Hacker News: howdydoo

New comment by howdydoo in "WordPress themes, plugins backdoored in supply chain attack"

howdydoo — Sun, 23 Jan 2022 00:39:38 +0000

Ideally our critical infrastructure would have a better security track record

New comment by howdydoo in "Audio Sparklines"

howdydoo — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 15:37:14 +0000

For zero-crossings my first thought would be either bullet (•), to not break the visual flow; or multiply (×), since it's at least vertically centered

New comment by howdydoo in "Security vulnerability in Rust standard library"

howdydoo — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 15:37:39 +0000

In C++, any concurrent filesystem access is undefined behavior (which seems pretty crazy to me)

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/filesystem

> The behavior is undefined if the calls to functions in this library introduce a file system race, that is, when multiple threads, processes, or computers interleave access and modification to the same object in a file system.

---

Golang also seems vulnerable to the same issue

https://github.com/golang/go/blob/d15481b8c7f5f73a8b987a0c1d...

Line 78 checks that the path isn't a symlink (time-of-check). Then line 97 calls openFdAt which on line 174 opens the path by name, without NOFOLLOW (time-of-use).

I bet this is a pretty common vulnerability.

New comment by howdydoo in "The long, slow process of carcinogenesis"

howdydoo — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 02:01:59 +0000

We spent our lives searching for the Creator, and in the end all we found was GitHub Copilot

New comment by howdydoo in "JetBrains Mono – the free and open-source typeface for developers"

howdydoo — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 18:54:21 +0000

If you think "→" misrepresents the meaning of "->", then certainly "->" also misrepresents the meaning of a semantic arrow "→". The set of symbols in 7-bit ASCII is somewhat arbitrary after all.

Let's say "→" misrepresents the meaning of "->" even as much as 0.1% of the time. Would you rather your risk of error be 99.9%, or 0.1%?

I'm sick of anti-ligature people telling everyone else not to enjoy their fonts, on every single post about a font. Ligatures have caught on for a reason.

New comment by howdydoo in "Gitlab Handbook's HN Page"

howdydoo — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 02:12:41 +0000

> We learned that the key to a post reaching the front page was the content itself.

Well that's good news, at least

New comment by howdydoo in "1Password Has Raised $620M"

howdydoo — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 15:30:01 +0000

I predict we start seeing "Login with 1Password" buttons on random websites next to the google and facebook buttons. I also predict it never catches on.

New comment by howdydoo in "How A.I. Conquered Poker"

howdydoo — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 01:57:26 +0000

The natural next step is adding ELIZA-like chat responses to your bots

New comment by howdydoo in "How A.I. Conquered Poker"

howdydoo — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 01:52:14 +0000

I know that PioSolver is not a "poker AI" per se, but the article seems to say it can tell you what to do based on the table situation. Has anyone tried pitting pro players against PioSolver?

New comment by howdydoo in "Why I Enjoy PostgreSQL – Infrastructure Engineer's Perspective"

howdydoo — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 02:59:12 +0000

Or even better, turn on autovacuum (buy a roomba)

New comment by howdydoo in "Tarrare"

howdydoo — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 01:38:11 +0000

Definitely embellished. If you try to eat a live cat, it will scratch your face beyond recognition.

New comment by howdydoo in "It's time for an inequality index for cryptocurrencies distribution"

howdydoo — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 01:21:54 +0000

Wow you're right, that's quite a manifesto. Almost as provocative as this quicksort manifesto.

https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~mjw03/PersonalWebpage/pdfs/quickso...

New comment by howdydoo in "Making Your Game Go Fast by Asking Windows Nicely"

howdydoo — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 01:01:15 +0000

> As of April 5th 2017 with the release of Windows 10 Version 1703, SetProcessDpiAwarenessContext used above is the replacement for SetProcessDpiAwareness, which in turn was a replacement for SetProcessDPIAware. Love the clear naming scheme.

This is the kind of thing I hate about "New Windows". Once upon a time MS used to strive for backward compatibility. These days every few years there's a new function you need to call. You can't get optimal behavior just by writing good code from the start. You need to do that, and also call the YesIKnowHowPixelsWork api call, and set true in your manifest to get what should be the default behavior. It's a mess.

New comment by howdydoo in "It's time for an inequality index for cryptocurrencies distribution"

howdydoo — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 00:50:08 +0000

I mean... no, the success of this burgeoning asset class does not depend on me convincing a single HN poster in a long-buried thread. And there never was a "manifesto", at least not one that I've ever heard about. But thanks anyway for the discussion I guess

New comment by howdydoo in "It's time for an inequality index for cryptocurrencies distribution"

howdydoo — Sun, 16 Jan 2022 21:24:34 +0000

Bitcoin is a technology that has various use cases. Just because some person gives a sales pitch, doesn't mean that sales pitch becomes the benchmark by which to measure the technology. Bitcoin is decentralized and does not have one stated goal. Many people use it for many different reasons.

If someone keeps changing their claims or is otherwise acting scummy, just ignore them. There are shysters in every industry.

New comment by howdydoo in "It's time for an inequality index for cryptocurrencies distribution"

howdydoo — Sun, 16 Jan 2022 19:27:52 +0000

People give sales pitches for lots of things. You don't have to listen to them.

> Are you sure about this?

Whether I'm sure or not... I think everyone should be given the choice.

New comment by howdydoo in "It's time for an inequality index for cryptocurrencies distribution"

howdydoo — Sun, 16 Jan 2022 18:31:33 +0000

Crypto isn't intented to remove middlemen. It's intended to give people the choice of who to trust. People can choose to trust an exchange, or to self-custody, and deal with the consequences in either direction.

If I choose to self-custody, it's much safer to memorize a seed phrase than to store cash in my mattress. Most people don't bother and use banks. But I think it's good that people now have a choice in the matter.

New comment by howdydoo in "It's time for an inequality index for cryptocurrencies distribution"

howdydoo — Sun, 16 Jan 2022 18:26:33 +0000

Many BTC addresses are owned by companies (e.g. exchanges, trusts, etc) and not by individuals. The Gini coefficient only looks at individuals, not companies. In other words, it doesn't treat Google as a person and compare its wealth directly to yours. So you can't directly compare those numbers.

New comment by howdydoo in "Shenanigans on Microsoft Feedback Hub"

howdydoo — Sun, 16 Jan 2022 16:35:28 +0000

Has anyone made a bot yet to automatically reply to stalebot so issues aren't closed?

New comment by howdydoo in "Switching from macOS to Pop_OS"

howdydoo — Sat, 15 Jan 2022 22:51:28 +0000

Can you elaborate, what happened with Manjaro?