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a quantitative analysis of the graying of barack obama's hair
| > (graph) gray value of obama’s hair (expressed as % similar to morgan freeman’s hair) over time, with annotations of important events.
i think this line sums up the study best for me. | i was under the impression that presidents dye their hair regularly.if a politician is too old - dye out some (or all) of the gray. reagan being an extreme example - not a single gray hair.if a politician is young - clinton, bush, obama - add some gray, until nature catches up.gray hair conveys "gravitas" - age, and experience - exploits a natural human bias. i'm sure this is focus-grouped to death. this all being in the age of color tv and hdtv of course - i doubt kennedy stooped to this level. pretty punishing, and just imagine a 4k picture or better down the road. |
a quantitative analysis of the graying of barack obama's hair
| i was under the impression that presidents dye their hair regularly.if a politician is too old - dye out some (or all) of the gray. reagan being an extreme example - not a single gray hair.if a politician is young - clinton, bush, obama - add some gray, until nature catches up.gray hair conveys "gravitas" - age, and experience - exploits a natural human bias. i'm sure this is focus-grouped to death. this all being in the age of color tv and hdtv of course - i doubt kennedy stooped to this level. pretty punishing, and just imagine a 4k picture or better down the road. | well... he probably has the crappiest job on the planet... |
a quantitative analysis of the graying of barack obama's hair
| well... he probably has the crappiest job on the planet... | i always figured his handlers were just having it dyed less and less to enhance the "experience" image. |
a quantitative analysis of the graying of barack obama's hair
| i always figured his handlers were just having it dyed less and less to enhance the "experience" image. | 2015 ig nobel award for politics, right there.i love this kind of 'research'. it's frivolous, but there is an underlying point about the stressfulness of presidency. |
cosmos browser – a text-message-based web browser. now on android
| congrats on launching this! i've been looking into using sms as a delivery mechanism for a while now, for different reasons. access to, for example, medical information through sms could be immensely helpful in the developing world.two questions that made me stumble were:- how does the pricing work out? in my research, all sms services were way too expensive to work at scale, especially with sending to the developing world, africa etc. you use twillio, and for developing countries it's mostly 0.01$/message over a local number, but no option to buy a local number.- what is the difference between land coverage of cellular networks vs. edge/3g networks in the developing world? does it make sense to focus on sms to increase reach?would appreciate what you guys or anyone else has found out about this. | awesome product, horrriblleeee timing on the launch :) |
cosmos browser – a text-message-based web browser. now on android
| awesome product, horrriblleeee timing on the launch :) | we've spent a significant amount of money already in the first couple of hours. we really need your support! if you guys could help us out on tilt, that would be awesome! we also have a teespring campaign going!<link> <3 you guys! |
cosmos browser – a text-message-based web browser. now on android
| we've spent a significant amount of money already in the first couple of hours. we really need your support! if you guys could help us out on tilt, that would be awesome! we also have a teespring campaign going!<link> <3 you guys! | hey guys, please note that this is still in the early stages of development. please report any bugs to [email protected] love,
team cosmos |
cosmos browser – a text-message-based web browser. now on android
| hey guys, please note that this is still in the early stages of development. please report any bugs to [email protected] love,
team cosmos | horrible landing page. no information about what/why/how whatsoever. |
not a bash bug
| > this feature is documented under the -f option of the export built-in command. the implementation detail of using an environment variable whose value starts with "() {" and which may contain further commands after the function definition is not documented, but could still be considered a feature.this undocumented implementation detail is also a limitation on the use of regular environment variables, and should be documented. when reading documentation about a mechanism, i expect that special magical strings which change behaviour of the mechanism are clearly documented. if such documentation had existed, someone might have noticed it and guarded against it.> assumedly programs like apache filter out environment variables properly. but unfortunately, in the validation of input data, they fails to validate correctly input data because they don't expect that data starting with "() {" will be interpreted by their bash child processes. if there's a bug, it's not in bash, but in apache and the other internet facing programs that call bash without properly validating and controlling the data they pass to bash.it isn't easy to validate and control data against an unknown magical feature in one of many possible shells.> but on the other hand, it is free software and not difficult to check the source to see as the nose in the middle of the face, what is done. when reusing a component with missing specifications and lacking documentation, checking the source of the implementation should be standard procedure, but it has clearly not been done by apache or dhcp developers.i think the shell is specified in posix/sus. checking the source of all possible open-source shells would be a huge job. i don't know how they should check source code of the closed-source shells. i don't blame them for using the environment variables according to available documentation.edit: typo | it's an "internet tech" bug. every developper should know how hard it is to parse textual data vs well defined binary in a secure and fool proof way. yet every damn internet piece of infrastructure is based on handling textual data, mash it up, pass it around, escape and unescape it in hundreds of stupid formats. no wonder that most security troubles surfacing over the years are some form of abuse of this crazy design flaw: buffer overruns, sql injection, the openssl bug a few month back and now this. let's go back to sanity and use well defined binary protocols where there is no damn way to send a command by text but only very explicit semantics, and stop the unix way of thinking that text should be more than a human interface. text should never be used as a command language in between complex programs. period. |
not a bash bug
| it's an "internet tech" bug. every developper should know how hard it is to parse textual data vs well defined binary in a secure and fool proof way. yet every damn internet piece of infrastructure is based on handling textual data, mash it up, pass it around, escape and unescape it in hundreds of stupid formats. no wonder that most security troubles surfacing over the years are some form of abuse of this crazy design flaw: buffer overruns, sql injection, the openssl bug a few month back and now this. let's go back to sanity and use well defined binary protocols where there is no damn way to send a command by text but only very explicit semantics, and stop the unix way of thinking that text should be more than a human interface. text should never be used as a command language in between complex programs. period. | > the problem is that 5 years later, new software was developed (apache, dhcp, etc), that uses bash in child processesi don't think this history is correct.at the time, most systems used sh as the default non-interactive shell. the other shells such as csh, ksh and bash were considered to add interactive niceties, but programmers and sysadmins expected scripts to use sh.one of the reasons sh doesn't have a lot of wiz-bang features is that it needs to stay compatible and portable across all the different unixes so that all the scripts, past and present, will work. and sysadmins liked this conservative approach.it wasn't until the rise of linux, and the aliasing of /bin/sh to point to bash, that sysadmins started becoming comfortable with running bash as the default non-interactive shell. and that was only because bash promised to be fully compatible with sh. and bash was compatible but it also added new scripting features. but most developers and sysadmins rejected using these new features because you would lose portability to sh systems if you did so. that is until now, with the dominance of linux and portability becoming less of a concern.so really this bug is the fault of bash's embrace-and-extend strategy. |
not a bash bug
| > the problem is that 5 years later, new software was developed (apache, dhcp, etc), that uses bash in child processesi don't think this history is correct.at the time, most systems used sh as the default non-interactive shell. the other shells such as csh, ksh and bash were considered to add interactive niceties, but programmers and sysadmins expected scripts to use sh.one of the reasons sh doesn't have a lot of wiz-bang features is that it needs to stay compatible and portable across all the different unixes so that all the scripts, past and present, will work. and sysadmins liked this conservative approach.it wasn't until the rise of linux, and the aliasing of /bin/sh to point to bash, that sysadmins started becoming comfortable with running bash as the default non-interactive shell. and that was only because bash promised to be fully compatible with sh. and bash was compatible but it also added new scripting features. but most developers and sysadmins rejected using these new features because you would lose portability to sh systems if you did so. that is until now, with the dominance of linux and portability becoming less of a concern.so really this bug is the fault of bash's embrace-and-extend strategy. | > if there's a bug, it's not in bash, but in apache and the
other internet facing programs that call bash without properly
validating and controlling the data they pass to bash.it's absurd to think that a transport layer should be responsible for "validating" all possible contexts in which the data it transports could be used. how is apache supposed to know the difference between using a magic string and simply mentioning it? how is apache supposed to know what magic strings apply to all possible subprocesses of sh that inherit environment variables? a program that receives user data has to be responsible for validating that data, and it's not productive to characterize the lack of validation as a "feature" just because it can be used to provide functionality.this kind of misguided thinking leads to practices like mod_security refusing to allow comments that contain the magic strings "1=1" because they might be trying to inject sql into something. |
not a bash bug
| > if there's a bug, it's not in bash, but in apache and the
other internet facing programs that call bash without properly
validating and controlling the data they pass to bash.it's absurd to think that a transport layer should be responsible for "validating" all possible contexts in which the data it transports could be used. how is apache supposed to know the difference between using a magic string and simply mentioning it? how is apache supposed to know what magic strings apply to all possible subprocesses of sh that inherit environment variables? a program that receives user data has to be responsible for validating that data, and it's not productive to characterize the lack of validation as a "feature" just because it can be used to provide functionality.this kind of misguided thinking leads to practices like mod_security refusing to allow comments that contain the magic strings "1=1" because they might be trying to inject sql into something. | the original author of bash (a friend of mine, which is why i have this context) has been being interviewed by various newspapers today regarding shellshock, and finds the idea that he might have anticipated the number of ways people integrated bash into various systems (such as with apache allowing remote control over environment variables when running software in security domains designed to protect against unknown malicious users) quite humorous. apparently, it has been an uphill battle to explain that this was all coded so long ago that even by the time he had already passed the project on to a new developer (after having maintained it for quite a while himself) the world wide web still wasn't a thing, and only maybe gopher (maybe) had been deployed: that this was even before the morris worm happened...> in an interview thursday, mr. fox, the bash inventor, joked that his first reaction to the shellshock discovery was, “aha, my plan worked.”<link> |
how much to keep of your startup?
i just listened to sam altmans "how to start a startup" lecture. one part that irritated me is that it is said that in the end you will probably keep around 10% of your startup.<p>im building a startup right now that is suitable for hyper growth. i expect to keep the majority of it. from previous ventures, i have enough money to pay for myself for the forseeable future. and one or two team members if i find them. so far i do stuff on my own. its a pure software startup. why would i expect to sell 90% of it?<p>zuckerberg owns 28% of facebook.
