Viewing profile — gengkev

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…

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.

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…

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++ cod…

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…

Right, I'm really surprised that there isn't at least a hash or something for that reason...

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 clas…

> 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 …

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 yo…

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 Mary…

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 prese…

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 s…

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 …

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...

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…

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 …

Are you sure pypy didn't just optimize out the loop entirely (as an aggressive C compiler would have done)?

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 sur…

Can't forget about direct messages on Instagram, either...

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... Basic…

There's another thread posted more recently with more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14616196

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 l…

I think I saw my Android phone use http://gstatic.com/generate_204 , though more recent phones might use something different.

How is a Chrome extension able to detect what external monitors or running applications there are on the system?

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.