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abshack

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What you’d need to make in every county in the US to afford a decent one-bedroom 12 years ago

$750/$1160 is ~64%. The common definition for affordable rent is ~30% of monthly wage[1] (based on some quick google-fu).

[1] http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/special-topics/files/...

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Those Who Say Code Does Not Matter 12 years ago

    if( DoSomething() )
        goto fail;
    else if(DoSomethingElse())
        goto fail;
        goto fail;
    else if(DoSomethingOtherThanElse())
        goto fail;

You get a syntax error at the final else-if. A better way would probably be:

    int err = 0;
    if(!err)
        err = DoSomething();
    if(!err)
        err = DoSomethingElse();
    if(!err)
        err = DoSomethingOtherThanElse();

    if(err) goto fail;

I would prefer chainable commands that abstracts out the error checking though.

    err = Chain(DoSomething).Then(DoSomethingElse).Then(DoSomethingOtherThanElse);

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My website was stolen by a hacker and I got it back 12 years ago

I'm partial to the "t33nz 1o1 \o/" cipher.

    input: correcthorsebatterystaple
    output: ~~krct^hrs333bttstpl$$:)

    input: password
    output: lulz!isma:PASSWORD#sorrynotsorry

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WhatsApp AES decryption key for all chats leaked 12 years ago

In terms of huge blows to WhatsApp, nothing beats the original[1] leak which showed that WhatsApp was using IMEIs as a password.

That didn't stop WhatsApp from growing into the behemoth (that its acquisition price states) it is.

[1] http://samgranger.com/whatsapp-is-using-imei-numbers-as-pass...

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WhatsApp AES decryption key for all chats leaked 12 years ago

That it uses the 'same' symmetric key for all users is what has everyone concerned. Coupled with the fact that WhatsApp stores your chats on external SD cards [1] without access controls, any APP you have installed can access and decrypt your WhatsApp chat history using this key.

[1] http://bas.bosschert.nl/steal-whatsapp-database/

This was on HackerNews a few days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7380136

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Say Hello to Cortana, Microsoft’s Siri Equivalent 12 years ago

Forced obsolescence -- Microsoft learned from Windows XP.

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After 5 days, my OS doesn't crash when I press a key 13 years ago

When I did Operating Systems in University (in a group), I remember distinctly only 3 bugs that we had difficulty debugging:

* re-using a loop variable from the outer loop in an inner loop (damn you `int i`!)

* putting a char[256] on the stack when the stack size was only 256 bytes and getting stack corruption (this one wasn't me, thankfully)

* signed vs unsigned code being passed between user mode and kernel mode causing problems (no idea why it was causing issues; i just made it all unsigned and the issue went away)

In hindsight, -Wall would have probably caught everything and saved a couple hours of "wtf" at 2-3 in the morning.

Often the simplest things are the hardest to discover.

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