled in PRISM.

The encryption is automatic, hence it makes sense that the backup is forced. Given that many Windows user get confused when their icons are moved, it would be hard to expect them to manage decryption keys. A significant percentage could lose their data. This is still better than earlier versions of personal use Windows where the data wasn't encrypted at all and all one had to do is to connect the hard drive on a different computer. On Professional and Enterprise versions, when you choose to encrypt, the dialog box with the choice does appear, I just tried.

wfjacksonon Bill Gates answers questions about Java during a deposition (1998) [video]

If later it can be proven that you did really remember it and that you lied for convenience, you can be held liable for perjury.

wfjacksonon Lawrence Lessig Interviews Edward Snowden [video]

The big difference is that it's automatic on RT, Phone and 8.1 if the hardware supports it. Think Grandma's PC. Do you really want her to see the option window about where to store a recovery key? For the other SKUs, an option window pops up when you enable BitLocker asking about backup location.

wfjacksonon Lawrence Lessig Interviews Edward Snowden [video]

That isn't Bit Locker, it's device encryption which is supported in 8.1 (Home) and Windows RT where naive users are more likely to forget to backup the key and hence lose data.

BitLocker is only available in the professional,enterprise and ultimate versions of Windows 8.1 and it does not automatically backup the key to an MS account.

wfjacksonon Lawrence Lessig Interviews Edward Snowden [video]

From that link:

>There are several locations in which your BitLocker recovery key might have been saved.

Keyword: might.

wfjacksonon Lawrence Lessig Interviews Edward Snowden [video]

>For example on modern Windows systems bitlocker keys are automatically uploaded to the (automatically created for you) Onedrive account associated with the Microsoft Account created during your install and Onedrive is on PRISM.

Please.

http://cdn8.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/bitlock...

wfjacksonon Bill Gates answers questions about Java during a deposition (1998) [video]

Yes, Bill Gates answer was the question I was referring to as a good one. My formatting of the quoted content was a little messed up in the first line.

>If the lawyer had said "Yes", he could have answered "No":

No to what? The original question was whether Gates was indifferent to developer usage pure vs. proprietary APIs.

This was an attempt by the lawyer to color the APIs as proprietary while asking about pure Java vs. Microsoft's API functions and Gates wanted to know exactly he meant by that term before giving an answer to the question which could imply that was agreeing with the lawyer that the API was "proprietary", which could mean different things to different people.

It's like a lawyer asking "Do you like the brand of the beer you stole?",

The proper answer is "What do you mean, stole?".

Not, "No, I don't like Budweiser".

wfjacksonon Bill Gates answers questions about Java during a deposition (1998) [video]

No, it's not. If you read the exchange posted by the parent poster again, it's about MS's additional API hooks in Java that were meant to be used by Java developers, so they're definitely not undocumented.

wfjacksonon Bill Gates answers questions about Java during a deposition (1998) [video]

>Q Is it a term you're familiar with in your business? >A I really don't know what you mean. You mean an API that you have a patent on?

Isn't that a good question? An API is essentially a function header.

eg. void print(string Text);

How can it be proprietary unless it was patented or something? See Oracle vs. Google.

While talking to a court one has to be exact. Perhaps the lawyer meant an API implementation that is copyrighted?

wfjacksonon Bill Gates answers questions about Java during a deposition (1998) [video]

From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine

> It was the fastest Windows-based implementation of a Java virtual machine for the first two years after its release.[1] Sun Microsystems, the creator of Java, sued Microsoft in October 1997 for incompletely implementing the Java 1.1 standard.[2]

Which is the fastest JVM after 1997 is essentially a moot point after the lawsuit was filed.

I also like how Apple completely sidestepped such kinds of situations in iOS by disallowing third party SDKs and alternate browser engines. If there can be no Netscape or Java, there is no threat and no need to kill something and potentially get into trouble. Same with Google and Chromebooks.

wfjacksonon Bill Gates answers questions about Java during a deposition (1998) [video]

Allowing Vista to play Bluray makes MS a major proponent of DRM? Then so are Google(Widevine acquisition), Mozilla(DRM in HTML5) and Apple. If you're referring to the FUD against Vista DRM, it was debunked long ago. I guess you missed it(read all three parts).

