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What if you had a friend or family outside, and you used teamviewer or equivalent on their computer?

sigkillon Pinay traumatized by horror trip to US

But American exceptionalism is a real thing. Well atleast today I don't think it stands for "Well, America is awesome" but more on the lines of "Where in the world will I find 300 million people having roughly similar culture, and for whom I don't need to translate my product into a dozen languages (bonus if it's English since we program by default in English), and who're more probably willing to spend money."

Bam, America. I'm not supporting anything, but looking at it from a business point of view this is pretty tempting.

sigkillon How Lavabit Melted Down

More like "Citizen Revocation Program". Wouldn't want citizenship reduced and people earning and paying taxes to other countries.

sigkillon There's a .00006% Chance of Building a Billion Dollar Company

My probability theory is a bit weak so correct me if I'm wrong. Since each company you start is an "independent event" doesn't your probability still stay at 6e-5?

sigkillon My embarrassing picture went viral

You're saying that my assumption is "Majority of the fat people are fat because of intake of food and not because of actual health problems." In this context, yes, that is exactly what my Bayesian priors (so to say) assume but it's not relevant to the point I'm trying to make. I've read things that seem to support this many times over the years so obviously that is what I would assume. If I am wrong, would you kindly care to educate me.

Actually no, don't. Because that is not the point. The point is (like I said in other comments) my gut feeling suggests that we as a society are moving towards optimizing for edge cases and that's not a good thing. (Immediate examples that come to mind are parent fearing children going out and playing, security theatre, crime television, crazy safety labels etc.)

sigkillon My embarrassing picture went viral

I agree that it is bad to be cruel because it does not gain us anything other than bad karma here. I do not think we should call a fattie as a fattie because it's better to not say anything at all if you can't say anything nice. Of course, ridicule is pretty bad. Some people's problems are visible (physical appearances) while others are not (mental problems), and obviously shaming isn't a good idea.

Btw this isn't a debate/argument but just a casual discussion. I was just observing that how quickly a person pulled an extreme card.

sigkillon My embarrassing picture went viral

I think I didn't make myself clear in my previous comment (which I've edited btw). It's not about THIS article or THAT article or anything. It's just that I've found when you (not you you, but the general you) focus on edge cases you lose sight of the bigger picture. Sure it may help you win an internet argument by appealing to emotion ("Terrorists will come again", or "She's not lazy, she has a real problem"). I don't disagree with those points but sometimes those are just too small in the probability field that we need to ignore them.

For instance, each iteration of the Rabin Miller test reduces the probability that a number is composite by 10^-4. So sure, you might argue "Well, you never know if the 16384-bit number is prime or not merely on running the rabin miller test 10 times because there's still a 1 in 10^-40 chance it's not prime so you method is invalid." I find this kinds of arguments infuriating.

sigkillon My embarrassing picture went viral

I've noticed this general tendency to focus on the edge cases to make the rules. This is how we end up with crazy security theatre instead of real security and pointlessly drifting away from the topic.

He is sharing his experience which probably applies to the majority of the people but no, use edge cases to justify your stance and feel good about having the moral high ground.

Congratulations on your ability to focus on the edge cases and not the majority of the bell curve.

EDIT - Guys, no don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about THIS specific article or about being fat or anything. It's just that for the past year or so I've been in any online community (even the other one) I've noticed this. Sure, I get it - Innocent until proven guilty and all, but sometimes, things really are as simple as they appear to be.

[Oh, and dear parent poster, I'm a bit sorry for the "Congratulations on your ability to ..." but that was just me getting upset that people aren't looking at the bigger picture.]

sigkillon Roundabouts have turned a corner

It's interesting that you call a roundabout a rotary, they are two different things actually - http://www.cityofbrooklyncenter.org/DocumentCenter/Home/View...

sigkillon Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

This raises another interesting question. Will there be a population explosion in Switzerland in the medium term?

sigkillon SQRL - Replacement for usernames and passwords

I agree with you. I was just informing the parent poster how differently cryptographers see the world as compared to us normal people.

Although, in some respects, I do get where they're coming from. New algorithms and computing paradigms develop that make the previous one broken. I'm just guessing here, but it maybe possible that probabilistic computers and awesome algorithms a few decades down the line are able to recover states of a CSPRNG by applying statistical techniques. Obviously, I'm way over my head here but this is a possibility.

If you say that the OP was talking about TRNGs then all bets are off. It could so happen that two consecutive 512-bits are exactly the same. The probability is extremely low (birthday low) but since it's a TRNG there's still a chance that it will happen.

sigkillon Lavabit founder turned over the private SSL keys as an 11 page printout

Does it really help? I'm assuming they'd be running SELinux. Autoplay isn't going to really help when they've specified the format as well.

If you gave them a rar, tar.gz, zip or anything, the Man can hold you for contempt if he really wants to.

sigkillon SQRL - Replacement for usernames and passwords

There is one thing that could never happen. Something that's mathematically perfect fits that criteria - the One Time Pad. Even at actual infinite available time frames i.e. you travelling at the speed of light, with quantum computer on board your ship powered by the unobtainium drive, even with that sort of time frame, you shall never be able to decrypt the correct message.

sigkillon Lavabit founder turned over the private SSL keys as an 11 page printout

It's not a big deal though. They subsequently specifically asked him to put it on a CD in PEM format and deliver it by 5 that day or be faced $5000 fine per day or something like that.

sigkillon SQRL - Replacement for usernames and passwords

I'd be careful if I were you. Cryptography and cryptographers are an odd bunch. "Never" literally means never, while in your comment "never" means not in our life times, or a thousand, or billions of years. In case of infinite time, 512-bit RNG'ed numbers have to repeat at some point in time.