larry and sergey own 18% of google.<p>any numbers on how much the airbnb, dropbox, pinterest... founders kept? | what matters is a controlling interest, not raw percentages.gates wound up with single percentage points of microsoft. around 2010, he and ballmer owned about 6% combined and were the two largest shareholders [ larger than any of the massive s&p based mutual funds obligated to hold microsoft shares ]. this allowed them to control the company without worrying about wall street because ousting gates as chairman or ballmer as ceo required a significant super-majority of voting shares ( ~56% plus 1).for what it's worth, gates and ballmer also amassed more wealth than the three tech founders you mentioned. in no small part because they took almost no outside investment. this allowed them to maintain control over the timing of the microsoft ipo [ venture capital funds have lifetimes and thus there is a pressure toward a liquidity event for any company which takes vc funds that gates and balmer avoided ].good luck. | if you're hyper-growth, the needs of your startup will outgrow your team of 1-3 very quickly. you and your small team will get overwhelmed by either your infrastructure (servers melting down under load), customer support, or user acquisition costs.the only way to keep up is to spend money addressing each of these areas. unfortunately, hyper growth startups are rarely hyper-revenue startups so the money's gotta come from elsewhere. for at least a few years, you'll be outspending any incoming revenue to keep the growth engine going.if you want to keep more equity then the best choice is to focus on sustainable growth. take on customers only when you have the revenue to support them and make sure you monetize your growth very early. this is a perfectly acceptable strategy. until a hyper-growth startup shows up as a competitor and is willing to burn investor cash to move 10x faster than you and doesn't need to worry about monetization strategies for a few years. |
how much to keep of your startup?
i just listened to sam altmans "how to start a startup" lecture. one part that irritated me is that it is said that in the end you will probably keep around 10% of your startup.<p>im building a startup right now that is suitable for hyper growth. i expect to keep the majority of it. from previous ventures, i have enough money to pay for myself for the forseeable future. and one or two team members if i find them. so far i do stuff on my own. its a pure software startup. why would i expect to sell 90% of it?<p>zuckerberg owns 28% of facebook.
larry and sergey own 18% of google.<p>any numbers on how much the airbnb, dropbox, pinterest... founders kept? | if you're hyper-growth, the needs of your startup will outgrow your team of 1-3 very quickly. you and your small team will get overwhelmed by either your infrastructure (servers melting down under load), customer support, or user acquisition costs.the only way to keep up is to spend money addressing each of these areas. unfortunately, hyper growth startups are rarely hyper-revenue startups so the money's gotta come from elsewhere. for at least a few years, you'll be outspending any incoming revenue to keep the growth engine going.if you want to keep more equity then the best choice is to focus on sustainable growth. take on customers only when you have the revenue to support them and make sure you monetize your growth very early. this is a perfectly acceptable strategy. until a hyper-growth startup shows up as a competitor and is willing to burn investor cash to move 10x faster than you and doesn't need to worry about monetization strategies for a few years. | i might be wrong, but i doubt the cap tables for the startups you listed are public. what the founders own is their own business.sam's likely talking about a 'typical' exit for a startup that's taken venture capital - multiple funding rounds, reasonable valuations at each round.if your startup is a facebook or google and does a lot better than the 'typical' startup that exits (which just by getting to an exit has already done better than most), you can raise at better valuations and choose to sell less equity. if your startup manages to grow in a capital-efficient manner, you can also choose to sell less equity and keep more of it for yourself.that said, being irritated with sam is just shooting the messenger - he's not lying to you. i certainly know of founders who came away with much, much less than 10% of their company. that also isn't necessarily a bad thing, since the stake they sold was used to get to an exit and expand their company. i'd certainly rather have 1% of a mammoth exit than 100% of a failure. |
how much to keep of your startup?
i just listened to sam altmans "how to start a startup" lecture. one part that irritated me is that it is said that in the end you will probably keep around 10% of your startup.<p>im building a startup right now that is suitable for hyper growth. i expect to keep the majority of it. from previous ventures, i have enough money to pay for myself for the forseeable future. and one or two team members if i find them. so far i do stuff on my own. its a pure software startup. why would i expect to sell 90% of it?<p>zuckerberg owns 28% of facebook.
larry and sergey own 18% of google.<p>any numbers on how much the airbnb, dropbox, pinterest... founders kept? | i might be wrong, but i doubt the cap tables for the startups you listed are public. what the founders own is their own business.sam's likely talking about a 'typical' exit for a startup that's taken venture capital - multiple funding rounds, reasonable valuations at each round.if your startup is a facebook or google and does a lot better than the 'typical' startup that exits (which just by getting to an exit has already done better than most), you can raise at better valuations and choose to sell less equity. if your startup manages to grow in a capital-efficient manner, you can also choose to sell less equity and keep more of it for yourself.that said, being irritated with sam is just shooting the messenger - he's not lying to you. i certainly know of founders who came away with much, much less than 10% of their company. that also isn't necessarily a bad thing, since the stake they sold was used to get to an exit and expand their company. i'd certainly rather have 1% of a mammoth exit than 100% of a failure. | another example that comes to my mind is markus frind, owner of plentyoffish. did he every sell a part of it? i think he kept everything. and makes like 10 million a year. not sure if that qualifies as "hypergrowth". what do you guys think? |
how much to keep of your startup?
i just listened to sam altmans "how to start a startup" lecture. one part that irritated me is that it is said that in the end you will probably keep around 10% of your startup.<p>im building a startup right now that is suitable for hyper growth. i expect to keep the majority of it. from previous ventures, i have enough money to pay for myself for the forseeable future. and one or two team members if i find them. so far i do stuff on my own. its a pure software startup. why would i expect to sell 90% of it?<p>zuckerberg owns 28% of facebook.
larry and sergey own 18% of google.<p>any numbers on how much the airbnb, dropbox, pinterest... founders kept? | another example that comes to my mind is markus frind, owner of plentyoffish. did he every sell a part of it? i think he kept everything. and makes like 10 million a year. not sure if that qualifies as "hypergrowth". what do you guys think? | the mismatch you have with altman is that you're assuming you'll keep the lion's share of the founder equity (as distinct from employee and investor equity). that being the case: with investors, you can plausibly hope to end up with somewhere between 20-50% of the company.say that as a single-founder company, in the unlikely event that you manage to raise not only a seed rounds but an institutional a round, you end up holding 40% of the company by the time it sells.now look at what happens if you have two equal co-founders: 13%, squarely in altman country.being irritated about this is pointless. at each dilutive step --- dividing the pie between cofounders, allocating options to employees, buying a pile of money from seed investors, buying a bigger pile of money from vcs --- you were given a judgement call: "will the amount of equity i end up, converted to dollars, be higher or lower if i give up equity now?" if the answer is "no", you say "no".often the answer is "yes". for instance: "will i make more money in the long run if i cut my stake in half by bringing on an equal cofounder?" if you're being careful, and you don't have a cofounder already, probably yes. looking at your percentage is not helpful. think of it this way: prior to having a cofounder, all your energy and skill is generating ${x} amount of value. if you select a cofounder carefully, you can end up generating more than ${2x}: not only is there a whole other founder working on the problem, but their skills complement yours. also you can get the stomach flu for a week and not leave the company rudderless.the percentage you're left with is a barometer, but it's a little like the spot cost of a share of stock: you need more context to actually evaluate it. having 90% of it can be a bad sign: it means you're keeping a lot of your value in the bank, rather than deploying it to accelerate your business.you say you're building a company positioned for "hyper growth". i'd suggest you double-check that assumption. implied in the strategy of "hyper-growth" is "fast go-to-market". that costs money. money costs equity. my sense is that a lot of people who believe they're in a shoot- the- moon startup are just fine with 10%; 10% of ${big number} is ${big number}. if you're thinking about what 10% of ${modest number} is, you're not thinking about "hyper growth". which is fine! i think "hyper growth" is a bad strategy for most founders.you can keep 100% of the company if you go it alone, don't take on investors, and pay nosebleed market salaries for all your employees. good luck. just remember what 100% of zero is.here's a link to one of the rare infographics that is actually helpful:<link>'s joel spolsky on how equity divides in a well-run startup:<link> |
microsoft’s cube debuts at decibel, creating a one-of-a-kind digital dance party
| any intended positive effect of this project is nullified by having a "senior marketing director" stand in front of it, emit a bunch of pointless superlatives, and take credit. nerd cool factor approaches zero. | i don't get the negativity. i've seen the cube - currently installed at emp museum - it's a pretty cool art project.is it pointless? yes, but it doesn't have to have a point. it's simply cool way to "transform" you from the meatspace into the "cube space" using modern technology. |
microsoft’s cube debuts at decibel, creating a one-of-a-kind digital dance party
| i don't get the negativity. i've seen the cube - currently installed at emp museum - it's a pretty cool art project.is it pointless? yes, but it doesn't have to have a point. it's simply cool way to "transform" you from the meatspace into the "cube space" using modern technology. | people connected in space... can dance together...... by being on opposite sides of an opaque obelisk. or, you know, you could actually dance together, in actual physical contact, actually looking at each other, rather than some laggy, pointless, abstract acid-trip-inspired video game (which uses more computing power and electrical power than the median us household practically owns). |
microsoft’s cube debuts at decibel, creating a one-of-a-kind digital dance party
| people connected in space... can dance together...... by being on opposite sides of an opaque obelisk. or, you know, you could actually dance together, in actual physical contact, actually looking at each other, rather than some laggy, pointless, abstract acid-trip-inspired video game (which uses more computing power and electrical power than the median us household practically owns). | "canvas for a new kind of creative expression", "unique technological sculpture", "the cube is community". all those buzz phrases make it feel like it's an april fools ad parody. |
microsoft’s cube debuts at decibel, creating a one-of-a-kind digital dance party
| "canvas for a new kind of creative expression", "unique technological sculpture", "the cube is community". all those buzz phrases make it feel like it's an april fools ad parody. | >>
the kinects can read up to three people on each side, and you can see others through the cube, which acts as a portal, virtually connecting people who are separated in physical space.
