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smtddr

4,380 karma · joined November 7, 2012

Note: I don't use this account anymore. I've seen enough comments, debates and arguments here to conclude most tech people are hyper-logical cold-hearted emotionless sociopaths and I'm better off just finding the decent ones in face to face conversations.

smtddr = Shadow-Me-Twice Dance Dance Revolution

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smtddr··on CVE-2015-8126: Multiple buffer overflows in libpng
A system can be owned using various exploits combined together. So if someone finds a way to alter the installation images, suddenly a mild trick that would normally just result in funny icons is now an exploit.

Kinda good example right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkPAgv1Gjz0

Maybe Nintendo never considered someone screwing around with their network to load an arbitrary image in a place that only Nintendo-Generated Mii png images should be but then I found a way... and if that libpng was vulnerable, suddenly we've gained usermode execution on a Wii U. Or worse yet, similar to the Sony PSP .tiff image exploit, maybe after gaining usermode we find a kernel-mode exploit and attack that. Now, we're near the realm of game piracy and private keys.

smtddr··on What happens when a culture is driven by the need for money to make more money
>>In general I've found the trope of "the rich don't pay taxes because of their fancy lawyers and accountants" generally turns out to be false.

It's not that they don't pay taxes at all, but they definitely pay less than they should. http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/news/economy/buffett-secreta...

There's no way you can believe otherwise, a millionaire can afford all kinds of financial experts to work 40hrs/week to move money all over the place to avoid taxes. It's unreasonable to think they don't (ab)use that ability.

smtddr··on What happens when a culture is driven by the need for money to make more money
In comparison to what? And exactly what income-levels paid what percentage of that? Did the poor & middle class paid 98% of of that? Did the rich & powerful use all kinds of crazy tax-loop-holes to avoid paying trillions? Cost of living/retirement in what parts of America?....maybe 19 billion is a drop in the ocean, maybe not.

19 billion tells me nothing.

smtddr··on I thought the Amazon store was a terrible idea, then went there
I'm assuming the OP is talking independent stores vs. Amazon as in "I don't wanna support the monolithic beast known as Amazon; I'd rather support mom&pop stores".... and other various data points around Amazon-is-evil-crazy-sweatshops-and-twist-arms-of-book-authors type stuff.
smtddr··on Why Childcare Workers Are So Poor, Even Though Childcare Costs So Much
You need proof that a child growing up with quality care and a quality social/cultural environment is more likely to be able to function and "succeed" in life as an adult?
smtddr··on Why Childcare Workers Are So Poor, Even Though Childcare Costs So Much
>>any non-pathological adolescent or adult can take care of children acceptably

Define "acceptably".

Some babysitters think it's acceptable to just chat on Facebook all day and plant the child in front of the TV for 10 hours. That's not acceptable to me, but that's more or less what you get for very cheap labor; just someone to keep you legally clear from abandoning a minor. Like those super-cheap bare minimum car insurance that does nothing but keep you legally driving.

Here's the definition of acceptable when it comes to my children: Take kids to parks and museums. Can avoid using profanity around them. Won't smoke around them. Won't be speeding down the highway with them. Can be trusted not to fill my children with junk food. Can truly trust them to actively watch the kids so they don't do something crazy like sticking a fork into a power outlet or turning on the gas stove without the flame, thus filling the house with gas. Right now, the only people my wife & I trust with our kids are their grandparents... aside from the pre-school teachers.

Finding quality childcare is harder than you think.

smtddr··on Why Childcare Workers Are So Poor, Even Though Childcare Costs So Much
It's only weird if the employee isn't directly responsible for creating that something.

e.g., You can buy a Lambo for nearly one million but the cars salesman who sold it to you probably isn't rich.

But when you buy a painting for nearly one million, it'd make sense to think the actual painter is doing pretty well.

A (good)public school teacher in America is woefully underpaid compared to the service they provide. They should be paid similar to doctors & nurses, imho.

smtddr··on iBackDoor: High-Risk Code Hits iOS Apps
Because you never really know until you _really know_. I know there have been times in my life that I was 100% sure of something and never thought there was a way I could be wrong, but somehow new info came to my attention and turned everything upside down. What if there's some kinda stuff in a chinese document that FireEye hasn't read yet, stating that this is normal functionality of the SDK and the developer, who read the docs thoroughly, knows that it does this. Better to just present the facts and stick with "suspect" or "alleged" type verbage and only drop the bet-hedging when it is known without a shadow of a doubt. The fact Apple removed the apps does strongly indicate FireEye at least found something suspicious and the readers of this article are probably mostly convinced at that point anyway without FireEye having to risk officially throwing around accusations.

Also, nowadays it's getting a bit too easy to blame hacking/spying on the Chinese & Russians so you don't want to accuse them until you're absolutely sure. If you're wrong, it's going to look extra bad.

smtddr··on Software developers describing their work in 1973 [video]
The more things change, the more they stay the same :)
smtddr··on Computer, Respond to This Email
Just fyi, https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html ...still works! I bet there are some people on HN who never saw the original Gmail.
smtddr··on Hearts on Twitter
That's one translation.

