Hacker News: aryastark

New comment by aryastark in "Lisp macros for C"

aryastark — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 23:01:41 +0000

You can delete the "aryastark" account and all comments.

New comment by aryastark in "Lisp macros for C"

aryastark — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 20:43:17 +0000

Look, I don't have time for your childish pedantry. There were entire articles on the front page of HN blaming C for having poor language design on the issue of "goto fail". Now there is an article promoting macros in C, no less.

HN may not be one person, but does have a front page as a result of aggregate behavior.

New comment by aryastark in "Lisp macros for C"

aryastark — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 19:22:28 +0000

I just don't know how to reconcile the fact that HN tore the C language a new arsehole over "goto fail", and is now back to praising macros.

Macros need to be tossed into the dustbin of history, right next to self-modifying code and other cute but dangerous hacks.

New comment by aryastark in "Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs"

aryastark — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 22:39:41 +0000

It's amazing how wrong companies can get marketing. Take Apple's AirDrop, for example. I spent 20 minutes one day wondering why my iPhone wasn't connecting to my Mac Mini. Turns out, "AirDrop" is two different things by the same company that are similar but completely incompatible.

New comment by aryastark in "Most Americans Do Not Want Google-ish Glasses, Drones, Or Lab-Grown Meat"

aryastark — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 20:25:01 +0000

Depends on whether people actually saw an automobile before they heard about the concept. And of course, people aren't visionaries. They usually do want what they have now--only better. The difference, at least with Google Glass, is that people have seen it and still don't want it. The burden is on Google to show people why they should want Glass. So far they haven't done it.

New comment by aryastark in "SigmaVPN: Stateless OpenVPN Replacement Using NaCl Encryption Library"

aryastark — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 19:24:49 +0000

Quicktun used to use C's rand() to generate keypairs (see keypair.c). They still include a blurb about /dev/urandom being insecure and apparently requiring the user to manually input random data. The nacl0 protocol is inherently insecure (null nonce, vulnerable to replay), not sure why they even include that. IIRC, you also pass the private key via environment variable. Lots of horrible flaws for such a small code base.

New comment by aryastark in "Navy's Railgun Now a Reality – Uses Lorentz force to hurl projectiles at Mach 7+"

aryastark — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:16:17 +0000

> “[It] will give our adversaries a huge moment of pause to go: ‘Do I even want to go engage a naval ship?’” Rear Admiral Matt Klunder

ah, yes. Because a railgun is the determining factor when considering attacking the US Navy. "Well darn, they now have railguns. Let's call off the nuclear Armageddon guys!" As cool as this may be, our military industrial complex is hopelessly delusional.

New comment by aryastark in "Drop Dropbox"

aryastark — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 19:39:48 +0000

> participated in a democratic process and he has an unpopular opinion

It may be unpopular in certain circles, but the majority of California first voted yes on Prop 22 and then again on Prop 8. Hard to get more mainstream than that.

But then again, Bush won a 2nd term as well. I guess we can only conclude that democracy doesn't work because the masses are stupid.

New comment by aryastark in "Chrome: From NSS to OpenSSL"

aryastark — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 19:01:20 +0000

it's more accurate to discuss NaCl since that's what libsodium is. NaCl is the combination of crypto primitives and the "box" abstraction. libsodium is just the repackaging and clean-up of the original NaCl implementation. If you're discussing crypto, you're going to be looking at the papers on NaCl.

New comment by aryastark in "The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid "

aryastark — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 20:02:34 +0000

> The number you're looking for is 599,602 people, not 7 million people.

What are you talking about?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008...

7,001,084 votes for yes.

New comment by aryastark in "The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid "

aryastark — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 19:40:17 +0000

I'm sorry, but Prop 8 passed. By 7 million people.

Boycotting Mozilla? Really? You need to talk about boycotting California. Making a scapegoat out of one single person for what an entire state did is fucking insane.

New comment by aryastark in "The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid "

aryastark — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 19:26:44 +0000

> Eich found it easier to treat millions of people he's never met as second class citizens

You act as if Prop 8 didn't pass by 52.24% of the voting public, or by 7 million people. But no, Eich was dictator of California, enslaving millions of gays. Or whatever.

