MatthaeusHarris's comments

MatthaeusHarris | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

That's an argument for them being a monopsony, not a monopoly. And since they were colluding with other companies, it fits the definition of a cartel better.

MatthaeusHarris | 8 years ago | on: Everybody’s Lying About the Link Between Gun Ownership and Homicide

Read all the way through to the third article. It does go into which kinds of guns are used in homicides, which is much easier data to come by (and perhaps more relevant to the concerns at hand).

MatthaeusHarris | 8 years ago | on: Cryptocurrencies Are Selling Off

Autoplays video with sound.

MatthaeusHarris | 8 years ago | on: When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?

I believe gp meant, "if the bulk of a tree's mass comes from dirt, why isn't the dirt around the tree used up as the tree gains mass?"

MatthaeusHarris | 8 years ago | on: What Is Bitcoin For?

That's exactly what "Regulatory Arbitrage" means. The author calls it out explicitly.

MatthaeusHarris | 9 years ago | on: Samsung's Tizen is riddled with security flaws, amateurishly written

Depends on your threat model.

From TFA: Another attack on Samsung Smart TVs was published last week that used malicious commands embedded in broadcast TV signals.

So, even if it's airgapped, a tv that's been compromised in this way is effectively a hostile general-purpose computer with a wifi card running inside your house.

If this is something you would do for a Klondike bar, then go ahead. I'll keep my dumb TV and my Kodi box, though.

MatthaeusHarris | 9 years ago | on: I Am a Recruiter (a.k.a Spammer) at Amazon

I actually got a "GO TO HELL" response when I did this once. After he told me what the company was.

Yes, I forwarded the e-mail chain on to them.

MatthaeusHarris | 9 years ago | on: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

I got what you meant, and that was my first thought too.

The main reason I haven't bought an Echo (and am looking into self-hosted solutions instead) is the privacy concern.

MatthaeusHarris | 9 years ago | on: According to Snopes, Fake News Is Not the Problem

Simultaneously and independently, with exact copies of all registered voters.

MatthaeusHarris | 9 years ago | on: Facebook is telling everyone that they’re dead

Perhaps. But it happened to both my account and my sister's account.

MatthaeusHarris | 9 years ago | on: VNC in VR: Synchronized Virtual Desktops

YouTube has the luxury of not needing real-time compression. Latency hurts usability more than low frame rate.

MatthaeusHarris | 9 years ago | on: You can type anything here to visualize its grammatical structure

This confuses it utterly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...

MatthaeusHarris | 9 years ago | on: Elon Is Wrong. We Don't Live in a Simulation

From inside a simulation, it's impossible to tell how fast the simulation is running because you have no external time reference. The visible universe as we know it could be running at a time dilation of of 10^100:1 and it would look exactly the same to us.

MatthaeusHarris | 9 years ago | on: This is the most demonically clever computer security attack I've seen in years

Yes, but it's much harder to hide a conspiracy to tamper with paper votes if it comes right down to it, since they're not all counted at the same place.

MatthaeusHarris | 9 years ago | on: I've Been Waiting For The Oculus Rift, But Now It's Sitting In My Closet

Literally every person I've put into my Vive has been blown away by it. Sure, there's probably some selection bias, but I've been buttonholing anyone who sets foot in my house, including my 70-year-old in-laws.

So far, of the 20+ people to whom I've shown it, one has taken it off voluntarily, and all had variations of, "Holy shit, this is really amazing."

MatthaeusHarris | 9 years ago | on: A Sensible Fix For TSA Security Lines

Intelligence as in information, not as in smarts.

Intelligence clearance = access to classified information.

MatthaeusHarris | 9 years ago | on: Four hundred miles with Tesla’s autopilot forced me to trust the machine

Miles on the car. Given how the article states that the tires alone are good for 5k miles and cost $1600 to replace, that's 32 cents per mile just for the tires. If you're going somewhere far enough away that it's worth your money to fly instead of drive, it'll also be worth your money to rent a local car rather than have your Tesla drive to meet you.

I am not a Tesla owner, so please correct me if I got the cost/mileage of the tires wrong.

MatthaeusHarris | 10 years ago | on: PfSense 2.3-Release Now Available

I have had decent luck the few times I've just dumped the xml config from one pfSense box and loaded it on another.

But yes, I eagerly await the API in 3.0

MatthaeusHarris | 10 years ago | on: Building a 32-Thread Xeon Monster PC for Cheaper Than a Haswell-E Core I7

What are you doing to your CPUs? In my experience, CPUs are reliable enough to be nearly beyond reproach when troubleshooting a broken machine.

MatthaeusHarris | 10 years ago | on: It's Impossible to Validate an Email Address

They can.

They don't.

It's extra effort for them for nearly zero marginal gain.