Hacker News: DrPizza

New comment by DrPizza in "Browsers"

DrPizza — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 01:46:47 +0000

I don't think the performance claiming is really the important part here; it's doing something that lacks any real reason but which hurts Edge.

And while I agree that video overlays are common, I also think it's reasonable for such overlays to revert to a slightly less efficient path.

New comment by DrPizza in "Browsers"

DrPizza — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 23:05:26 +0000

On the other hand, pretty easy how such a div might trigger a less efficient path; if the video is top in the z-order then it can probably bypass being composited by the browser (and who knows, maybe even bypass being composited by the OS) and avoid a whole mess of rendering to a texture, texturing some triangles, and so on and so forth.

New comment by DrPizza in "Mac mini review–a testament to Apple’s stubbornness"

DrPizza — Fri, 23 Nov 2018 17:51:37 +0000

Right. My take is "hey, good engineering to not need a power brick. But to what end? What's the practical purpose of this engineering? Why not just make the system bigger?"

New comment by DrPizza in "Mac mini review–a testament to Apple’s stubbornness"

DrPizza — Fri, 23 Nov 2018 16:42:56 +0000

Uh, I don't complain it has no power brick. I say that it's impressive it has no power brick.

New comment by DrPizza in "Microsoft’s problem isn’t how often it updates Windows, it’s how it develops it"

DrPizza — Sun, 21 Oct 2018 15:48:20 +0000

I wish you'd posted this as a comment on the article so I could have promoted it so that everyone would see it.

New comment by DrPizza in "Microsoft’s problem isn’t how often it updates Windows, it’s how it develops it"

DrPizza — Sat, 20 Oct 2018 23:34:18 +0000

One of the (many) reasons I've heard they had to abandon Longhorn was that apparently it was essentially unbuildable. The build was broken so much of the time that they gave up and started over.

New comment by DrPizza in "Intel platforms from 2008 onwards have a remotely exploitable security hole"

DrPizza — Tue, 02 May 2017 19:05:29 +0000

Even with the CPU, you also need the right chipset and the right firmware to actually light this stuff up. While especially in the laptop sector there are consumer devices that include this, it's far from universal.

New comment by DrPizza in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2017)"

DrPizza — Tue, 02 May 2017 03:50:29 +0000

Good luck with that. It's working for Raytheon with a clearance.

> (C) discrimination because of citizenship status which is otherwise required in order to comply with law, regulation, or executive order, or required by Federal, State, or local government contract, or which the Attorney General determines to be essential for an employer to do business with an agency or department of the Federal, State, or local government.

New comment by DrPizza in "Escalation of Privilege Advisory"

DrPizza — Mon, 01 May 2017 20:56:09 +0000

The advisory says it doesn't affect consumer firmwares.

New comment by DrPizza in "Intel platforms from 2008 onwards have a remotely exploitable security hole"

DrPizza — Mon, 01 May 2017 17:30:30 +0000

It isn't on all hardware. Intel has two ME firmwares, a small one for consumer systems, and a big one for corporate/enterprise systems. The small one does not (or at least, should not; is not supposed to) include the remote management features.

In other words, the separation that you describe exists.

Systems with the full firmware sport things such as the vPro branding, and only certain combinations of CPU and chipset support it.

New comment by DrPizza in "Skype finalizes its move to the cloud, ignores the elephant in the room"

DrPizza — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 16:21:39 +0000

I did ask them, and the post contains everything they had to say in response.

New comment by DrPizza in "How Windows Everywhere finally happened"

DrPizza — Mon, 23 May 2016 16:59:54 +0000

Sure, if you install a GNU stack (glibc, for example, being an important part) you can run typical Linux software on Android. It's not the default, however. While the Linux kernel has proliferated, the userlands are more varied; Android/Bionic on phones and tablets, uClibc on routers and other embedded roles, GNU/Linux for most servers and desktops--though even in that final category, we see substantial variation such as systemd versus init.

Sometimes this is to Linux's advantage; it underscores its flexibility, and the ability to use, for example, busybox uClibc on small systems is definitely an advantage. But other times, like having no standard UI toolkit that works across desktop, tablet, and phone, or having different approaches to managing services/daemons, the advantages are less clear.

Canonical was heading hard in this unified direction, but I'm not sure what their current phone/tablet plans are. Their stupidly implausible kickstarter seems to have disrupted these efforts.

New comment by DrPizza in "How Windows Everywhere finally happened"

DrPizza — Mon, 23 May 2016 16:49:49 +0000

Modern graphics hardware isn't optimized for drawing bitmapped lines. It's optimized for drawing textured triangles. This means that it's not actually a good fit for GDI any more. Given that Windows Phone was, as far as apps were concerned, a clean slate, there was little reason to retain USER and GDI.

win32k.sys is also rife with security flaws, so scrapping it has arguably reliability benefits too.

New comment by DrPizza in "It’s Time for Microsoft to Turn the Xbox into a PC"

DrPizza — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 19:32:31 +0000

> Snark aside, this is probably one of crappiest articles I've ever read (EDIT:) on Ars Technica (or rather, skimmed; didn't deem it worth reading word-for-word). "Microsoft should make a do-it-all box for $200 that has cutting-edge GPU and CPU, and they should fragment their hardware lineup. Oh, and put a pony in every box." I'm sure this article is being passed around the E&D executive suite as I type.

Maybe you should bother to read the article before commenting, because it says quite the opposite, and suggested that in fact it's the attempt to make a do-it-all box that leaves the Xbox simultaneously overpriced as a streaming box, and underpowered as a console.

New comment by DrPizza in "Hands-on with HoloLens: On the cusp of a revolution"

DrPizza — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 21:25:59 +0000

I wear pretty strong corrective lenses (about -8 in each eye) and HoloLens was fine; a lot more comfortable than the Vive with glasses on.

New comment by DrPizza in "Hands-on with HoloLens: On the cusp of a revolution"

DrPizza — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 19:36:38 +0000

It is not native advertising.

New comment by DrPizza in "Hands-on with HoloLens: On the cusp of a revolution"

DrPizza — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 19:35:18 +0000

HoloLens is a derivative of Kinect. Kinect 1 (with the Xbox 360) was structured light. Kinect 2 (with the Xbox One) is time-of-flight. I'm not sure which tech the HoloLens uses (I don't think Microsoft has specified one way or another, and I didn't have an IR camera to look to see if it was emitting a pattern), but I'm assuming it's based on the newer tech, because my understanding is that time-of-flight systems can much better handle having multiple devices scanning the same space. HoloLens handled this situation very well; I've seen at least 8 devices all scanning the same area without getting confused.

It's all driven by the unit, btw; no need for markers or external illumination.

New comment by DrPizza in "Hands-on with HoloLens: On the cusp of a revolution"

DrPizza — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 19:29:27 +0000

Conker can handle complex objects, but they have to have been present when scanning the scene; my cameraperson was moving around so she didn't get scanned.

The depth maps can get dynamically updated, so it's not insurmountable, but currently the process seems to take a few seconds. I'm not sure if this is a design decision, a processing limitation, a hardware data capture limitation, or something else entirely.

New comment by DrPizza in "Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf"

DrPizza — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 07:02:26 +0000

How anonymous can the reviews be if the subject of the talk betrays the identity of the presenter?

New comment by DrPizza in "Hiroyuki Nishimura, founder of 2channel, has taken ownership of 4chan"

DrPizza — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 20:52:33 +0000

> You should write about all the problems with major game publishers and name names.

People have written bits and pieces on this before

Nobody really cares.