Hacker News Reader

Yep. An easier way to remember this is to note that Velocity + Time = c

The faster you move, the lesser "Time" needs to be in order to be equal to c.

sigkillon Tech Blogger Tries To Cancel Comcast Service, Hilarity Ensues

Firstly, Comcast has no business why he wants to cancel. He might want to cancel because he landed a tails on a coin flip on a Tuesday, and it shouldn't matter.

Secondly, with such strongly hostile customer service representatives the more you speak that's more ammo you're giving them to argue without cancelling the contract. If you say, 'customer service is poor' there's a high chance that CSR going to pull up records saying that "You called us X times with Y and Z complaints and we have responded to them within 48 hours. That's well within our metrics" or some bs like that.

Talking to hostile CSRs is akin to talking to the cops - don't speak more than you have to.

sigkillon The Rise of Thin, Mini and Insert Skimmers

Interesting. I was using my chip card in a country where chip cards were not really well known till last year. Surprisingly they already had chip-ready readers for easily two years before now so I have personally experienced the part where the cashier is completely baffled with the face of "I've never encountered this error before". Then, I have to operate the terminal, and insert my card (again) and press enter. I do not remember seeing any way to bypass it. I would have loved to do that because by this time it'd already be in my wallet and I cba to remove it again.

sigkillon The Rise of Thin, Mini and Insert Skimmers

Unfortunately, it doesn't even matter. If the reader detects that you have a chip card, you cannot use the magstripe even if your chip is faulty. The error you will get, after swiping the card, entering the amount and then pressing enter waiting for confirmation will be "PLEASE INSERT CARD". Quite vague but that's exactly what you get.

sigkillon On being targeted by the NSA

Holy cow, it really doesn't work. I tried it once immediately as you posted, and then continuously via different people's accounts and different computers even. It really doesn't work, and it ain't just my computer or account. It isn't even a US thing.

I don't think there's a problem with parsing the URL because it clearly is able to load up the preview. All I can say is, MAN! They really don't want you helping people with Tor.

sigkillon Pierre Sprey on the F-35 [video]

Oh cool. Didn't realize it was considered a word by itself. I guess it can be considered slang since it's on urban dictionary.

sigkillon Pierre Sprey on the F-35 [video]

>buku

Completely off topic, but did you mean the French beaucoup to imply the phrase "Lots of money" here?

sigkillon Spouses of H-1B Visa Holders May Soon Be Allowed to Work in the U.S.

Aren't H1B work visa? But I think your idea of the green card is pretty good to return the balance of employer/employee leverage. I wonder what abuses that might have though.

sigkillon Charge Your Phone in 30 Seconds? An Israeli Firm Says It Can

Resistance of a cable/wire is given by the formula R = <rho> * L / A where rho is the resistivity of the material, L = length, and A is the cross-sectional area.

It's a pretty straight forward formula. To lower the resistance, you either decrease the numerator (but a zero length wire is pretty useless) or increase the denominator (a huge-ass not even necessarily infinite, but just a conductor the cross-sectional area of say, the Pentagon, is technically possible but utterly pointless unless you're transmitting electricity cross-continent or whatever.

However, the resistivity of a conductor is its inherent property and so if there were a way to get a material whose resistivity was zero. Then you could transmit huge-ass amounts of energy over hair-strand thin wires because since <rho> is zero, you can play with other parameters in that formula without any fear. Hmm... (hint hint)

sigkillon Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8.1 with personal assistant Cortana

So this is one thing that puzzles me. Why can't phones have modular drivers like a PC? Phones of today are way more powerful than PC of the past, but it seems that manufacturers still want to keep an appliance like structure for the phone.

In my ideal world, I'd download (say) Android 4.4 and install it on my phone. After that, I'd hunt around, download and install the drivers for my phone like mic, camera, gyro, etc.

Why is this not possible already?

sigkillon The Pirate Bay Bundle

  Magnet - magnet:?xt=urn:btih:b451022826f63c15fefc24bc91d0284adbee5c21&dn=THE+PIRATE+BAY+BUNDLE&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.istole.it%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337

sigkillon How British satellite company Inmarsat tracked down MH370

I don't know why I haven't seen this linked before here, but this is a very informative teardown of an FDR by Mike of MikesElectricStuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQehX0rVYuY

Check out his other videos as well. He is really good at what he does, and his videos still retain the hackery feel.

sigkillon Credit Card Breach at California DMV

To be fair, technology makes it easy to firehose-vacuum data for both the government and civilians if you know how to wield that power. The government needs to supply a letter stating that they're 'quartering troops' in your datacenters in an abstract manner (bureaucratic exploit) while the normal user learns the intricacies of the system and uses that (technological exploit). It so happens that fixing bureaucratic 0days are harder than fixing tech. 0days.

sigkillon The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

Seems exactly like modern day witchcraft/wizardry hunt.

If a Middle Age dude was an expert in chemistry, he'd probably be tried quite similarly. The fact that no one around him could even comprehend what chemistry is, is now completely irrelevant to them ruining his life.

Now replace that with technology, the people with modern day morons and death with impossibly high bail/languishing in prison for years together ruining any chance of an average, let alone decent future and you've got what we have today.