You may consider this pedantism, but it's this pedantism and conservativeness that calls AES broken today.

sigkillon Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

What's the probability that the customer is unaware that this is a "membership" email rather a monthly email sent because you signed up and bought once? It's not uncommon for Newegg or Amazon to send you emails.

sigkillon Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

Regarding your reference link [1], I just noticed another devious strategy. At the bottom of the page, the "I accept the terms of" is in black for higher visibility while the "JustFab VIP membership program" is in pink. Now, Black on white is easily more visual than hot pink on white. And since the hot pink is next to the black, its visual contrast reduces even more. Combine that with the fact that users are very highly likely to tick a checkbox, any checkbox with the phrasing "accept the terms" it makes this even more sinister.

Regarding link [2] I'm unable to even find a way to 'escape' the subscription process. Oh, no wait, it's again present as a "Checkout as Regular member" again in a hot pink on white scheme while the other giant CONTINUE TO CHECKOUT is in a more contrasty white on pink, and it's larger. Also, wait, if that's the regular member checkout link, then what's the giant checkout button do? Bam, chicanery yet again.

sigkillon Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

I find Dan Ariely's books on human irrationality very interesting and very easy for normal people like us to get into.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_ariely#Publications

sigkillon Steam Controller

I don't get that argument either. My main case for the eraser-nub-mouse is that I don't have to physically move my finger over and over again. It goes like this, put finger in one corner, drag finger, reach end of touch surface, lift finger, put finger again on the opposite side, drag again... until you reach destination.

sigkillon Decoding Vibrations From Nearby Keyboards With Mobile Phone Accelerometers [pdf]

And the spacebar key, when hit, sounds different than the other keys. I'm not good with onomatopoeia but normal keys generally go tack-tack-tack while the spacebar goes tchick-tchick-tchick. It's noticeably different. This could actually prove quite scary since if you know the length of the 'tack', you're basically doing stupidly simple linear cryptanalysis.

sigkillon Gates calls Ctrl+Alt+Del command a mistake

On a tangentially related note, it took me a while to make the connection that HALT on x86 is 0xF4 -> Alt+F4 = close in Windows.

sigkillon Gates calls Ctrl+Alt+Del command a mistake

I'm almost playing the chord with my left hand. Left ring finger, left index finger and right index finger.

sigkillon The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked

THIS is what I don't understand. Why do people call it "subsidized" when you're locked in to a 2 year contract with an early termination fee.

IT IS NOT SUBSIDIZED, PEOPLE.

You may say, well I'm paying the same per month whether I take a new phone or not from the carrier, so... it's subsidized right? Nope, they're just gouging you when you're on an old phone. Taking the new phone just slightly reduces your disadvantage. Let's put it this way, if MVNOs can offer you piggybacked network rates at $X while traditional operators rates are $3X aren't you a bit surprised? It's not that the operators are going to sell to MVNOs for a loss, and not that MVNOs are going to sell to you for a loss.

sigkillon FastMail staff purchase the business from Opera

Sweet. I guess I'll be ordering one after all. And thanks for the cpulimit code as well. I had no idea you could do such a thing at all.

sigkillon FastMail staff purchase the business from Opera

A question re: BTSync/RPi - I've got around 40-50 gigs synced up between my x86-64 computers (might be on the order of fifty thousand plus files) and the maximum memory it occupies is around 60-70 megs. It idles at 42MB. Since you already have the set up that I am looking into, I think you're the right person to ask, can the RPi handle that much? If not, what are the signs of it slowing down? If it helps, my hypothetical RPi would be connected via wires instead of USB-Wifi dongle.

sigkillon Show HN: Building a Military Spec MacBook Air Case with Long Life Battery

>dropped a glass of water on the case, and

Okay, so that sucks.

>razor sharp shards of glass ricocheted

Welp, you literally dropped a glass glass of water. Good lord, that's scary on a naked computer. This is a pretty awesome hack.

>(Be sure to get your finger partially in front of the lens while documenting this.)

Why does he say this? I don't understand.

I have another question. What is the present status of taking something like this on-board an airplane? Is the extended battery likely to raise alarm at the carry-in security section?

sigkillon Thwarted Linux backdoor hints at smarter hacks (2003)

I'm not a professional programmer by any stretch, but wouldn't this problem completely go away if the C and C++ compilers detect a single = inside an if statement and outright refuse it. Either that or automatically substitute the assignment with checking for instances inside the if-condition.

The reason I'm asking is, because I don't know if there's ever a case where you'd want to assign right inside the if-condition. Is there?

sigkillon DivX Now Installs Malware

I find it sad, no, completely pathetic that java needs to use such monetization strategies. It's a god-damn shame.

sigkillon FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack

Is there a difference between ddg and startpage.com principles? Because I find startpage to be more in-line with the results I want to see.