News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

mbroshi

Re:Going Dark, and the era of law enforcement hacking on Friday August 14, 2026 @06:09PM (#49305186)
> In the real world, it does feel likely that we’re going to hit some sort of a ceiling on the number of useful bugs, and probably we’ll hit it soon.

This doesn't resonate with me. I see companies adding more sloppily written features with AI. I see more bugs in the software I use, not less. While it's plausible that software is getting both buggier and more secure, I suspect those two move in the same direction not opposite.

My guess is that we're getting better at finding _existing_ security issues with AI (and thus fixing those issues), but simultaneously adding more insecure surface areas _at a faster rate_.

Re:Show HN: Probabilistic Tic-Tac-Toe on Monday June 10, 2024 @01:44PM (#40636066)
Brilliant! Makes a simple children's game very interesting. One aspect I really enjoy is that it makes clear the knee-jerk response towards action bias[0]. There are times when your opponent has two-in-a-row, but the probability of a frown on the third is > 50%, in which case it's in my interest to have my opponent click on the third square instead of me (but even knowing that cognitively, it's still hard to not action).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_bias

Re:The Sage Compiler, Operating System, and Web-Demonstration on Wednesday January 03, 2024 @05:38PM (#38860802)
FYI, Sage is also the name of a mathematical programming language: https://www.sagemath.org/
Re:Two men die in Ironman Cork competition in Ireland on Sunday August 20, 2023 @06:47PM (#37203666)
There's an implicit assumption that the organizers would cancel the race if conditions are unsafe. E.g., when I go on a rollercoaster, I assume engineers have calculated the safety better than I could ever evaluate
Re:The Peecyclers on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:13AM (#31807598)
Sounds like an interesting--although presumably not easily and quickly scalable--solution to fertilizer shortages. I am dubious about the environmental improvement. According to a meta-analysis[0], chemical fertilizers produce less ammonia emissions

> However, ammonia emissions, nitrogen leaching and nitrous oxide emissions per product unit were higher from organic systems.

Basically, chemical fertilizers are much more efficient and have more uniform distribution of nutrients.

[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030147971...

I see a lot of doubters, but the bet is still open. If you're so doubtful, go ahead and put your money where your mouth is!
Re:Do Not Recommend: User Provided Primary Keys on Wednesday February 23, 2022 @12:36AM (#30438027)
> Did you use a regex to verify the data looks like a uuid before putting it into the database?

Is that really a thing? I have used UUIDs as primary keys many times in my life, and never had a need to do such a thing. I am struggling to even think of a valid use case.

Re:Ask HN: Quit caffeine? Before and after anecdotes on Saturday February 19, 2022 @04:42PM (#30400806)
This is something I have thought about a lot.

I have had coffee daily, gone months without any caffeine, and currently average about one cup of coffee every week or two.

I think the best approach is experimental and data-driven. Everyone has different genes, life circumstances, sleep quality, etc., so it's hard to deduce too much from others' anecdotes. Once a week, I do a version of the Beck Depression Inventory[0] to measure my mood over the previous week. For me, daily coffee definitely causes me to be slightly depressed. I have found a cup when I really need it (which is about once every week or two) is ideal. But, whatever it is you want to optimize for (lines of code, happiness, sleep quality, etc.), make sure you are measuring, and then start experimenting!

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beck_Depression_Inventory

Re:Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @09:16PM (#30281675)
As Tyler Cowen always responds to headlines like this: "If it’s true, why isn’t the price of oil down?"
This is a great idea! I tried it on a 200-page document [1], and it took over a minute to process in my browser, and the result seems to be about 75% highlighted. Not sure if it's the "math-ese" or length that is the issue.

One cool thing is that it highlighted both the same sentences in English and French. I presume you translate the text before analyzing.

[1] https://www.math.mcgill.ca/darmon/theses/leahy/thesis.pdf

Re:We deleted the production database by accident on Saturday October 17, 2020 @09:57PM (#24814993)
I love this post. This sort of thing happens to everyone, most people just are not willing to be so open about it.

I was once sshed to the production server, and was cleaning up some old files that got created by an errant script, one which file was '~'. So, to clean it up, I type `rm -rf ~`.

Re:$7.5k Google services mix-up (2018) on Monday April 20, 2020 @08:09PM (#22930396)
I think the link should be here: https://www.ezequiel.tech/2019/01/75k-google-cloud-platform-...

And the date should be (2019)

I wonder why the body needs to move to stay warm. Seems like a waste of energy. If I were to "design" the body, I'd make automatic heat generation one of my MVP features.
Re:Changing Our Approach to Anti-Tracking on Thursday August 30, 2018 @01:30PM (#17878720)
My favorite hidden feature in Firefox is having multiple profiles[0],[1]. Unlike containers, profiles have separate bookmarks, extensions, etc. I have found profiles even more useful than containers for development.

[0] about:profiles (paste into URL bar in Firefox)

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...

Somewhat perpendicular, but intermittent fasting has been a great recent lifehack for me. I skip breakfast every day, and sometimes skip lunch. Gives me back at least an hour every day. And gorging for dinner is a lot of fun.
Re:Showdown: MySQL 8 vs. PostgreSQL 10 on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @12:47PM (#17135629)
There are functional benefits for having UUIDs as a primary key, but yes there are performance impacts on writes and ORDER BY. The best way to find out how it will impact your application is to have performance tests in place, and test out the primary key change in a development environment. I do not think you'll able to determine the impact on performance/scalability based on "pure thought".
Re:Showdown: MySQL 8 vs. PostgreSQL 10 on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @12:43PM (#17135586)
It's pretty unlikely to get a collision[1], and the client should be able to handle the gracefully (regenerate the UUID and retry).

[1] https://www.quora.com/Has-there-ever-been-a-UUID-collision

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