272 karma · joined June 3, 2017
https://github.com/vinayms2017/JEEP2018
(I couldn't read the full article as I didn't have access, so not sure if this is touched upon there.)
This to me is real hacking, saying what the heck and writing a tool for oneself instead of looking around and getting lost in the multitude of 'mature' options that exist. I am sure hacking this was quicker, and more fun, than browsing all the available options, picking one, installing the tools, learning to use them and getting the desired result.
Now, how long till someone decides to bootstrap this - use it to hack a binary that compiles it?
Can someone explain why this merger is bad, beyond the usual refrain "Microsoft is evil"? I mean, I rally want to understand what the fuss is all about. It isn't like all our repositories are locked in some proprietary GitHub format and now we are at the mercy of MS. As is happening, people can always migrate elsewhere, and there is always going to be an elsewhere.
Are people upset that they have to take the pains to migrate due to Microsoft's involvement? In that case, it begs the question why is it bad at all. Currently, with my trouble understanding this, it seems like a knee jerk reaction, like disgruntled Americans talking about migrating to Canada post Trump.
For a more controlled kind of discussions, the current preeminent site for such activity is stackexchange. Sure, it has its flaws - its strictly qna style, is filled with elitist and intolerant mods - but for most questions that are not of the form "how to do X with API Y on platform Z", you will find discussion in comments. Even on stackoverflow which primarily encourages questions of the above form, there are enough discussions. The softwareenginering site is much better for slightly opinionated discussions disguised as questions and answers; so are workplace, unix etc.
I no longer need to go on a wild goose chase googling to find similar books. This way I have found some real gems that I might not have had I simply googled for similar books. So, when I do have to google for a book on a new topic that piqued my interest, I know that once I find an Amazon page directly or find a forum post recommending one and then open that page on Amazon, the rest of the search would be a relatively smooth ride.
Most youtubers are one or more of these three:
1. They comment on things, either current events or things in general. 2. They are self designated experts in their field and dole out tips and advice. 3. They make original content of some kind, like comedy skits or other art forms.
Then there are the so called bottom feeders, the scourge of modern YouTube, the makers of reaction videos.
Their channels are updated quite frequently, if not daily at most one per week. Only small proportion of the videos is worth watching. The rest is total waste of time. Subscribers often vent their frustration in the comments about the content, but for most people you'd have to go past several pages to see disgruntled comments. The top ones are usually favorable ones, and I am unsure of their authenticity.
The fundamental problem is that these youtubers mistook dumb luck for talent. When, for some inexplicable reason, some of their early videos went viral, they were egged on by their ego to post more, which is fine. But soon when they ran out of content, instead of quitting or taking a break to regroup, they continued to post substandard content.
I know I am being overtly judgemental by using words like 'substandard', and one might contest that by showing how popular these people are - some were even guests on popular US talk shows (one shiela was even on Conan) - but that is my point. I am amazed at the success they got despite such content. I wonder what kind of people are impressed by such content. Its one of the great sociological mysteries to me because, unlike a low quality TV show that persists due to studio bosses persisting with it for whatever reason, on social media things survive due to direct audience interest.
Quality intellectual output is quite hard. Even the most gifted comedian won't be funny all the time, the most gifted musician won't make good music all the time, the most gifted philosopher won't say deep thought provoking things all the time. In the current state of society where instant gratification is craved, people don't understand this, and it shows in how mediocrity succeeds time and again in all walks of life.
I think this burn out thing is their coming to terms with their lack of quality content and sort of giving up being an imposter. That said, some of the youtubers who post original content are indeed good. If they take time off and develop their talent, they could make a proper career out of it.
Whenever I watch lions on one of the nature channels, I think a male lion looks so majestic and powerful front on but looks as ugly and vulnerable from the back due to its testicles sticking out. When male lions fight, I get this skin crawling fear of lions ending up with torn testicles. Instinctively I cup my own like football players in the wall do.
That said, I think on bipedal animals like humans (but not stooped over primates), external testicles are not only relatively safer, they are also aesthetically good. I mean, imagine a penis sticking out of the abdomen without the testicles like a hook nose. Picture the famous Greek naked statues this way and you shall see how odd and ugly it would have been. (One might argue that humans might have been conditioned to consider this rather cropped anatomy aesthetic but that's a debate not worth having.) I often wonder if this external pair of testicles is analogous to a pair of breasts, acting like a natural jewellery that attracts mates.
