saguro

This sounds actually illegal? Like unauthorized access to computer systems federal crime illegal? What the fuck were they thinking.

That thing facebook does with demanding your phone number, that's my favorite dark pattern. Apple does the same thing with iOS upgrades.

First you pose a seemingly innocent question, like 'would you like to give us your phone number so we can keep your account secure?' or 'would you like to upgrade to new iOS?'. Then you take away the NO option. You replace it with 'i'll decide later'. And by doing so, you make it not a choice for the user. You make it a statistical guarantee that sooner or later, most users will cave in and hit yes, even if by accident. iOS is an extreme example of this - when you say you don't want to upgrade, you are immediately prompted with a pin code request as if your device just locked itself, and your reflex is to punch in the pin to unlock it again. But if you read what it says at the bottom, it's asking for your pin to get permission to schedule the upgrade that you just said no to.

Whoever the designers are who came up with this stuff, fuck them. This shit is going to be in ethics textbooks in a decade or two. I hope someone from the facebook UX team is reading this, I hope they know their day job is to make the world a worse place.

That's a great example of why unit testing is mostly useless.

Having an expected/input output set when writing something like a parser is standard practice. Turning that set into unit tests is worthless for a few reasons.

1: You will design your code to make them all pass. A unit test is useless if it always passes. When your test framework comes back saying x/x (100%) of tests have passed, you are receiving ZERO information as to the validity of your system.

2: You wrote the unit tests with the same assumptions, biases, and limitations as the code they're testing. If you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the system should do, it will manifest in both the code and the test. This is true of most unit tests - they are tautological.

3: While doing all of the above and achieving almost zero additional utility, you had to fragment your logic in a way that easily yields itself to unit testing. More than likely, that's not the most readable or understandable way said code could have been written. You sacrificed clarity for unit testability. Metrics like test code coverage unintentionally steer developers to writing unreadable tangled code.

The only use case for unit testing here would be if this parser was a component that gets frequently updated by many people or a component that gets implemented anew for different configurations. But at this point i'm just talking about regression testing, and there are many ways to do that other than unit testing.

There's a much easier way to break it down.

Tests are a pattern. And patterns are the bread and butter of the medicore. That's not to say that patterns or tests are bad, but high calibre guys know when to use which tool. As a tool, unit testing is almost useless.

Low calibre guys don't have any feel for what they're doing. They just use the tools and patterns they were taught to use. All the time. This goes from engineers to managers to other disciplines.

I've seen people at a factory floor treating my test instructions for a device I built as some kind of bible gospel. I had a new girl who had no idea I designed said gadget telling me off for not doing the testing exactly like the instruction manual I wrote says.

The same thing happened with patterns and unit tests. You have hordes of stupid people following the mantra to the letter because they don't actually understand the intent. Any workplace where testing is part of their 'culture' signals to me that its full of mediocre devs who were whipped into some kind of productivity by overbearing use of patterns. It's a good way to get work done with mediocre devs, but good devs are just stifled by it and avoid places that force it.

A DNN might be more effective at exploring the hypyerparameter space than people are with their intuition and luck. Rumor is Google has achieved this.

So the only advantage of the TPU is it's a simpler and more specialized asic? Google didn't break any new ground in terms of training perf?

No. Handing over card details just pre-authorizes them to make transactions later.

Many of “thousand of Reddit stories” are just like your comment. Repeating a meme, nothing more.

Demonstrably, provably, completely, wrong.

https://www.reddit.com/r/netneutrality/comments/7kzblu/i_con... - 4 page account of comms

https://www.reddit.com/r/Firearms/comments/75yjkd/the_offici... - photos showing redditor attended in person instead of making a phone call. Was told their concerns would be 'passed along'

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/6dm169/i_also... - full account of comms. Again cookie cutter response.

Maybe this is biased because it's the top results. Let's jump to page 4.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SaltLakeCity/comments/7dtlyr/i_just... - rep's voice mail is full and has been for months. No response

https://www.reddit.com/r/Connecticut/comments/7gwins/this_is... - representative actually stands up for the interests of constituents. Yay, we got one!

