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joncrocks

1,134 karma · joined January 15, 2014

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joncrocks··on The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
Or it could be cheaper to make.

i.e. It's cheaper per unit-airtime to have a small crew interviewing people for backstory (+ editing) than recording people doing the course. They can pad-out the expensive bit (holding the events) with filler/b-roll.

joncrocks··on Null-Restricted and Nullable Types
Indeed, Optional<> was designed/intended to be used in this way.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26327957/should-java-8-g...

joncrocks··on Google listed my restaurant's number as its British HQ
I guess this _might_ count, but the whole 'store within a store' tends to be a bit of publicity stunt. You can just bung the store owners a few quid, make some stands with your company name on it and send out a press release that you now have a 'store'.

It's an order of magnitude less hard than actually setting up a store front, signing up for utilities, hiring staff directly, managing stock/inventory, dealing with returns etc. Not to mention that no-one will likely notice when you quietly take down the 'Google section' overnight.

It the equivalent of setting up a 'store' on Amazon vs. creating your own web presence + fulfilment warehouse.

joncrocks··on Second factor SMS: Worse than its reputation
> the ideal is not just having an app that generates a token but one that generates a specific type of token depending on what type of transaction you're performing and won't accept, for example, a login token when adding a new payee.

I think at least some UK banks will do this. When I've done it using a card + card reader, you select the option to choose which type of operation you're trying to do. And if you're just trying to login it just displays a rolling code, but for authorisation of particular events it will take the form of a challenge/response, i.e. you have to select the operation on the card reader + enter a code provided from the site. This should I think prevent _simple_ replay attacks.

I even think for some transactions such as transfers over a certain amount, you have to enter the amount into the reader as part of the code generation.

joncrocks··on Facebook and Instagram's 'pay or consent' ad model violates the DMA, says the EU
Does this imply that Facebook is required to provide free service to everyone?

At what point are private companies allowed to decide how to charge customers for the services they provide?

joncrocks··on Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta
> Me

A name I call myself?

joncrocks··on Companies with return-to-office mandates face losing their most valuable workers
https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-resources/workin... - Colloquially known as the working time directive
joncrocks··on Companies with return-to-office mandates face losing their most valuable workers
So that's your personal experience, but you can imagine that this might be different for different people.

The point is that previously you had a choice over the amount of space you need at home, there are requirements for WFH. i.e. You need a place where you can work effectively.

joncrocks··on UK General Election called for July 4th
Only that the current government can call it when it might be beneficial to them, i.e. if they think they are more popular now than they will be in the future/when it will be mandated.
joncrocks··on Passkey Implementation: Misconceptions, pitfalls and unknown unknowns
Indeed, the problem with lots of fallbacks is that they can invalidate user's requests for higher security. Security can sometimes end up being only as strong as the weakest link.

Make the fallback too lax and you might as well not bother with 2FA/Passkeys at all.

joncrocks··on Johnson and Johnson to pay $6.5B to resolve talc ovarian cancer lawsuits in U.S.
While it is a concern, I think all males 'get it' if they advance enough in years.

I remember reading somewhere that if you biopsied those that died of 'old-age' then it would be present in some form. So it's not a question of if, but when, and when, whether it'll be the thing that gets you before something else gives out.

joncrocks··on Tougher rules for sellers of internet-enabled devices in the UK
There are some extra protections on credit card purchases that you don't get from buying things with cash/debit cards

https://www.moneysupermarket.com/credit-cards/guide-to-credi...

joncrocks··on Doctor at Cigna said bosses pressured her to review patients' cases too quickly
How can it outspend everyone in everything using relative numbers?

Everyone has the same 100%, just distributed differently.

joncrocks··on AI-generated sad girl with piano performs the text of the MIT License
Snaaake, snaaake.
joncrocks··on Deep Bug
Had a similar bug in a production system about 10 years ago. Indexes got corrupted after some length of time. Only in production, couldn't replicate. A distributed system as well.

We (mainly a collegue of mine) eventually traced it down to a smaller part of the code until we noticed a subtle bug.

Multi reader + multi writer and a atomic operation that miscounted the number of readers.

Took us a couple of weeks to track down if I remember right.

https://issues.redhat.com/browse/ISPN-4777

joncrocks··on Double-entry bookkeeping as a directed graph
Cash flow is not just what is happening, but what will happen. i.e. the difference between when money goes out vs. it coming in.

If you are selling widgets for $1.20 and buying them for $1, and they are delivered after you order them, you are limited on how many open orders you can have at any point in time even though you make money on each order.

