gengkev

7 ms·

1.
by gengkev 1y ago
I tried this but the DMV doesn't let you request it ;-( Alas, probably for the better... At each DMV there are a stack of license plates that they hand out on-site. So requesting a vanity plate of the same format would probably require
2.
by gengkev 3y ago
With my car, trying to lock the doors just doesn't work if one is left open — not always the most obvious failure mode, but it's been enough to get me to notice something's wrong.
3.
by gengkev 4y ago
Suppose it takes 2 seconds of 100% cpu usage to compute the password hash (you probably wouldn't want to wait much longer). Then brute forcing a 4 digit PIN will take 20000 seconds ≈ 6 hours maximum. There's no way around that, no
4.
by gengkev 5y ago
For me, at least, there's an important difference missing from the debate over the term "C/C++": compiling C code is always much faster than you would expect, but compiling C++ code is always much slower than you wou
5.
by gengkev 5y ago
Pixel phones can take "Motion Photos" — it seems like this is basically just an mp4 file stuffed into a jpg somehow (but without sound). The Google Photos app lets you export it as an mp4 or gif file, or pick a specific timestamp
6.
by gengkev 5y ago
Right, I'm really surprised that there isn't at least a hash or something for that reason...
7.
by gengkev 6y ago
Conversely, I think the beauty is that they _are_ the same as top-level functions, just in a special namespace. This means that you can call "instance methods" directly from a class, i.e. the following are equivalent: (1) +
8.
by gengkev 6y ago
> And Sundar has needed to go for a long time... How do you turn the largest consumer and commercial OS into a dumpster fire of exploits, half-finished ideas (Settings vs. Control Panel, anyone?!?)... So Windows was made by... Google?
9.
by gengkev 6y ago
I always found this an interesting phenomenon. I hate being "wrong" as much as anyone else. But it seems like the best way to not be wrong is being aware of the uncertainties in your understanding, not making claims about topics w
10.
by gengkev 6y ago
I imagine it's possible, but "no reason" is definitely a stretch. The parts of DC that are federal land are hardly contiguous, and trying to force a clean split between DC and Maryland looks like it would be a nightmare: htt
11.
by gengkev 6y ago
On a related note, the finance-related apps on my phone all offer me the option to sign in with a fingerprint sensor. Arguably you have two forms of authentication there: the presence of the physical device itself (using the secure element
12.
by gengkev 7y ago
This isn't even quite right, since the first argument of strncat needs to be a null-terminated string, and strncpy may not null-terminate. I would honestly just give up and write size_t len = strlen(source); char *dest = mall
13.
by gengkev 7y ago
Yeah, isn't Plaid basically teaching users to fall for phishing attacks? As with any account, the only sane advice is to only enter your password for account X into the website or app for X. Which is the exact opposite of the expectati
14.
by gengkev 7y ago
Funnily enough, when I need a USB-C cable to charge my phone, I'm usually able to borrow one from a friend who uses USB-C to charge their Macbook...
15.
by gengkev 7y ago
Probably that the original binding of p is immutable, as it would be in a functional language: you can create a new binding, but you can't actually change the value of the existing binding.
16.
by gengkev 8y ago
Won't this calculation overflow to +Infinity in JavaScript after a while? On the other hand, Python will try to compute the actual result using arbitrary precision integers, which is that's slower.
17.
by gengkev 8y ago
Are you sure pypy didn't just optimize out the loop entirely (as an aggressive C compiler would have done)?
18.
by gengkev 8y ago
I think the problem is Facebook's lack of transparency here. As a user, suppose I have some information that I've marked as "not available to third-party apps". Then I might be surprised to find out that Blackberry'
19.
by gengkev 8y ago
Can't forget about direct messages on Instagram, either...
20.
by gengkev 9y ago
On the relative density of languages, here's an article about a study I think has been discussed on HN before: http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2091477,0... Basically your intuition is
21.
by gengkev 9y ago
There's another thread posted more recently with more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14616196
22.
by gengkev 9y ago
It may seem like a little thing, but you have to be very careful while typing not to accidentally press Enter. I've found this to be surprisingly difficult, and it makes typing a lot more stressful.
23.
by gengkev 10y ago
I think I saw my Android phone use http://gstatic.com/generate_204 , though more recent phones might use something different.
24.
by gengkev 10y ago
How is a Chrome extension able to detect what external monitors or running applications there are on the system?
25.
by gengkev 10y ago
He does mention 6am elsewhere in the article, so perhaps she works less than 8 hours. But spending 8 hours a day on commuting is a definite recipe for disaster.
26.
by gengkev 10y ago
In contrast to what Zed suggests, I would argue that the text/binary dichotomy that you describe is actually very important for beginners to learn. Until I learned Python 3, I never really understood how text encodings worked, which co
27.
by gengkev 10y ago
One problem with distributed systems is the lack of a centralized authority for usernames. (Who says @POTUS is POTUS?) So why not create a custom TLD for a Twitter-like service? Each domain would be required to implement the API for that se
28.
by gengkev 10y ago
Years ago, when Google+ was first launched, you had to enter your birth date to create a Google+ profile. But my friends and I were under 13 at the time, and a few friends had their accounts disabled due to their age. There was a minor fuss
29.
by gengkev 10y ago
I'm a bit confused that TJSON only allows UTF-8 strings. The only way to escape Unicode characters in JSON is \uXXXX. But to encode astral characters with this syntax, UTF-16 surrogate pairs must be used. How does TJSON handle this, if
30.
by gengkev 10y ago
As I responded to another commenter, the purpose of "char * p" might simply be to indicate the type of p, not necessarily to indicate that it is uninitialized. If you wanted to indicate the type of p, what would you write instead?

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