There are several 'feature wish list' I have for humans. Such as. Similar to eyelids, having earlids would have helped against loud noise but I guess noise pollution was not rampant during humonoid 1.0. Same with noselids. I would have loved to have regenerating cartilage, at least, if not regenerating organs (liver is a bit odd but not fully so), but I guess humans didn't live long enough to have lifestyle issues due to joint wear and tear. As for external testicles, if not the way things are, the entire unit, including penis, should have been retractable into a pouch but I guess there weren't pool tables during ver 1.0.
This sentence form the article is gold.
> We are evolved to survive and reproduce, but not necessarily to be healthy, comfortable, or happy
I guess people are not yet ready to tread this path of moneymaking. Seems at least some societal mores are valued/feared/respected.
This would be an interesting sociological development when (or if?) it happens.
As for Ramdev, though we don't know yet if he is evil of that proportion, there is no dearth of people speculating that he launders money, which is worse. They also speculate who his clients are. But, of course, these speculators don't have enough time, money and motivation to follow up and provide proof; they wait and watch, hoping to say "I told you so" one day. But since the political clout these sanysais wield is common knowledge, its anyone's guess as to when the reveal will happen. These poor sods are more likely to die of old age without ever uttering that.
That said, I have a problem with its implementation. I don't like the graying out of the text as its done in HN, or collapsing the post as done elsewhere etc. That is sort of pushing the majority viewpoint on everyone by effectively censoring the less popular ones by hindering access to them. Surely, some of these 'alternates' happen to be downright stupid, inflammatory, abusive etc, but if the uncivil ones are modded off, we are left with stupid ones, and since when is expressing stupidity a crime?
Instead of censoring, why not simply have a sort of visual indicator that a post has garnered several disagreements? May be with a series of red dots with more number indicating more disagreements should serve well.
To specifically answer your question - I don't care much. I mean, this is ultimately just an online forum that has some interesting stuff, nothing more nothing less. There is life beyond the www aka internet.
I was expecting the article to start off by 'tearing apart' the source code, then dig into the algorithms with which diverse formats are rendered, then compare a few popular implementations and finally provide valuable insights, something on the lines of what WalterBright mentioned and the brief discussion it started. If not all this, the minimum I expected was an abridged, annotated source code.
This article left me underwhelmed.
The points mentioned in the article are a bit misplaced. Aspects such as taking ownership, taking initiatives, going out of their way to help their peers etc are product of the environment. They also bleed into leadership territory. That is another thing about this article, is it talking about a team member or a lead engineer? The point about commitment to deadline is dubious. It says
> They are not hesitant in going extra miles in order to meet the committed deadline and to fulfil the agreement.
This sort of going extra mile has always baffled me. What does it mean? Working overtime? Working after office hours from home voluntarily? Unless there is a bonus for completing a task before the promised deadline, what's the need to do this? Is it because there were last minute feature additions? Then it is really the incompetence of the manager and has nothing to do with the exceptionalness of an engineer. If anything it shows that the engineer is weak and spineless. I would argue that a good engineer would fight against this, or request appropriate amount of time by citing the project management triangle. Anyway, this point smacks of a job in software service rather than product, and since I have always worked in product, that didn't do this, I can't comment anymore.
For me, an exceptional engineer is someone who keeps churning out ideas and POC for them, and keeps the product evolving constantly. He often finds himself in a position where he needs to learn something new, or ask questions about something he doesn't understand, and does it. He leaves no stone unturned to accomplish the task. He perseveres. He is humble enough to learn from someone half his age. He doesn't hack things, he builds them carefully.
For me its the point 2 that is most relatable. Every time I have to use a library, even C++ STL beyond the oft used portions, or learn a new framework or language, my heart sinks a little anticipating the impending path of thorns. I have had so many encounters where it is literally a pain in the neck from all the peering into the screen trying to see just what the heck is not working, or eye burn from staring into the monitor squinting at the debugger window with small fonts, or both of this along with sore and sweaty fingers out of frantic googling that I shudder just writing about it. I call this "wrestling with the API". Its an occupational hazard for us to deal with all the man made pieces of software that are as different as their creators, and I have made my peace with it.
It usually turns out that I missed a fine detail in the documentation. Sometimes its my fault where I wouldn't have read the docs properly or have made uncalled for assumptions, and other times its squarely the documentation's fault for being unhelpful. When its my fault, I feel really disappointed with myself for having been so careless despite being an experienced dev. That adds to the frustration. Almost every time, stackoverflow has bailed me out, and invariably it would be an old post. (At times when I find a solution to something seemingly insurmountable, I have even mused about donating some money to them.) I take solace in the fact that someone had faced similar problem long before me and I need not be so harsh on myself. That until it happens again.
