CoffeeOnWrite

Be satisfied with fixing the new passwords going forward. Or gracefully force a new password for everyone, if circumstances permit that (circumstances including decision making authority; if you are the new CTO or CISO, and you're paranoid about reviewing the existing hashes, you should strongly consider the batched graceful forced reset!)

You can set a flag on login to use the password in memory rather than stored.

They forced a password reset. You can use HIBT data in a way that's less disruptive.

> sys admin accessing password hashes placed under his care

Parent commenter never mentioned anything about comparing stored password hashes. What you do is block bad passwords at password set time by hashing the prospective password and comparing with HIBP. A prospective password you haven't accepted or stored or transmitted off the application server - common sense says that's not a privacy violation - and many giant companies including my employer do this routinely.

[Edit] Oh yea I remember HIBP has an online API. Don't use this. Take the HIBP dumps that they make freely available and compare locally. If not for reasons of privacy, for reasons of simplicity and removing an unnecessary external business/legal/software dependency.

Thanks for your openness (sincerely).

At the end of the day I guess my experience has shown me that if given a nudge, people are capable of solving problems with automation, that can yield order of magnitude improvements in this or that process. I don't care if the automation is a custom script or an off the shelf tool, but let's do it. I want to share that inspiration with the field - we can automate that and we may be rewarded for it, let's give it a try and earn the nice things that we want!

In my experience quick scripts that leverage existing tools, that abide by some conventions, and that show some consideration for others using them - are great! Every software team has a bucket of routine tasks that developers need to do - are they one liners in the veterans' command line histories that are passed around in chat, or are they organized and documented in source control as "tools"? The later, please. (thank you framework designers that allocate a place for these as do Rails, Elixir, and npm (even if I hate the way npm does it ;) ).

It sounds like you've been burned by too much reinventing the wheel and not invented here. Like I said, it's possible to overdo it. What you've experienced sounds shitty, and I'm sure you're just trying to steer people away from the pitfalls you've observed, which is noble.

I just come down the other way: people declining to try to invent better solutions has been more of an impediment to my team's success, than their over-eagerness.

If your coworker wrote such a script, would you respond positively or gloomily?

Maybe they researched and found actually all the options out there have whatever drawbacks that they don't fit the bill. Maybe they didn't bother to research because it only took them 10 minutes to script that manual process we perform multiple times a week, and they were curious to see if they could improve that. Maybe some of the 5 were pretty good actually, but the coworker has some specific ideas how their "6th" new tool could be better in certain important ways.

The good off the shelf tools make it easy to build on them with custom tools to fit your purpose.

I really don't mind if people lean a bit one way or the other in their inclination toward custom tools. But I do expect people to be supportive of attempts to build nice tooling, and show a curiosity toward the trade offs, and willingness to try an experiment.

Don't be afraid of building a tool, hacker friends. If nobody else displays an interest in what you build, or it doesn't turn out to really save time, or it costs too much to maintain.. you can ditch it! You are a professional with good critical judgment whose ability to improve the productivity of your group and provide repeatable "executable documentation" will carry you far in your career. Let your creativity shine, and have fun.

You define tooling too narrowly. That custom script that the team uses to cut a release branch and notify people with contributions on the branch that it's being deployed? That's a tool, that itself uses off the shelf tools/products (eg. perhaps Python, GitHub, Slack). And it could possibly be a very helpful tool that saves manual effort and improves results, for a fairly low cost.

Sure you can spend too much time and effort building tools, rather than focus on meeting the most important business objectives, and we've all met developers that do that. But you can certainly build too few tools, as well.

For clarity, the vehicular manslaughter laws referenced by parent commenter are specifically for when [criminal] negligence is involved (and yes parent commenter’s use of “accident” does imply absence of negligence, so I appreciate your calling them out, they don’t seem to understand the law):

> In cases of criminal negligence, the defendant is commonly charged with unintentional vehicular manslaughter.