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/everything-youve-read-about-v...

Also, perhaps you believe more FUD against Windows 7's perceived DRM, but it was also debunked.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/02/oh-the... Perhaps you need to read from more varied news sources than just Slashdot, Groklaw and Boycott Novell/Techrights.

And what have you got to say about Palladium implementation by Apple?

wfjacksonon Bill Gates answers questions about Java during a deposition (1998) [video]

>So Microsoft wrote their own Java runtime called the MS JVM, and made it part of Windows, it extended Java to do Windows-only things, meaning there were now "Java" apps that could only run on Windows, destroying the whole point of Java.

The more important question is, was there anything that prevented Sun or anyone else from implementing those in the other OSes? Otherwise it looks like programs are limited to the most basic level everywhere. I do remember the MS JVM was significantly faster than Sun's. So the solution was to slow it down or for Sun to make it's own faster?

It's in Microsoft's interest to make things run faster on it's own OS. For example of a similar issue, see Flash on OS X and Jobs' memo regarding how it sucked and made OS X look bad and refusal to allow it in iOS. How is that a good thing and what MS did bad?

Instead of improving the JVM, Sun decided to make money by suing MS. No wonder that bloated piece of slow crap that looks like crap is dying a slow death and stopped being relevant.

I remember using a popular bittorrent client called Azureus that ran on the JVM. My laptop would get super hot and slow to a crawl. Also remember how J2ME made mobile Java development a complete hell before Windows Mobile and iPhone came on the scene?

http://www.zdnet.com/three-billion-devices-run-java-yeah-but...

wfjacksonon Bill Gates answers questions about Java during a deposition (1998) [video]

What DRM bullshit? I thought it was Apple that implemented Palladium?

>As such, it is quite reasonable to disregard the "millions of people his foundation and charity work have touched", as many others would have done the same in his place.

Steve Jobs quote:

>Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology

Also, throwing money at charities is far less effective than try to affect change by working full time on it. If money was the solution, the tens of billions given to Africa would've solved the issues.

wfjacksonon Bill Gates answers questions about Java during a deposition (1998) [video]

Reminds me of the -webkit tags that became the defacto standard forcing Opera, mobile Firefox and mobile IE to support them since web developers can't be bothered to code to standards or update their code. If it works in Safari/Chrome it ships because of their very large user base in mobile, exactly the same situation with IE.

http://css.dzone.com/articles/why-webkit-new-ie6-trap-vendor http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/australian-technology/the-w...

Not to mention Chrome developers "trying to enforce their own web standards":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7184912

Progress on web standards have always been spearheaded by browser implementations before being standardized, there were many non standard extensions that Netscape implemented that IE had to add support back in the day. IE6 was a particularly bad issue because major browser releases were tied to Windows releases and Longhorn/Vista had to be reset and delayed.

wfjacksonon Most Autistic People Have Normal Brain Anatomy

Then perhaps it's gut bacteria causing it?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-bacteria-may-p...

Causative factors for anorexia and bulimia were found in gut bacteria.

http://www.neomatica.com/2014/10/08/molecular-origins-eating...

wfjacksonon Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required

This saying comes to mind.

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"

Not to mention innocent until proven guilty.

If the rate is really 128 proper seizures out of 739, it makes no sense to keep this automatic seizure. Instead have them do more investigative leg work before seizure so that it is whittled down further. Or even freeze the money only for a month before which the IRS needs to make a case to a judge about why further time is warranted before returning the money.

wfjacksonon Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required

>You have a pretty good chance of making the case that you are just doing your business

Did you read the article? Specifically the story of the business that made <10k deposits because they had theft protection of max 10,000 ?

