Nicksil

>I mean, you can do a very general audit of things like “is there CI” or “do they use horribly unsafe serialization everywhere” but I don’t see anything beyond this without a huge amount of effort.

Do we know what is or isn't being reviewed? Do we know how much effort is being applied in this process or if there's a defined upper and/or lower bound?

>Issues such as what?

Such as those which do not meet the standards defined for the particular audit.

>You seem to have fooled literally every person replying to your post, then.

Fooled? No.

>Perhaps consider that your reactionary post was not quite as "rational" as you'd like to believe, or at least that you haven't yet said what you mean.

What part of any of my comments are reactionary? What have I said that I don't mean? I genuinely don't understand.

>Ack, and thanks for your comment. I am choosing to disengage from this conversation, have fun!

Sorry, what was it about my comment you vehemently disagree with?

>If that line itself isn't enough to tell you he's full of shit you have hopelessly fallen for the myth of his Tony Stark-like brilliance. Do you honestly think he contributes any meaningful engineering work at SpaceX? If he didn't own SpaceX, what about his history suggests he could even be an engineering intern there?

Every day there are a lot of software developers on this very website (in this very thread) and elsewhere, with no professional engineering background, nor uphold similar standards and professionalism, who refer to themself as engineer.

>Still, the issues you'll likely encounter inside a car are very very different from the ones you'll see inside [...]

There are many systems involved in those cars, there's also many people working for those kind of companies who do not solely "work on cars."

>Auditing code is more than analyzing runtime/memory complexity.

I agree.

>Thats not to say it's impossible for Tesla engineers to audit. But I'd imagine it would take quite a bit of time to gather meaningful insight into the landscape and would hardly be an efficient use of the time of senior Tesla engineers.

Take longer than if the team were comprised of Twitter staff or who are already familiar with Twitter's infrastructure and code base? Sure. But that's the case with just about any audit conducted by an outside entity.

>I'm not missing the point. "Searching for and recognizing issues" is not somehow completely independent from the domain of the code in question. More importantly, different domains often have completely different primary concerns. E.g. web app engineering is often concerned with reducing cycle time because the technology means that you can instantly release updates. That's obviously very different from the concerns of launching a rocket, and I would expect them to have very different engineering practices.

>In short, experience matters.

Is this based off real experience in the field of auditing?

>At Twitter's scale the issues are far less about "this code smells funny" but how dozens of systems interact together. Ain't nobody gonna figure out problems by simply checking out a repository, and specially in a few hours / days.

I don't know why you think someone would have to know about Twitter's specific implementation of distributed systems in order to inspect those systems for non-twitter-specfifc issues.

>I implore you to consider that auditing code is more than just big-O analyses.

That isn't at all what I said nor implied.

>Bullshit. I'm a web engineer, and I wouldn't be competent to audit code that runs Space X's rockets, nor would anyone I know in my career space.

You're still missing the point. It isn't about knowing how rockets work or anything in particular. It's about being able to search for and recognize issues.

>Would it?

Would it not?

>Oh please, that's a ridiculous assessment of what was said. Coding giant distributed web apps is a very different domain than coding for cars. I wouldn't put much stock in Twitter engineers assessing self driving car code either.

You don't need to be a part of any particular domain to effectively audit code.

>The hubris is thinking Tesla engineers (who are offered worse pay and wlb relative to Twitter) are coding masters of every domain. I won't even snipe at their own software here.

Who is thinking that?

>Which facts, specifically. Please go on the record.

This is incitement.

>Meanwhile in the US we have a huge rash of thefts of Hyundais and Kias and neither the police nor the manufacturers are interested in doing anything about it.

Is there a reason why it's specifically Hyundais and Kias? Are they just easier to steal?

> Your definition of engineer doesn’t apply to how the word has been used for the great majority of history but it is what some paper pushers would like you to believe.

I don't think this is correct. There is no shortage of professionals, project managers, or others in positions of great responsibility who seek qualified, professional engineering because of the criticality, risks, complexity, liability, etc. involved in their project.

>If you hold software devs to the same standard, require them to sign off on projects and be criminally liable if it collapses later, you're going to create shortage of such engineers, and would also give them immense power. They'd be more powerful than lawyers and politicians probably, given how much money is tied to software.