New comment by aryastark in "Your Game Doesn't Need UDP Yet (2013)"

aryastark — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 19:00:52 +0000

UDP has error checking in the form of a checksum. It's one of the few guarantees UDP has: your datagram either arrives complete, or not at all. TCP also has no real security to speak of, either.

New comment by aryastark in "Tesla and SpaceX: Elon Musk's industrial empire [video]"

aryastark — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 18:40:45 +0000

I have yet to hear anyone speak positively about their experience working at SpaceX. The common theme seems to be incredibly high turnover with intense burnout. However, looking at Glassdoor right now, it seems things may have improved. Or there has been a lot of recent astroturfing going on. The reviews were pretty negative last I looked, a year or two ago.

New comment by aryastark in "Why Use Make? (2013)"

aryastark — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 19:39:16 +0000

Not sure what you mean. I've developed Android apps on Windows 7 using Cygwin and make just fine. It's nearly identical to using it on Linux.

New comment by aryastark in "Why Use Make? (2013)"

aryastark — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 18:43:34 +0000

I feel like this whole thread is a bad joke.

Do you know of Unix pipes? The fact that gulp calls all of this "streams" and "pipes" is a seriously bizarre form of NIH.

You might also be interested in make -j option.

New comment by aryastark in "Introducing Michael Abrash, Oculus Chief Scientist"

aryastark — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 23:49:16 +0000

> where they had enormous amounts of custom machining and microcontroller work, you can deride that as "tinkering" if you like.

I will deride it all day, because it's not manufacturing. In manufacturing consumer products you must worry about things like margins, supply chains, and regional regulations. Oculus Rift is going to be a consumer device. So why the hell are you trying to compare apples and doorknobs here? I wasn't knocking Carmack or Abrash. I was telling you factual information. They are not the same people that will turn Oculus Rift into a consumer product. At all. Facebook will have to hire more people and bring in more outsider knowledge. That is what I'm saying.

> demonstrates how much hardware knowledge Google has. So you are wrong there too.

Nexus is just rebranded Asus/LG/Samsung devices. In fact, my Asus tablet has more features and is cheaper than its Nexus sibling. Chromebook came out and was priced higher than a MacBook. Which is proof enough that Google doesn't understand the hardware market. Who wants to buy a locked-down dumb terminal laptop, when you can get the real deal for cheaper? Google Glass? Did anyone really take that seriously? Self-driving cars? Didn't know I could go to my local auto dealer and get one.

My point is, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Wrong market predictions, wrong retail pricing, bad supply chain, terrible marketing. And you really expect that Carmack+Abrash = VR products for sale soon? Realistically, we're not going to see anything for at least 5 years. Conservatively, 10. And Carmack and Abrash are a few pieces in a giant puzzle.

> they sold me an iPhone

That's nice.

New comment by aryastark in "Y Combinator's YC VC may lose the actual VCs"

aryastark — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 20:59:53 +0000

Raleigh? Access to students from NC State, Duke, and UNC Chapel Hill, all within a few miles. And of course...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Triangle_Park

It may completely shock some of you stuck in bubble land, but many people don't want to live in SV. Even for a day.

New comment by aryastark in "Introducing Michael Abrash, Oculus Chief Scientist"

aryastark — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 18:49:33 +0000

Facebook is not Apple. Even Google is not Apple, as we watch time and time again Google failing at hardware and customer service. Neither of which, Facebook has any experience at. Nor are Carmack and Abrash hardware guys (that is, manufacturing rather than tinkering). Let's be just a bit realistic here. They have an uphill battle. Facebook also has no game development team (which I would include 3d modelers, world designers, etc.) There are a ton of missing variables from this equation still.

Money buys people, but it doesn't create miracles. I was excited when Abrash joined Valve, but nothing came of that.

New comment by aryastark in "Teen to government: Change your typeface, save millions"

aryastark — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 16:39:06 +0000

yes, but some of us have higher standards of creativity than the 100th version of 2048 or the front page of reddit.