adrianmonk

The article mentions this: "A few years back, Linux added a way for software to wait on several events at once, which is something Windows had built in for decades, but Linux didn't."

This is not really my area, but from a quick web search, I think they mean io_uring. Here's a blog post about it: https://mazzo.li/posts/uring-multiplex.html

If you're talking about the incident described in the article, it says it was a flaw in "a popular open-source, web-based system administration tool".

Google's blog (https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/ai-...) says Google "worked with the impacted vendor to responsibly disclose this vulnerability", so in this incident, it's not Google software.

Here's a better comparison to pro athletes. Their work output is winning games. How do they get good at (and stay good at) that? Is it by playing real games for points?

That's a part of it, but only a small part. They don't get good at the thing mainly by doing the thing. They get good at it by training to do the thing.

An NFL football player does a ton of things other than playing in games. They have practice scrimmages. They do drills like throwing, catching, running patterns, tackling, reading quarterbacks, stripping balls, picking up fumbles, etc. They work with coaches on their technique. They watch film. They spend many hours in the gym and on the track building their strength, speed, cardio, and stamina.

Yes, it's true that your software skills will atrophy if you don't use them. But that doesn't mean your skills have to get worse and worse causing you to eventually quit the job. It means you need to set aside time to maintain your skills. It may no longer happen automatically as a side effect of your work, but it can happen intentionally instead.

They are suggesting that a human used an abbreviation rather than making a typo.

The scenario is a cross-country trip in an electric car. What actual, specific advantage does a train or bus offer in this scenario? What problem does it solve better?

It's an electric car, so carbon emissions are low.

Most of the route will be in rural areas in the middle of the night, so the impact on traffic will be minimal.

As for the cost to build and maintain the roads, they are already needed so rural areas are accessible. Wear and tear on roads and bridges isn't much of an issue since heavy vehicles like trucks cause massively disproportionate damage[1]. (A bus might actually be worse than the equivalent number of cars in this respect.)

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[1] See https://blog.ucs.org/dave-cooke/trucks-cause-the-lions-share... . Some studies show that damage varies with the fourth power of axle weight.

I read it as "paraboloid" and expected it to be about some very specific geometrical shape with a niche practical application.

Apparently a common source of problems is taking two different medications without realizing they both contain acetaminophen.

Suppose your arthritis is acting up, so you start taking Tylenol 8hr Arthritis Pain[1]. That's 2 tablets every 8 hours. They're extended-release with 650mg per tablet. A total of 3900 mg in 24 hours.

A few days later you get the flu, so you decide to add what seems like a completely different medication: Theraflu Flu Relief Max Strength[2]. It has a cough suppressant and an antihistamine. But each caplet also contains 500 mg of acetaminophen. It says to take 2 caplets every 6 hours, so you take 8 of them in 24 hours[3]. That's another 4000 mg.

Between the two, you're at 7900 mg.

Then you wake up in the morning and take both medications, but 30 minutes later you've forgotten you took them. You're not thinking straight because you're sick. So you accidentally take a second dose. That additional 2300 mg brings your total to 10200 mg.

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[1] https://www.tylenol.com/products/arthritis/tylenol-8hr-arthr...

[2] https://www.theraflu.com/products/day-night-flu-relief-max-s...

[3] You weren't supposed to take 8 of them, though. If you'd read the label very carefully, you'd have seen it also says not to exceed 6 in a 24-hour period.

That's the joke, isn't it?

A fission power plant simulator lets you have fun playing through a meltdown disaster scenario. A fusion power plant simulator is "worse" because it takes away the "fun" of meltdowns. The humor is in reacting to the simulator as if it were a game (some are, but this one isn't).

Chips only have a certain number of pins. It probably works out better economically if those pins can be used for either input or output. Chip manufacturers can thus make one product that will fit the needs of more customers instead of (say) 9 different chip variants with 8 inputs and 0 outputs, 7 inputs and 1 output, 6 inputs and 2 outputs, etc.

It could also be useful to the end user. Motherboards have a limited number of ports since the connectors cost money and take up space on the back panel. One user might want a line input (for digitizing old cassettes, for example)[1] and another user might want an extra surround sound output (for 7.1 surround sound instead of just 5.1 surround). With retasking, the motherboard can support both these niche use cases with a single shared port.

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[1] You can't use a microphone input for this because (a) it's mono and (b) it's a different voltage level.

If their slogan isn't "The Sole of a New Machine", I'll be disappointed.

> Crawlers do not use the browser back button or browser history.

Couldn't you instrument the crawler's browser engine to observe whether (while crawling) the page does any behaviors that would result in back button hijacking? No back buttons have to be clicked.

You just have to watch whether the mousetrap is set. Since you know how mousetraps work, you don't have to grab the cheese.

That's a valid point. Another example is SIGHUP, which will cause some programs to exit but other programs to reload their config file. In certain very specific cases, that could even cause harm.

So really what "kill" would be doing is automating a common procedure, which is different than taking responsibility for doing it correctly. It would need to be configurable.

I still think it would be a net benefit since right now incentives push people toward doing something the wrong way (even if they know better). But I can also see how it might give people a false sense of security or something along those lines.

Maybe this logic should be built into the "kill" command (or some other standard command). Given that this is the right way, it shouldn't be more tedious than the wrong way!

It could also monitor the target process and inform you immediately when it exits, saving you the trouble of using "ps" to confirm that the target is actually gone.

Hopefully nobody thinks "I'll save even more if I get two!" and plugs them both into the same circuit.

Perhaps they could somehow detect each other and shut off.

> You're assuming a non-partisan technocratic process

No, of course I'm not assuming that. That's not the administration's pattern of behavior, so it would be a crazy assumption.

