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formerly_taon Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo

CMU being there doesn't hurt, either

formerly_taon Why Nerds Are Unpopular (2003)

I'd go even further than that. They're not independent variables, but instead are highly correlated. High achievement in one area means you're more than likely to be above average in another.

formerly_taon WhatsApp backdoor allows snooping on encrypted messages

If you're serious about security, every computer outside your control should be considered compromised, regardless of what you think about the owning company.

With Signal, I have an E2E connection where if I trust both clients, I can trust the connection. WhatsApp, however, has client code that will essentially reveal any unsent messages to the server on request. And then you just have to trust this compromised computer with any message you send.

formerly_taon Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?

And if you're shooting your resume off to such different positions that you can't cover them with the same (or one of a few) intro paragraphs, you're probably not that great a candidate for this specific role anyway.

formerly_taon Angular 1.x Banned from Firefox Addons

That was the way I read it initially to. I think the intended meaning was that we don't know anything about it, up to and including this ridiculous claim. It's more to highlight the lack of transparency than actually put forth a viable theory.

formerly_taon Getting root access on a Tesla Model S

There are lots of things you can do to make a car not street legal. And people have access to them. And it's their responsibility to make sure they only drive a street legal car on the street.

formerly_taon Oculus Rift

Very handy. Thanks for throwing that together.

At first glance I was thinking of the hell that it would be to run a current IDE on a 640x480 14" monitor. But at 1280x960 on a 28" monitor, it may work pretty well.

formerly_taon Inside the Mad, Mad World of TripAdvisor

Ex-employee here.

It's got its up-and-downs. It's a highly profitable company that still wants to hire smart people, so it bills itself as a "startup culture." Then you join and you're in a multi-level org chart with different silos literally competing for resources and attention. Very corporate. So their turnover is pretty fast, particularly in engineering.

It is a very profitable company with legit tech and legit scale, so there are some great experiences to be had there if you're lucky enough to land on the right team or impress the right boss. And because they have a pretty high bar for hiring and a reasonably high burnout rate, having worked a few years at TA means something to many Boston tech companies.