<link> i would expect this to be a hit in japan where shyness is apparently a taller hurdle to overcome than most of western social norms.<link> |
on building portable linux binaries
| by far the most reliable way i've found to run old binaries on linux is ... to run a windows binary under wine.we have the portable all-free-software binary handler, yay! it just has win32 in the middle ... | you can use gentoo prefix for this:<link> builds everyting except libc. support for building libc is under development by the project. i used an early version of it to provide a build environment for the zfsonlinux kernel modules on coreos:<link> |
on building portable linux binaries
| you can use gentoo prefix for this:<link> builds everyting except libc. support for building libc is under development by the project. i used an early version of it to provide a build environment for the zfsonlinux kernel modules on coreos:<link> | another option:most/all modern distributions can run programs built with lsbcc[1] from the linux standard base workgroup. the lsbdev environment links your program against "stub" .so files that advertise appropriate symbol versions, and prevent referencing library symbols that are not defined in the standard.it can be somewhat of a hassle to get programs to build in this environment, but it greatly reduces the chances of finding an incompatibility when the program is later run under an unexpected linux distribution. lsb includes an app checker[2] which can generate reports[3] showing compatibility with various distributions.[1] <link>[2] <link>[3] <link> |
on building portable linux binaries
| another option:most/all modern distributions can run programs built with lsbcc[1] from the linux standard base workgroup. the lsbdev environment links your program against "stub" .so files that advertise appropriate symbol versions, and prevent referencing library symbols that are not defined in the standard.it can be somewhat of a hassle to get programs to build in this environment, but it greatly reduces the chances of finding an incompatibility when the program is later run under an unexpected linux distribution. lsb includes an app checker[2] which can generate reports[3] showing compatibility with various distributions.[1] <link>[2] <link>[3] <link> | a made a tool called whack [1] as an attempt to solve a small part of the problem. the idea was that you could write scripts that would build statically-linked versions of binaries, such as apache httpd [2]. then, you could run a command like: whack install git+<link> apps/apache2
to install to any location you wanted, and the installation would still work if you mv'd the entire directory somewhere else, or even onto another distribution (provided it didn't have an older libc).i never really the pushed the idea further since i think doing a decent job requires a lot of time and effort, and it solves something which is a minor annoyance for me, rather than causing significant pain. i do still use it for when i need to quickly get a wordpress server for development up and running since it's one command to deploy from scratch.it feels to me like there's lots of scope for something similar to apt-get that builds and installs static binaries (or, at the very least, lets you install to different directories without root, similar to, say, virtualenv for python or rvm for ruby).edit: actually, from a quick glance, it seems like gentoo prefix [3], as mentioned by ryao, allows you to install things as you normally would on a gentoo machine, but without being root and with a prefix of your choosing.[1] <link>
[2] <link>
[3] <link> |
on building portable linux binaries
| a made a tool called whack [1] as an attempt to solve a small part of the problem. the idea was that you could write scripts that would build statically-linked versions of binaries, such as apache httpd [2]. then, you could run a command like: whack install git+<link> apps/apache2
to install to any location you wanted, and the installation would still work if you mv'd the entire directory somewhere else, or even onto another distribution (provided it didn't have an older libc).i never really the pushed the idea further since i think doing a decent job requires a lot of time and effort, and it solves something which is a minor annoyance for me, rather than causing significant pain. i do still use it for when i need to quickly get a wordpress server for development up and running since it's one command to deploy from scratch.it feels to me like there's lots of scope for something similar to apt-get that builds and installs static binaries (or, at the very least, lets you install to different directories without root, similar to, say, virtualenv for python or rvm for ruby).edit: actually, from a quick glance, it seems like gentoo prefix [3], as mentioned by ryao, allows you to install things as you normally would on a gentoo machine, but without being root and with a prefix of your choosing.[1] <link>
[2] <link>
[3] <link> | i know it's not a panacea, but the open build service is helpful in building packages for multiple distributions. |
signaling post-snowden era, new iphone locks out n.s.a
| fta: at a news conference on thursday devoted largely to
combating terror threats from the islamic state,
mr. comey said, “what concerns me about this is companies
marketing something expressly to allow people to hold
themselves beyond the law.”
the state and the law are separate entities, mr. comey. it concerns me that, in your mind, you have conflated the power of the state with the normativity of the law.in the twentieth century, the modern state gained the power to destroy all life on earth. in the twenty-first century, the modern state and the modern citizen gained the power of private machine-assisted telepathy, memory, and computation. the state and its avatars must recognize that it cannot and must not have the ability to exercise absolute power over citizen's thoughts, computations, and communications if it wishes to foster a healthy and free society. | well dudes, you screwed it up for yourselves with illegal wiretapping, the perhaps legal but still outrageous secret court orders and the attitude you presented when all this came to light. fuck you. |
signaling post-snowden era, new iphone locks out n.s.a
| well dudes, you screwed it up for yourselves with illegal wiretapping, the perhaps legal but still outrageous secret court orders and the attitude you presented when all this came to light. fuck you. | the new security in ios 8 protects information stored on
the device itself, but not data stored on icloud, apple’s
cloud service. so apple will still be able to obtain some
customer information stored on icloud in response to
government requests.
some? i think the importance of this qualification has been overlooked everywhere it's been reported. |
signaling post-snowden era, new iphone locks out n.s.a
| the new security in ios 8 protects information stored on
the device itself, but not data stored on icloud, apple’s
cloud service. so apple will still be able to obtain some
customer information stored on icloud in response to
government requests.
some? i think the importance of this qualification has been overlooked everywhere it's been reported. | the most important takeaway of the "post-snowden era" is that both companies and the government lie.apple now is in the damage control mode, trying to undo the massive credibility hit dealt by snowden revelations. but since they were in bed with the nsa for several years prior, i really doubt they have an option of divorce. if they were strong-armed into cooperation before, it'd be foolish to assume that they can get out of it on such a flimsy technicality as a in-device encryption. so what's likely to be happening is that apple started encrypting, the state started saying "oh, noes! it's unbreakable. buy american again." and behind the scenes they still cooperate in a less in-your-face fashion. something as simple as initializing prng on the device in a predictable manner - piece of cake to do, very hard to detect, but exploitable on the spot with a bit of foreknowledge. where there's a will, there's a way. and the will is there. |
signaling post-snowden era, new iphone locks out n.s.a
| the most important takeaway of the "post-snowden era" is that both companies and the government lie.apple now is in the damage control mode, trying to undo the massive credibility hit dealt by snowden revelations. but since they were in bed with the nsa for several years prior, i really doubt they have an option of divorce. if they were strong-armed into cooperation before, it'd be foolish to assume that they can get out of it on such a flimsy technicality as a in-device encryption. so what's likely to be happening is that apple started encrypting, the state started saying "oh, noes! it's unbreakable. buy american again." and behind the scenes they still cooperate in a less in-your-face fashion. something as simple as initializing prng on the device in a predictable manner - piece of cake to do, very hard to detect, but exploitable on the spot with a bit of foreknowledge. where there's a will, there's a way. and the will is there. | this makes me extraordinarily happy, perhaps this is the first major step in the struggle against government spying on innocent citizens?on another note, is anyone disturbed by how even the idea of people being able to store their private data securely being seen as inherently criminal by high level officials? what does that say about these people in power, they literally view your right to privacy as dangerous. sickening. |
⚠ be careful with unicode ⚠
unicode has a lot of little known features. if you allow user generated content you should probably use a whitelist of acceptable symbols. otherwise people may wreak havoc with right-to-left-overrides, zalgo, or most recently, color symbols. | #فͤ҈ͨͥ҉҉ͦ҈҉ͨ҈ͩ҉ͪ҈ͣͯͫ҉ͥͬͨ҈ͭ҉ͮ҈ͯ҉ͨ҈ͭͭͬ҉ͧͥ҈ͣ҉ͨ҉҉҈ͧͥ҉ͯ҈ͮͥ҉ͭ҈ͤ҈ͦ҈ͥ҉ͧ҈ͩͯ҉ͭ҈ͨ҉ͨͥ҉҉ͣ҉ͣͪ҉ͧ҈ͭ҉ͩ҈ͤ҉ͮ҈ͯͥ҈ͬ҈ͭ҈ͦ҈ͨͣ҉ͥ҈ͯ҉҉ͣͧ҈ͫ҉ͭ҈ͥͯͯ҉ͦ҈ͥ҉ͧ҉҈ͩ҉ͭ҈ͣͨ҉ͣͥ҈ͪ҉ͧ҈ͭᅠ'̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏ ᅠᅠ'̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋ กิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิก้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้ก็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็ก้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้ก็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็กิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิ
ͥͦͧͣͤ ͦͧͣͤͥ ͧͣͤͥͦ ͣͤͥͦͧ ͤͥͦͧͣ ͥͦͧͣͤ ͦͧͣͤͥ ͧͣͤͥͦ ͣͤͥͦͧ ͤͥͦͧͣ ͥͦͧͣͤ ͦͧͣͤͥ ͧͣͤͥͦ ͣͤͥͦͧ ͤͥͦͧͣ ͥͦͧͣͤ ͦͧͣͤͥ ͧͣͤͥͦ ͥͦͧͣͤ ͦͧͣͤͥ ͧͣͤͥͦ ͥͦͧͣͤ ͦͧͣͤͥ ▲▲▲̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏ never heard of this. | that sounds like a good idea, but how can i whitelist symbols of languages i don't even know? can you recommend a good whitelist? |
⚠ be careful with unicode ⚠
unicode has a lot of little known features. if you allow user generated content you should probably use a whitelist of acceptable symbols. otherwise people may wreak havoc with right-to-left-overrides, zalgo, or most recently, color symbols. | that sounds like a good idea, but how can i whitelist symbols of languages i don't even know? can you recommend a good whitelist? | this is a test‣that was a rtl override character. seems to have had no effect. interestingly however, it seems hn gave me 0 points to start instead of 1. |
⚠ be careful with unicode ⚠
unicode has a lot of little known features. if you allow user generated content you should probably use a whitelist of acceptable symbols. otherwise people may wreak havoc with right-to-left-overrides, zalgo, or most recently, color symbols. | this is a test‣that was a rtl override character. seems to have had no effect. interestingly however, it seems hn gave me 0 points to start instead of 1. | ⓘ ⓗѧ℣є ѝ☺ ⓘℶⓔѧ шℍλṯ ⑂оμ'℞ⓔ ⓣⓐℓĺĸⅰиҁ ѧβⓞⓤŧ |
⚠ be careful with unicode ⚠
unicode has a lot of little known features. if you allow user generated content you should probably use a whitelist of acceptable symbols. otherwise people may wreak havoc with right-to-left-overrides, zalgo, or most recently, color symbols. | ⓘ ⓗѧ℣є ѝ☺ ⓘℶⓔѧ шℍλṯ ⑂оμ'℞ⓔ ⓣⓐℓĺĸⅰиҁ ѧβⓞⓤŧ | this is just not helpful. i know unicode has "weird stuff" in it. if i didn't, this post would not do much to teach me about them.as for a whitelist, it sounds like an incredibly huge effort to write a good one. telling me i should do it without commenting on whether anyone else has tried and succeeded or failed leaves me where i was before reading this post. i was already thinking "boy, unicode has some weird stuff in it. wonder what i should do about it?" |
the last question by isaac asimov (1956)
| asimov's "the last answer" is perhaps more profound:<link> | one of the comments in the older threads mentions how the multivac represents the opposite of what we got today, because we have so many computers running at the same time (phone, laptop, tv, and tablet currently around me, for instance).i can't completely agree. although all these devices might work by themselves. but they are not complete. each of these machines is currently running software that actively connects one or the other cloud service. isn't what we have pretty much that multivac thing? it's not a single big blob somewhere on this planet, but this just makes it way bigger. |
the last question by isaac asimov (1956)
| one of the comments in the older threads mentions how the multivac represents the opposite of what we got today, because we have so many computers running at the same time (phone, laptop, tv, and tablet currently around me, for instance).i can't completely agree. although all these devices might work by themselves. but they are not complete. each of these machines is currently running software that actively connects one or the other cloud service. isn't what we have pretty much that multivac thing? it's not a single big blob somewhere on this planet, but this just makes it way bigger. | thank you for posting it. i first reading this story as a teenager. i remember it having an impact on me in a way few stories do. i have re-read it many times since then and it can still take my breath away every time. |
the last question by isaac asimov (1956)
| thank you for posting it. i first reading this story as a teenager. i remember it having an impact on me in a way few stories do. i have re-read it many times since then and it can still take my breath away every time. | 'nightfall' is also very good, both the short and novel version.
