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datphp

49 karma · joined November 20, 2013

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datphp··on DigitalOcean leaks customer data between VMs
In my opinion implementing the deletion of data in a way that can be forgiven by the user (and even worse API) is a bad idea. It's like burying unexpected clauses in the middle of a 50 page terms and agreements.

It's definitely not illegal or reprehensible, but anyone doing *aaS has exponentially more knowledge than it's users and knows it. Anyone who has once tried not to impose minimum password complexity knows what I mean.

To me it seems that data cleaning should be something you choose as you purchase the service. I understand that cost might be a factor in this particular case, but in then why not communicate about it and make a premium or discount system? It would probably come in good light to both users with sensitive data and those who don't care.

datphp··on Ask PG: Does smoking marijuana affect the ability to hack and run a startup?
"Problems just become simpler"... here is my story about that!

I've smoked ever since I was 14. Most of the time about once a week, at times not smoking for a year, and sometimes all day for months.

Smoking very frequently has a negative effect on me when it comes to business. I have more trouble finding motivation and caring, I am less in control of myself and get along less easily with people.. I become a feral hacker pretty fast.

On the other hand, I find a lot of benefits in smoking occasionally.

It seems pot disconnects you from your "hard-drive". You have problems pulling data that is otherwise readily available, and much that happens when you smoke doesn't seem to get stored at all.

So what's the advantage? Well, it doesn't seem to affect what's in your "RAM". You're like a super AI with a completely fresh storage and barely any data. Now data in most cases is useful, specially when you're trying to reproduce things that worked previously. When you hit a wall though, it can become a burden.

Most of you probably remember the sentence "You must unlearn what you have learned"! Except in this case, you lose factual data, but not cognitive processes. You certainly won't suddenly be able to levitate, but it's amazing what the brain can come up with when you lose track of all the common practices.

I've done a year of math prep in one of EU's hardest universities, and it was amazingly hard. Trying to solve any of the problems while high would lead to a ton of execution mistakes (copying stuff wrong, losing track of what you were doing etc), and was generally bad. Being slightly high for a test would cut my grade in half.

On the other hand, on many occasions, I spent a couple hours attempting to solve something from any possible angle and failed, like solving a rubik's cube and always coming back to the same configuration. Then at some point, later in the day or week, I'd think about that problem again while being high, and have my mind elegantly walk through the complexity of it and see the solution.

I spoke about it with people at that school who smoked, and most of those who were naturals at math seemed to have had the same experience. Ever since, I've had it happen to me on many occasions about different implementation/design challenges. I've worked with other people who were occasional smokers, and sometimes when failing to solve problems (more policical / vision related than technical), mention them again when we were high, and have extremely interesting things come up.

Obviously you want to review / implement / apply those new ideas when you're sober, because you need to run them through your experience and memory extensively, but weed can be a great source when you need an alternate angle of approach.

datphp··on Why can't Google understand why I don't want to combine my Gmail and Youtube?
I certainly understand your point. As a developer and power-user, keeping independent components well separated is something pretty obvious for both ethical and technical reasons.

What I don't like about this kind of argumentation is that it comes from an idealistic point of view (that I share), which isn't appropriate at all when analyzing a billion dollar company strategy.

Obviously at some point most big corporations are going to do stuff that completely puts off the elite. "Don't be evil" only lasts for so long (while building hype), and quickly "How much will that earn us" is all that's left (monetizing said hype).

I hope you realize that 99% of the profit of Google or Microsoft comes from masses of people who don't really understand anything that's happening, and click "next" and "accept" hoping they won't hit a wall. Did you ever click an Adword banner (except out of curiosity to see what's behind, using a private tab)? Do you purchase stuff only because it's presented to you as the next thing that justifies getting behind on your credit card payment? Neither do I.

Being the 1% is frustrating at times, but that's what we are. The 1%. Sometimes it's worth doing small things to please us, most of the time it's not.

datphp··on Windows XP: Microsoft’s ticking time bomb
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt ATMs are connected directly to the internet.
datphp··on Why is stackoverflow turning so negative?
I like lurking around SO as there is a lot of good knowledge flying around, and I've seen my share of closed questions.

Honestly, I hate the abuse of power you see on many forums, but I've never seen a topic closed without appropriate justification.

SO is meant to be a place to ask for a solution to a specific problem you've narrowed down as best as you could, not copy-paste a bunch of stuff you don't understand for people to analyze. I think it's awesome, because it keeps the quality very high, and makes it an extremely useful resource to quickly find solutions to not-so-obvious problematics.

Posting links to some of those threads would help having a better look at what you've witnessed though, maybe as someone said it's specific to certain areas of the site?

datphp··on I Got Myself Arrested So I Could Look Inside the Justice System
I'm white, from Switzerland.

The only time I experienced racism was taking a vacation in Spain, in a place where there are a lot of french tourists. They get a lot of hate, and me speaking french got me treated like one of them.

I'm a very laid back, cool guy, and I'm usually the last one to get angry. But being at a restaurant and being made fun of randomly by the waiter, and then wondering if someone spat in my food, and having this impression that everyone hated me for now reason...

It was a terrible feeling. But I knew the only reason they were like that was because of a misunderstanding. All I had to do was mentioning I was Swiss or speak Spanish and it would stop instantly.

Now if I had been french, and I had no way to defuse the situation, I can imagine how frustrating it would have been.

Then I can see how things being like that your whole life must feel, specially when its something that stands out as much as your skin color.

I've been extremely frustrated on rare occasions in my life, and I've done things I would never thought I would. Karma is a thing. If people give you shit without a good reason, you'll do the exact same, probably to someone else, just to balance things.

datphp··on Startup Design Framework
Landing on a page and having an auto-play HD video as a background, then clicking on the play icon just to have a the same video poping up (and lagging like hell... this is the point where I hope the have a great concept)

Then not being able to figure out what those guys sell...

Then finally figuring out they're selling website design. Damn the irony...

datphp··on Compress 7G to 1K with epic vaporware
"I don't understand what you're saying, but you're wrong"
datphp··on Compress 7G to 1K with epic vaporware
It's always April 1st somewhere!

Edit: I've once thought of a system which would allow virtually unlimited compression, the only drawback is that it would take an insane amount of time to execute.

Imagine a chess board, a 8x8 grid of alternating black and white tiles. Now you write an algorithm that performs permutations, 2 by 2, 4 by 4, etc, in a predefined order.

If you do enough permutations, at some point you're going to have all the white tiles on one side of the board, and the black ones on the other side.

You can now store your board as its size, 2 expressions representing the 2 halfs, and the number of permutations you need to reach the original state.

Looking forward to additional info on this joke/hoax!

datphp··on How to make fake data look meaningful
I worked in retail when I was younger. This would be excellent advice for a sales person working with uneducated customers.

I was the go-to guy, resulting in a lot of freedom when dealing with clients. It allowed me to do lot of social experimentation, especially when selling custom services (like fixing "My PC is slow").

Explaining the in-and-outs of different options (goal, short/long term consequences, risks, up/downsides...), then saying it would cost 50$ would usually result in the guy becoming all suspicious, saying he wanted me to guarantee him stuff that I couldn't, and that it was expensive.

Say "Oh you'll need our performance rejuvenation(tm) package, that'll be 400$" and the guy happily pulls out his credit card!

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