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

This is incredibly boring to me. Create an environment where people feel safe and empowered to speak up and show them you value their judgment and are genuinely receptive to feedback, hire great people, manage out the bad fits, practice basic empathy as a matter of habit, and this will not be a major issue, just correct deviations from expectations with careful nudges. A healthy culture is the highest leverage tool in your toolbelt.

What the article describes isn’t wrong, but is duct tape over a poor work culture. Just fix the culture. Doesn’t that sound more fun?

(If you aren’t in a position to influence the culture and can’t afford to leave the job, then absolutely deploy the duct tape. My heart goes out to those in this category)

Would that be truly ironic, or logical? People make decisions on the margin, rising insurance rates seem a fairly humane way to incentivize people moving out of dry rural wooded locations.

Folks that really don’t want to move can pay the elevated public backstop options or if their house is paid off, run the risk of total loss. The longer people wait to leave the worse off they will come out because their property values will go to zero. I’d be in favor of public funding to help people relocate.

If we get through it all, recreation and tourism can bounce back with lightweight infrastructure that doesn’t need to be defended, and some better engineered permanent infrastructure.

Am I way off base?

All I can think to reply is to focus on the context here: SBF, EA, and charities with no specific purpose other than promoting EA. In that context the glib “Yes” answer would not be interpreted as discouraging people from a genuine earning and giving lifestyle.

> "earning to give" as a personal lifestyle choice seems reasonable

Among Effective Altruists, we have seen that it’s a rationalization they use to justify greed. That’s the context. So parent is saying that this rationalization isn’t helping anyone.

Another way of thinking about it is, do you think the honest people living the lifestyle choice you describe, would they be out there telling people how great they are for doing it? No, they’d be focused on their work, to earn, and to give.

But here they need a “movement” to validate themselves, because at some level they know they are just selfish people.

(See related rationalization where highly successful founders and investors that decline to give to charity because they are “investing in their next venture that’s going to make far more money and then they’ll give more to charity” when they have more money than anyone needs and the world needs help NOW)

Love this idea.

To add food for thought, could the basil be dried in a dehydrator immediately after being taken off the shelves after minor wilting but while the taste and nutrition are still there? The resulting product might be better quality than what is sold in the dried spices aisle that is much less fresh..

For some reason Apple puts the most basic stuff behind an accessibility option. For example, tab to next button in a system dialog is disabled by default.

> Translation, never pay up front for anything that requires service at a future date.

Would you say more?

For things like hotels in popular destinations, it lets me sleep at night to put down a deposit up front, I feel like it incentivizes the hotel to hold my room. Knowing the room is better secured is more important to me than money.

Now with Booking, I’ve never had them ask for a deposit. They either have me pay at the hotel, or they run my card after the “free to cancel” period expires (which is always very generous, expiring from 5 days to 1 day before my stay). This doesn’t help me sleep at night, when making bookings a month or more out, I worry that I’ll be cancelled on or be offered a lesser room than the one I booked. Fortunately I’ve only had good experiences with Booking so far, but once I have my first bad experience, I will switch to booking direct or with another platform that lets me put down a deposit up front.

> or you're waiting to buy a SIM

Is there any advantage today to buying a physical SIM? Why not buy an ESIM from home just before your trip? One less thing to worry about abroad..

Is the median person capable of being consistently honest with themselves? Honest with themselves about the most important things?

Yes. For me personally, I found the framing that “building and maintaining friendships takes time, energy, and sacrifice, but is so totally worth it for our healthy wellbeing,” very helpful to inspire me to focus on the kinds of relationships I want and justify the investment to be a better friend.

GP’s comment is a wry (“hobby”) and pithy and provocative take that’s not wrong. IMO, friends are the nutritious meal that’s more expensive than friend substitutes. GP seems to have a different conclusion on cost/benefit. But nobody can deny there is a cost!

