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phigcch

190 karma · joined December 28, 2012

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phigcch··on Ask HN: Did you encounter any leap year bugs today?
According to the Intranet, it was everybody's birthday yesterday.
phigcch··on Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?
Comrod (https://www.comrod.com/about/company-history/) is one of my lesser known favourites.

Started out making steel and fibreglass fishing rods in the 1950s. Pivoted to making high-performance antennas in the 1960s. This move makes a lot of sense when you think about it, but most people's initial reaction is surprise.

phigcch··on Schnorr confirms paper is his, claims it “destroys RSA cryptosystem”
Without experimental data to back it up (e.g. implementation and benchmarks), I'd consider this claim veeeery dubious - regardless of who it came from.

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence, and in this case it would be easy to provide such evidence - by cracking appropriately-sized challenge primes in a transparent way that can be independently verified.

On the other hand, the theoretical approach in the paper is quite complex and hard to follow - even for professional cryptographers.

phigcch··on Backdoorer the Xplora: Bugs in smart watches for kids
Blogpost with technical background: https://www.mnemonic.no/blog/exposing-backdoor-consumer-prod...
phigcch··on Undocumented backdoor that covertly takes snapshots found in kids’ smartwatch
Additional technical background is available in the following blogpost: https://www.mnemonic.no/blog/exposing-backdoor-consumer-prod...
phigcch··on Out of Control: How consumers are exploited by the adtech industry
See also previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22043209 (edit: NYT coverage of the same report)
phigcch··on Grindr and OkCupid Spread Personal Details, Study Says
Link to full reports and release: https://www.forbrukerradet.no/side/new-study-the-advertising...

Twitter threads: https://twitter.com/finnmyrstad/status/1216988370632695809 https://twitter.com/maxschrems/status/1216954710248259585

phigcch··on British woman revived after six-hour cardiac arrest
There's a nice research article from 2016 by doctors in northern Norway about resuscitation of frozen patients:

“Nobody is dead until warm and dead”: Prolonged resuscitation is warranted in arrested hypothermic victims also in remote areas – A retrospective study from northern Norway

J. Hilmo, T. Naesheim, M. Gilbert https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030095721... (open access, CC licence)

Same hospital and team that treated Anna Bågenholm (mentioned in other comments, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_B%C3%A5genholm), and I guess that case is part of the study.

phigcch··on Which answer in this list is the correct answer to this question? (2017)
In the same vein, there's the classic infamous self-referential aptitude test. http://faculty.uml.edu/jpropp/srat-Q.txt
phigcch··on Peter's Evil Overlord List (1996)
Not to mention the 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the U.S. Army: http://skippyslist.com/list/
phigcch··on NSA encryption plan for ‘internet of things’ rejected by ISO
Better article from April when this story first broke. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/25/nsa_iot_encryption/

The standardization of Simon and Speck has been an ongoing fight within ISO/IEC JTC1 SC27 WG2 since 2014 or so, but looks like it's finally game over for now.

phigcch··on The mysterious case of the Linux Page Table Isolation patches
Interesting to note that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_page-table_isolation was created on December 29th.
phigcch··on Poor developer estimates, a.k.a. guesstimation
I find that the most precise approach is usually to make an estimate based on experience, and then multiply it with either e or Pi.
phigcch··on The Cold Hard Facts of Freezing to Death (1997)
It is actually quite amazing what it is possible to survive. The hypothermia "record", so to speak, was broken shortly after this article was written. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_B%C3%A5genholm http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/12/cheating.death.bage...