it may have influenced vernor vinge's deepness in the sky portrayel of the civilization of the intelligent spider creatures who hibernate through the "deepest darkness" of their variable sun's long "off" periods where their civilization falls apart. |
the last question by isaac asimov (1956)
| 'nightfall' is also very good, both the short and novel version.
it may have influenced vernor vinge's deepness in the sky portrayel of the civilization of the intelligent spider creatures who hibernate through the "deepest darkness" of their variable sun's long "off" periods where their civilization falls apart. | it might have already been posted.<link>!/story/fore... |
beyond objective-c, beyond swift
| enjoyed this piece. you could argue that a few of the new features in swift do offer more concise syntax e.g. inferred types and the ability to use map/filter – leading to reduced lines of code similar to arc (but not quite as transformative as reducing state and memory bugs).nevertheless i would be interested in creating a framework to tackle the model/persistence/networking/reactive boilerplate issue. i imagine it would be very popular.also is there a swift version of reactivecocoa? | there are libraries that partially solve the persistence issues the author talks about :mantle : - <link> - <link> restkit<link> |
beyond objective-c, beyond swift
| there are libraries that partially solve the persistence issues the author talks about :mantle : - <link> - <link> restkit<link> | i'm not as in love with swift as i was when it first came out after having used it for some small hobby projects. i agree that it doesn't solve any of the big problems in software development, and more just amalgamates ideas from multiple languages (bringing them into the cocoa world which is a good thing) and makes things safer.however, a lot of sinclair's arguments are misguided/misplaced/misdirected. let me address each of his 4 core issues:databases & persistence – this is almost certainly a library issue rather than a language issue. as others have pointed out, third party libraries solve this problem quite well on other platforms and there's no reason they can't be solved just as well with swift. in fact isn't that kind've what realm is doing?automated restful apis - i don't think i even need to explain for the crowd here why this is a library issue and not a language issue.triggers & responses – swift actually has some rudimentary support for this in the form of property observers (didset, willset). these aren't useful for all of the same scenarios as kvo, but they're a start and i see this as an area that is clearly getting renewed attention with swift.ui layout - how did he manage to criticize this issue so much and not mention interface builder? if you're primarily doing your layout in code, you're doing it wrong. i've been fighting autolayout a lot the last week, so i'm not in a mindset to give ib too much praise. autolayout in ib is still buggy and still has some ridiculous error messages, but i don't spend my days doing geometry calculations as he seems to imply. i'd like to see ib improvements, but again this is not a language issue.so, it sounds like sinclair mostly wants better libraries and better tools. don't we all? |
beyond objective-c, beyond swift
| i'm not as in love with swift as i was when it first came out after having used it for some small hobby projects. i agree that it doesn't solve any of the big problems in software development, and more just amalgamates ideas from multiple languages (bringing them into the cocoa world which is a good thing) and makes things safer.however, a lot of sinclair's arguments are misguided/misplaced/misdirected. let me address each of his 4 core issues:databases & persistence – this is almost certainly a library issue rather than a language issue. as others have pointed out, third party libraries solve this problem quite well on other platforms and there's no reason they can't be solved just as well with swift. in fact isn't that kind've what realm is doing?automated restful apis - i don't think i even need to explain for the crowd here why this is a library issue and not a language issue.triggers & responses – swift actually has some rudimentary support for this in the form of property observers (didset, willset). these aren't useful for all of the same scenarios as kvo, but they're a start and i see this as an area that is clearly getting renewed attention with swift.ui layout - how did he manage to criticize this issue so much and not mention interface builder? if you're primarily doing your layout in code, you're doing it wrong. i've been fighting autolayout a lot the last week, so i'm not in a mindset to give ib too much praise. autolayout in ib is still buggy and still has some ridiculous error messages, but i don't spend my days doing geometry calculations as he seems to imply. i'd like to see ib improvements, but again this is not a language issue.so, it sounds like sinclair mostly wants better libraries and better tools. don't we all? | react.js/om <link> type of framework would be awesome! the only thing is i don't think uikit lends itself nicely to this kind of programming. we're also missing persistent data structures (in the <link> not durable sense). i wasn't the first one to think of this :) <link> |
beyond objective-c, beyond swift
| react.js/om <link> type of framework would be awesome! the only thing is i don't think uikit lends itself nicely to this kind of programming. we're also missing persistent data structures (in the <link> not durable sense). i wasn't the first one to think of this :) <link> | i'm starting to the feel same way about swift. while the syntax is less verbose which i prefer. it feels that its just incremental improvements to objc. |
greeks captivated by alexander-era tomb at amphipolis
| took me a few seconds to realize what's so captivating about this for geeks. | interesting the town had no internet connection. |
greeks captivated by alexander-era tomb at amphipolis
| interesting the town had no internet connection. | a quote: "archaeologists and the greek ministry of culture warn against such speculation, especially since alexander the great is known [sic] to have been buried in egypt."an unfortunate turn of phrase. i would have said "is thought to have been buried in egypt" or "is said to ...", since no one has definitively located alexander's tomb. |
greeks captivated by alexander-era tomb at amphipolis
| a quote: "archaeologists and the greek ministry of culture warn against such speculation, especially since alexander the great is known [sic] to have been buried in egypt."an unfortunate turn of phrase. i would have said "is thought to have been buried in egypt" or "is said to ...", since no one has definitively located alexander's tomb. | whoever is where, the dna analysis will be a story in itself. are there known descendants of alexander the great? |
greeks captivated by alexander-era tomb at amphipolis
| whoever is where, the dna analysis will be a story in itself. are there known descendants of alexander the great? | it is not expected to find alexander by anyone. it is expected to find an important general or someone close to alexander though.the tomb date is greatly varied now, between 100-400bc but before christmas where excavation will be done to the lower outer part of the tomb it will be possible for a ceramic analysis to be done that will pinpoint the date within 2 years. |
antisocial – ello and facebook
| fbpurity add-on to the rescue! <link> out the junk you don't want to see, leaving behind the stories and page elements you do wish to see | does anyone else feel that ello's design is really poor? it feels "over designed," actually.also, who just calls their faq/help a "wtf page?"<link> |
antisocial – ello and facebook
| does anyone else feel that ello's design is really poor? it feels "over designed," actually.also, who just calls their faq/help a "wtf page?"<link> | i like ello. looking forward to it. looks clean and simple. there's room for this sort of thing out there i think. |
antisocial – ello and facebook
| i like ello. looking forward to it. looks clean and simple. there's room for this sort of thing out there i think. | "i guess i’m just not a social network kinda guy."..."i can’t work up any enthusiasm for ello"¯\_(ツ)_/¯ |
antisocial – ello and facebook
| "i guess i’m just not a social network kinda guy."..."i can’t work up any enthusiasm for ello"¯\_(ツ)_/¯ | i'm not sure why people consider not having a fb account such a badge of honor.if you learn to use it, it's pretty good. there is real value is in the many, many useful groups (both public and private) as well as the event invitations.yes, i understand "if you don't pay for it you are the product". i think that's bunk - or rather, i don't think that makes it any less useful.newspapers have been subsidised by advertising for years (the cost of the paper basically covers distribution costs). that never made them any less useful.(and ello? i care even less than the author. pg has the canonical technique for building a product like this: concentrate on a very small market subset, and then expand. i don't see that they have done that.) |
shell shock exploitation vectors
| one thing that'd be somewhat useful, with respect to #2 ("it must invoke bash"), is to separate it into those which specifically invoke bash, versus those that invoke /bin/sh. if bash is not installed as /bin/sh, as is the case on debian and ubuntu, do any of these (inetd, exim, etc.) still explicitly call it? put differently, is this mainly an issue for distributions that ship bash as /bin/sh? or do users of distributions like debian also need to worry about common system services setting bash shell variables?maybe i'll try to answer that by pulling a bunch of debian source packages and grepping for explicit calls to bash... | always protect your openvpn instances with tls-auth, especially if your instance accepts connections from any ip. it prevents the ssl negotiation from even occurring if it doesn't match. it would have protected you from heart bleed, and it protects against shell shock.there is no downside to using it. however, keep in mind that the key file is shared across all clients, so you probably want to change it periodically depending upon how much you trust your clients not to become hostile. you could run multiple server instances on different ports/ips to subdivide your client base, or when rolling out a new key. |
shell shock exploitation vectors
| always protect your openvpn instances with tls-auth, especially if your instance accepts connections from any ip. it prevents the ssl negotiation from even occurring if it doesn't match. it would have protected you from heart bleed, and it protects against shell shock.there is no downside to using it. however, keep in mind that the key file is shared across all clients, so you probably want to change it periodically depending upon how much you trust your clients not to become hostile. you could run multiple server instances on different ports/ips to subdivide your client base, or when rolling out a new key. | maybe a small note, but the variable needs to start with the bytes "() {", not the characters.for example, () {̀ also triggers the parsing code. that's a ` over the { using unicode.fwiw, i haven't been able to actually exploit it this way, but referencing that variable in the new shell generates errors, so there might be something there:bash: () {̀ :;}; echo vuln2: invalid variable name for name reference |
shell shock exploitation vectors
| maybe a small note, but the variable needs to start with the bytes "() {", not the characters.for example, () {̀ also triggers the parsing code. that's a ` over the { using unicode.fwiw, i haven't been able to actually exploit it this way, but referencing that variable in the new shell generates errors, so there might be something there:bash: () {̀ :;}; echo vuln2: invalid variable name for name reference | for mac os x, until apple releases a software update, i've applied the original cve-2014-6271 (shellshock) patch and the cve-2014-7169 patch. repository and instructions to reproduce without trusting me are located here:
<link> releases are here:
<link>
...including a .pkg file that can be installed with a double-click.instruction here:
<link> |
shell shock exploitation vectors
| for mac os x, until apple releases a software update, i've applied the original cve-2014-6271 (shellshock) patch and the cve-2014-7169 patch. repository and instructions to reproduce without trusting me are located here:
<link> releases are here:
<link>
...including a .pkg file that can be installed with a double-click.instruction here:
<link> | on the theory that it is more likely to help hners than the bad guys: <link> . note in particular the part about stdenvvars. the docs say it is off by default, but it is actually on in a lot of common deployment scenarios, for example if most of your apache configs were sourced from the big "apt-get install foo bar baz" line everyone copies from a blog post to get a working lamp installation on an ubuntu box.i have not poced this yet, but if i were trying to, i'd first try to make a client certificate with a highly non-standard distinguished name. it doesn't particularly matter if it fails validation as long as it doesn't fail in such a way that apache dies before passing your information deeper into the guts of the web app.after that point you're just looking for e.g. any page or library in the web app you can coerce to do a system() call or similar. while i was poking around in my own apps something like system(...) in ruby on ubuntu actually called /bin/sh rather than bash, but i think that is probably not the case for every combination of stack and distro. |
