finnw

> ... Apple pulled them all from the store because they have mobile payment ambitions - and one doesn't let predators into ones own garden.

And yet Pingit is still in the app store. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/barclays-pingit/id496552142

More importantly, Java's main rival C# has an (incomplete) version of this:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa664765(v=vs.71).as...

Products like this have existed for a while now but have never sold well.

gets has no right to exist. But sprintf does. It's a workaround for some old embedded C compilers that lack the safe string copy functions (strcpy_s, strlcpy.)

    char dst[5];
    sprintf(dst, "%.*s", (int)sizeof(dst)-1, "Hello!");

Copies a null-terminated string to dst, truncating if necessary to avoid overflow.

Just don't forget the "." or the "-1".

> ... to avoid a software change.

"It's OK, it doesn't need any code changes, just a modification to the configuration files, so the approval process does not apply."

That company's developers just need to learn the trick of making the configuration file format Turing-complete.

If you don't have time to write your own interpreter, XSLT is an easy one to sneak by PHBs.

I've seen one system where 70-80% of the functionality was implemented in XSLT for this reason. It meant changes could be delivered in 5 days instead of 35. Obviously good news for the customer. The PHBs were pleased that the bug count in the C++ core had dropped (it hadn't really, we just stopped using the buggy modules.) The integration testers were pleased that the end product worked. Basically everyone was happy except the C++ reviewers in QA.

> ... you have unprotected sex with people with HIV (you're already +, so what does it matter?)

That is a bad idea, even if you are 100% certain the result was correct.

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

Not by itself, but with a USB miner.

No. That's what obfsproxy is for.

https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy.html.en

You can call me a "male" if you like. I do not find it offensive at all, even if intentionally used in that way. I am an animal after all. It's only double standards that I would have a problem with.

> Here's an example of StackOverflow working for a fairly deep question, about the maximal possible asymptotic slowdown due to purely functional programming

But there is (now) a better SE site for this: http://cs.stackexchange.com/

> That's why I consider /r/programming a better place to find fruitful discussion than StackOverflow

There is also http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=65767

Funny, I see a lot of closed questions on SO, but most of them are from HN links. When I google for a solution for a programming problem, I usually find a high-scoring (not closed) SO question with useful answers.

> Wait, does that mean that iterating across the members of a Lua table is not in deterministic order?

Yes. And it is documented as such. Any dependency on repeatable iteration order is a bug.

> ...FP's answer to OO's AbstractSingletonBeanFactoryStrategy

That does not really belong to OO. You would be unlikely to find an AbstractSingletonBeanFactoryStrategy in a Smalltalk project for example (even one under the control of a Purist.) You would find it in a JavaEE project, but even then it is not part the platform, it has more to do with convention that has built up around the platform (and the type of Purists it attracts.)

But you already got the "Famous Question" badge for it a year ago: http://stackoverflow.com/help/badges/28/famous-question?user...

No, but they send you mail that you inadvertently asked for, and mail that you initially asked for but have since decided that you no longer want.

Yes, why is this not mentioned more prominently?

Detergent is optional, but it sometimes helps.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/02/tide_becomes_...

I can understand this - I know some C++ but I am not very good at it, so I usually go for C with "greenspunning", i.e. using an embedded scripting engine, e.g. guile/lua/spidermonkey

Even if there is a route that takes 2-3 minutes to walk, what is to stop you deliberately taking a longer route?

I did mean cheaper (i.e. a low-end machine being cheaper to buy than the time it would take to install and configure the VM.) But yes, it is probably safer as well.

It is probably cheaper to use a dedicated (physical) machine.

Maybe they could argue that their employment contracts were not in effect during that period (especially as they are not being paid.)

Those are the ones that took me the longest. There are so many minor variations of C/Java/Javascript/Lisp that it takes a while to figure out which one you are looking at.

It's the languages with very distinctive features that can be guessed quickly (assuming you have seen them before) e.g. cobol, erlang & also joke languages like intercal, brainfuck, chef etc.

> Other more quaint languages like Java may have type systems that check properties such as "The program does not add numbers and strings"

Poor example. In Java, number + string means "convert the number to a decimal string then concatenate", and it can be invoked unintentionally.

Hopefully somebody will create an unauthorized patch that enables LAN play and then Blizzard will have to release an official patch to compete with it.

Unless the Bad Guys already have the MD5 hashes

Breaking SHA2 (i.e. developing an economically-feasible preimage attack) would indeed crash bitcoin, but the converse is not true.

A near-collision attack on double SHA256 (if you treat it as a single hash not a pair of independent hashes) would also crash bitcoin, but would not necessarily be a threat to use of SHA256 for authentication purposes.

A bitcoin block solution just needs the hash to include enough leading zeros. Authentication (nearly always being automated) requires every bit to match - hitting 255 of 256 bits is no better than hitting 0 bits, as either way your message will be rejected.

And in some of these jurisdictions, the clock restarts when you are informed that your appeal was unsuccessful (even if the collecting agency likes to pretend otherwise.) So check the rules first.