Hacker News: yerich

New comment by yerich in "Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M"

yerich — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 21:34:42 +0000

The highest frequency city pairs I can think of, at peak periods, looking at available tickets this week:

Shanghai Hongqiao to Hangzhou East is about 10 high speed trains per hour, all trains using the same line.

Tokyo to Shin-Osaka is also about 10 high speed trains per hour.

Taipei to Taichung is 8-9 trains per hour, high speed + conventional. Shanghai to Suzhou is similar.

Rome to Florence is 6-7 trains per hour.

Hong Kong West Kowloon to Shenzhen North is 6 high speed trains per hour.

Beijing South to Tianjin is 5-6 high speed trains per hour.

New comment by yerich in "Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark"

yerich — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 20:19:53 +0000

I have no idea where that list is coming from but many top games are missing. Fortnite, League of Legends, Valorant, Roblox, FC26, and Battlefield 6 all do not run at all on Linux due to anti-cheat.

New comment by yerich in "Awash in revisionist histories about Apple's web efforts, a look at the evidence"

yerich — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 15:04:33 +0000

A "little indie developer" hasn't been able to write a web browser in several decades. An implementation of 2005-era CSS and JS would be a complex task surely requiring a fairly sizable team to implement.

The fact is, all three major browser implementations are open-source and that has allowed any company to come in and release or embed their own browser with minimal effort. Chrome/Blink is dominant but that is not due to technical barriers that make it difficult for other companies to ship their own browsers. In fact it is now easier than ever to do so.

Cyberhaven's Chrome extension security incident

yerich — Fri, 27 Dec 2024 21:50:53 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cyberhaven.com/blog/cyberhavens-chrome-extension-security-incident-and-what-were-doing-about-it

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42526387

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by yerich in "Pure CSS Website"

yerich — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 01:45:31 +0000

Using pure CSS to make a 3D "game engine": https://keithclark.co.uk/labs/css-fps/

New comment by yerich in "Does cashless society discriminate against the poor and elderly? (2019)"

yerich — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 19:57:11 +0000

Being able to call an Uber or Lyft when I need it has made it much easier to live without a vehicle. I have tried to call a cab company using the phone before, but even they have transitioned to using apps for dispatch now.

New comment by yerich in "Rogers network outage across Canada hits banks, businesses and consumers"

yerich — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 00:18:48 +0000

Here are some major non-Canadian outlets with coverage:

BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62102223

NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/world/americas/rogers-int...

Reuters (doesn't really count, because HQ is in Toronto): https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/rogers-commun...

NPR: https://www.npr.org/2022/07/08/1110500480/rogers-canada-majo...

Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-08/banks-pay...

New comment by yerich in "Jeff Bezos Accuses National Enquirer of Blackmail"

yerich — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 01:28:15 +0000

What's the New York Times supposed to do for their readers? Not publish anything? De Becker, AMI and Amazon were asked for comment and declined. Besides, only a few paragraphs from the story are quotes from the blog post.

New comment by yerich in "Chinese battery expert is charged with stealing trade secrets from US employer"

yerich — Sun, 23 Dec 2018 16:40:47 +0000

No, I am not a Chinese agent. I don't know how to prove this to you definitively. However, I'd like to ask you if you consider my query legitimate, given that I did not have access to the full affidavit when I asked it, only the original article which was skimpy on the details around the extent of the copying. Mostly, I was more worried that my company could have me arrested either for accessing or copying a file arbitrarily deemed outside of my duties, or for violating their IT policy.

New comment by yerich in "Chinese battery expert is charged with stealing trade secrets from US employer"

yerich — Sun, 23 Dec 2018 16:36:00 +0000

Thanks for the additional details. It was not present in the article, which is why I am glad I asked the question. It seems that the extent of the copying is greater than I had assumed from the original article's text.

New comment by yerich in "Chinese battery expert is charged with stealing trade secrets from US employer"

yerich — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 09:57:47 +0000

> The agent said Tan handed the flash drive over to the US company, and the firm found that the deleted files would have allowed his new employers to recreate the product in question. The files had been deleted from the flash drive the day before Tan resigned, the affidavit said.

