Politicians and other public figures in India routinely take detractors to task using defamation laws. I guess now corporations are realising that they too can play the same game.

Most of these laws date back to colonial times and are in need of replacement.

All of this brings into focus how good American free speech jurisprudence is and how vitally important that is for a democracy.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47776644

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

World population in early 1800 was around a billion. As recent as 1928, it was only 2 billion. We added 3x that number in the last 100 years!

I see population decline as a good thing. Nations should focus on managing the decline gracefully. It's good for the environment. It's good for distributing our limited resources equitably.

I use a pre-commit hook to run `pnpm check`. I missed mentioning it in the original comment. Your reply reminded me of it and I have now added it. Thanks.

My hierarchy of static analysis looks like this (hierarchy below is Typescript focused but in principle translatable to other languages):

1. Typesafe compiler (tsc)

2. Basic lint rules (eslint)

3. Cyclomatic complexity rules (eslint, sonarjs)

4. Max line length enforcement (via eslint)

5. Max file length enforcement (via eslint)

6. Unused code/export analyser (knip)

7. Code duplication analyser (jscpd)

8. Modularisation enforcement (dependency-cruiser)

9. Custom script to ensure shared/util directories are not over stuffed (built this using dependency-cruiser as a library rather than an exec)

10. Security check (semgrep)

I stitch all the above in a single `pnpm check` command and defined an agent rule to run this before marking task as complete.

Finally, I make sure `pnpm check` is run as part of a pre-commit hook to make sure that the agent has indeed addressed all the issues.

This makes a dramatic improvement in code quality to the point where I'm able to jump in and manually modify the code easily when the LLM slot machine gets stuck every now and then.

(Edit: added mention of pre-commit hook which I missed mention of in initial comment)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46855326

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

And then cheap and good enough option will eventually get better because that's the one that is more used.

It's how Japanese manufacturing beat Western manufacturing. And how Chinese manufacturing then beat Japanese again.

It's why it's much more likely you are using the Linux kernel and not GNU hurd.

It's how digital cameras left traditional film based cameras in the dust.

Bet on the cheaper and good enough outcome.

Bet against it at your peril.

Not that this cannot be overcome with some kind of spaced repetition or daily practice over a period of time; it's just more effort than most programmers will bother with.

Relatedly, too many factoids and gotchas are the reason why I gave up on C++ after nearly a decade of reaching significant expertise with it.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45981166

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

I stay and work in India. Yesterday, as part of a VAPT audit by a third party auditor, the auditors "recommended" that we do exactly this. I wonder if this directive comes as part of some outdated cyber security guidelines that are passed around here? Not entirely sure.

When I asked them about how I'd pass the secret to the client to do the client side encryption/decryption without that key being accessible to someone who is able to MITM intercept our HTTPS only API calls anyway, the guy basically couldn't understand my question and fumbled around in his 'Burp' suite pointing exasperatedly to how he is able to see the JSON body in POST requests.

Most of the security people we've met here, from what I can tell are really clueless. Internally, we call these guys "burp babies" (worse than "script kiddies") who just seem to know how to follow some cookie cutter instructions on using the Burp suite.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45701607

Points: 58

# Comments: 23

I'd like to quote from the HN guidelines:

> Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.

With that said I urge you those who disapprove to ask whether you are being "rigidly negative" about this.

1. Is this disapproval perhaps coming from your religious context? If so, please pause and consider why that may not apply to the rest of us. And also whether you really think that your religious beliefs must be forced on the rest of us.

2. Is this disapproval coming from a sense of deep unease that this post causes? If so, know that this unease is shared by most of us. But try and muster the fortitude to go past that unease and consider the decision from a place of compassion.

> By your logic we should kill everyone at their peak.

No, they suggested that the old and ailing whose quality of life has deteriorated to the point where there is no hope or no more joy in living, ought to be given the choice.

Let me end by quoting my favourite lines from the HN guidelines:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

Of course this is a standalone page written in some language that I forget. I think Cursor mentioned some animal name... anyway. Can you please put this into our product please?"

And for those who can, Appscript gives your spreadsheet super powers.

For those who don't know, you are not stuck with writing JS in the Appscript integrated web IDE that comes with Google sheets (though honestly it's not too bad itself).

Using clasp, you can develop your code locally in an IDE of your choice, in typescript and have a build step compile those to js, and have clasp push it to spreadsheet.

Once you have the tool chain set up the DX is quite nice.

Sutter was one of the people who led the design of 747.

Also I believe in entering null values will lead to undefined behaviour.