mlader

If I never come back to ChatGPT then I'll never know if it finished or not. It's a real Schrödinger's Loop.

I legitimately put "Infinite Loop" in the chat box, and the response hung up. Refreshed and it was down. I know this was just a coincidence, but I can dream can't I?

This can usually be solved by coaching, not only for this person, but for the teammates who are spending more time answering questions.

For coaching the questioner, I ask them how they approach finding information, and recommend they time box their exploration, and only ask their question if they've given it a good try. I I also will describe my personal workflow to find answers when answering their questions.

For coaching the rest of the team, I often suggest they ask "what have you tried so far?" or "where have you looked so far?" before just giving an answer. This can help show knowledge gaps, and oftentimes the questioner will take another look and discover the answer themselves.

And yes, if they never get away from this behavior even after getting feedback multiple times, then that turns into a different sort of conversation.

A challenge response check will help ensure that the webhook consumer is actually using the webhook signature, and improve the likelihood that you are sending data to the right target. I saw a number of times that systems weren't verifying the data we were sending them came from us even though we had gone to all of this effort to help them :facepalm:.

Basically you periodically send a GET request to the target API with a token, and have them respond with the token encrypted with the same secret they'd use to decrpyt your webhook signature.

You could also consider sending dummy ping messages that may or may not have a valid signature (of course make sure this behavior is documented) that you would expect the target API to return a 4xx error if the signature is incorrect.

These extra steps are definitely not table stakes for a webhooks system, but could be enough to make sure the webhook event providers are being the best possible stewards of their user's data that they can =D. A lot of this complexity can also be wrapped by a client library you provide, which is a big win for everyone on its own.

Twitter's webhook API has an example of CRC btw! https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/enterprise....

This is great =). I have owned a large webhook delivery system myself, and considered starting a SaaS around it. I'm also a big fan of webhooks and I think there is definitely a market for this out there. Kudos to you for taking the plunge and launching!

Here's the only post I wrote for it that focuses on security, which is pretty critical for a webhook system https://www.easywebhooks.com/how-to-secure-a-webhooks-api. You might want to consider adding protection against Replay Attacks and support for Challenge-Response Checks if you do not already!

One of my colleagues used to love referencing Sayre's Law when we found ourselves bikeshedding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law.

Everyone in my office experienced it being down as well!

I typically will throw in a debugger instead of a print statement if I'm debugging locally.

import ipdb; ipdb.set_trace()

Then I'll explore the context variables and figure out what the hell is going on.

Also for any hubot fans out there, we commissioned one of our makers to create a statue of him for GitHub. http://www.custommade.com/model-of-hubot/by/impressiveprotot...

CustomMade (http://www.custommade.com) is a great place to emulate this process, i.e find a craftsman/maker who can help you ideate and create great pieces of furniture, jewelry, and other crafted goods. Check us out if you're interested in buying custom and aren't sure where to start!

They should trade into the bank! 4 for 1 =)

Just figured out that you can make your ship temporarily disappear by right clicking =)

Macro was my favorite subject! I was lucky enough to take the first year PhD sequence during my last year, which was my first taste of coding =D

I think in industry (anti-trust at least), they stick with the older models because their value has legal precedent, and using new methods would require some more legal hand waving by the attorneys.

I also come from an Economics background, and am now a software engineer/budding data scientist. As I've delved more into machine learning topics, I'm amazed (though not surprised!) at how both academic and industry economists are still mostly focused on running OLS/logit/probit regressions, and not other classification techniques. My undergraduate thesis did use some computational models that sought convergence for dynamic & stochastic conditions, but that was definitely not the norm.

Well, whether or not you agree with Rand Paul as a politician, I think an actual discussion of the economics at hand would be more fruitful. And by the economics, I do not mean "regulation attacks our liberties and cripples the economy," but more specifically I'm interested in the following quote:

"Many of the calls for additional legislation depend on the false premise that there is a 'market failure' regarding cybersecurity, and that businesses cannot adequately protect themselves."

From what I understand, the Obama administration believes that cybersecurity is a public good, and that there is a free riding problem. One company finds a vulnerability or comes up with a new security solution, shares that information with other companies, and then everyone benefits. The idea is that many companies would assume that others will put in the resources to solve these problems, and that they can benefit from the resulting information.

Overall expenditure in cybersecurity may be increasing, however, I'm curious what the distribution of spending looks like across various industries. Are there a few players that make up the large portion of spending, or is it spread out among more companies. In the former, a free rider problem seems more likely, while in the latter I don't really see a problem.

Personally, I'd assume that many companies are very worried about cybersecurity and free riding is a minor issue. It's bad for a business' bottom line and reputation to have a security breach, especially if they deal with customer finances. Honestly though, I do not know enough about the industry and would love to hear from someone who is more familiar with the economics and incentives.

How about dyslexia? :)

Happy April Fools Day to you too =D

This is very neat!

The main issue I could see implementing this is that you'd have to constantly get permission from the user to use their webcam. I'm not sure I'd trust a site to just use my mug for improved readability.

Could be great for games though!

I'm a little put off by the author's reaction to users suggesting features that didn't make the MVP cut. It's great that your users are requesting features that are already on your roadmap! That means you're potentially on the right track or at least know a bit more about your users.

When you complete them, you can tell your users that, "we listened to YOU the community and have delivered what you have asked for". You'll be able to keep those early users through the early stage roller coaster much more easily.

Your job isn't to be smarter or always one step ahead of your customers--it's to provide value to them so they can't live without you. Otherwise, sounds about right to me =)

Full Disclosure: I was one of the participants in the first Boston Startup School class.

One of the great benefits of the program was the plethora of networking opportunities that appeared via the instructors and the constant interaction with local startups. The program also focused on a diversity of skill sets & preparation for positions that are critical to the success of most startups: Marketing, Product Design, Sales & Biz Dev, and of course Software Development. We also had participants come in from all over the United States and the world, so I don't think drawing in top talent would be too difficult once the program has established itself. Even so, the program thrived on people with an entrepreneurial spirit and drive to learn & create rather than pure technical talent.

I'm not sure that BSS could have done well in a startup poor environment since it's success depended a lot on the participation of local startups. That's not to say, however, that a different program with a different business model couldn't succeed in such an environment.

I'd be interested in seeing a time series representation of this data, similar to http://www.gapminder.org

Apple and a number of publishers have already settled with the EU Commission [1], which began an investigation before even the DOJ. From a legal standpoint this is not an admission of guilt. Apple believed that either a) the legal costs of mounting a defense were about the same as the potential damages, b) they could not win in the European Courts (this could be because of the interpretation of their anti-trust laws), or c) the PR debacle would harm their brand and reputation too much. I would pick a combination of B and C in this case, though mostly B.

As far as the DOJ anti-trust division is concerned, their job is to investigate and prosecute companies that allegedly partake in anti-competitive behavior that adversely affect consumer prices. They saw a rise in prices as competition increased, which is contrary to how price dynamics are supposed to work in an increasingly competitive market. Given that the source of this rise in prices was due to simultaneous pressure from publishers on Amazon to switch to an agency pricing model from a wholesale pricing model, it makes sense that the DOJ would investigate. This suit will likely take a few years to come to a conclusion.

[1] http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipad-iphone/news/?newsid=3353332&#...

I'm curious if bottles using this coating will be recyclable. Reducing food waste is great, but if it's at the expense of recycling plastics or glass I'm not sure if there is a net benefit.