By the time you "make a case" you're already out lawyer fees and risk your business being closed. Please read the article (again). IRS does not need to show that you were trying to evade reporting requirements to seize the money. They don't even need to file a case!

wfjacksonon Indian Air Force Issues Security Warning; Xiaomi Clears the Air

The US and Korea don't have territorial claims or border disputes or fought a war with India. Also, many Chinese firms are known for hacking and spying to get trade secrets. Chinese firms will have a big leg up against Indian ones if they know the price they're bidding for overseas contracts, for example.

Example of ZTE blatantly violating an NDA it signed. http://thepatentinvestor.com/federal-judge-says-vringo-has-c...

The way that Xiomi blatantly copies Apple, including the "one more thing", I wouldn't expect them to have any qualms turning any and all info to their govt. for any small benefit.

http://www.cultofmac.com/291859/xiaomi-ios-7-ripoff/

wfjacksonon PSA: Don’t Open Random PowerPoint Presentations from Strangers

You expect office workers who get confused when an icon is moved to understand and use CSS for layout? Probably even Latex is easier for this.

And how can HTML5 do anything that Excel can do?

wfjacksonon PSA: Don’t Open Random PowerPoint Presentations from Strangers

OpenOffice and LibreOffice aren't magically free of security holes.

https://www.openoffice.org/security/bulletin.html

wfjacksonon Calories in, calories out

Gut bacteria are a big confounder among a bunch of other things. Different types can do a lot of things differently, like extract more calories from the same food.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/ci-gbi091012....

They can even mess with your mind to make you crave junk food.

http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/08/116526/do-gut-bacteria-rule...

Transplanting them from a thin human to an obese mice slimmed the mice down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/health/gut-bacteria-from-t...

Jet lagged gut bacteria can contribute to obesity.

http://www.popsci.com/article/science/jet-lagged-gut-bacteri...

Diet soda can alter gut bacteria to make one gain weight.

http://www.prevention.com/health/diabetes/artificial-sweeten...

There are more gut bacteria than human cells in our body, and they actually release chemicals that affect the brain and have evolved to do that and there are a lot of other factors that influence gut bacteria, including what got passed on from your mother, what foods you ate during your life, what antibiotics you took etc. etc.

And gut bacteria is just one variable among things like activity levels, pollution levels, sleep amount and quality(not sleeping well can make you eat about 600 calories more the next day), peers(hanging out with obese people is likely to make you obese, obese people tend to have obese pets!), poverty, car ownership, smoking, tastebud sensitivity, commute time(people with longer commutes tend to be obese),genetics,water intake, muscle mass,stress levels, food additives, pregnancy, childbirth, menopause, time of the month for women, free time in a day(try cooking at home and exercise working 2 grueling jobs to make ends meet), drug side effects, emotional eating, type of exercise, micronutrients in food,portion sizes in restaurant, food advertising, food subsidies, vitamn level, thyroid function, insulin sensitivity, liver health, distribution of fat around body parts and inside organs,will power, processed foods, food availability and cost etc. etc. Some of these variables affect the others in a chaotic state machine kind of way.

It's no wonder that all these low carb, low fat, paleo, etc. diets are not one-size-fits-all solutions and that such discussions descend into WORKED-FOR-ME!!! Y U NO DO IT?!! platitudes. A calorie = a calorie is as true and as useless as answering the question "Why are there so many people inside the Super Bowl stadium during the game?" by saying "Because more people entered it than who left, if only people didn't get in, it wouldn't be so crowded."

wfjacksonon Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

I guess you haven't read the HN threads on hospital costs in the US. Here's a sample https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6838269

wfjacksonon Doctor in New York City Is Sick with Ebola

Many signs point to the viral load not being highly infectious at the beginning. Duncan was sent back to his home by the hospital and lived with his fiance who was taking care of him for two days before being readmitted. She wore no PPE yet appears to be uninfected. If sitting next to someone infected on a bus or subway is enough to pass it on, there would be a million cases in West Africa by now, not 10K. It appears to be primarily caregivers at the later stages of the disease, and the custom of kissing corpses that appear to be spreading the disease because the viral load is extreme at that stage. This doesn't mean that the potential contacts of this person should not be traced or that it was good idea for him to go bowling, but the sky isn't falling just yet.