I agree it'll be abused. I just didn't feel it necessary to state the obvious.

This part of the press release seems pretty crucial:

> Producers of consumer-grade routers that receive Conditional Approval from DoW or DHS can continue to receive FCC equipment authorizations.

In other words, foreign-made consumer routers are banned by default. But if you are a manufacturer, you can apply to get unbanned ("Conditional Approval").

In the FAQ (https://www.fcc.gov/faqs-recent-updates-fcc-covered-list-reg...), they even include guidance on how to apply: https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/Guidance-for-Conditi...

If you (a manufacturer) apply, they want information regarding corporate location, jursidiction, and ownership. They want a bill of materials with country of origin and a justification for why any foreign-sourced components can't be domestic. They want information about who provides software and updates. And they want to hear your plan to increase US domestic manufacturing and progress toward that goal.

So, foreign-made consumer routers can still be sold, but they are going to look at them with a fine-tooth comb, and they are going to use FCC approval as leverage to try to increase domestic manufacturing.

Their comment proposed something that would "be the answer here".

What does "here" mean? It's logical to expect "here" to refer to a scenario that includes cases like the one in the article. If it's some scenario that excludes cases like the one in the article, then it's not actually relevant to the discussion.

(Tangents are OK. It's just confusing if they're introduced with phrasing that makes them sound like they're not tangents.)

I actually like the concept behind it. It just doesn't have "this is going to be a success" vibes.

It makes me think of the 1978 movie "The Wiz" starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and Richard Pryor. Despite the big stars, it isn't generally regarded as a very good movie. Maybe updating "The Wizard of Oz" with disco music wasn't a good idea after all.

You can just add a second line to /etc/passwd with a different username but the same numerical uid. Like this:

    altroot:x:0:0:Alternative Root User:/:/bin/sh

Then, of course, run (as root) "passwd altroot" to set a password.

We used to do this all the time for users who needed root access to their own workstation. It allowed us to avoid telling them the common root password used on all the machines in the organization.

In your case, doing this might be beneficial in case there is a network problem because you'll have a way to log in as root locally.

OK, now that you have this data, give me a "prefer safer routes" option in Google Maps navigation!

While you're at it, give me an option to avoid unprotected left turns and to avoid making a left turn across a busy road where cross traffic does not stop. (But only during heavy traffic; it's fine when nobody is on the road.) Not only are these more dangerous, they're also more stressful and they also introduce annoying variation into my travel time.

There's probably a strong survival advantage in convincing whoever is leading a meeting that it's time to adjourn.

The site is confusing since, if you click the link, you don't see the context. But that definition is for cargo screening only.

If you scroll down and look at it in context, that definition is under section (g): "Air Cargo on Passenger Aircraft".

And of course passengers aren't cargo.

It means you do an electrochemical reaction that releases an oxygen molecule, like the original explanation said. It doesn't really matter what reaction it is, but it could for example be electrolysis, where you split 2x H2O into 2x H2 and 1x O2.

The point is this reaction is reversible. In one direction, you end up with fewer O2 molecules than you had before. In the other direction, you end up with more.

No really, I'm a normal person, and I went to the most recent No Kings protest. I've never protested anything before in my life, but now I've gone to two protests against Trump because he's just that bad and dangerous and my country is important to me.

I wasn't paid anything. I rode the bus downtown, thinking it'd be easier than driving / parking, which wasn't quite the brilliant strategy I thought it'd be. I marched down the street with literally tens of thousands of people.

There were definitely some people there who seemed to be the activist type (who find something to protest every weekend), but it was mostly normal people. I saw at least three people I know. I saw regular-looking men in cargo shorts and women in straw hats. It was during the football game, and I saw many people wearing team colors and one sign that said, "It's gotten so bad I'm missing football to protest." One guy was wearing a "Jesus is King" t-shirt. A woman was carrying a "Hicks Against Facism" sign. Another guy was carrying his vinyl copy of Rush's "A Farewell to Kings" as a protest sign.

So, not paid protesters carrying boilerplate signs supplied to them by some organization. Just regular people who are not OK with what's going on.

Maybe they are looking for people who've experienced transitioning from tech to something else. Even if they know lots of supportive people in real life, it's possible none of those people may have gone through this process.

Sounds nice, but how do you keep it from falling over? The higher screen makes it top heavy, and the way screens are tilted back also makes it lopsided. It will want to fall backward, and it will be worse on surfaces that aren't flat and solid, like your lap.

I guess one approach is weight distribution. Make the screen as light as possible and shift as much weight forward (near the space bar) as possible. I'm just not sure if it would be enough. You could also go with outriggers (like a crane or boat), but that's ugly and doesn't help with the lap situation, which is where you need help the most.

I think that reinforces their point if anything. With reflected light, you have a natural, inherent form of auto-brightness because the amount of light coming off the page depends on the amount of light in the room.

Or it's neither, and the intended effect is zero variation in the retrieval time, as when trying to avoid leaking secrets via timing attacks.

(Or I guess, more generally, the intended effect is zero correlation between the information and the time it takes to retrieve it. If retrieval time were completely random, it would achieve the goal, but it wouldn't have zero variation.)

To get a journeyman electrician license in Texas, you need to have 8000 hours of documented on-the-job experience working under a licensed electrician[1].

So you'd need to find an electrician who will let for you work them on the weekends, and if you work 8 hours every Saturday and every Sunday, then it will take you 500 weekends.

A residential wireman license only requires 4000 hours[2], but I'm not sure if that kind of license would be good enough for the inspection.

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[1] https://www.tdlr.texas.gov/electricians/apply/individuals/jo...

[2] https://www.tdlr.texas.gov/electricians/apply/individuals/wi...