friendcomputer's comments

friendcomputer | 10 years ago | on: Glibc getaddrinfo stack-based buffer overflow

If this was originally filed on an open bug tracker in July 2015, what were the glibc team doing in the mean time? The Google post indicates they were "working on it" when Google got in touch. How much work was going on, exactly? How did this languish for so long?

friendcomputer | 10 years ago | on: Automatic bug-repair system fixes 10 times as many errors as its predecessors

I think the difference is in one case you are talking about specific properties of specific programs, and in the other you are talking about a universal question about any program.

friendcomputer | 10 years ago | on: Coliving: Dorms for Grownups

"Evans plans to create an online recruiting process that will help him select applicants who fit into the community."

Gotta be careful of those discrimination laws.

friendcomputer | 11 years ago | on: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

If you want a full featured local linux command line, you can switch to developer mode and install one in a chroot via something like https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

This does sidestep some of the security features of the device, but it's fine if you really want it. Or you can just ssh somewhere.

friendcomputer | 11 years ago | on: Scrollback: A friendly portal to your IRC channel

If you're wondering which tab is making a random key click sound in the background every couple of minutes, it's this one.

friendcomputer | 11 years ago | on: Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer Steps Down

I wonder why he didn't donate the shares directly, isn't that simpler for tax reasons?

friendcomputer | 12 years ago | on: Network of 75 Million Neurons of the Mouse Brain Mapped for the First Time

The article lists 1.8P for a brain with 75 million neurons. Unless I've misplaced my zeroes, that's over ~20M per neuron, which seems much higher than I'd expect.

friendcomputer | 12 years ago | on: In Some Ways, It's Looking Like 1999 in the Stock Market

Its worth pointing out that due to Sarbanes-Oxley, some of this will not happen on the stock market this time. So if you are just looking at P/E of publicly traded stocks you are going to miss the signs.

friendcomputer | 12 years ago | on: The 1% doesn't stay the 1% for long

Yeah, this is not news to anyone who looks beyond the surface level income figures. Unfortunately, journalists fail us comprehensively in this regard. It's a shame because there are some very interesting things to talk about once you look at lifetime gross income and the trajectory people take through life.

friendcomputer | 12 years ago | on: Yale researchers reconstruct facial images locked in a viewer’s mind

From TFA:

"Working with funding from the Yale Provost’s office, Cowen and post doctoral researcher Brice Kuhl, now an assistant professor at New York University, showed six subjects 300 different “training” faces while undergoing fMRI scans. They used the data to create a sort of statistical library of how those brains responded to individual faces. They then showed the six subjects new sets of faces while they were undergoing scans. Taking that fMRI data alone, researchers used their statistical library to reconstruct the faces their subjects were viewing."

So yes, it will always output something like a face. It's more like they are using the FMRI to select among preset options. It's still potentially a great result, but we need more detail than this article provides.

friendcomputer | 12 years ago | on: What's expected of us

Hmm. I'd like to say I'm excited but I really don't see how they will capture that story effectively in film.

friendcomputer | 12 years ago | on: What's expected of us

I highly recommend Ted Chiang. I really enjoyed "Story of your Life" available in this short story collection of the same name: http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Others-Chiang/dp/193...

Some of the stuff is a but uneven but he's written some of the most thought-provoking sci-fi I've read in some time.

friendcomputer | 12 years ago | on: Lavabit's Dark Mail Initiative

Please show me the spec. Or even a high level discussion of the protocol.

friendcomputer | 12 years ago | on: Lavabit's Dark Mail Initiative

I can't find any information on the "newly developed dark mail protocol." Is this public anywhere? I need more information before I know if I want to donate to support it.

friendcomputer | 12 years ago | on: Valve demonstrates Steam Controller [video]

He was explicit in that he was demonstrating 1:1 legacy mouse support, presumably there are other options for non-legacy games (and perhaps legacy games too?)

For example, my macbook track pad takes velocity into account. Something like that could make a big difference for covering large distances. I'm withholding judgment until I try one.

But then I play FPS with a trackball now, so it doesn't seem so alien to me.

friendcomputer | 12 years ago | on: The network of mathematics

That's from http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/9704009.pdf

There's some more from the author here: http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/crazy.html

friendcomputer | 12 years ago | on: CloudFlare, PRISM, and Securing SSL Ciphers

This should help. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6962

friendcomputer | 13 years ago | on: U.S. Alleges $6 Billion Money-Laundering Operation Using Virtual Currency

Leaving aside the question of whether evading a law through a technicality is alright (and surely the court will decide whether they were successful at that or not), but the indictment indicates they misled financial regulators, submitted a fraudulent verification system to regulators that falsified data, and indicated they sold the company to a foreign entity then continued to operate it surreptitiously through shell companies. This doesn't sound like squeaking by on a technicality.

I really don't see why everyone is assuming these guys are in the right. I don't see much to support that claim.

friendcomputer | 13 years ago | on: U.S. Alleges $6 Billion Money-Laundering Operation Using Virtual Currency

It's really hard to claim that the LR guys are innocent. The comparison with Ford is completely out. If you read the indictment itself it's fairly clear that they were knowingly building a system to work around money laundering laws (including the Patriot Act) and went to great difficulty to do so.

If they come after bitcoin and you make the same comment, I'll be more sympathetic.

friendcomputer | 13 years ago | on: Bunny.py: A WiFi darknet that hides its traffic in the noise of 802.11

From my reading of the included proposal.txt, it uses steganography to have side-channel communications that look like other wifi communication near you.