why clay shirky just banned technology use in class
| i went to college in the late 90's, before laptops were really viable for use in lectures (despite what i recall from the 1986 movie back to school). we did have our math class in the computer lab, so we could graph functions. of course, i spent most of my time reading newsgroups and mailing lists, the equivalent of modern students on facebook.looking back, i really regret the use of technology. i'm talking about the computer distraction, but also the heavy reliance on advanced calculators like the ti-92 that did symbolic integration and differentiation. the classes were focused on making the graphs appear and getting answers, not on grasping the fundamental, underlying concepts. i'd prefer a strict paper and pencil analysis course.i also remember the countless student questions, "will this be on the test?" the basic concept of testing student knowledge is that you can only administer a test where a small set of questions are randomly distributed across the much larger subject matter. you aren't supposed to memorize the answers to some questions, you're supposed to demonstrate that you learned everything.i didn't even learn what learning is until a good fifteen years after i was done with school. i suspect the students engaging in these behaviors, also, don't understand what learning is, and will graduate having passed some tests without knowing much. | having both used "technology" (laptops, phones) during classes as a student and taught to students which used them, i still can't make up my mind about this debate.arguments for technology use:- there are legitimate uses of computers to take notes, so banning technology overall seems misguided, and it's hard to ban specific usages meaningfully. (a better approximation would be to block wi-fi/phone in rooms. it takes much more dedication to get distracted with no connectivity, and arguably connectivity isn't necessary if you want to remain focused. that being said, people could still legitimately want to look things up during the class...)- it is each student's choice to pay attention or not, it doesn't look like you would want to force them. (the article does a good job of justifying this claim, though it goes a bit far in saying that students just cannot help but get distracted. having just a text editor to take notes requires some discipline but it's not entirely impossible either.)- it is a valuable lesson to figure out that multitasking is a sure way to both not get anything done and not get anything out of a class, and maybe you need to experience it yourself. if everyone prevented students from realizing this, maybe they would still need the time to figure it out later. people who were adults when laptops and phones came around are now figuring out about this at the workplace.- sitting in a class and not paying attention is not even necessarily a mark of disrespect. as a student, sometimes if i had one free hour with nothing better to do, i would go to an a-priori irrelevant class to work on homeworks/projects. so i could work if the class indeed wasn't relevant to my interests, but sometimes i had pleasant surprises and ended up paying attention. sitting in the class and working silently on something else would seem disrespectful, but what if i was doing this rather than not showing up?arguments against technology use:- it's a hard lesson to figure out that multitasking is often a bad idea. it may require sometimes kicking you out of the habit for you to realize the difference. (i'm not yet sure if this is a lesson that we are "getting", as a society.)- the second-hand distraction effect is real: of course, it's harder to pay attention individually if people around you are not. (although it's not clear whether it should be your responsability to not be influenced. the line between passively and actively distracting fellow students is quite a bit blurry.)- even more viciously than that, even if a student is individually dedicated to paying attention no matter what happens around, a room where 90% of people are listening feels very differently from a room where 10% of people are, from the teacher's perspective. when you're addressing a sparse group of survivors among a mass of people who zoned out, it's hard, you feel bad, and the quality drops. teaching isn't a one-way process where the teacher is not influenced by the students and the students individually retain what they want out of the teaching, so the simple reasoning about students individually doing what they want doesn't exactly apply.so i don't know what the right answer is. i think a minimal step in the right direction is to encourage people who use computers for other things than work to sit towards the back, and encourage those who want to pay attention to sit towards the front. in this way, second-hand distraction is reduced (you can't see the screen of someone sitting behind you) and the teacher is motivated by what they see in the front row. |
why clay shirky just banned technology use in class
| having both used "technology" (laptops, phones) during classes as a student and taught to students which used them, i still can't make up my mind about this debate.arguments for technology use:- there are legitimate uses of computers to take notes, so banning technology overall seems misguided, and it's hard to ban specific usages meaningfully. (a better approximation would be to block wi-fi/phone in rooms. it takes much more dedication to get distracted with no connectivity, and arguably connectivity isn't necessary if you want to remain focused. that being said, people could still legitimately want to look things up during the class...)- it is each student's choice to pay attention or not, it doesn't look like you would want to force them. (the article does a good job of justifying this claim, though it goes a bit far in saying that students just cannot help but get distracted. having just a text editor to take notes requires some discipline but it's not entirely impossible either.)- it is a valuable lesson to figure out that multitasking is a sure way to both not get anything done and not get anything out of a class, and maybe you need to experience it yourself. if everyone prevented students from realizing this, maybe they would still need the time to figure it out later. people who were adults when laptops and phones came around are now figuring out about this at the workplace.- sitting in a class and not paying attention is not even necessarily a mark of disrespect. as a student, sometimes if i had one free hour with nothing better to do, i would go to an a-priori irrelevant class to work on homeworks/projects. so i could work if the class indeed wasn't relevant to my interests, but sometimes i had pleasant surprises and ended up paying attention. sitting in the class and working silently on something else would seem disrespectful, but what if i was doing this rather than not showing up?arguments against technology use:- it's a hard lesson to figure out that multitasking is often a bad idea. it may require sometimes kicking you out of the habit for you to realize the difference. (i'm not yet sure if this is a lesson that we are "getting", as a society.)- the second-hand distraction effect is real: of course, it's harder to pay attention individually if people around you are not. (although it's not clear whether it should be your responsability to not be influenced. the line between passively and actively distracting fellow students is quite a bit blurry.)- even more viciously than that, even if a student is individually dedicated to paying attention no matter what happens around, a room where 90% of people are listening feels very differently from a room where 10% of people are, from the teacher's perspective. when you're addressing a sparse group of survivors among a mass of people who zoned out, it's hard, you feel bad, and the quality drops. teaching isn't a one-way process where the teacher is not influenced by the students and the students individually retain what they want out of the teaching, so the simple reasoning about students individually doing what they want doesn't exactly apply.so i don't know what the right answer is. i think a minimal step in the right direction is to encourage people who use computers for other things than work to sit towards the back, and encourage those who want to pay attention to sit towards the front. in this way, second-hand distraction is reduced (you can't see the screen of someone sitting behind you) and the teacher is motivated by what they see in the front row. | shirky quotes sana et al [1]:the results demonstrate that multitasking on a laptop poses a significant distraction to both users and fellow students and can be detrimental to comprehension of lecture content.i want to kiss all these people on the mouth. i feel like a cross between don quixote and the stay-off-my-lawn guy for fuming whenever someone sits down next to me when i'm trying to concentrate, and engages in a constant stream of messaging, or playing some game that's chirping and beeping and booping. there is such a thing as a 'tragedy of the attention commons' but it seems like nobody gives a shit about it. but maybe this piece, and this research, means the tide is about to change.[1] <link> |
why clay shirky just banned technology use in class
| shirky quotes sana et al [1]:the results demonstrate that multitasking on a laptop poses a significant distraction to both users and fellow students and can be detrimental to comprehension of lecture content.i want to kiss all these people on the mouth. i feel like a cross between don quixote and the stay-off-my-lawn guy for fuming whenever someone sits down next to me when i'm trying to concentrate, and engages in a constant stream of messaging, or playing some game that's chirping and beeping and booping. there is such a thing as a 'tragedy of the attention commons' but it seems like nobody gives a shit about it. but maybe this piece, and this research, means the tide is about to change.[1] <link> | really wish my profs at uw seattle would have done this. so many of my classes lacked discussion or engagement because so many people were chillin on facebook. i think i also met fewer friends because of it. very few of the people actually cared about getting an education and were instead just there to get the credits and then get a job (this was in the business undergrad). having no devices might have forced people to engage out of sheer lack of an alternative. |
why clay shirky just banned technology use in class
| really wish my profs at uw seattle would have done this. so many of my classes lacked discussion or engagement because so many people were chillin on facebook. i think i also met fewer friends because of it. very few of the people actually cared about getting an education and were instead just there to get the credits and then get a job (this was in the business undergrad). having no devices might have forced people to engage out of sheer lack of an alternative. | for some reason the article didn't link to the actual medium post: <link> |
the rise of hacker news is bad news for the tech world (2014)
| intriguing read, but to me it's fud. | posted and killed by user flags a few months ago: <link> |
the rise of hacker news is bad news for the tech world (2014)
| posted and killed by user flags a few months ago: <link> | this post is inane. most of the "tech world" has never even heard of hacker news. |
the rise of hacker news is bad news for the tech world (2014)
| this post is inane. most of the "tech world" has never even heard of hacker news. | >"people should be able to curate their own content over time. to intentionally create their own filter bubble.if i vote down a story that you voted up, your vote should count less in my rankings of stories. and vice versa. the same holds for comments."i really like this suggestion and wanted to bring it out for those who may not read through the entire article. :) |
the rise of hacker news is bad news for the tech world (2014)
| >"people should be able to curate their own content over time. to intentionally create their own filter bubble.if i vote down a story that you voted up, your vote should count less in my rankings of stories. and vice versa. the same holds for comments."i really like this suggestion and wanted to bring it out for those who may not read through the entire article. :) | tl;dr: hn, or to be exact graham and yc have (big financial) interests and views on this industry, which can lead to a conflict of interests with hn as a (neutral) news aggregator, which encourages discussion. while this is only a theoretical flaw and with a transparent and open site this is not a problem, the moderation is intransparent and harsh and there are reported casues, where users get banned, because their opinions interfere with graham's/yc's.besides this, hn has also technical flaws and sees little to no development/innovation. he proposes some systems and functions, who would improve hn. though at the end he would like to see a p2p based, better, version of hndisclaimer: while some of his points are exaggerated and he is kinda harsh to some persons, i agree on the gist of his article |
the surprising and continuing influence of swami vivekananda (2012)
| maharishi ramana is someone who truly was a maharishi and attained atma gyan(enlightenment).