No memes here, just detailed accounts which overwhelmingly demonstrate that paid-for representatives have a strategy to deal with this. As for civic duties, you do not have a civic duty to uphold a process which is a textbook example of regulatory capture. If you get success by doing it, great. But statistically, for the majority of Americans, talking to their rep is worse than doing nothing. It's spending their time and effort on a process which is designed to ignore them, so they don't spend that same effort searching for an alternative process which might actually work.

This process used to be effective; before it was circumvented by lobbying activity. You can't cling to it today just because it worked yesterday. You also can't get jobs by just turning up to places and handing out your CV. Times change.

You're suggesting that your n=1 anecdote weighs more than those thousands of reddit stories? Or that my position is invalid because instead of engaging in another n=1 anecdote I aggregated the outcome of many?

For your one story, you can click the top few links of that search to see detailed accounts and full documented histories from representatives who are clearly systemically stonewalling this kind of activism. And judging by those counts, they are the majority.

www.google.com/search?q=i+contacted+my+representative+site%3Areddit.com

Knock yourself out.

Spoiler alert: almost everyone reports getting a cookie-cutter email or scripted response about why the rep will stay the course. They clearly have an established strategy of how to handle the 'contact your rep' crowd and channel their efforts to /dev/null.

Because calling paid-for representatives has such a strong record of success over the last decade of human rights erosion.

Talking to your representative is roughly as useful in curbing these things, as doing nothing at all. What's the real solution?

The plea of stupidity in high profile insider trading cases is a smoke screen - that was my point.

Highly successful executives engage in insider trading quite frequently (see link). When they do, they take a calculated risk. You can be quite sure that none of them are stupid in any sense of the word. They take a measured risk and some succeed and some fail, depending on luck, skill, ambitions, and how big/rich they already are. From what little I know, doing it in a an open manner is actually the best best way to go about insider trading. If you attempt to skirt around it by doing anything shady like having friends/relatives execute the trades for you, the evidence is undeniable once discovered. If you go about it 'openly' and instead rely on blurry interpretation or your ability to plead ignorance or put the timeline into question, it's a lot harder to nail you.

There are many cases of brazen broad-daylight insider trading, such as Donald Trump right now. Only the ones that end in successful legal action go on to be considered stupid. Even when they do get caught, a lot of the time the penalties are relatively lax, like suspended or weekend sentences for first time offenders.

So no, just because he is successful as an executive at a major corporation doesn't at all make it 'stupid' for him to engage in insider trading. That line of reasoning is a diversion from the facts of the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_SEC_enforcement_...

The news doesn't seem to have been that bad for Intel's stock

That's a red herring. Krzanich had no idea how badly the news would impact the stock. He may have well overestimated it in his mind and chose to sell. Just because he didn't make huge gains from the possible insider trading, doesn't preclude the possibility of insider trading occurring.

So the whole argument here is:

1) Krzanich couldn't be possibly stupid enough to do this.

2) He didn't make a ton of money so it's a stupid plan, he could't possibly be stupid enough to do this.

Weak.

From TFA:

As you can see in the above code, the login functionality specifically

looks for an admin user named "mydlinkBRionyg" and will accept the password

of "abc12345cba" if found. This is a classic backdoor. Simply login with

the credentials that I just mentioned from the above code.

Programming mistake? Seriously?

I would say that if people on HN are saying the attack is too stupid to be government supported, then the government has succeeded at their primary goal of having plausible deniability with these issues.

If we take recent history, we now have hard evidence of all sorts of conspiracy theory type stuff being absolutely true. With that in mind, do we just keep defaulting to 'not government' every time there's a deliberate backdoor identified? Sounds like a great way to maintain the status quo and ensure that no action is ever taken to curb this.

this is a textbook example of a sloppy developer who doesn't understand security

From TFA:

02 - Hard coded backdoor

02.1 - Vulnerable code analysis

02.2 - Remote exploitation

That's probably a question that CS researches will get to address one day in the future... Estimating what percentage of reasonable length DNA arrangements leads to intelligent organisms.