Another could be: "Our users are being innovate and using our services in ways we didn't completely anticipate, therefore we are trying to let our products grow "organically" and will make changes that augment what our users appear to be doing."

But this is kind of 2 sides of the same coin.

smtddr··on Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
I don't know how "proprietary" or "walled-garden" it is, but I can connect to slack using open-source "irssi" on linux.

http://www.tricksofthetrades.net/2015/09/10/slack-irssi-conn...

I feel like that has to diminish the walled-garden, proprietary weight at least a little bit if slack & irssi can communicate. And it works over SSL too. Once I started doing that, I didn't mind using slack. You have to "/ignore" certain server messages though or your whole screen will be spammed with them and you'll barely see the stuff people are saying.

smtddr··on After guilty plea, judge confused why prosecutors still want iPhone unlocked
This arstechnica comment has it spot on and is tagged as Readers Fav:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/feds-apple-must-s...

""" That's because unlocking the iPhone was never about this case. It was about putting Apple in the position of unlocking every iPhone that the government will ever want unlocked now and into the future because if you do one you have no argument against doing the next one. And to make sure that all iPhones now and into the future can be unlocked. There, does that make more sense? """

That's really all this is about.... setting precedent and pushing legal events down a logical path that'll eventually lead to a judge ruling Apple must make backdoors into all future iOS versions. They have to push hard to get a favorable ruling quickly before everyone updates to the new iOS that Apple can't unlock at all. Because by then they'd have a much more difficult legal argument to make.

smtddr··on Show HN: Twitch Installs Arch Linux – A cooperative text-based horror game
You may already have figured this out, but just incase anyone is wondering what the potential problem here is...

If it doesn't wake up and run the date command in a certain timeframe then this while loops will run forever.

The chances of that happening, while greater than zero, are really small though. It'd be something like the loop checks the time at "15:59:59", doesn't match so it goes to sleep just a few milliseconds before "16:00:00" then wakes up and runs the date command again and hopefully the deities of the CPU clock & scheduling will do this before too many milliseconds go by and the time becomes "16:00:01", at which point the while-loop would be infinite since the exact moment in time it's waiting for is now in the past and cannot occur again. I suspect though, CPU clock ticks are measured in nanoseconds or something smaller than a millisecond so this while-loop shouldn't miss its exit criteria on any modern machine.

Also, there's a chance this is just a fancy splash screen or even just a screenshot and a Twitch employee will manually get things started when it's time.

smtddr··on Rust-Doom: A Doom renderer in Rust, with no unsafe code
>>Most banks don't make any security demands of internal applications because they are not accessible to the internet. At which point safety is just a way to slow you do.

This is a bad way of doing things. That means as soon as someone finds a way to get inside the network, the bank is wrecked. You need to look at security from the point of assuming the attacker somehow got inside because it'll happen one day.

http://digg.com/2015/ashley-madison-hack

""" MOTHERBOARD: How did you hack Avid Life Media? Was it hard?

The Impact Team: We worked hard to make fully undetectable attack, then got in and found nothing to bypass.

MOTHERBOARD: What was their security like?

The Impact Team: Bad. Nobody was watching. No security. Only thing was segmented network. You could use Pass1234 from the internet to VPN to root on all servers. """

smtddr··on Mark Zuckerberg Signed the Wrong Document
You can't dismiss Facebook for copying myspace then in the same breath credit Google without respecting all internet entities that tested the waters before it. I was using Netscape Navigator, mapquest, yahoo, hotbot, lycos, and altavista before any of this Google Chrome/maps.google.com/ Google Search/Gmail stuff came along.
smtddr··on License Plate Readers Exposed – How Public Safety Agencies Responded
>>Personally, I would not want anyone with criminal records in my neighborhood/private property.

There are plenty of good people who get labeled criminals and plenty of people would really should have a criminal record but avoided it. Don't make the mistake of aligning morals/ethics with the law. What's legal often isn't morally sound, what's illegal doesn't make sense half the time until you follow the money.

smtddr··on Cutting Back Sugar Improves Obese Children's Health in Just 10 Days
Well, I pretty much did the same thing and lost 35 lbs. I know my electronic scale can't be influenced by the placebo effect.

That said, I'm not trying to say sugar is 100% bad for you. I'm sure removing 100% of the sugar from the human body will cause it to fail. Just saying that if you're one of those knocking down 2 bottles of mountain dew and a candy bar everyday, you should probably stop.

smtddr··on Paternal stress in mice given to offspring via RNA packed into sperm
>>And what they hear is that every single thing causes cancer

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/processed-meat-causes-c...

...you're so right it's painful. =/

smtddr··on Social Anxiety
it's possible :p
smtddr··on Social Anxiety
Hmm, I don't know that show by name but it's possible I may have tuned in just to see something horrible scene.
smtddr··on Social Anxiety
The closest thing I can think of is maybe a bunch of vines will come out and grab me or something.
smtddr··on Social Anxiety
We're talking irrational fears?