<link>
<link> | if you're interested in someone who both loves yoga & meditation, and tends toward a rational bent, you should also check out gopi krishna.<link> was a pretty normal guy living a pretty normal life in the 1900's, and in his 30's through meditation he had a textbook enlightenment experience which resulted in a metamorphosis of sorts that he ultimately came to believe was biological / physiological in nature and could be repeated in others. he's one of the first if not the first person to suggest that what we think of as enlightenment is actually a biological event that the human body can perform given the right triggers, rather than simply a different state of mind or frame of thought. this is a revolutionary idea if you think about it; talk about "hacking the brain". the great thing about him is he's very relatable and not aloof, he kept his job as a government clerk and aside from selling a small handful of books, was clearly not interested in making money off his ideas.he tried for years to raise interest in the scientific community to study the phenomenon, but of course grant money is hard to come by, and doubly hard if you're doing anything remotely unconventional, so his research foundation never took off and he passed away in i think it was 1981.a lot of people don't know about him, but they've started putting his books on kindle so you can go check them out. all of them are extraordinary reads, although i'd start with his prose, and then move to his poetry if you're interested in that.<link> |
the surprising and continuing influence of swami vivekananda (2012)
| if you're interested in someone who both loves yoga & meditation, and tends toward a rational bent, you should also check out gopi krishna.<link> was a pretty normal guy living a pretty normal life in the 1900's, and in his 30's through meditation he had a textbook enlightenment experience which resulted in a metamorphosis of sorts that he ultimately came to believe was biological / physiological in nature and could be repeated in others. he's one of the first if not the first person to suggest that what we think of as enlightenment is actually a biological event that the human body can perform given the right triggers, rather than simply a different state of mind or frame of thought. this is a revolutionary idea if you think about it; talk about "hacking the brain". the great thing about him is he's very relatable and not aloof, he kept his job as a government clerk and aside from selling a small handful of books, was clearly not interested in making money off his ideas.he tried for years to raise interest in the scientific community to study the phenomenon, but of course grant money is hard to come by, and doubly hard if you're doing anything remotely unconventional, so his research foundation never took off and he passed away in i think it was 1981.a lot of people don't know about him, but they've started putting his books on kindle so you can go check them out. all of them are extraordinary reads, although i'd start with his prose, and then move to his poetry if you're interested in that.<link> | some brilliant quotes from this :>> faith, he wrote, must be based upon direct experience, not religious platitudes.>>more presciently, he warned that india would remain a vanquished, impoverished land until it "elevated" the status of women.so apt with current state of affairs in india!in fact (am from india) , every time any female from family (female) has to go out , a male always accompanies them!sadly even kids are not spared from this!hope the everyone learns to respect them in india rather than look at them as on object or thing!>>'if there is a god, we must see him. and if there is a soul, we must perceive it.' |
the surprising and continuing influence of swami vivekananda (2012)
| some brilliant quotes from this :>> faith, he wrote, must be based upon direct experience, not religious platitudes.>>more presciently, he warned that india would remain a vanquished, impoverished land until it "elevated" the status of women.so apt with current state of affairs in india!in fact (am from india) , every time any female from family (female) has to go out , a male always accompanies them!sadly even kids are not spared from this!hope the everyone learns to respect them in india rather than look at them as on object or thing!>>'if there is a god, we must see him. and if there is a soul, we must perceive it.' | vivekananda also lives on as an icon for the rss and other extreme right wing hindu groups.here for example is rss leader mohan bhagwat speaking in front of a big vivekananda picture:<link> they claim him wrongly? idk. |
the surprising and continuing influence of swami vivekananda (2012)
| vivekananda also lives on as an icon for the rss and other extreme right wing hindu groups.here for example is rss leader mohan bhagwat speaking in front of a big vivekananda picture:<link> they claim him wrongly? idk. | the amount of nonsense which has been written about yoga (vedanta and buddhism) is, ironically, matches the amount of nonsense about oop and java.)yoga, at least according to the yoga sutra of patanjali is *unity with the whole (that)", through unity of mind and body via breath as a preliminary practice, without which any further "realizations" are impossible (training routine).vedanta, which is rather mediocre "systematization" of upanishads has been profoundly summarized by ramakrishna - "wanna see god? look between two thoughts." (at the source/origin of thoughts). this is enough for realizing one's "true nature" (which is popular culture associated with a ray of light - pure energy).the essence of buddha's teaching is "life is shaped by our mind, we become what we think", which directly points to the mind as the ultimate source of all "suffering". (problems doesn't exist outside one's head. just physical processes).there is also rumi, who had the same realizations, but put them in different words.the problem with all these fine and subtle teachings is, like sartre pointed out, "the other people" with their stupid ambitions and flawed actions.instead of yoga we have gymnastics (in some cases even acrobatics) and whole industry of yoga pants and joints when they are sited for $30/h. instead of vedanta we have the same mysticism, where all the deities are morphed into the one. instead of buddhims - tons of narcissistic graphomany published by snow lion and the others.so, no, so-called piece of mind comes not from yoga courses or a crowded retreat, but form realization of being an inseparable part of the whole, of that (or being in accordance with tao, or "letting god/love in", etc, etc.) it is in being "in balance" (in eastern terms), non-contradicting with the whole.i am guide for himalaya and tibet region for a few years now - and i could tell that all the magic and miracles, mantras, mandalas, sacred rituals or any form of shamanism "working" only in the realm of one's mind, and does not exist outside it.) |
the alzheimer's enigma
| this is one disease that getting it scares me more than almost any other; yet once someone has it deep it no longer matters to them. i've always wondered if what you do with your mind during your life has any actual influence on this disease. | the latest research is pointing to alzheimer's being another form of diabetes which attacks the brain, nick-named "type 3 diabetes" [1]. the cells in the brain become insulin resistant, first causing memory loss and brain fog, and later causing dementia and alzheimer's.1. <link> <link> |
the alzheimer's enigma
| the latest research is pointing to alzheimer's being another form of diabetes which attacks the brain, nick-named "type 3 diabetes" [1]. the cells in the brain become insulin resistant, first causing memory loss and brain fog, and later causing dementia and alzheimer's.1. <link> <link> | for a stretch i helped research alzheimer's effects the olfactory system -- one result of the cascade of alzheimer's described in the article is that olfactory sensory neurons start mistargeting their downstream glomeruli [1] [2]. alzheimer's patients correspondingly perform poorly on odor identification tests, though the confounding factor of dementia makes it a poor diagnostic tool.more generally, while this article mostly discusses treatment, the physical symptoms of plaques, tangles, and neural degeneration occur before a patient starts displaying dementia. assuming an alzheimer's treatment can't reverse the damage done, it would have to be coupled with an early diagnostic, something which doesn't exist yet.1. <link> <link> |
the alzheimer's enigma
| for a stretch i helped research alzheimer's effects the olfactory system -- one result of the cascade of alzheimer's described in the article is that olfactory sensory neurons start mistargeting their downstream glomeruli [1] [2]. alzheimer's patients correspondingly perform poorly on odor identification tests, though the confounding factor of dementia makes it a poor diagnostic tool.more generally, while this article mostly discusses treatment, the physical symptoms of plaques, tangles, and neural degeneration occur before a patient starts displaying dementia. assuming an alzheimer's treatment can't reverse the damage done, it would have to be coupled with an early diagnostic, something which doesn't exist yet.1. <link> <link> | a long but interesting read. the parallels with the mystery novels didn't make sense to me at first but then i understood that the evolution of such novels to greater complexity was being compared to the growing complexity of our understanding of alzheimer's disease.i prefer to draw a comparison to cs. the tau vs amyloid camps are essentially defining two spaces where potential solutions may exist. it seems like the research is doing brute-force depth-first searches across potential solution spaces. viewed in this manner, and given the lack of results, i wonder if a more comprehensive (breadth-first) approach might be more appropriate. accounting for all sides of the puzzle rather than focusing on only one.undoubtedly more funding will be required in any case. |
the alzheimer's enigma
| a long but interesting read. the parallels with the mystery novels didn't make sense to me at first but then i understood that the evolution of such novels to greater complexity was being compared to the growing complexity of our understanding of alzheimer's disease.i prefer to draw a comparison to cs. the tau vs amyloid camps are essentially defining two spaces where potential solutions may exist. it seems like the research is doing brute-force depth-first searches across potential solution spaces. viewed in this manner, and given the lack of results, i wonder if a more comprehensive (breadth-first) approach might be more appropriate. accounting for all sides of the puzzle rather than focusing on only one.undoubtedly more funding will be required in any case. | frustrating article. attempts at communicating biology in popular science are invariably incomplete. additionally, we must realize that identifying targets is far different from developing effective drugs for these targets.scanning the comments: no one really thinks that tau is responsible anymore. the problem is that we only rather recently realized soluble ab oligomers are the most distal causative agent. t3 diabetes is again a distal effect of the etiologic agent of ad; what causes t3 diabetes?i would encourage anyone who is interested to begin with this paper: <link> (zhang et al. cell 2013). |
twitter image bots stuck in an automated loop
| too many bots:<link> | disclaimer: iana ai researcheri wonder if you could build some kind of distributed neural net on top of twitter or another social network. find some way to get nodes with very little computation power hidden within a free app, webpage, screensaver or something[1], and use twitter as a communications channel instead of irc or whatever. the social graph stuff is already built in.twitter seems to be terrible at detecting and banning bots - i wonder how fault-tolerant something like this would have to be. after all, the bots would be following generally good heuristics of communicating with one another, albeit probably not in natural language. they would probably have insane login patterns, however.[1] or a botnet, if you're feeling evil. |