Yep. I’ll choose UPS ;)

Would you say more about mockingbirds? Does Merlin tend to output mockingbird when it’s really a bird that a mockingbird imitates, or output a non-mockingbird when it’s actually a mockingbird imitating that non-mockingbird? (I found an amazing-sounding bird and downloaded Merlin on the spot to id it, and it output mockingbird, that’s why I am especially curious. It was a dark night so I could not visually id at all)

Theoretically it aligns the incentives of the founders with those of the VCs putting new money into the round (eg the founders are OK with the company taking more risk, because they have diversified their personal net worth somewhat). Now, the incentives of the VCs putting new money into the round, there's certainly an argument that they don't always benefit society or deliver the best possible product...

Yes, during the rounds where VCs are stepping over themselves to invest, founders can negotiate terms that permit them (and their employees and early investors) to sell some of their stock as part of the deal, in a secondary sale (https://rizstanford.medium.com/secondary-sales-in-vc-backed-...).

Yep. For the founders in particular though, who had the most influence early on in taking the VC path, odds are they took some money out along the way, perhaps quite a bit more than had they stayed small.

"Lee Valley" sounded vaguely familiar, so I plugged it into my email. Turns out I purchased 2 hanging wine glass racks [0] from them in 2020 for $6.20 apiece (to go above my kitchen sink on either side). We're talking generic "wire" 2-up wine glass racks I got to maximize space in my very ordinary rental apartment. I spent 5-10 minutes researching and identified Lee Valley as the best vendor for this very specific need, when I didn't trust the selection at the large Ace Hardware a mile away. Not remotely luxury, in my scenario ("Ikea for hardware"). But reflecting good SEO, clear photos and product specs, and low-friction checkout! Shipping was $7.95 by the way.

[0] https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/shop/hardware/kitchen-hardwa...

So what do you do?

I have never run into this where the human driver didn’t get the hint when I remained in front of them with my reverse lights on. They have somewhere to be so sooner or later they go around me (backing up if necessary). From my understanding, the driverless car in the OP just sat there forever.

What’s your angle here?

In practice humans frequently neglect to signal in instances where it is legally required (I don’t know if it is strictly legally required in California when parallel parking, but it’s certainly good common sense). Human drivers know that people don’t signal and account for that.

In this particular scenario the reverse lights would be a crystal clear indication of the driver’s intent, even if they failed to signal.

I don’t want to assume the intent of your comment, I don’t know what you’re getting at..

There’s nothing wrong with San Jose, it’s not amazing but it’s definitely not nowhere. Look at Japantown, a central neighborhood with nice well maintained apartments and condo developments well integrated in the street grid. Five minutes walk to dozens of shops and restaurants. Good network of bike routes including protected bike lanes on stroads. 12 minute bike ride to BART, 15 minute bike ride to CalTrain. 20 minute walk to downtown (adequate nightlife, San Pedro Square is walkable, etc). 20 minute bike ride to The Alameda and Willow Glen gives variety of walkable business districts. Plenty of parks with tall trees within a 20 bike ride (eg. Guadalupe River, Overfelt Gardens). Excellent Asian food, pretty good food in general. Fairly frequent city buses and a light rail (candidly, though, I have never used them).

That’s all^ for if you don’t have a car. Yea with a car you can access all the suburban stuff of which there is a lot (eg. shopping and restaurants at Westfield, The Pruneyard, eg. amazing hiking at New Almaden, Saratoga Quarry Park, eg. the vast amenities of nearby small cities). I recommend a car, it gives you access to more stuff, but is definitely not necessary, and even if you have one you don’t need to drive for everyday needs.

My one complaint about San Jose is not enough of a base of everyday cultural events, specifically live music and stand up comedy. The only small music venue I am familiar with that has regular bands is Mama Kin’s. There is no good regular stand up comedy to my knowledge. I guess SF and Oakland suck that energy out of SJ, but that’s a real deficiency.

Incidentally, Neil Young pulling off Spotify in protest of Joe Rogan, inspired me to start a vinyl collection this year.

Or a piece of blue tape.

How about inspiring humility about your place in the ecosystem? :p

https://www.saanoadventures.com/saanoadventures-blog/2016/3/...

Huh? I was pointing out another example of a consumer product that is designed to be sanitized, but that we nevertheless buy new because of squeamishness around our mucous membranes.