Hacker News Reader

joostetoon Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

When I find a glitchy site in Firefox, I try chromium. Usually turns out it's glitchy there as well.

joostetoon Microsoft Releases a Linux Version of the ProcDump Sysinternals Tool

Windows is practically clean on install compared to any Android phone I've owned

My Nexus Android phones were clean. And yes, Sony etc phones are adware, but so are Sony Windows computers.

joostetoon iPhones are allergic to helium

Sugar in coke doesn't sink to the bottom, indeed, but if you put a sugar cube in water, it first sinks to the bottom, and then (slowly) dissolves.

Likewise, if you release helium in air, it goes up first, and then (quickly) dissolves in the air.

joostetoon EU copyright law proposal rejected

And if you do contemplate them, you'll be accused of participating in project fear.

joostetoon Analysis of USB fan given to journalists at North Korea-Singapore Summit [pdf]

They may want to know who is leaking the sensitive information to the journalists

joostetoon Pointers Are More Abstract Than You Might Expect in C

When I compile the example, i get:

  0x7ffd0b57ebd0 0x7ffd0b57ebd8 0

OK, so gcc reordered a & b; I'll fix this by chaning the initialisation of p and q to:

  int *p = &a + 1;
  int *q = &b;

But when I now run the example, I get:

  gcc -o c c.c && ./c
  0x7ffe55eb0aa4 0x7ffe55eb0aa4 1

  gcc -O -o c c.c && ./c
  0x7ffcfeffd914 0x7ffcfeffd914 0

So, p==q only evaluates to 1 if optimisation is enabled.

  $ gcc --version
  gcc (Ubuntu 7.3.0-16ubuntu3) 7.3.0

joostetoon The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?

Response by one of the original authors: https://jasoncollins.blog/2018/05/31/the-marshmallow-test-he...

joostetoon How microbes survive clean rooms and contaminate spacecraft

"It’s not clean until it’s been soaked in sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide, UV sterilised, gamma irradiated, then parked in a decaying orbit above the sun."

By that time, you've also 'sterilised' most electronics...

joostetoon The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?

Often the poor are fat because healthy food is more expensive. So yes, scarcity of healthy food is linked to poverty.

joostetoon Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

Multicast may be useful when the hairdresser is busy at the requested time, and algorithm searches for an available option.

joostetoon Twenty years of speedcubing (2003)

But then, why is it called "twenty years of speedcubing", if he started in 1981?

joostetoon GG-flip: simplest and most efficient ways to flip the sign of a number

So what if x > MAXNUMBER/2 ?

Also, how can this be faster than x=0-x; ?

joostetoon What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?

Many stories on HN, for example:

2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11984609

2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6309618

joostetoon Italy Quake Rescuers Ask Locals to Unlock their Wi-Fi

Because when your home gives free access, sharing the connection (and cost) with your neighbors becomes easier.

Yes, it's possible now already, but now we're all afraid the others may abuse our connection.

joostetoon I ended up paying $150 for a single 60GB download from Amazon Glacier

If downloading more than 5% of stored data is so expensive, wouldn't it have been cheaper to upload a file 19 times the size of the stored data (containing /dev/urandom)? After that, downloading just 5% of total data would have been free.

joostetoon EU Telecoms deal: Mobile roaming charges ban in 2017

About tethering restrictions: I would have hoped network neutrality would forbid those as well. Probably not though.