For the longest time I had a fear of unfamiliar shower heads well into adulthood. http://i.imgur.com/qcVVJwCl.jpg

Like if I'm in a hotel room and need to take shower, I have to take a deep breath and stare at it, telling myself "it can't hurt me" over and over again. The same kind of nervous I get in a plane that's about to take off. I still get a bit nervous to this day at 38 years of age. I suspect something happened to me at a young age but nobody seems to know what it could be. I've noticed that my 5yr old daughter is also scared of them when they make those whoosh-sounds just before water comes out. Maybe I was traumatized from that too.... I dunno...

smtddr··on Scientists create a working animal limb in a lab
One day... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjuQRCG_sUw
smtddr··on The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates
These kinds of HN threads have completely ruined me on ever using the term "liberal" in any context. It doesn't reliably scale to broadcast a consistent concept to a sizable group of people.
smtddr··on Virtual currencies can be exchanged tax-free in Europe after court ruling
Wait... then, what _IS_ tax-free about it?

If I still have to pay capital gains tax and sales tax on it, then what's different about taxes in regards to bitcoin vs. government currency?

smtddr··on Of kimono and cultural appropriation
To spell it out, the point I'm trying to make is that historically oppressed and/or underrepresented groups trying to get a foothold in society, trying to get an identity or trying to celebrate their culture... as soon as they get a foothold, that foothold is taken from them by having its definition changed or diluted into almost nothing.

>>it was modified to mean largely the same thing but a bit different

To you it's a bit different. To me it carried the constant struggle of poor minorities, including my parents, and that difference is huge enough that I don't go just tossing the word around freely. You're definitely not going to see me with coffee mugs & pencils with "hustle" engraved on it. Btw, "The Struggle" is also another term that carries significant weight in poor communities. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=the+struggle ...yes, you can show all the history of the word "struggle" but it now carries a big definition with poor people, especially african americans. At this point, there's nothing more I can say. This kind of thread never ends on HN and eventually someone will come along and say something that requires a whole school semester on history, culture and the different forms of oppression throughout history to respond to.

smtddr··on Of kimono and cultural appropriation
This argument is similar to "gay" meaning "happy". Yes, we all know that was the original definition but then it became associated with homosexuality then people started saying "gay" when they're describing something that's "bad".... and I hope we all see the problem here. I'm going to avoid pedantic debates on HN, they're endless. All I wanted to do here is show that culture appropriation is a real thing and can become a problem depending on the context.
smtddr··on Of kimono and cultural appropriation
So... I can't speak directly to the issue discussed in the article, but I am reading a lot of HN comments that seem not to understand the term "cultural appropriation", think it's a non-existent problem and anyone complaining about it is crazy. I just want to let people know that while there are a bunch of "Social Justice Warriors" running around complaining about anything and everything, the issue isn't just fiction on the part of the offended, particularly when it's erases, dillutes or mocks the actual source of the art while celebrating their own rendition.

1. http://www.refinery29.com/cornrows-cultural-appropriation

To the point, it's this kind of thing that annoying:"It seems the more popular cornrows have become among white women, the more they are drained of their history. “Sometimes editors see something that someone pseudo-popular does and they say it’s new, fresh, or edgy,” says India Jewel Jackson, an editor at Hearst Publications. “But, when it was us doing it, it was ghetto. Now that it’s someone blonde and blue doing it, it’s fresh."

2. http://jezebel.com/what-the-hustle-looks-like-on-etsy-in-201...

"“Hustling” as it presents itself in the 2015 economy erases the barriers posed to wealth acquisition by sexism, classism, racism, cissexism and ableism, instead chalking up a lack of financial success to a lack of entrepreneurial spirit. It makes no acknowledgement that some people have to hustle much, much harder than others.

This one isn't exactly cultural per se, but it erases the message the word use to carry. Now I can no longer use the word "hustle" in tech circles because I don't think it means the same thing to them as it does to me. When my parents came to America from Nigeria, their stories of things they did and things they saw in Oakland carry the definition of "hustle" that I know. While I'm sure starting up a company is very hard work, it doesn't in general contain all the facets of the historical hustle. Where one is constantly walking the tightrope between homelessness and not eating for 2 days while playing a game that seems pretty rigged against them. You certainly didn't have extra money to be buying fancy pencils and coffee mugs with the word "hustle" printed on them.

Btw, this is extremely similar to the #AllLivesMatter hashtag that washes away the original message. http://fusion.net/story/170591/the-next-time-someone-says-al... --- "Imagine that you’re sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don’t get any. So you say “I should get my fair share.” And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, “everyone should get their fair share.” Now, that’s a wonderful sentiment — indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad’s smart-@$$ comment just dismissed you and didn’t solve the problem that you still haven’t gotten any!"

smtddr··on The Fats You Don’t Need to Fear, and the Carbs That You Do
Well that's interesting! I'm still convinced that living on Twinkies & McD's isn't going to result in quality health, but it's good to know the super-size-me person had to lie in his documentary.
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