Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment The coding error... (Score 2) 67

It's a very simple error. You have a codebase that allows high muckity-mucks to make phone calls and yell at people until they delete the parts the the muckity-muck didn't like, and the code didn't stop that from happening. Just completely normal access control things. Totally normal.

Comment Re:Anyone is surprised about this? (Score 1) 63

Unfortunately it *is* stupid that there's no authentication. Something as simple as even a 4-digit PIN check would have been sufficient. There is no need to allow random radio transmitters to apply the brakes, and anyone with the *authorized* equipment would be able to have an emergency override code possibly built right into their gear.

The system, as designed, has *no* such codes at all.

Comment Re:Oh that would NEVER happen to ME (Score 1) 160

The fact that there are so many memory leak and bounds overflow vulnerabilities with C++ programs that are actually out there is something you just can't sweep away.

Yes, we can, because those are largely a problem of discipline and can be greatly reduced with more careful analysis. ...and we can do so by noting carefully that the body of bugs that are not those types is a much larger problem and very sensibly recognize that the core problem is that we need better ways to teach people to be more careful coders, instead of continuing to allow the baseline to be "well, it didn't blow my fingers off when I hit enter" and demanding they use languages that have compile-time checking built in.

Comment Re:Like a bandaid (Score 1) 160

They do so because it's cheap, and it doesn't immediately collapse into recycled wood pulp when exposed to moist, warm air. ...but no one gets excited about inheriting Ikea furniture, nor are there high expectations when buying it, nor does one often seen it featured in magazines that celebrate fine craftsmanship in carpentry.

Don't try and make low-craftsmanship furniture the new standard just because there's even more terrible things on the market. Mediocrity does not become excellence just because it's more widely available.

Comment Re:Like a plastic knife. (Score 2) 160

C++ is very definitely not a plastic knife.

It's a knife with a sharp blade where the handle is also the blade. Double knives FTW!

I'm afraid I'm going to have to call "nonsense" on this. Using a lame metaphor does not excuse people of their personal responsibility to not write code that's functionally just three bugs in a trenchcoat. nor will using Rust stop them from doing so.

Per example, the code for the cat utility is dead simple. Anyone reasonably competent should be able to audit that code to be 100% sure it's safe within a few hours, and yes I'm including time to go look at the reference manual for every single instruction because someone might be unfamiliar with the language. Someone familiar with the language would be able to do this much more quickly. Yet people who apparently can't summon up enough discipline to carefully consider two pages of code are rewriting cat and the other tools that ship with it in Rust "because reasons". This is unlikely to make anything at all safer, but it will probably sell more training classes and manuals.

Comment Re:Like a bandaid (Score 1) 160

We see you there, ignoring the question of whether or not people should learn to be more careful.

Planes stay in the air because the people who write the code that keeps them in the air are careful and thoughtful engineers who also use code checkers to ensure that planes stay in the air, or if they don't stay in the air then it wasn't the software that brought them down.

Outside of that industry the baseline for diligence seems to be "will this code get me fired before lunch". Using Rust isn't likely to change that.

Comment Re:Why don't people use audio compressors? (Score 2) 39

Audio is already very carefully scaled for this because you wouldn't want a large explosion at the actual decibel levels in your living room--neighbors who live blocks away would call the police to report an emergency. ...but the difference between a whisper and an explosion on TV is called "dynamics" and if you compress everything to make it relatively the same volume, the audio becomes bland and stops being impactful, or worse, it becomes heavy-handed. Faint background music that's used to set a mood suddenly becomes overt and intrusive. Every bus or car ride becomes a chaotic mess of noise in between the primary character's spoken lines.

Some televisions support compressing their audio although just as often it's only impacting the bands where human speech typically exists, but only slightly because by and large it simply makes things where care was taken in constructing the audio notably worse. Advertisers need to stop trying to force people to listen to the commercial from their bathrooms--unless they're selling toilet paper, it's just being intrusive and wildly inappropriate.

Comment EXTEND IT TO STREAMERS (Score 1) 39

Some of the streaming services are absolutely ridiculous about this, with the audio of the commercials being easily 30-50% louder than the programming they're interrupting. ...and it's definitely not innocent or accidental because the ones that are doing it, do it all day and all night long, no matter the program.

Comment Consider carefully the speaker. (Score 0) 303

While it's reasonably true that Elon is the majority owner of SpaceX, for the last few years he's given literally dozens of public statements and interviews on the subject, so it's important to remember that he actually knows as much about the ISS and what it does as Three-Toed Cleetus down at the trailer park.

Comment Of course it fell (Score 2) 55

They just up and set fire to their already suffering goodwill.

It's always been the case that the value of Reddit is literally it's users... and they just took a huge step forward in trying to eliminate their "dependency" on those users with AI, which was almost certainly trained on the very posts the users made. Those users were neither asked for permission nor was any serious attempt made to inform them that their previous works were about to be used for an effort to replace them--effectively taking away their agency to keep Reddit in check by withdrawing from the site if the environment became too toxic.

This isn't really a matter of copyright, per se. It's strictly a matter of the social contract under which Reddit benefitted always had the restriction that they couldn't screw over the users because if they drove the users away, Reddit would be "done". They tried to break that social contract and keep the benefit of having active, knowledgeable and engaged users without the responsibility of providing a reasonable place for those users to meet and communicate. That's taking agency from users, which is counter to everything else Reddit represents and objectively evil, so of course their value dropped.

Slashdot Top Deals

He who has but four and spends five has no need for a wallet.

Working...