theclaw

4 jaar geledendiscuss

This triggered for me when trying to download a podcast from Hardcore Gaming 101. The detection is clearly very accurate and good. I had no shame disabling it.

theclaw

6 jaar geledendiscuss

Anyone interested in the development of the ARPANET and its transformation into the Internet we know today owes it to themselves to read Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Hafner and Lyon - it’s a great read and the audiobook isn’t bad either.

theclaw

6 jaar geledendiscuss

It sends me to endless ‘appsflyer.com’ redirects and prompts to install Norton VPN apps from the app store on ios. Wtf.

theclaw

6 jaar geledendiscuss

I don’t have a problem with this. I am seeing systemd as a system management layer and as such it makes sense that it should manage as much of the moment-to-moment operation of the system as possible. It seems like a lot of people are upset because it’s a new thing to learn that’s being forced on them by their distro.

I used to feel the same way. I’m only a casual linux user and I didn’t want to climb this particular mountain but having learned just a little about it, created some of my own units and played with the tools the sense of alienation dissipated and I was fairly happy with it.

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

In my opinion the problem with Kinect was that it was necessarily a 1-1 mapping between your performance and the character on-screen. The Wii, in comparison, could only sense broad gestures. The direct mapping of kinect requires a great performance by the player to make a great performance in-game. This isn’t what gamers are used to - they’re used to a kind of ability amplification through the controller, where they press a few buttons or waggle the Wii remote and Spiderman does a sweet backflip.

Playing Kinect games was either frustrating because the game would not recognise your gestures, overly complicated because there were too many possible gestures and no obvious affordances to the user other than ‘move your whole body somehow’, or simply too physically difficult for some players to perform.

It’s ironic that such a high fidelity input device actually limits the kind of games you can design for it. Some of the best Kinect games were those that used the input data for purely cosmetic purposes.

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

https://www.lingscars.com/ - yes, this is a real car rental business. Best viewed on desktop - the mobile version is not nearly as... potent.

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

Not just on the Arc either - the inline assembler was also available in BBC BASIC on its predecessor, the BBC Micro. I remember you had to put the asm code in a FOR loop so the interpreter could do two passes - one to locate all the labels and one to assemble the result, I believe.

That BASIC also had proper functions and procedures as well as special fast integer variables in zero page, it offered easy access to the whole machine from graphics to sound to ADCs and tape or disk IO. It was also very fast for the time, and the manuals that came with the machine were excellent.

The BBC micro user manual section on the inline assembler is available here for anyone interested in how it worked: http://central.kaserver5.org/Kasoft/Typeset/BBC/Ch43.html

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

I’m not sure I’m a fan. It’s like a profile shot of a laughing bulbous head. It says supermarket brand laundry detergent to me.

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

For those not aware Captain Disillusion is an impressively well produced youtube series mimicking the vibe of 90's kids TV, but for an adult audience. The Captain uses Blender for the 3D effects in his videos, and did a great presentation at the Blender conference last year [0].

The type of effect used to create these candy words is covered in the "Marble Sorting Machine" video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em-pVICrnqM

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qSTcxt2t74

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

Which criticisms are you referring to?

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

Maybe it wasn't open to the public Internet, but the VPN exit is inside the datacenter and connects out to the public Internet. Is it feasible that NordVPN provided their customers with a secure tunnel into their own datacenter's management software?

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

Given the behaviour demonstrated (register fingerprint, everything works as expected, add screen protector, any fingerprint unlocks), I'd imagine that they're not dealing with every possible result the fingerprint reader can produce. For example, they might be assuming the result could be either a pass or a fail, but in fact there are three states: valid fingerprint and matched, valid fingerprint and not matched, and not a valid fingerprint.

Perhaps the fingerprint reader returns a result of 0 for "valid print and not matched", result 1 for "valid print and matched", and result -1 for "not valid print". If the phone vendor code simply tests for a non-zero result code and treats this as "matched", then the situation described would occur.

It would be interesting to test with other smooth objects that might activate the reader.

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

Yeah agreed. It's almost certainly some code that needs to change from this:

  testResult = TestFingerprint(fingerprint);
  if(testResult)
    return UNLOCK_OK;
  else
    return UNLOCK_FAIL;

to this:

  testResult = TestFingerprint(fingerprint);
  if(testResult == RESULT_OK)
    return UNLOCK_OK;
  else
    return UNLOCK_FAIL;

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

> In fact there are already articles showing how the unlock feature works while you’re asleep

Hah, this was the first thing I tested with Face ID when I got my iphone 10. If you look at it with your eyes closed then it won't unlock. Open your eyes and it instantly unlocks. It spent about five minutes playing peek-a-boo with it.

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

Maybe I’m living in the 1970s but I always assumed pagers just showed a phone number and you were supposed to call back?

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

I didn't appreciate physical albums when I was younger but now I find it difficult to throw them out, especially if they were bought in a store. Just looking at them reminds me of the time in my life that I bought them, who I was with and where I was.

I think it's meaningful to surround yourself with objects that remind you who you are, and your ability to shape your world. I do not get this sense with Spotify or Apple Music or Youtube. I still use those services but there's a sense of detachment, like listening to an song in a store.

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

May I recommend Keypirinha [1] over Launchy? I recently tried all of the launchers I could find for Windows and KP was by far the best, and does not get enough recognition in my view.

[1]http://keypirinha.com/

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

It now looks as though it might be Google Chrome. Whoooops.

https://mrmacintosh.com/google-chrome-keystone-is-modifying-...

e: hn discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21064663

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

Sounds unlikely to be a virus. Certificate expiry seems probable if it’s happened suddenly to everyone using this software and dongle.

theclaw

7 jaar geledendiscuss

There is already a Microsoft library for this - System.Numerics.Vectors, see documentation at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.numerics?...

Not sure how MathSharp compares in performance or usability, however.

Submissions

Advent of Computing Podcast

I Bought 1970s Data General Mini Computers [video]

A History of Computer Art

One Alternative to Centralised Electronic Identities [video]

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