The point is, they don't know the subject yet feel that they know enough. History, it seems never changes.

sigkillon Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning

The beauty of your comment is that just a little over half a year ago you'd be considered a complete conspiracy nut and a paranoid tinfoil hatter but today there's no one even saying anything against you.

sigkillon DataStickies: USB drives as sticky notes

I'm sorry I don't understand your description. You said a grid of conductive dots right? You'd need two separate grids of dots if you're going to use one-wire. Would you superposition both grids? Then it would short. If you have one 'band' on top and one band below, then it's just a rail setup.

sigkillon Officials Say U.S. May Never Know Extent of Snowden’s Leaks

>Not very intelligent for an intelligence agency

I am also wondering, is it smart for an intelligence agency to tell the truth when they say "We don't know how much was leaked"? Or is this a large lie in order to lower, I don't know, someone's guard. I mean, it doesn't make sense to me.

sigkillon Officials Say U.S. May Never Know Extent of Snowden’s Leaks

In a perverse despotic dictatorial way, killing US citizens is okay because "they're my slaves" kind of thing. He's dealing with a government that has killed a group of Yemeni family folks in Yemen who were allegedly attending a wedding accidentally with a drone strike. It is my imagination where they just say "Oops".

sigkillon DataStickies: USB drives as sticky notes

Not to poke holes in the implementation but even one-wire requires two connection, [1]Data/Power [2] Ground. Even with their optical mumbo jumbo how the hell can they actually transfer data?

On one hand they talk about optical things, and then on the other hand they're talking about 'conductive'. Seriously? Regardless, you do not bypass the laws of physics. You need atleast a complete circuit for it to be powered. And if their cop-out is that it's got a super-micro-pico-tiny-high-density-capacitor then I'm not even going to bother poking holes anymore.

Well, there is a way but it's pointlessly slow - inductive power.

The whole concept is quite flawed in my opinion [EDIT - unless their plan is to showcase a theoretical ultrathin USB flash drive.]

sigkillon How Americans Were Deceived About Cell Phone Location Data

Since he said "Inner emigration" I think he means to say dropping off the grid. But I maybe wrong here.

sigkillon German Patent Ruling Threatens Microsoft's Windows Phone Earnings From Android

So it's just a normal case of Dutch directness?

sigkillon People Don’t Actually Like Creativity

I have studied Mechanical Engineering as well, and I, on the other hand see plenty of opportunities to use things taught in ME in real life. Might be as simple as "How safe is this plank for me to walk on" (bending moment) to "It's strange that there are cold pockets in this room, what's the optimum positioning of a flow mixer".

But we don't generally think even for a second. People just take a 'common sense approach' to most things, which while good enough for a large set of applications breaks down in many cases. And come on, you're an engineer, you should try to get the optimum solution possible. Obviously, I'm not pointing to you directly but to people in general.

And yes, I do know that there's analysis paralysis situation as well, but a good engineer know where that line is, and to stop just before that line.

sigkillon My Roommate's a Genius

They absolutely are. But in normal conversation when you speak to people about this, they'll most probably say "Wow, that's pretty smart man, I wouldn't have thought of using a pipe as a sound carrier" (or something like that).

sigkillon My Roommate's a Genius

Not to take away the intelligence of people but a hacker is someone who excels in situations as this - Limited time, limited resources/cheapness to spend money, Have objects X, Need functions Y.

That takes a hacker. Everything else is just a builder (be it building code, or cabinets, or robots). The core ideology of being a hacker is seeing beyond the normal functionality of the item like this roommate has seen. He looked at the wardrobe and saw a sliding table. That is hacking.

sigkillon Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL

I agree with this. Something like <first><lastname>.<tld>/social or /card and have that page list all your fb, g+, linkedin twitter links.

Bonus, you get a permanent email address that NO ONE can take away from you, for life.

sigkillon Fifth Amendment Prohibits Compelled Decryption, New EFF Brief Argues

This might just be a thought exercise, but I remember reading somewhere that 100 miles from the borders and 50mile radius at all port of entries the Amendments do not apply. Also, these explicitly state 'persons' not citizens or residents so in that sense you're safe.

sigkillon Namecheap now offer .io domains

- Out of curiosity, who's your current registrar?

- I don't know if you're talking about a ccTLD or a com/net/org but if it's the latter I don't think a non-US registrar can help you since those TLDs are directly under US control.

sigkillon Steps You Can Take Right Now Against Internet Surveillance

>switching email providers

I kind of agree with you here. Especially if it's tied to your identification personally. If you have an X@gmail.com or Y@yahoo.com then you're essentially at their mercy. But if you just buy a domain for 10 bucks a year, you can go to your registrar's page and forward mails from catchalls @FNLN.com to your secret X@gmail.com. If you don't like them, download it to outlook and move on to Y@yahoo.com and change the setting at your host record page. That is literally it. Your cost here to switch is the time it takes to download messages to your computer and close the account, sign up for a new account and redirect your alias to the new account. I would ideally automate step 1 as soon as I have opened an account.

You are not 'locked-in' to one provider as your custom domain name becomes an abstraction between your identity to the real world and your storage space/identity to servers. You can change the latter without changing the former. Of course, if you were early enough you could've snagged a Google Apps account, or if you're just entering the scene, you can get a Live Domains account. The only down side is that they don't have catch-alls, so you can have an on the fly email address like hn@FNLN.com for signing up at different websites.

sigkillon Why Registers Are Fast and RAM Is Slow

That's an awesome explanation. Thank you. [Making obvious reference to how relevant your username is]

sigkillon Why Registers Are Fast and RAM Is Slow

So, I'm a bit confused. Are registers SRAM? Or are they faster than SRAM?