Call me confused, but I don't really see a crime here? The defendant turned over the data before his resignation and is not accused of actually making an attempt to transfer or sell the data to another party, or conspiring to do so. The only accusation is that he had some files that weren't part of his job to have, apparently. But presumably the internal corporate system allowed him access to it and thus he obtained it without breaching any computer system. Perhaps his workplace policy barred him from downloading files onto a USB drive. But is that considered theft?

New comment by yerich in "As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants"

yerich — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 02:06:14 +0000

> The social network allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.

> The social network permitted Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and it let Yahoo view streams of friends’ posts as recently as this summer, despite public statements that it had stopped that type of sharing years earlier.

This information contrasts with a statement Facebook provided in 2018, stating that such data sharing partnerships ended at the end of 2015. That statement itself was correcting an earlier statement stating that such access had ended even earlier.

From https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-shared-user-...:

> Facebook shared personal information culled from its users' profiles with other companies after the date when executives have said the social network prevented third-party developers from gaining access to the data, the company confirmed Friday.

> The companies had access to the data during a stretch of time in 2015 after Facebook had locked out most developers who build apps that work on its social network. Facebook gave select "whitelisted" companies extensions before they were also blocked from getting its users' personal information.

> Those extensions expired before the end of 2015, Facebook said. The company believes the previously unreported extensions with a select group of companies is consistent with previous statements that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made, including in testimony to Congress, about shielding its 2.2 billion users' personal information from third parties since 2015.

> "Any new 'deals', as the Journal describes them, involved people's ability to share their broader friends' lists — not their friends' private information like photos or interests," Ime Archibong, Facebook's vice president of product partnerships, said in a written statement.

New comment by yerich in "Facebook's seized files published by MPs"

yerich — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 20:07:01 +0000

No, since the person who's documents were seized was in the UK on a trip. Except for special cases where immunity is granted, physical presence in a country means that one is subject to the laws and jurisdiction of the country. In this case, the UK Parliament had the authority to compel the production of the documents in question, by threat of imprisonment if necessary.

A question for any legal scholars out there: the seizure of the documents would be contempt of court in the US, could it not? The person who was threatened with arrest has the defense of duress, so could the US court charge the MPs who ordered the seizure? I don't think the UK would extradite, but if the MPs were to visit the US without immunity, could they be arrested for violating US law (even though their actions are apparently within their rights under UK law)?

New comment by yerich in "Is it possible that Tencent can save Snapchat?"

yerich — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 19:49:14 +0000

Tencent, surprisingly, is 33% owned by the South African company Naspers, as well as 7% other foreign institutional investors. Alibaba is 30% owned by the Japanese Softbank and 15% owned by a US holding company resultant of Yahoo's sale. [2] Baidu is 35%+ held by a hodgepodge of funds and holding companies. [3]

[1] http://www.4-traders.com/TENCENT-HOLDINGS-LTD-3045861/compan...

[2] http://www.4-traders.com/ALIBABA-GROUP-HOLDING-17916677/comp...

[3] http://investors.morningstar.com/ownership/shareholders-majo...

New comment by yerich in "Walmart's $10 smartphone isn't actually $10"

yerich — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 22:52:43 +0000

As of 2014, it is explicitly legal to unlock a phone:

"Circumvention of a technological measure that restricts wireless telephone handsets or other wireless devices from connecting to a wireless telecommunications network ... may be initiated by the owner of any such handset or other device ... solely in order to enable such owner or a family member of such owner to connect to a wireless telecommunications network"

- Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, 2014 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1123...)

New comment by yerich in "1912 Eighth Grade Examination for Bullitt County Schools"

yerich — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 04:28:58 +0000

Much of this seems like rote memorization, to which I see very little use for in today's society. Need to get a list of state capitals? Google it. Need to plot a naval route from England to Malaysia? Look at a map. Students do not need a teacher nor a classroom to memorize facts. The time is better spent on developing problem solving and teamwork skills. Note the lack of any room for original expression or thought - no essays, no argumentation. Just rote memorization which will likely have no real use 99% of the time.