I don't think anyone's arguing for the certification of every software developer. Just those who wish to become a professional engineer. A software engineer will then work on such projects and may even be the one to sign-off on it. They will be held to a higher account and be expected to produce robust, safe systems. All the things that come along with being a professional engineer. And just as it is in other fields, the majority of those employed are not engineers and will work on other projects. We're not talking about anything novel here; the approach would be similar to that of any other professional engineer.

>This seems reasonable for something like software for cars or civil projects. Your typical fart app can't really afford to make strong guarantees.

Indeed. Those interested in such a career would have something to pursue and, at completion, may refer to themself as engineer. For the rest of us we have other job titles to describe what we do (software developer, code monkey, etc.).

>It’s not really the specific employees making that call. Being a “principle engineer” is the job title in the contract.

If it's your job title and you're not working for yourself, then it's likely there's little-to-nothing you can do about. This concerns folks referring to themselves as engineers.

> Maybe because some of us are really Engineers

Well, yeah. If you're an engineer then call yourself one if you'd like. My comment concerns folks who are not engineers yet refer to themselves as such.

I've never understood why some people use the term "software engineer" when there are many, more appropriate titles for this profession. Something as simple as "software developer" conveys the same thing and better describes what vast majority of "software engineers" do.

There's also this, from the article:

>“Professional engineers are held to high professional and ethical standards and work in the public interest,” it said. “The public places a high degree of trust in the profession and these layers of accountability and transparency help keep Canadians safe.”

I cannot agree more. Such standards and concerns are found within a minority of software development roles (critical, risk, etc.); the majority of work in this field does not hold to the same account which is fine for the type of work.

Nobody is demanding all software developers be held to the same standards as professional engineers; there is no movement to force everyone wanting to write software be required to go through the same education and development as professional engineers. Again, there are plenty of other, more correct terms to use.

I would like to see a more concerted effort to bring back and/or develop new standards and criteria for genuine professional engineering in software. People who desire such a career will have something to pursue. Everyone else can continue to being software developers ... which is fine. Simple.

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I've used Sublime Text and have been recommending it to others since the first version. I still recommend it above all other text editors; especially for folks working on a Windows machine.

>If buying wrong aluminim for consumer grade vehicles is such a crime, then you may be interested to know where USAF gets steel alloys for fighter jets.

OK, curiosity is killing me. I've got no dog in this fight but would like to know where the USAF get steel alloys for jet fighters.

Holy hell. Look how many people are commenting about their production environment being affected by this issue. All these folks had not even the simplest test/checks in place before pushing changes to production. And they're openly admitting to it by complaining about an issue with a dependency they just YOLO'd and shipped.

>Websites are absolutely someone's intellectual property. Just because I've watched a Disney movie on my phone doesn't mean I'm allowed to download Disney movies from Disney+ and start my own competing service.

I wasn't referencing intellectual property. Re-phrased: "It's their premises."

>Or, it's like watching you add stuff to your shopping cart, walk around the store, then remove some items, pick different items... and finally walk to the self checkout, scan and buy the goods.

It's their property.

A website (or app or whatever) is downloaded to my machine and then executed. So all this stuff going on behind the scenes is doing so from my property, using my resources.

>Most people are just meme posters.

>Meta: This is evil. Zuck is a robot. Everyone laugh at the metaverse

>Google: Wow when are they going to cancel this

>Amazon: I've lost confidence in buying anything from amazon

>Apple: Apple is too corporate since Cook took over, I hate the app store monopoly

Because it's all accurate*!

You can try and be all hand-wavy about it, but the fact of the matter is these companies do a lot of harm and I will take advantage of every opportunity to warn others. They've long since lost the benefit of the doubt.

* Excluding Apple. I don't have much experience with them or their platform(s) to make an informed argument either way.

>I have the same TV and have literally never thought about the ads on it except when reading articles on Hacker News.

>It seems like a huge benefit these days to be the sort of person who just isn't bothered by ads, like you can enjoy products and have more options available and don't have to do a ton of work to enjoy them.

You work for Google. Of course you have no problem with ads.

Good lookin out. Appreciate the heads-up.