News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

throwaway7033

Re:The Lost Art of C Structure Packing (2014) on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @09:30PM (#31187852)
Most ABIs are complex and only partially specified; you're playing with fire if you use bitfields or other ill-defined features in public APIs.
Re:The Hare programming language on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @02:51PM (#31184180)
Most systems don't merit reading the documentation; if it doesn't look markedly better, I'm moving on.
Taking money from the West doesn't keep you alive; if I were a Russian would-be defector I'd be worried about ending up like Alexander Litvinenko (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko).
The linked Mozilla bug report provides an excellent reason to drop P-521.

If you look at the telemetry for last actual Firefox release, only 8 (yes, eight!) out of 1.67 BILLION handshakes used a P-521 curve. This is a good indication that P-521 isn't needed, at least for certificates verified by web browsers.

Lead poisoning lowers your IQ; blacks are more likely to be exposed to it. (https://www.dw.com/en/lead-poisoning-reveals-environmental-r...)
The Griggs v. Duke Power Co. decision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.) makes them legally problematic.
Re:Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source on Sunday March 27, 2022 @01:45PM (#30822264)
Here are some package counts(http://www.modulecounts.com/) for different platforms:

* npm - (1,916,619)

* Maven - (465,713)

* NuGet - (299,957)

npm has about 2.5 times the number of packages as Maven and NuGet combined; it's not surprising that it has more drama than other ecosystems.

Re:American poverty is too high for all kinds of people on Friday March 25, 2022 @03:24PM (#30806135)
I'm reminded of this cartoon - Introduce them to identity politics (https://imgur.com/gallery/KdeMOdA).
Be thankful it's just marijuana; here in Seattle, we're so enlightened that addicts using fentanyl and meth on buses (https://komonews.com/news/local/king-county-metro-drivers-fr... a big issue.
It's cronyism, pure and simple.

Certificate authorities like Camerfirma[1] were revoked from all browsers because of numerous policy violations. This legislation is intended to force browsers to accept their certificates.

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA/Camerfirma_Issues

Re:Alarm raised after Microsoft wins data-encoding patent on Friday February 18, 2022 @04:50PM (#30391563)
Prior art only applies if the USPTO agrees to review the patent and the examiner considers it prior art; neither of these are guaranteed.
Re:Ask HN: What are your contrarian views? on Wednesday February 16, 2022 @06:49PM (#30367524)
Software development managers don't need to be technical; soft skills are more important.

Avoid engineering practices from Facebook or Google. Both companies have monopolies, an army of developers and can afford to rewrite software on a whim.

Re:Russia could hit U.S. chip industry, White House warns on Saturday February 12, 2022 @08:28PM (#30318206)
The same as Crimea; Putin thinks he can get away with it.
Re:I almost got banned from Hacker News on Friday February 11, 2022 @10:54AM (#30302849)
lobste.rs has a public log of moderator actions.

It's a fraction of the size of HN, though and requires an invitation to join.

Re:Banned and Challenged Books Everyone Should Read on Saturday February 05, 2022 @03:45PM (#30225777)
Here's the complete list.

Maus by Art Spiegelman

1984 by George Orwell

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Stamped by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Melissa by Alex Gino (previously published as George)

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Ulysses by James Joyce

Re:Reduced-hours software development engineer position at Amazon on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:28PM (#30187132)
Job descriptions are forward looking statements; the position may be entirely different.

Here are some of the many possibilities:

The service has poor uptime and you're on call every weekend.

Schedule pressure or poor management means that you're asked to come in on Fridays "until the next release".

The reduced-hours position was sponsored by a VP who has lost interest or left the company. Your direct manager has deadlines to meet and pressures you into working full-time.

Re:Google Is Forcing Me to Dump a Perfectly Good Phone on Thursday January 27, 2022 @09:31PM (#30110061)
> It's fascinating that Google, the stewards of Android, have refused to solve any of those problems. The most successful operating system in history is managed by a company who refuses to solve its deficiencies.

I wouldn't say that they've refused to solve its deficiencies; Google is not to blame for nor do they have any control over the Linux kernel's development practices. The kernel developers don't want to have stable APIs and the natural result is that out-of-tree drivers are poorly supported.

Re:Economists are revising their views on robots and jobs on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @08:33PM (#30080544)
> Home ownership is a way to keep people busy fixing the house, working or risk losing a basic need, and living at the edge of their means. Also invested in their own property and less willing to riot and revolt. Don’t get me wrong - I like my home a lot, but the cost is not much less expensive than rent after all the other associated expenses.

"No man who owns his own house and lot can be a communist. He has too much to do." - William Levitt

Re:ISO C became unusable for operating systems development on Sunday January 23, 2022 @04:44PM (#30050767)
Many of the people who complain about undefined behavior effectively want a #pragma dwim.
Re:The control group is out of control (2014) on Saturday January 22, 2022 @06:04PM (#30041724)
How so? Casinos routinely ban card counters; if psychic powers existed then psychics would also be banned from casinos.
Re:Google is wrong. Apple’s iMessage is a failure on Wednesday January 19, 2022 @08:58PM (#30003336)
Yellow journalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism) has been a thing since at least the 1890s.
Re:Ask HN: Why is Docusign a $50B company? on Sunday November 28, 2021 @07:45PM (#29374992)
> I'm almost afraid to ask since it's such a given, but do employees actually get fired for choosing the wrong vendor? I've heard it repeated in quite a few contexts, and I'm unsure if I should interpret it literally. At worst, I would expect the executive has a slightly tarnished reputation for picking what ended up being a bad partner.

It wasn't just picking the wrong vendor but one of our competitors got a new CTO after a critical system was poorly migrated to the cloud.

They could buy directly from the seller; that's how I got my condo.
Re:Being on Call on Friday February 26, 2021 @05:59PM (#26280855)
Our normal start time is before 9 am and many people start work much earlier; the company is on the Fortune 100 Best Places to work list.