> 1. I expect to not get the answer on the first try
> 2. I can tolerate ungodly amounts of frustration
> 3. I attack problems from multiple angles
> 4. I check my goddamn work
> 5. I practice persistence
I happen to be one of those engineers/persons who thrives working alone, values quality over quantity, and tries to be as self sufficient as possible, so I can really relate to the above points very much.
Question: How do you validate that the posted company or job position doesn't need whiteboard? Is it after the fact, as in a disgruntled candidate complaining? I couldn't find any information about this on the site.
The author sensationalizes the effort of the creators, painting a Holywoodesque scenario where they break into every possible software company to steal keys to misrepresent the software, going undetected by every possible security company etc. Since this is a Quora post, I can live with him playing to the gallery.
Given the amount of speculation of involvement of US and Israeli intelligence agencies, and the task this worm was assigned, the real effort might have been just about writing a USB worm that identifies specific machines and handing the USB-0 to a double agent (I stopped watching Homeland after season 5 and am rusty with the jargon). The rest of it would have been simply asking all the associated software and hardware companies, politely, to cooperate.
If any of this is true, stuxnet is anything but sophisticated. Its just lots and lots of specific API calls.
That brings up the question: what is sophistication as applied to software?
This is 'hacker' news after all. Can't this website release its forum software so that a bunch of interested volunteers (no me) could improve it? Wouldn't that be really meta and cool?
The main gripe I have with HN forum is lack of reply notification. Secondly, the crowd tends to overdo the hacker-nerd-geek thing by discussing unrelated minutae till the cows come home which inflates the comment count. This sort of discourages posters to post their POV fearing it will be buried amidst the 500+ comments. We have a visibility problem.
We just need a few tweaks.
Further, looking at all the passionate discussion about AI and ML that happens here, I am sure some of the regulars would like to implement a scheme that learns my 'collapse the chaff' pattern and spare me the gory boredom inside a thread.
(I think what I wrote might come across as snarky, but I assure you I am not being so.)
To me, it appears that the modern epidemic of equating live TV coverage where reporters blabber inconsequrentialities with an event being in the news is the cause for the feeling that the article espouses. Doesn't a 60 second mention about an event suffice? The larger point is, how does this 'coverage' really help the cause? Surely, reporting a disaster, with brief visuals, will alert the volunteers to do their bit for humanity, but showing private human emotions for days and days is something I never understood. It can't be anything but politically motivated propaganda. It also smacks of commodification of victims for a sort of depraved entertainment value. I often feel that a disaster that suits a tv station's agenda is a relief to them because they don't have to worry about programming and can simply milk it till they get bored.
One could argue, correctly, that when an event is reported only briefly on tv it doesn't remain in people's memory. This is where I favor newspapers to tv news. Although there is still a bias here too - an event being reported on front page, with pics etc, or in the fifth page column 2, or nowhere at all - it is relatively indelible. The cliched Hollywood character that pins newspaper clippings to remember an event sort of corroborates what I am saying.
That said, I must say that I am not a fan of all these award winning gut wrenching pictures of human tragedies because I refuse to believe that the photographer is not manipulating. News via visual media is always less trustworthy to me than news via written word. Atleast with the latter, we can sense the tone, inclinations, sophistry etc which is extremely hard with visual medium. For instance, every documentary looks manipulative to me, so I never value news disseminated via visual medium, except for some events like Hindenberg disaster, Tsunamis etc which can't be described in words.
I don't hesitate to say I like JS. These days I try creating any small experimental programs I need in JS and run them in FF instead of starting the whole build process with C++ code. If there is file i/o needed, I use an extention that I have created for this purpose. When necessary, converting this prototype into C++ code is not a big deal.
As for its flaws, well, which language doesn't have flaws. Part of being an experienced dev is to learn, respect and avoid the shortcomings of the technology you use, aka paying attention. Its arguable that some flaws in some systems are worse than some flaws in other systems since the design factor comes into play, but with something as pervasive and monopolistic as JS, there is a clear choice to be made - create something better for the community or shut up and live with it. I am sort of doing both. (To pull off the first one, I need some serious credeitials, which I hopefully earn in the near future.)