The definition of 'arranged marriage' today has been neutered. Until 2 generations ago, arranged marriage meant that women had absolutely no say in their marriage - it was at the decision of the parents and to further the desires of the parents.

Today, arranged marriage means that the woman's parents will present her with prospective marriage partners but leave the decision making to her, including veto or asking the parents to 'arrange' for a man that the woman fancies - kind of like Tinder but the matching algorithm is parents. That version of arranged marriage is straight up better than the (serious) dating scene in westernized countries.

The original version is definitely considered evil by today's morals.

discerning of good and evil

Humans don't have such a capacity. The notions of 'good' and 'evil' have historically been in flux and went through many huge changes. Modern humans consider the typical behaviors of past humans as 'evil'.

Vikings - rape after conquering is good. People today: that's evil.

India until 2 generations ago - arranged marriage is good. Today that's evil.

Homosexuality - has oscillated many times between good and evil. In fact, different geographic regions will still have polar opposite views on this today.

Does it even matter? It's a learned behavior in humans too. Nurture plays a far bigger role in what we do than people give it credit for.

I don't think all branches of evolution lead to intelligence given any finite amount of time.

It's worse than just having to trust their metrics. Last time I looked, you can't access your own realtime heart rate no matter what - it was only available to 'registered partners' or some shit. When I was looking, their partners page had a demo video of a crowd watching a football match, and had that overlaid with the heart rates of the fans. So basically, next level sentiment monitoring and advertising capabilities.

So actually, Fitbit is in the business of collecting high resolution fitness data which they onsell to 'partners', and they've managed to convince the public to PAY to have this data collected about them in exchange for really coarse aggregated statistics which are an order of magnitude less useful than what Fitbit extracts from the raw data and keeps for themselves.

Fitbit's marketing strategy is the work of evil geniuses.

Agreed. I guess the core of the question is 'what does that ultimately give nintendo?'.

And that's where I think the government needs to step in as it did with copyright and patents, and ask an additional question: 'what does that ultimately give to society?'. The answer is decreased environmental impact and decreased cost of living. The console manufacturers are passing on costs to consumers that consumers shouldn't have to bear - and don't have to bear when it comes to patents and copyrights. Imagine if patents were perpetual like DRM is and rocket engine technology would forever belong to a single manufacturer with the license..?

But they don't always release a next gen device. And a lot of people who own a <brand> device will automatically buy next gen <brand> when it comes out. And then only a comparatively small fraction of games is typically re-sold without modification.

You think the return on the tiny percentage intersection of those conditions justifices the cost to society in terms of wasted materials and labour to do that? Does it even justify the manufacturer's development costs to create that lockout in the first place..?

I don't buy the added development cost argument. Firstly because AAA dev kits already have out of the box support for the Switch, secondly because sony and xbone put just as much effort into preventing unsigned code execution as nintendo does.

Then is it just about protecting the emulation market? For nintendo I'd agree. For sony I'd say maybe. For microsoft? They don't really have an emulation market to speak of, but they still dump a lot of resources into DRM.

So is it all about the perceived threat of piracy, or is there more?

But to my earlier point, piracy stops being a factor a decade or two after the release of a console. Why don't we put time limits on DRM like we do with copyright and patents so that the manufacturers are forced to allow full use of the devices eventually.

Beyond preventing the distribution of pirated games, why do console manufacturers put so much effort into preventing unvetted code from running on their hardware?

Does Nintendo actually stand to lose anything if a homebrew community evolved?

Shouldn't we put time limits on DRM like we do on copyright so that eventually owners of these devices are allowed to use them however they like?

My sony PSP and nintendo DS are collecting dust because I already played all the licensed games I was going to on them. Now these devices are worthless to me and get tiny prices on the 2nd hand market. If their owners released firmware signing keys, these devices could have a new lease on useful life as homebrew machines, but instead their owners tell us no, they'd rather the devices became prematurely useless and that we can't get any use out of them unless they can cash in on it... It's weird now that I think about it.

