FaceKicker

In Chrome at least, it also breaks going back to the cached page after first view using back/forward navigation. (Try clicking the link from HN, go "back", then go "forward" again.) This might be obvious to people who know anything about browser caching, but I thought it was kinda interesting.

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand - can you explain more? How does the OS making it unmountable when it's locked stop the FBI from physically removing the internal storage and looking at its contents via another device? I can see how it might require specialized forensics equipment depending on how obscure/proprietary the internal storage hardware is, but that seems like something the FBI would have access to or be able to obtain...

Fourth paragraph:

> It should be obvious that π is not “wrong” in the sense of being factually incorrect; the number π is perfectly well-defined, and it has all the properties normally ascribed to it by mathematicians. When we say that “π is wrong”, we mean that π is a confusing and unnatural choice for the circle constant.

It's a pattern lock, so it must not be using disk encryption (only available on Ice Cream Sandwich with either PIN or password). Is there some reason they can't just open it up and see what's on it?

Considering they've stopped running those ads since gaining a ton of traction in the PC industry over the past few years, I think those ads are probably supporting evidence of GP's claim (if anything), not a counter-example.

Edit: I went back and actually reread what GP said and realized I was wrong if interpreted literally, but I took it to mean something more like "you know you're currently losing when you compare yourself to the competition". But yeah, my bad, you're definitely right under the literal interpretation - Apple didn't lose and may actually win at the end.

Is it just me or do the comparison pics of the old iPad screen vs. new retina display on this page look exactly the same? http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/

Edit: never mind, there's a zoom widget I didn't notice.

Yeah, you really need something like they do in Mission Impossible 4 where it has a single target whose eye it's tracking, changing the perspective projection accordingly.

Understanding this little subtlety of the pointer declaration syntax was the epiphany that led me to feel like I actually, truly understood pointers a couple years ago (never been much of a C programmer). This syntax always confused me - I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't be something like "int& p" to declare an int pointer, but rather includes the dereferencing symbol, which made it seem anti-pointy to me at the time. Pretty much the instant I figured out why my thinking was wrong - that "int * p" should be read as "(* p) is an int" rather than "p is an (int *)" (as this post explains nicely) - pointers just completely "clicked" for me.

Ah, if that's true I didn't know. I think I sort of assumed that if it could be turned off, pretty much everyone would (and I've only ever seen technologically competent people posting these ticker stories), but I guess not.

I don't really understand what Spotify is thinking with the FB-only login. I get that it's free advertising and data for them, but it seems like there's probably a very large percentage of potential users who are uncomfortable with spamming each one of their FB friends every time they listen to a song (not to mention "guilty pleasure songs" that people would be embarrassed to listen to knowing that everyone will see it).

While it's indeed imperfect and inconsistent, in the 10 minutes I've spent playing with it, it does seem much, much easier to read and click links without zooming, which is quite a bit more important to me than it being slightly ugly. I'll definitely be using it over the stock browser.

I'm not sure if you're saying it's less than 100K or just that you'd think contractors would make much more than regular employees, but $74 an hour works out to roughly $150K a year if they work full time hours.

Edit: sorry, clearly I know nothing about contracting.

DoJ press release with a little more info: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/January/12-crm-074.html

And presumably the passenger's name is encoded in the barcode, which I guess is why the OP suggests printing the original ticket with the name of the friend that bought it instead of just using the "forged" ticket at the gate. Though I'd also guess that the airline employees who scan the ticket at the gate almost never check that the name on the ticket matches the one displayed on their screen when they scan the barcode, so you'd probably be fine using the forged one.

In my experience, the TSA agent you have to show ID and boarding pass to at the security checkpoint also scribbles something with a marker or highlighter on your boarding pass.

But even aside from the fact that this is obviously and trivially forgeable, I don't think the person who scans your boarding pass at the gate even looks for the scribble, as I've used a different boarding pass to get on the plane than I did at the security checkpoint before (because I had printed one out at home and also printed another copy at the self-service check-in machine, and just happened to use different copies each time I needed to show it).

I like the spirit of the question, but it kind of bothers me. The fact is, no matter what finite number of hypotheses you test before making your one guess about the rule, there will always be an infinite number of possible "rules" that could fit all the information you have so far (where a "rule" is a function mapping triplets to booleans).

So in the example he gave, let's say I decide to try his "falsification" technique as well. I ask about all the same 6 triplets he gives as examples, and then decide that the rule is "ascending numbers". So I guess that. Nope, that's wrong in this particular case - the rule was actually "ascending numbers where the second one is at least as close to the first number as it is to the third". As you can imagine, you could play that game forever. I don't think his guess of "even increasing numbers" is any less reasonable than the correct answer of "increasing numbers". Maybe the rule is "ascending integers" - he didn't try falsifying that by guessing 3.14 in one of his triplets. There are unlimited "patterns" he'd have to try falsifying.

I think the ideas behind the problem are good but you'd need to constrain it in some way for it to be reasonable.

Are you implying that all restaurant owners seize every possible good business opportunity?

Disclosure: first-year CS Ph.D. student.