twitter image bots stuck in an automated loop
| disclaimer: iana ai researcheri wonder if you could build some kind of distributed neural net on top of twitter or another social network. find some way to get nodes with very little computation power hidden within a free app, webpage, screensaver or something[1], and use twitter as a communications channel instead of irc or whatever. the social graph stuff is already built in.twitter seems to be terrible at detecting and banning bots - i wonder how fault-tolerant something like this would have to be. after all, the bots would be following generally good heuristics of communicating with one another, albeit probably not in natural language. they would probably have insane login patterns, however.[1] or a botnet, if you're feeling evil. | they always share different images, if reproduced such behaviours could fill a non negligible server disk space. |
twitter image bots stuck in an automated loop
| they always share different images, if reproduced such behaviours could fill a non negligible server disk space. | whoa! didn't expect to see this here! one of the bots, @pixelsorter, is my bot which you can read more about here: <link> background information: this first got started because i tweeted an image at @pixelsorter and @badpng (see the thread here: <link>, i wrote a blog post here: <link>, which spawned a really interesting infinite loop. eventually, the other bot's creator reset her bot and that infinite loop ended, but people caught wind of it and have been making my bot enter infinite loops with other image bots ever since.i think @a_quilt_bot and @pixelsorter are a particularly interesting pairing though, because @a_quilt_bot can generate new sources of imagery that my bot can further resort, resulting in a neverending stream of new, automatically generated imagery. my bot is also rate-limited by the twitter api (350 api calls per hour), so there's no technical reason my bot and another rate-limited bot couldn't keep communicating forever. i'm actually really interested in this idea, and it's the center concept behind my next project idea. |
twitter image bots stuck in an automated loop
| whoa! didn't expect to see this here! one of the bots, @pixelsorter, is my bot which you can read more about here: <link> background information: this first got started because i tweeted an image at @pixelsorter and @badpng (see the thread here: <link>, i wrote a blog post here: <link>, which spawned a really interesting infinite loop. eventually, the other bot's creator reset her bot and that infinite loop ended, but people caught wind of it and have been making my bot enter infinite loops with other image bots ever since.i think @a_quilt_bot and @pixelsorter are a particularly interesting pairing though, because @a_quilt_bot can generate new sources of imagery that my bot can further resort, resulting in a neverending stream of new, automatically generated imagery. my bot is also rate-limited by the twitter api (350 api calls per hour), so there's no technical reason my bot and another rate-limited bot couldn't keep communicating forever. i'm actually really interested in this idea, and it's the center concept behind my next project idea. | reminds me of the interaction between two automated amazon pricing algorithms: <link> |
ask yc: how much of 120k was left at demo day?
given the recent talk of being extra careful about burn rates i would like to get an idea of the average burn rate of a yc investment in the run up to demo day so that i can plan for my own yc app. did you have 50% left, 20%, more investment or broke? thanks in advance. | you should plan to have somewhere between $153.23 and $724.78 left by demo day. your burn rate is a proxy for your company's growth. if you have too much money left, investors will think you're not growing fast enough. | > i would like to get an idea of the average burn rate of a yc investment in the run up to demo day so that i can plan for my own yc apphow would that be helpful your yc application?the talk about burn rates is for startups that have raised $millions. $hundred-thousands are barely anything when determining burn rates. ($120k is the cost for one engineer) |
ask yc: how much of 120k was left at demo day?
given the recent talk of being extra careful about burn rates i would like to get an idea of the average burn rate of a yc investment in the run up to demo day so that i can plan for my own yc app. did you have 50% left, 20%, more investment or broke? thanks in advance. | > i would like to get an idea of the average burn rate of a yc investment in the run up to demo day so that i can plan for my own yc apphow would that be helpful your yc application?the talk about burn rates is for startups that have raised $millions. $hundred-thousands are barely anything when determining burn rates. ($120k is the cost for one engineer) | knowing how much money you'll have left after demo day doesn't say anything about the state of your business, or if you did it right or wrong.what you can do is estimate your runway length based on ramen profitability. that should give you a rough estimate of your best possible scenario (i.e. no other expenses). at least you'll know how much an unforeseen cost will shorten that period. that's the only thing you and your co-founders can relate to, and have to know. |
ask yc: how much of 120k was left at demo day?
given the recent talk of being extra careful about burn rates i would like to get an idea of the average burn rate of a yc investment in the run up to demo day so that i can plan for my own yc app. did you have 50% left, 20%, more investment or broke? thanks in advance. | knowing how much money you'll have left after demo day doesn't say anything about the state of your business, or if you did it right or wrong.what you can do is estimate your runway length based on ramen profitability. that should give you a rough estimate of your best possible scenario (i.e. no other expenses). at least you'll know how much an unforeseen cost will shorten that period. that's the only thing you and your co-founders can relate to, and have to know. | i think it's a reasonable question. the answer is almost entirely dependent on how many founders/employees you have and if you're drawing salaries or not. salaries are by a country mile your most expensive cost.it should be roughly enough for around 4 people to be pulling $90k/year salaries for 3 months with a bit left over for other stuff. so not a ton, but enough to do something interesting. the expectation is you'll be raising another round right after yc. |
ask yc: how much of 120k was left at demo day?
given the recent talk of being extra careful about burn rates i would like to get an idea of the average burn rate of a yc investment in the run up to demo day so that i can plan for my own yc app. did you have 50% left, 20%, more investment or broke? thanks in advance. | i think it's a reasonable question. the answer is almost entirely dependent on how many founders/employees you have and if you're drawing salaries or not. salaries are by a country mile your most expensive cost.it should be roughly enough for around 4 people to be pulling $90k/year salaries for 3 months with a bit left over for other stuff. so not a ton, but enough to do something interesting. the expectation is you'll be raising another round right after yc. | your business needs should be dictating your burn rate. what's it matter what other people are doing? |
write your own virtual cpu in c++
| my mips cpu which boots linux -<link> | i've written an (incomplete) 8086 emulator in c++ [1] as part of a bigger project [2]. this kind of thing is really fun to do and gives you a lot of insight of how cpus work (as a black box, though).[1] <link>[2] <link> |
write your own virtual cpu in c++
| i've written an (incomplete) 8086 emulator in c++ [1] as part of a bigger project [2]. this kind of thing is really fun to do and gives you a lot of insight of how cpus work (as a black box, though).[1] <link>[2] <link> | a nice book i have found on the topic of virtual machines as they relate to programming languages is <link> it is a pretty good book although the focus is less on emulating actual hardware and more on designing and implementing custom virtual machines as compilation targets for imperative, functional, and logic languages.i kinda wish there were more meetups that focused on this kind of stuff instead of the latest and greatest frameworks. this kind of fundamental theory is applicable in any kind of application and framework setting. |
write your own virtual cpu in c++
| a nice book i have found on the topic of virtual machines as they relate to programming languages is <link> it is a pretty good book although the focus is less on emulating actual hardware and more on designing and implementing custom virtual machines as compilation targets for imperative, functional, and logic languages.i kinda wish there were more meetups that focused on this kind of stuff instead of the latest and greatest frameworks. this kind of fundamental theory is applicable in any kind of application and framework setting. | i wish there were more people who thought about and understood these low-level basics; it feels like today, almost everyone who uses a computer is at such a far level of abstraction from the base hardware that they've lost the intuition for how computers behave the way they do and everything seems mysterious to them.this book is highly recommended to anyone interested in how computers work; it starts off with very basic electronics and goes up to a full cpu, plus some software stuff near the end:
<link> |
write your own virtual cpu in c++
| i wish there were more people who thought about and understood these low-level basics; it feels like today, almost everyone who uses a computer is at such a far level of abstraction from the base hardware that they've lost the intuition for how computers behave the way they do and everything seems mysterious to them.this book is highly recommended to anyone interested in how computers work; it starts off with very basic electronics and goes up to a full cpu, plus some software stuff near the end:
<link> | i got this idea from a friend, but whenever i wanted to learn a new language, i would quickly hack out a 4001 emulator in that language. its an interesting but quick challenge.<link> - c<link> - haskell<link> - js<link> - mhs this language cant take input (its an educational toy language for a course) |
a google chrome 37 canvas bug that affects certain flot charts
| a link to the reported bug seems missing? | it's not clear from the html5 spec (<link> what's supposed to happen when you try to fill a degenerate polygon. this may be "flot" relying on undefined behavior. |
a google chrome 37 canvas bug that affects certain flot charts
| it's not clear from the html5 spec (<link> what's supposed to happen when you try to fill a degenerate polygon. this may be "flot" relying on undefined behavior. | i've been tracking a number of differences between how browsers render canvas content: <link>, and take advantage of it to use the same code to generate a different picture in every browser (<link>'ll probably need to add this one to the list! |
a google chrome 37 canvas bug that affects certain flot charts
| i've been tracking a number of differences between how browsers render canvas content: <link>, and take advantage of it to use the same code to generate a different picture in every browser (<link>'ll probably need to add this one to the list! | has anyone else noticed the 4 or more tabs in a row layout bug in latest stable chrome?<link>'s interesting that it happens in .124 but not .122. does anyone know if it's possible to see the list of changes between those releases? |
a google chrome 37 canvas bug that affects certain flot charts