How about by manipulating your facebook news feed and exposing you to a carefully selected series of images and headlines to sway your opinion on political topics without you even realizing.

How about identifying which youtubers your children are impressionable to, and then approaching them to push unhealthy food products?

How about using your porn browsing habits and location history to figure out when you start cheating on your significant other, how about offering you divorce lawyers before you even realize you need one.

How about figuring out when you become isolated and lonely by looking at changes in the volume of texts and phone calls and IMs you exchange, and then selling that primarily to dating and sex chat websites.

Ever wondered why these websites are silently deploying anti-adblock functionality rather than trying to bring the matter through the legal system? Because if it ever became a legal case and they were made to disclose how they use the data, there'd be a fucking uproar. This is exactly what happened in the EU and that's why advertisers had their balls cut off in that region. So now they've opted to support the destruction of net neutrality and bolster DRM laws so they can shoehorn advertisements and anti-adblock under DRM instead.

People need to get 100% clear on something: there are very smart people getting paid very generous salaries whose job is to find ways to distort and manipulate laws and public perception to prevent consumers from asserting their rights against having their behavior manipulated. I don't think it's an understatement to say that these groups are a major threat to the wellbeing of the people, right up there with war and climate change. Ajit Pai is a textbook example of this pattern. He's not stupid, he's not an asshole. He's a smart person who has been tasked with a goal that goes against the public good. And he's done a good job at that task.

I wonder if this guy will look at this topic and all the counter arguments and downvotes and actually stop and ask himself if maybe its possible he is a bit brainwashed.

I mean, you're using moralistic arguments to defend a clearly immoral market actor whose entire business model revolves around abusing lack of regulations to collect and sell consumer information without their knowledge or informed consent.

You're defending a business entity whose entire existence is against your personal interest. In market terms, you are not a rational actor maximizing self interest. If you're not brain washed, what are you?

Just like businesses would be irrational if they didn't use every legal tax 'loophole' to make sure they pay no tax, you are irrational if you don't use available legal avenues to get the content you want for the lowest price - in this case, viewing it with ad blockers. If that means content providers go out of business, that's okay. New ones will show up with new business models that are actually viable. The free market expects individuals to maximize their self-interest within the confines of the law. If you're not doing that, you're just harming yourself for no meaningful reason whatsoever.

If anyone is wondering what greater harm comes from the advertising industry than just showing obnoxious images, it's this.

Consumers becoming so brain washed, so accepting of the advertising status quo that they actually defend it even though everything about it is against their personal interests.

I don’t understand the entitlement

There is no entitlement, it's a right. I am exercising my right as the operator of this PC to connect to content providers and display their content however the fuck I want within the confines of the law. The law doesn't give them any right to extract revenue from me if I choose to opt out. If they have a problem with that, they have the right try to block me within the confines of the law. And I have the right to bypass that block within the confines of the law.

Let me put it another way. Your sentiment is way more pliant and ethical than the sentiment of the guys who run the ad industry. Your job history, drinking habits, sex habits, food preferences, mental health, personal aspirations, etc - all of this stuff is up for sale to anyone in the advertising circles. The only thing missing is your credit card number and name/address so it's not 'technically' PIA even though correlating all of it back to you is trivial and everyone knows it. I thought I was paranoid about ads, and then I landed a job in the ad industry and realized my worst paranoia was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what actually goes on.

Don't defend the guys who are fucking you, stand up for your rights.

To me you are consenting the moment you decide to use services and websites that cost millions of dollars to maintain and expecting and paying little to nothing compared to the real cost of those services.

That's not how consent works, if it was then I would just claim that by establishing a connection to my computer, the remote website consents to my rules including ad blocking. My computer is mine, I have the right to display the content sent to my computer however the fuck I want. If my doing so ends up putting some company out of business because their tracker revenue dries up, that's perfectly fine, that's literally the free market at work and the consumers signaling to providers that this business model is not viable.

I'm not obliged to be a source of revenue to these companies.