I would say, no, a scientist doesn't really need a "Ph.D.", but does need the training that a Ph.D. involves. To me, this question is very different from the question of whether someone who wants to be an industry software engineer needs a bachelor's degree (a popular HN topic). The difference is that in a science Ph.D. program, you are doing science the entire time you are there. Sure, you take a few classes as well, but these are only to reinforce concepts you'll need in your research; the entire reason you're there is to learn to do scientific research by actually doing scientific research. You are doing at school what you'll be doing in your career; you're just getting paid less for it because you're "in training".

I don't see any reason why one couldn't get a similar education by doing scientific research in an industry which does not result in a formal "Ph.D." degree, rather than an academic setting that does result in a Ph.D., it just doesn't seem like it's been tried up until (apparently) now. Personally (all other things being equal) I'd rather do a Ph.D. program in an academic setting because an industry setting would likely be constrained to research areas that are beneficial to the company.

> The widgets you listed here are identical to their GB counterparts.

... shit, did they really exist before? Wow, I'm an idiot. I guess I never looked at the widgets menu very closely until I got the upgrade...

> Also, I find it strange you get such poor battery life. The battery life on my Nexus is far superior to stock.

It seems to be a (nearly?) universal issue - Google stopped the OTA update due to the battery issue. (http://www.technobuffalo.com/companies/google/android/google...)

My overall experience on my Nexus S:

-Horrible, awful battery life. Probably about 12 hours. Hoping they get a fix out soon...

-UI is much smoother and more polished than Gingerbread (smoother animations, extra room to put apps on homescreen with the bottom bar)

-The new widget features are great (can add a homescreen icon to call/text a specific person, play a playlist, navigate/open a map for a specific location)

I love it except for the battery issues.

I've had a great experience with their VPS service as well. I chose it just because it was the cheapest one I found when I briefly looked around, but I've had 100% uptime for the entire 6 months I've had it.

The username thing is indeed very annoying though.

Do people really use these suggestions though? I don't think I've ever used them personally (maybe once?), but maybe others do. And even if people use them very frequently, I still don't think that would make the usefulness of Amazon grow as a "square" of the number of users as the article implies.

I mentioned word-of-mouth buzz in my post, but it didn't make sense to me that that could be the reason as Ben and Jerry's ice cream has the same thing going for it (as an anecdotal example, I never bought it until my girlfriend bought a couple flavors and I tasted them and found out how much tastier than generic ice cream it was).

And even if Amazon has more of this word-of-mouth going for it than Ben and Jerry's, I would think this would be a result of their implementation (i.e., it's a well-done site and that's why people tell their friends), rather than something inherent to its business model which is what the article is talking about.

How does Amazon have a "strong network effect"? I'd still use it even if none of my friends did; it's not like Facebook (or instant messaging networks, to use the 11-year old example from the article) where my friends not using it would render it useless (or even less useful).

The only things I can think of is that (1) customers will advertise for you by word-of-mouth, and (2) it's cheaper per user the more users you have (economies of scale), but Ben and Jerry's has both of these properties as well and the author says it has "no network effect". It is true that its reviews have a strong network effect, but that's not the part of their business they profit from directly - you can easily just check Amazon for its reviews and then go to Buy.com to actually make the purchase.

Can someone clarify what he might mean when he says Amazon's business has a strong network effect?

I also don't really understand how Amazon has "strong customer lock-in", either. Maybe "weak customer lock-in" would be appropriate, as once you make an account it's easier to order more items, since you don't have to figure out the design of the website and re-enter your credit card and shipping info. Amazon Prime clearly has strong lock-in as you're paying for a one-year subscription in advance, but nowhere near the majority of customers use it (I would assume) and it didn't even exist in when this article was written.

By "argue that", did you mean "argue against the point that"?

Sorry to sound nitpicky, but I was confused by the rest of your post after reading the first sentence.

At least it's based on science, unlike what most states are doing with banning only handheld phones even though all the research says they're just as bad as hands-free.

I'm not patio11, but my guess (completely speculating here, of course) would be that "Merry Christmas" sounds more like something someone you know in a casual context (friends, family, etc.) would say to you, whereas "Happy Holidays" is used more by companies, which tend to try harder to be politically correct. When users see "Merry Christmas" rather than "Happy Holidays", they might be more likely to just read the subject line and open the message without checking the sender, assuming it's from a friend. "MC" also sounds (to me) more like an email that is being sent with a specific purpose (as opposed to just a reminder that the company exists), e.g., maybe the company is offering you free bingo cards as a gift.

Signed using a pair of static keys? So...it is authenticated then? Or are they more like SSH keys/self-signed certs where you just trust the key belongs to who you think you're talking to the first time?

> Confidentiality isn't the killer feature/flaw here; integrity is.

I initially posted "Authentication, too" in response to this, but then I reread the page and it says it doesn't provide authentication.

...in which case, I don't really understand this at all. What good is integrity if there's no authentication? Doesn't that mean an active network attacker can completely swap out the DNS response for a different one, but just can't modify it (short of creating a brand new one)? If that's the case, it seems completely useless. It claims to protect against man-in-the-middle attacks, but I don't understand how that's possible if there's no authentication.

I'm sure I'm missing something here.

I don't think you even need to get into the "race is an illusion" argument to self-identify as a different race. I remember when I applied, all the applications asked the question with phrasing like "Which race do you consider yourself?" I wondered if there would be any consequence if I answered Black or Hispanic (I'm white). Probably not, I'd think, as they can't prove I don't "consider myself" one of those.

Surprising that it doesn't happen more often. Or maybe it does...