| has anyone else noticed the 4 or more tabs in a row layout bug in latest stable chrome?<link>'s interesting that it happens in .124 but not .122. does anyone know if it's possible to see the list of changes between those releases? | you could do a bisect on the source code and find the commit that introduced the bug. you might be able to find a flaw in the code pretty quickly and submit a patch with your report. it also helps to be active on #chromium on freenode. people will look at your bug if you are active in there. |
qmail is a vector for bash shellshock
| another great reason to have a good filtering proxy in front of qmail, such as qpsmtpd or my own haraka. both validate mail from and rcpt to commands to ensure they are valid according to rfc 5321 (the newer version of rfc 2821), and will reject any command not complying with those specifications. qmail alone is just too fragile. | i would still argue the bug is not entirely bash it's fault. a feature that causes security bugs, is imo the fault of the application using a program that has these feature. it's like not escaping strings/cli-commands/sql commands.or did i miss something where this bash feature is not suppose to work under all circumstances ? |
qmail is a vector for bash shellshock
| i would still argue the bug is not entirely bash it's fault. a feature that causes security bugs, is imo the fault of the application using a program that has these feature. it's like not escaping strings/cli-commands/sql commands.or did i miss something where this bash feature is not suppose to work under all circumstances ? | does this mean he gets the $500?<link> |
qmail is a vector for bash shellshock
| does this mean he gets the $500?<link> | this also applies to pure-ftpd when using an external authentication module: <link> |
qmail is a vector for bash shellshock
| this also applies to pure-ftpd when using an external authentication module: <link> | this would also affect exim's pipe filter if it accepted '()' in author names. |
looking at productivity as a state of mind
| i have come to exactly the opposite conclusions than the one proposed in this article. for me, not working when i don't feel like it, and really exploiting the times of high energy yields the most productivity.if i force myself to trudge through moments of low energy, it saps all my energy. moreover if i finish my alloted time of work, and then hit upon a high energy moment, it forces me choose between working even more and having any kind of leisure.of course, i think this has to do with the work one does. i'm in academia and the article discusses data entry. you don't really need creativity or initiative to do data handling. | ultimately disappointing article ... discusses productivity in the purview of line-workers/data-entry type jobs, and clumsily tries to extrapolate to contemporary work environments/jobs that require more creativity and mental skill to perform :\ |
looking at productivity as a state of mind
| ultimately disappointing article ... discusses productivity in the purview of line-workers/data-entry type jobs, and clumsily tries to extrapolate to contemporary work environments/jobs that require more creativity and mental skill to perform :\ | the average business fails to provide staff the autonomy they need to be productive. articles like this don't help one bit.i need a couple of hours of peace/alone time every day to focus on the important parts of my work. i'm lucky enough that my work is ok with me going to the local coffee shop for hours at a time. most workplaces aren't. they claim to care about results but take such a short term view.don't evaluate me on my daily performance or the number of story points i have completed this sprint. look at my performance month to month and year to year.of course some places have such high turnover (20%+) that they can't evaluate on a year to year because people aren't around for long enough but they have bigger issues. |
looking at productivity as a state of mind
| the average business fails to provide staff the autonomy they need to be productive. articles like this don't help one bit.i need a couple of hours of peace/alone time every day to focus on the important parts of my work. i'm lucky enough that my work is ok with me going to the local coffee shop for hours at a time. most workplaces aren't. they claim to care about results but take such a short term view.don't evaluate me on my daily performance or the number of story points i have completed this sprint. look at my performance month to month and year to year.of course some places have such high turnover (20%+) that they can't evaluate on a year to year because people aren't around for long enough but they have bigger issues. | these conclusions seem to be focused on a very 19th century vision of "work", where productivity is just a function of efficiency and not, say, creativity or risk-taking. |
looking at productivity as a state of mind
| these conclusions seem to be focused on a very 19th century vision of "work", where productivity is just a function of efficiency and not, say, creativity or risk-taking. | the most horrible article i have read at ny times so far.
pushing workers to work harder and faster by motivating them with punishment is not about productivity at all. alienating workers, saying that they "wanted" punishment and backing up all these "business" rhetoric with science is just sick.
i wonder what "state of mind" the author was in when producing this article. did he also hired the ivy league college he is working in to help with his "self-control" issues?
and providing workers with a "wellness program" just because it "reduces health costs" was the most chilling part.
we are all human beings, not quantities or rats in a maze. |
bash bug: apply the unofficial patch now (cve-2014-6277)
| looks like it's in ubuntu's build: $ lsb_release -a
no lsb modules are available.
distributor id: ubuntu
description: ubuntu 12.04.3 lts
release: 12.04
codename: precise
$ dpkg -l bash | tail -1
ii bash 4.2-2ubuntu2.5 gnu bourne again shell
$ foo() { echo foo; }
$ export -f foo
$ env | grep bash_func
bash_func_foo()=() { echo foo
is this a correct test?probably as of about 13:27 utc yesterday, if i'm reading correctly here: <link> | as an alternative, make sure that /bin/sh is set to something other than bash. in debian and ubuntu it is already set to dash by default.(there's no guarantee that dash doesn't have similar problems, but at least the surface area is smaller.) |
bash bug: apply the unofficial patch now (cve-2014-6277)
| as an alternative, make sure that /bin/sh is set to something other than bash. in debian and ubuntu it is already set to dash by default.(there's no guarantee that dash doesn't have similar problems, but at least the surface area is smaller.) | aslr is another one of the nice things about dash compared to bash in debian: $ hardening-check /bin/dash /bin/bash
/bin/dash:
position independent executable: yes
stack protected: yes
fortify source functions: yes (some protected functions found)
read-only relocations: yes
immediate binding: yes
/bin/bash:
position independent executable: no, normal executable!
stack protected: yes
fortify source functions: yes (some protected functions found)
read-only relocations: yes
immediate binding: no, not found! |
bash bug: apply the unofficial patch now (cve-2014-6277)
| aslr is another one of the nice things about dash compared to bash in debian: $ hardening-check /bin/dash /bin/bash
/bin/dash:
position independent executable: yes
stack protected: yes
fortify source functions: yes (some protected functions found)
read-only relocations: yes
immediate binding: yes
/bin/bash:
position independent executable: no, normal executable!
stack protected: yes
fortify source functions: yes (some protected functions found)
read-only relocations: yes
immediate binding: no, not found! | given that florian is the guy making the decisions on the rhel bash package updates, i suspect this patch is already in the latest rhel/centos/scientific linux bash package (the one that came out early yesterday, soon after the patch was posted to the oss-sec list).edit: confirmed in this bugzilla ticket comment <link> |
bash bug: apply the unofficial patch now (cve-2014-6277)
| given that florian is the guy making the decisions on the rhel bash package updates, i suspect this patch is already in the latest rhel/centos/scientific linux bash package (the one that came out early yesterday, soon after the patch was posted to the oss-sec list).edit: confirmed in this bugzilla ticket comment <link> | for mac os x, until apple releases a software update, i've applied the original cve-2014-6271 (shellshock) patch and the cve-2014-7169 patch. i will be applying florian's patch once it or a similar patch come out for 3.2.repository and instructions to reproduce without trusting me are located here:
<link> releases are here: <link>
...including a .pkg file that can be installed with a double-click.instruction here:
<link> requests are welcome, especially if you've modified florian's patch to apply cleanly on 3.2, which is my next task. |
counting bytes fast
| so the problem is when the same byte occurs 2 or more times in rapid succession, right? couldn't you use a temporary variable to count the number of consecutive occurrences of the same byte, and then once you hit a different byte, add the total consecutive count to the appropriate slot? that way you only write to the count table once for each run of identical bytes, and you never write to the same slot of the table twice in a row. assuming that the compiler can fit all the necessary temporary variables into registers, wouldn't this eliminate the problem entirely? or would this be so much extra work that the processor becomes the bottleneck instead of writes to memory? | if i remember correctly, the mill wouldn't have this issue, since all stores go through the cache hierarchy (by default) so they finish as soon as it's in l1 (~3 cycles typically). it's then evicted down through the cache and into to main memory as usual, while retaining consistent aliasing semantics automatically.i may have misunderstood, but this is covered in more detail in the memory talk i believe: <link> |
counting bytes fast
| if i remember correctly, the mill wouldn't have this issue, since all stores go through the cache hierarchy (by default) so they finish as soon as it's in l1 (~3 cycles typically). it's then evicted down through the cache and into to main memory as usual, while retaining consistent aliasing semantics automatically.i may have misunderstood, but this is covered in more detail in the memory talk i believe: <link> | thanks for this post! i've known about the massive effects of optimizing for cache lines but this is the first time i've heard of the write commit delay. great example as well. |
counting bytes fast
| thanks for this post! i've known about the massive effects of optimizing for cache lines but this is the first time i've heard of the write commit delay. great example as well. | i wish the author would have been more specific about the processor being tested. this is the sort of thing that is extremely dependent on the microarchitecture of processor used. i wonder if he's testing on amd or older intel?modern intel chips usually do an very good job of "store-to-load forwarding" when the load is the same size or smaller than the store. although it's testing a slightly different effect, this is a great recent article on the topic: <link> |
counting bytes fast
| i wish the author would have been more specific about the processor being tested. this is the sort of thing that is extremely dependent on the microarchitecture of processor used. i wonder if he's testing on amd or older intel?modern intel chips usually do an very good job of "store-to-load forwarding" when the load is the same size or smaller than the store. although it's testing a slightly different effect, this is a great recent article on the topic: <link> | i did a quick test on an i5( ivy bridge ) proc using c, and surprisingly when on a non-random table, the distributed version retained the speed of a random table, while the single version became 2.5x slower. |
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