Hacker News: fourcommas

New comment by fourcommas in "I Am Deleting the Blog"

fourcommas — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 07:45:16 +0000

The lead editors are responsible for maintaining ethical standards, and they represent the NYT. Adjust your impression of the NYT reputation based on this story. Also see the other comment on this article about Naomi Wu being doxxed, where the risk is deadly living under a tyrannical regime: the NYT hired the journalist responsible, who doesn't believe any mistake was made there.

New comment by fourcommas in "I Am Deleting the Blog"

fourcommas — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 07:36:02 +0000

And then there's Washington Post whose entire editorial board signed a letter asking the US Gov to arrest and charge their own source. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/edward-snowden-doesn...

New comment by fourcommas in "Microsoft: Rust Is the Industry’s ‘Best Chance’ at Safe Systems Programming"

fourcommas — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 23:56:57 +0000

> the CVEs per LoC better be shrinking by at least factor X (this is where Rust comes in) or else the system is getting less secure

Do you really think windows 95 was more secure than win 10? Or that IE6 was more secure than the latest IE? The newer versions are way more secure, it's not even close. Your data is giving you incorrect conclusions, because you're combining and cutting the data in ways that don't make sense.

New comment by fourcommas in "Microsoft: Rust Is the Industry’s ‘Best Chance’ at Safe Systems Programming"

fourcommas — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 23:06:17 +0000

Now divide the number of CVEs in each year by the LoC maintained. You're again looking at completely the wrong number. Line-for-line, C/C++ written today at MSFT/Goog has less memory errors than 10 years ago, and even less exploitation of memory errors. Anyone who lived through the rise and fall of Internet Explorer intuitively knows this.

New comment by fourcommas in "Microsoft: Rust Is the Industry’s ‘Best Chance’ at Safe Systems Programming"

fourcommas — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 16:54:21 +0000

You shouldn't trust someone who misleads with: "Now, 70% of the CVEs originating at Microsoft are memory safety issues, Levick said. “There is no real trend it’s just staying the exact same,” he said. “Despite massive efforts on our part to fix this issue it still seems to be a common thing.”"

There is a trend, and the trend has been a MASSIVE reduction in memory errors. The percentage of security issues that are memory errors says nothing of the totals, which is what matters.

Microsoft could go through 2021 with only one CVE and we'd see articles like this saying "100% of security vulnerabilities are caused by memory errors, we must switch to Rust!"

New comment by fourcommas in "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone"

fourcommas — Fri, 12 Jun 2020 22:00:21 +0000

I've lived in Capitol Hill for 9 years. I've been attacked twice by crazy people. One time it was a physical attack, the other time it was a man singling me and my family out and approaching within a few feet while screaming very aggressively (my family was visiting me at the time).

I'm a large man. It's worse for people who are not physically imposing. A woman I knew worked an early shift job (leave at 3:45am to open up). She was regularly followed and harassed while walking to work sometimes by gangs of men, she left the city in less than a year.

These problems are getting worse because there's literally hundreds of thousands of citizens (you can see them in this comment chain) who will rush to disagree with anyone who raises these problems. I'm well-equipped to buy a house here, but we decided several days ago to stop looking for one. We decided we're going to leave the Puget Sound area to get away from this.

New comment by fourcommas in "Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report"

fourcommas — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 16:55:54 +0000

Snowden passed his trove of classified info to two papers: WP and Guardian. Snowden never published any of his trove, he relied on these two papers to determine what was newsworthy and publish it.

WP published various parts of the trove they deemed newsworthy, and ultimately won and accepted a Pulitzer for this.

Then the editorial board signed and published a statement that said some of what was released from the trove actually wasn't newsworthy and were reasonable and legal defense programs. The editorial board recommended that because of this Snowden should be charged. In the editorial itself they acknowledge that the illegal behavior that was discovered can't be used as a defense in court.

The WP was offered and accepted the responsibility to parse this trove and publish only what is newsworthy. They messed up and published a couple documents that weren't newsworthy. They never publish any kind of apology or correction for it, instead they indict their own source, and recommend he be charged for that!

There's an unprecedented level of malice and incompetence displayed here. Look at the revolt in the NYT newsroom about the Cotton op-ed, and compare to literally not a word said in opposition to the WP editorial (which was written and signed by the editorial board, unlike the Cotton op-ed). The WP is rotten throughout, and shouldn't be held in even the slightest regard as a newspaper when they use their position to destroy the protection of sources that journalists fought for so long to preserve.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/edward-snowden-doesn...

New comment by fourcommas in "Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report"

fourcommas — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 05:33:36 +0000

WaPo holds the distinguished title of being the first and only newspaper in the US whose editorial board endorsed the arrest and criminal charging of their own source.