ColinDabritz

Adding a single element from each other office would be a neat way to tie them together. For example, the new wave wall with a single lavalamp, hanging rainbow, and dual pendulum.

"Kuszmaul remembers being surprised that a tool normally used to ensure privacy could confer other benefits."

It was surprising to me too! But reflecting on it more closely, most performance isn't about "faster" in a literal sense of "more instructions run per time", but about carefully choosing how to do less work. The security property here being "history independence" is also in a way stating "we don't need to, and literally cannot, do any work that tracks history".

It's definitely an interesting approach to performance, essentially using cryptography as a contraint to prevent more work. What properties do we need, and what properties can we ignore? The question becomes if we MUST ignore this property cryptographically, how does that affect the process and the related performance?

It certainly feels like it may be a useful perspective, a rigorous approach to performance that may be a path to more improvements in key cases.

It's an example of "non-euclidean" space, and yes, it is a bit different than the article.

There was an example of this in the classic 'Duke Nukem 3d'. It had a level by Richard "Levelord" Gray, 'Lunatic Fringe'.

https://dukenukem.fandom.com/wiki/Lunatic_Fringe

This level had a circular hallway ring around the outside that had two full rotations around without intersecting, using the 'build' engine's ability to separate areas by their room connections that also drove the 'room over room' technology which was groundbreaking at the time.

It made for fun multiplayer, and the illusion held well there. The central chamber has 4 entrances/exits if I recall, and you would only encounter two of them in each loop around the outside.

I recall building a toy level while experimenting with the engine that "solves" the "3 houses with 3 utilities without crossing" puzzle using this trick as well.

I love that this is a common enough problem, that there's a full domain website for it:

https://0.30000000000000004.com/

That is a simple but clever technique. These sorts of approaches feel like they will be part of a more formalized software engineering profession.

There are a lot of crazy people in industry, unfortunately. Not as much at the big flashy tech startups or places you hear about in the news, but there are still plenty of 'work a day' businesses in corners of industry that do not have expertise in these areas that absolutely should.

I helped my current employer make this transition and it was similar to the description in the article. Controlling database change in source was foreign to them.

Jail time for bugs that should have been preventible and caused harm to users. Mistakes and bugs happen, but we also have methods of mitigating them. Standards, quality controls, tests, analysis, and other care. I specifically said jail time for gross negligence because that means not taking care and allowing harm to users.

If you had an error that leaked private information, it's worth an investigation. If it made it through despite controls, that's understandable. If they find you failed to do analysis on the risk to users privacy, if you failed to have controls in place, if you didn't code review or test the code, then you have made specific choices that harmed users. That should be criminal.

We need to take software engineering seriously as a discipline. We have the potential to do more wide scale aggregate harm than any structural engineering collapse. We need to start acting like it.

software bugs cause mass harm. We can't ask people to never make mistakes, but we can ask that they have appropriate practices, standards, quality controls, and care. Not taking appropriate measures to mitigate risks that can significantly affect millions of users is willful negligence, and should be a crime.

Not the op, but meaningful fines, executive jail time for gross negligence and especially for intentionally taking inappropriate risks, breaking up or closing companies that are shown over time to be unable to safely handle sensitive information. Proper regulation. Consequences that can't be cynically taken as the cost of doing business.

For me, in Chrome, I could not find "Show In Viewer", but the static preview image on the left side has a "launch" text splash when hovering. Clicking it opens a player with play/pause/step and other functionality.

Have we actually seen the real interface? There was the first round, which was a mockup many were told was a 'screenshot', and a follow up that was a second mock up that was closer.

http://www.civilbeat.org/2018/01/hawaii-distributed-phony-im...

It's a common enough UI issue to be immediately clear to a professional how it happened though.

The cue I learned for that was "the stick man is standing on the line | and leaning forward / or backward \ " (Which is of course western reading direction sensitive)

This threw me off for a bit.

The \1 is from the original puzzle, and refers to the value of the first (capture group). I ran into this issue while filling out the puzzle. The \1 is required to 'propagate' the value in that square to other places. The puzzle is ambiguous without this fix.

Thanks for the pointer, I've added the note in the comments. Hopefully the puzzle is editable.

Lovely puzzle, and it's a great quote. :)

This is a wonderfully complicated mix of in game rewards, but they aren't DLC, some have exclusive in game rewards you can't get elsewhere. You can buy some Amiibo retail, but others which unlock exclusives in a brand new game are locked behind owning collectibles which aren't retail-available any more (and expensive from third party resellers). Some of the items are cosmetic, nice callbacks to older games and similar. Others provide in game advantages.

That makes the ethical questions very challenging to address. Personally I feel more 'ok' with hackery for the items that aren't available retail, but I hate 'pay to win' in games as well. It's hard to articulate how I feel about the situation. I think the article is spot-on that making these available in DLC packs or something as well would clarify the situation a lot.

