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thefurman

10 karma · joined April 13, 2018

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thefurman··on The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker
Was he abused by his father or something? Sounds like it should be investigated further. People usually don't just become like this without a good reason.
thefurman··on Anu: A sound, distributed version control systema
Taking into account the history of how lines have changed isn't much better, sorry Anu. (Or if you think it is, please give some very compelling real world examples).

I believe that you need to understand the semantics of the code to truly do what you are trying to do well, and for all other cases the snapshot model is more than good enough and given how we structure and modify code, it works out really well in practice. Code dealing with a single aspect should and almost always is co-located, so to get a conflict of intention in a merge is very rare. There are other human aspects like code ownership and collaborating teams which makes the issue even less of a problem.

thefurman··on Help the Graphics team track down an interesting WebRender bug
Why the downvotes? Anything contradicting this which you might want to share in text instead?
thefurman··on Help the Graphics team track down an interesting WebRender bug
You should ask the people having the issue to switch graphics cards, PSU and RAM since this >90% smells like a memory/power issue. I think you've just gotten unlucky and collected a few similar reports of people having memory corruptions. I am guessing you cache renderings and that is why the issue sticks around until you re-render.

If you want to reproduce it yourselves then perhaps try pointing a hairdryer from a distance at the various components until they start to create trouble, or alternatively just overclock them towards the breaking points.

thefurman··on Rock climbing and the economics of innovation
I once lost a job opportunity by passionately speaking about nothing but jiu-jitsu during the interview. They kept asking and I kept talking. After about 20 minutes they said thank you and goodbye.
thefurman··on No Maintenance Intended
I think one of the problems people have with free open source in general is that it's hard to get a bearing on exactly what additional risks come with it now and in the future.

Will it stay open source and free to use? Will it be actively maintained? Can I get support for issues in a timely manner? Will someone be there to helpfully guide or at least review and accept my contributions?

There needs many more dimensions to the categorization and it would be very nice if OSS projects could be graded along them all.

thefurman··on Samsung: Anyone's thumbprint can unlock Galaxy S10 phone
See answer above.
thefurman··on Samsung: Anyone's thumbprint can unlock Galaxy S10 phone
> "something you are" is attached to you

And can be compromised without theft, coercion or any other trace.

> One can be swapped out if compromised or get lost.

Which makes something you are strictly worse than something you have.

> undergoes slow changes over time

You are lacking an argument for anything attached to this point.

> ...it makes sense to split it into two categories

So you are arguing that because something is strictly worse from a security standpoint, it should be categorised as a new category? Have I summed up your position correctly?

There are usability benefits which would exist similarly by attaching something which couldn't be easily compromised to your body. For example a chip under your skin or just carrying a watch on your wrist which you could authenticate with after putting it on and which would un-authenticate automatically when it is taken off. Nobody would argue that you are your chip or your watch.

Something you know is different because there are no plausible ways aside coercion and similar for extracting such secrets in idle, and the other alternative is to get compromised on usage. It's about the threat models.

thefurman··on Samsung: Anyone's thumbprint can unlock Galaxy S10 phone
"Something you are" and "something you have" are the same class, just that the thing you have is physically attached to your body. Doesn't matter if it's a fingerprint, a chip installed under your skin or a tattoo. Pretty pointless distinction. Fingerprints, faces and eyes are merely conveniences.
thefurman··on Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report
"From the days immediately following the Lion Air accident, we've had teams of our top engineers and technical experts working tirelessly..."

If they've been working tirelessly, then they should have understood the risks and grounded the fleet.

Either they understood the risks, but neglected to ground the fleet, or they didn't understand the risks and hence we can't trust the fix.

I also find it sort of nauseating that the CEO implicitly gets the message through that the fix already has been worked on for a long time, has thus matured, can now be fully trusted, and we are just weeks away from flying with a safe plane.

I don't buy any of it. Let's analyse this critically.

The MCAS still needs to augment the flight characteristics. There is nothing that can be fundamentally changed regarding this fact. We can only change the conditions under which MCAS activates and the conditions under which it is deactivated.

It still has to have the same authority for a nose-down and recovering from an erroneous high-magnitude nose-down will still be mechanically hard or require additional pilot knowledge and actions. The latter should be impossible without recertification.

The operational characteristics of the airplane are not matched with the operational controls offered to the pilots, by design constraint. The plane is thus unsafe and will forever be unsafe, without redesign and recertification, because with the constraints in place, they can only add additional information on displays, add more reliability by having the MCAS utilise input from more sensors, add more conditions under which the the MCAS deactivates, etc, but none of this attacks the fundamental impedance mismatch between characteristics and controls, as well as the lack of education for it. Deactivation also simply exchanges the risk of stalls for nose downs.

All-in-all, the MAX is simply an airplane with a worse flight envelope as far as safety is concerned, and nothing can be done about it.

thefurman··on MacOS System 6, Version 6.0.8: run in browser
I pressed ⌘-Q and quit my browser. Good morning.
thefurman··on Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought
Yes, very clearly, sure. You don't even know the very basics of scientific methodology, statistics, interpreting data, or critical thinking.
thefurman··on Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought
There is no argument made, it's a comic strip.
thefurman··on Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought
Using a comic strip as an argument, well...
thefurman··on Apple Sued an iPhone Repair Shop Owner in Norway and Lost
Just stop buying apple products, please?