Hacker News: certainly_not

New comment by certainly_not in "Why the Floppy Disk Is Still Used Today"

certainly_not — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 09:05:56 +0000

The systems are time-tested. How many accidental launches have happened so far? Zero. In my opinion that's the most important metric of these systems, as long as they are still credible threats otherwise.

Also, what could a better system improve? Slightly faster launches? Slightly more certain launches? I argue that those are not important -- the enemy won't fear the missiles more if they run off USB. But you might increase the chance of a false launch, and certainly incur large testing costs.

New comment by certainly_not in "New Pacman for Atari 2600"

certainly_not — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 11:58:59 +0000

The embedded video is not showing up for me. I believe this is the one though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clddb79LQcM

New comment by certainly_not in "Questions with Vim’s Creator, Bram Moolenaar"

certainly_not — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 11:29:28 +0000

undotree only becomes usable once you install https://github.com/sjl/gundo.vim

It's a lifesaver after that.

New comment by certainly_not in "Where have you gone, Peter Norton?"

certainly_not — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 07:17:02 +0000

Norton Commander was a great concept, but what really perfected that concept was Dos Navigator... It had so many useful features... If you didn't use it in the 90's, you missed out on a legend! It was open-sourced after DOS became history: http://www.dnosp.com/.

And there was also Volkov Commander, which was about feature-equal with NC, but was written by hand in assembly. Tiny resource usage and lightning speed.

New comment by certainly_not in "Forensic Ballistics: How Apollo 12 Helped Solve the Skydiver Meteorite Mystery"

certainly_not — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 14:19:23 +0000

I'd never heard of "drag catastrophe" before either, but I think you're right that he's referring to the onset of turbulent flow that reduces drag on a bluff body.

That's the sudden drop at the right in all of these graphs: www.google.ro/search?q=drag+reynolds+number (same as his own Figure 9, really).

There are a lot of surprising nonlinearities in those graphs. I wish there was a more detailed article/paper somewhere.

New comment by certainly_not in "Bad Password Policies"

certainly_not — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 08:22:55 +0000

Passwords don't need to be legible in the first place. There's nothing wrong with correcthorsebatterystaple.

On the other hand, forbidding spaces is absolutely misguided.

New comment by certainly_not in "100 time cheaper dropbox like service"

certainly_not — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 10:20:41 +0000

I can't understand how people trust (or even care about) server-provided encryption. There's no guarantee they or their friends can't open it on their servers. Unless you use your own solution, their encryption only provides protection in transit, against unaffiliated third parties.

New comment by certainly_not in "Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only"

certainly_not — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 20:58:44 +0000

I use this bash function to achieve something similar using the existing (and much larger) database commandlinefu.com:

    howdoi() { curl "http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/matching/$(echo "$@" | sed 's/ /-/g')/$(echo -n $@ | base64)/plaintext"; }