A companies cash flow will be dependent on employees, capital expenditures, money for stock, returns rates, tax requirements etc. etc. So it's heavily dependent on what type of business is being run and the specifics of how the business is being run.

joncrocks··on Multimillion-dollar L.A. heist was seamless, sophisticated, stealthy
The difference is that in the UK (where Hatton Gardens is), both Good Friday and Easter Monday are public/bank holidays.

At least in the UK, it's one of the few times that there are a guaranteed 4 days of closures, given that Christmas can fall on different days of the week each year.

In the UK both Christmas and the following day (Boxing day) are public holidays and the holidays will move to the next working days if they fall on the weekend. So this is the other time of year that can have 4 consecutive days of public holidays/closures.

joncrocks··on How Hertz’s bet on Teslas went sideways
Also worth noting that in Norway, they will often have cars with engine block heaters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_heater), with associated plug points in parking spaces/places.

Makes it much easier if there's already infrastructure.

joncrocks··on Friends don't let friends export to CSV
Indeed. It's like 'text file' - there are many ways to encode and decode these.

Add another munging the to list, ids that 'look like numbers' e.g. `0002345` will get converted to `2,345`. Better be sure to pre-pend ' i.e. `'0002345`

joncrocks··on What Happens When a Fifteen Year Old Pumps and Dumps with a Net Profit of $800k? (2002)
The rabbit hole is deeper than you think.

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

FWIW, there are other examples of where securities laws where intent (which is difficult to prove) is needed in order to demonstrate a law has been broken. e.g. Spoofing.

joncrocks··on Why is it so hard to build an airport?
How many planes were taking off in 1930 vs. today?

If you bought a residence in 1930, are you never allowed to complain?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#As_metaphor

joncrocks··on Why is it so hard to build an airport?
Playing Devil's advocate, air travel is a much larger business than it used to be.

Over time the number of flights, size of aircraft and time of flights can change. This can lead to increased disruption over time. It's not unreasonable to complain about an unexpected increase in disruption.

You can factor some of this into the price, but you can't factor in unknown-unknowns.

joncrocks··on Exodus Bitcoin Wallet: $490k swindle
It's a bit more like 'possession is 9/10 of the law'.

The "not your keys, not your coins" is more the fact that someone else holding your stuff happen to them and your stuff goes away. Or they never had it to start with. i.e. Counterparty risk.

`Cash` doesn't inherently have any mechanism for enforcing rights either. The difference is that real-world identities are easier to establish in situations where cash transactions go awry.

joncrocks··on An Executive Bought a Rival's Stock. The SEC Says That's Insider Trading
The only argument that holds water is that `in theory` anyone could generate the same information from what is publicly available, from first principles.

It might be expensive to do so, but they could do it.

Insider trading is slightly unique is that an outsider could not generate the same information as would be available to an insider. Their unique position is that the organisation they are part of is `inventing` information 'from thin air' (so to speak) on the basis of the decisions they are making.

joncrocks··on How to keep engineers out of meeting hell
Indeed, and actions assigned to accountable individuals etc. How to run an effective meeting is another topic entirely :-)
joncrocks··on How to keep engineers out of meeting hell
Every meeting should have:

* an agenda, so people know what is going to be discussed and the right people can be in the meeting, and how long it might take

* expected outcomes - e.g. Are we just discussing something, are we deciding something

If those two things aren't done, it's likely not to be an effective meeting.

joncrocks··on Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers
I think the word is Cartel.
joncrocks··on Check Out These Self-Soldering Sleeves from World War II
I think this must have been dependent on the school/location as I was also in an RAF section and we flew in (small) planes maybe once a term.

For maybe 30 minutes, and lots of waiting around, but was fun. Got to do a fair bit of aerobatics as well. Obviously we weren't flying solo (although there were a handful that did a course that culminated in a solo flight)

Also went gliding once.

joncrocks··on FDA says 561 deaths tied to recalled Philips sleep apnea machines
There's also `nasal strips` - plastic strips with adhesive (like a plaster) to open up the upper-nose.
joncrocks··on Fix date-handling bug when today’s date is later than the target month
To expand on this a little, there are operations that have slightly ambiguous meanings/can end up with different answers depending on your assumptions.

e.g. If today is the 30th of January 2024. What is the date in 1 months time?

Should it be the 29th of February? (as the 30th doesn't exist). The 28th? (the penultimate day of the month, like the 30th of Jan). The 1st of March (a 'standard' month should be considered 30 days, so 30 days from now).

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