HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

alextgordon

3,588 karma · joined December 19, 2009

As an EU citizen and resident, I hereby request deletion of this account pursuant to the EU GDPR.
submissionscomments
alextgordon··on America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts
If they get an office job they are going to have to use drop-down menus, rename files, send emails, etc. If schools only taught teenagers the skills that teenagers deem relevant... there wouldn't be much need for schools.
alextgordon··on That Thumbprint Thing on Your Phone Is Useless Now
https://xkcd.com/538/
alextgordon··on Let’s ban elementary homework
> However, I find this statement laughable: "Can it be true that the hours of lost playtime, power struggles and tears are all for naught?" If doing homework is a power struggle in elementary school, you're a poor parent and are raising an entitled brat.

Yeah kids are so entitled these days. They'll have all the time in the world to have their childhood, when they get to 65.

alextgordon··on Transmission BitTorrent app contained malware
OK so let's imagine sandboxing is on by default, then "Transmission" pushes an update that asks for read/write access to the whole home directory. You don't know if Transmission has some legitimate need for that or not, so you just shrug and click Allow. Boom—infected.

So I think sandboxing is basically useless against these kinds of attacks. Either they allow apps to elevate their entitlements in an update, or they don't and developers will always out-out from the start (or pick the widest set of entitlements available).

If sandboxing is forced with no opt-out, then users will have to jailbreak their computers so they can install Parallels...

alextgordon··on Man Convicted Based on Erroneous Evidence Exonerated After 25 Years
The error in your attempt at utilitarianism is to only count deaths of innocent people as meaningful. It doesn't actually matter whether someone is guilty or innocent when executed, the effect on their family will be precisely the same.
alextgordon··on Detecting Code Indentation
In Chocolat we take a similar approach, but the histogram is of the GCDs, not of the indentations.

So we just take a sample of 1000 lines, then take the GCD of every pair. The indentation width is simply the most common pair.

If it turns out that one bin is not clearly more dominant than the others, then we default to whatever was used last time for that language.

alextgordon··on Detecting Code Indentation
You shouldn't use tabs for new projects, because spaces are more popular. It's like endianness: it doesn't matter which you use, as long as it's the same as everybody else.

Right now, "everybody else" is using spaces. So get onboard.

alextgordon··on OpenSSL CVE-2016-0799: heap corruption via BIO_printf
Don't even need anything that drastic. Just switch the compiler to C++ mode and start using std::unique_ptr instead of malloc/free. Remember to turn off exceptions and RTTI to keep the spirit of C alive in your C++ code!
alextgordon··on Dissolving the Dead
For anyone slightly confused (I was), Bury Council (bury.gov.uk) is the local government for the town of Bury, and that is a guide for burials in Bury. It's not the national authority for burials or anything.
alextgordon··on Most software already has a “golden key” backdoor: the system update
Isn't that discredited by Apple's "goto fail" bug? A critical function was mistakenly circumvented in an extremely transparent way, and yet the source code sat on their website for a long time without anybody noticing. Nobody even ran coverity on it.
alextgordon··on AppImage: Linux apps that run anywhere
What OS X at least gets right is that OS-bundled software is immutable, or desired to be. If you want a recent version of e.g. Python, you install separately and add it to your $PATH instead of changing the base. Then any app that depends on Python can continue using the system version.
alextgordon··on GCC 6: -Wmisleading-indentation vs. “goto fail;”
Horizontal space is free, vertical space is not.

The more lines that are visible on your screen, the less you have to keep in your working memory. Human memory is fragile, so you really don't want to rely on it.

I can only fit 51 lines vertically (damn widescreen laptop) so that one snippet fills a good 1/3 of my screen.

Personally I'd write that as

    if (condition_a) {
        if (condition_b) do_thing_a();
        else do_thing_b();
    }
    else {
        do_something_else();
    }
alextgordon··on GitLab 8.5 released
The "cargo" is self-referential, clearly. It's a cargo cult "cargo cult".
alextgordon··on Half the world to be short-sighted by 2050
So "short sighted" is a metaphor in BrE but an idiom in AmE.
alextgordon··on How to Safely Store Your Users' Passwords in 2016
Because every time you open the site you'd have to receive an email. vs just letting 1password, browser, etc enter the password.
alextgordon··on How to Safely Store Your Users' Passwords in 2016
So there's no password option? That's horrible, means you can't use it with incognito mode (because you'd have to receive an email each time)
alextgordon··on Issue and Pull Request templates
Heaven must be a real party then.
alextgordon··on We Need a Better PC
I'm not understanding what is "insane" about installing to /usr/local/Cellar and dropping a symlink in /usr/local/bin. This is the convention on OS X. All tools I have ever seen install to /usr/local.
alextgordon··on Too many people have peed in the pool
It's never acceptable to use violence, but the world does contain a lot of violent people, and most of them are on the internet. Welcome to Earth.
alextgordon··on Base Ten for Almost Everything
I hereby define 1 megawatt to equal 7^7 watts, because I find that more convenient. Any light bulbs not sold in base 7 units are part of a conspiracy by light bulb manufacturers.
alextgordon··on Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science
Going to a library and getting a free copy is exactly what people are doing. The library is online, freely accessible without discrimination.

Since when have we asked authors permission to add their book to a library? In many places (including the US) if you publish a book it is mandatory to submit it to a library.

alextgordon··on Internet Access Is Finally Permanently Tax Free in the U.S.
> Pointless campaign because it cannot be done. You cannot remove VAT under EU regulations from an item.

There's a referendum coming up to do just that...

alextgordon··on Internet Access Is Finally Permanently Tax Free in the U.S.
Rich people don't spend all their money on consumption like poor people have to do. Their money goes into equities, houses, investments that appreciate over time.
alextgordon··on “Huge” number of Mac apps vulnerable to hijacking, and a fix is elusive
Even for a simple text editor, AFAIK you can't continually monitor a directory for changes (FSEvents), so it's hopeless.
alextgordon··on Twitter's new timeline feature
Back in 2009 the developer of Tweetie got so frustrated with the second group he made this site:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090218122324/http://twitterisn...

alextgordon··on Amplifying C (2010)
Well you can generate C with Ruby, JavaScript, Bash, or whatever language takes your fancy.
alextgordon··on Amplifying C (2010)
Not really. Compiling to C is much easier than compiling to LLVM. If 90% of languages fail, then there's only a 10% chance you'll have to do that rewrite :)
alextgordon··on The Rich Are Already Using Robo-Advisers, and That Scares Banks
For me, the opposite. $50m is about 100x more than I could ever need, so I'd just stick it in $SPY until I die. Volatility is irrelevant as there is no actual risk to life or limb, only the "risk" of numbers going up or down.
alextgordon··on GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
What a load of tosh. Are there no disadvantaged people in America with light coloured skin?
alextgordon··on iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs
Today's state-level agency is tomorrow's small town police department, and next week's street criminal. Attacks only get better.

Also, Apple is not only designing phones for you and me, but for businesses who nowadays are the target of state-level security agencies.

Clearly Apple fudged the implementation of this feature, and it's a PR nightmare, but all evidence points to their intentions being genuine.

← PreviousPage 2 of 30Next →