Play! This aspect of learning is crucial for children too, but as a developer nothing pushes learning like playing around with things that interest you.

They absolutely care if you call, if you show up to town hall meetings. It matters. They are elected officials, and they do ultimately care and worry that if they do unpopular things they will not get re-elected.

There is an excellent write up of how this works and why it works from a former congressional aide: https://qz.com/836737/fomer-congressional-staffer-twitter-ti...

Take action!

Write your senators numbers on a note by your desk, put them in your phone as contacts. Add your house representatives as well. When you hear about an important issue, make a quick call. Ask them to represent you on upcoming issues. Thank them for their position on issues you support, let them know you are disappointed in them for things you oppose.

I also love that one. I am not yet finding the specific citation in the actual linked repo. I would appreciate it if someone could point it out!

I had heard good things about mint, and I liked the 'dashboard' screenshots and such. Then I looked at how it worked, particularly "provide your bank credentials" part.

It didn't take long to realize how incredibly dangerous that was, and leave.

Banks should provide API access for services like this because it mitigates significant security issues.

Yes, good point. It was discussing in past test in the context of "DeCOMification" mainly. It would be interesting to have some insight into new component creation vs use of existing components.

COM is the Component Object Model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model

This was how a lot of system and third party libraries provided large amounts of functionality in the windows ecosystem for quite some time. These are usually in the form of a DLL (Dynamic Link Library), libraries of COM components, packaged as a ".dll" file. This is related to the re-use and versioning issues known informally as "DLL hell". Most COM components are native C and C++ based, exposing a standardized COM interface for component reuse.

Dot net was a new ecosystem, but much of the Win32 related dot net API is wrappers over existing native COM components. There are also extensive dot net facilities for repackaging and working with existing COM libraries through a Com Interop layer. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173184.aspx

The COM system provided an approach to interoperability and reuse for a long time, but compared to our current generation of cross platform compatibility, the venerable COM system components are proving to be a significant legacy challenge for cross platform implementations.

For the other side of that laugh, see Richard Feynman's "I want my dollar!" story: http://www.e-reading.mobi/chapter.php/71262/33/Feynman_-_Sur...

(Find "I want my dollar!" toward the bottom of the page)

It turns out there was technical paperwork signing over patent rights to the government at a dollar each...

Seconded, "performed a lithobraking maneuver" is now on my list next to "rapid unscheduled disassembly".

Your Mac updates are indefinitely truly avoidable despite the constant nagging. You declined 875 times, and you can decline 875 times more, and forever after that.

Windows 10, in home edition, only lets you delay a limited time. There is a finite amount of possible total time before windows will no longer operate without applying the update. It will apply the updates on restart, or forcibly restart your computer to apply them. This is not the case on any other OS that I am aware of.

You are correct that Chrome applies updates when it is restarted, which is similar, but subtly different behavior. Chrome does not destroy my running context to forcibly restart. I've had the "red" about tag indicating critically out of date for a few weeks on a laptop, with no issues.

http://www.howtogeek.com/219166/you-won%E2%80%99t-be-able-to...

I love the clarity and readability of these errors. You can work on UX at lower levels, and it looks like this. Beautiful. I'm not even a Rust dev, I'm mostly in C# land these days, but I appreciate the effort this takes. Well done!

Although you can get the coding support in Sublime through Omnisharp: http://www.omnisharp.net/#integrations

They are providing the same tools they use to drive VSC to many popular editors, including Emacs and Vim as well. It seems that Microsoft wants to give you the best support they can in whatever environment you like!

The article makes some good points, part of the problem I have with describing "functions" is that there really is a LOT to unpack there, but after years of software development the idea of a function with all its nuance is a single idea, very compressed. To teach that you have to unpack it and take it slow.

I would also note that expertise in one field doesn't mean you have expertise in another field. Many (or most) expert software engineers are not expert educators. They are separate skills. It's beautiful to watch someone with both skill sets work. I strive for understanding and expertise in both, and I hope that it helps.

I don't think the issue is 'any contact', it's specifically "Harassment of our Authors" and "unwanted attention". This indicates that it's inappropriate content, regardless of the source, and it also may not have stopped when asked, hence harassment. It may also be specifically from older men in this case, but the behavior isn't appropriate for anyone. This needs to stop.

I find myself frustrated almost any time I open a WSJ or other paywall article, and close them immediately. It hampers shared understanding and discussion. The 'web' workaround isn't viable for me either. I want to forward URLs to friends, and have open conversations, not conversations only with those savvy enough to work around the paywall. I think we should consider careful focused HN policy around paywall links.

I appreciate insights and research like this. It seems clear to me that these issues are complex, multi-faceted, and often subtle. If they were obvious single issues they would be much easier to address.

Figuring out hard to see sources of bias and discrimination make them easier to address. For my part, I'll try to consider fair distribution of both boring and fun tasks in groups when breaking down work.