brandt's recent activity
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Comment on Conan O’Brien’s wild first year: An oral history - In 1993, NBC made a historic decision—and gave Late Night to a nobody. O’Brien, Letterman, Lorne Michaels, Lisa Kudrow, and more tell all in ~tv
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Comment on The origin of mysterious green ‘ghosts’ in the sky has been discovered in ~science
brandt LinkArchive link for folks getting an error on the page:...Archive link for folks getting an error on the page: https://web.archive.org/web/20231213002301/https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-12-12/the-origin-of-mysterious-green-ghosts-in-the-sky-has-been-discovered.html
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Comment on GPL or Apache license for an upcoming PySide2 project? in ~comp
brandt Link ParentDisclaimer: IANAL. If we have any IP lawyers here, I'd welcome their corrections. The AGPL doesn't necessarily prevent that. I think that's a common misconception because, in practice, SaaS...Disclaimer: IANAL. If we have any IP lawyers here, I'd welcome their corrections.
The AGPL doesn't necessarily prevent that. I think that's a common misconception because, in practice, SaaS companies tend to avoid AGPL-licensed software like the plague. AGPL's surprisingly limited history in the courts make those companies' lawyers take an extremely cautious position on the ambiguities of (1) what constitutes "remote network interaction" and (2) to what extent do its copy-left terms apply to the other software behind their services?
To this layman, the plain meaning is a lot less cataclysmic than that. But I digress.
To guard against what you've described (another company offering your software as their service), you'd need something like the SSPL, which is itself based on the AGPL.
In fact, the only substantial difference between the Terms and Conditions of the GPLv3, AGPLv3, and SSPL is in each one's Section 13:
GPLv3
13. Use with the GNU Affero General Public License.
...Just clarifies how the GPLv3 and AGPLv3 interact.
AGPLv3
13. Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have permission to link or combine any covered work with a work licensed under version 3 of the GNU General Public License into a single combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The terms of this License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work, but the work with which it is combined will remain governed by version 3 of the GNU General Public License.
Server Side Public License (SSPL)
13. Offering the Program as a Service.
If you make the functionality of the Program or a modified version available to third parties as a service, you must make the Service Source Code available via network download to everyone at no charge, under the terms of this License. Making the functionality of the Program or modified version available to third parties as a service includes, without limitation, enabling third parties to interact with the functionality of the Program or modified version remotely through a computer network, offering a service the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program or modified version, or offering a service that accomplishes for users the primary purpose of the Program or modified version.
“Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software, all such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available.
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Comment on Light No Fires (from the makers of No Man's Sky) | Official reveal trailer in ~games
brandt Link ParentWhether or not they've learned their lesson, I've learned mine: No more pre-orders.Whether or not they've learned their lesson, I've learned mine: No more pre-orders.
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Comment on [SOLVED] Recovering data in a very old, possibly corrupted tar archive? in ~comp
brandt Link ParentGlad I could help. It was a fun rabbit hole to go down. As you saw, the file magic header was 0x1F 0xEF instead of what you'd expect from gzip (1F 8B). But there were a bunch of 0x1f archive...Glad I could help.
It was a fun rabbit hole to go down. As you saw, the file magic header was
0x1F 0xEFinstead of what you'd expect from gzip (1F 8B). But there were a bunch of0x1farchive formats. So the search took me on a tour of the many ancient archive formats that might have still been kicking around back in 1999–2001 when this file was created. I didn't find any that matched, but it was a fun search anyhow.Incidentally, I've concluded that the file really is just corrupt. The closest I could come to finding something with that signature was when you read a gzipped archive as UTF-8 text. In UTF-8, the
1Fis a valid character but8Bis not. So the latter gets substituted with replacement characterEF BF BDmaking the first few bytes1F EF BF BD. However, in our bad file the third byte is08, which is exactly what we'd expect from a regular gzip file. The rest of the header also looks normal. In the bad file's trailer, the uncompressed size matches our good file, but the uncompressed CRC32 checksum does not.So I don't have a good explanation for how it became corrupt, but given the nature of the contents, I'm going with cosmic rays. :)
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Comment on [SOLVED] Recovering data in a very old, possibly corrupted tar archive? in ~comp
brandt LinkI think this might be the same package, but working: https://web.archive.org/web/20010615115135/http://bubba.ucdavis.edu/~knox/radpack/radpack.tar.gz Note that this one is only a tar file despite...- Exemplary
I think this might be the same package, but working: https://web.archive.org/web/20010615115135/http://bubba.ucdavis.edu/~knox/radpack/radpack.tar.gz
Note that this one is only a tar file despite the .gz extension.
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Comment on Tildes Video Thread in ~misc
brandt LinkWatch electricity hit a fork in the road at half a billion frames per second Quoting one of the comments: As someone who doesn't have a PhD in physics, I agree. It's such a beautifully simple...Watch electricity hit a fork in the road at half a billion frames per second
Quoting one of the comments:
I have a PhD in physics. That graph is easily the most instructive, intuitive thing I've ever seen about electricity and it's relationship to the wave properties of the electric field.
As someone who doesn't have a PhD in physics, I agree. It's such a beautifully simple visualization that's clarified things for me a ton.
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Comment on Plagiarism and You(Tube) in ~tech
brandt LinkWhile not the central topic of the video, his comment about video editors freely sharing information reminded me of how things were and, to a good extent, still are in the software side of the...While not the central topic of the video, his comment about video editors freely sharing information reminded me of how things were and, to a good extent, still are in the software side of the tech industry.
So much of the innovation in the tech world has been fueled by people freely offering their work under permissive licenses for others to build upon with only attribution. And engineers often light up when you ask them how they did something at their company.
This industry would not have advanced as quickly as it has without that openness. I wonder to what extent people outside of it realize that is the case.
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Comment on Newsweek's World's Most Trustworthy Companies listing in ~finance
brandt LinkHmm... There are some famously untrustworthy companies in the top 10 of several categories. Looking at their methodology, apparently social media sentiment analysis was 20% of the score. I wonder...Hmm... There are some famously untrustworthy companies in the top 10 of several categories.
Looking at their methodology, apparently social media sentiment analysis was 20% of the score. I wonder whether and to what extent this factor was gamed.
The remaining factors were Investor trust (40%), employee trust (20%), and customer trust (20%). It would be very interesting to see those individually.
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Comment on A very subtle bug in ~comp
brandt Link ParentI love stories like this. It's like a whodunit where you can speculate as it unfolds. By the end, you've either refreshed your knowledge or learned something along the way. Also, learning how...I love stories like this. It's like a whodunit where you can speculate as it unfolds. By the end, you've either refreshed your knowledge or learned something along the way.
Also, learning how stuff breaks is a great way of getting a better understanding of how it works.
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Comment on Mexican Congress holds second UFO session featuring Peruvian mummies in ~science
brandt (edited )LinkOnly UFOs and mummies? When are they going to do something about the lemon stealing underpants gnomes? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Being cagey with the evidence is as big...Only UFOs and mummies? When are they going to do something about the lemon stealing underpants gnomes?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Being cagey with the evidence is as big and red a flag as they come. Anthropologists aren't The Scarlet Pimpernel. It's not hard to reach out across institutional boundaries.
But I suppose if you can't find a peer to backup your claims, you can always shop around for a charlatan outside your field.
Heck, I'll even give them a few leads!
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Dr. Avi Loeb isn't an anthropologist, but until recently he was the chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy, is still a department head, and he's basically become the Ancient Aliens guy meme. He thinks everything is aliens these days, and publishes more than a paper per month.
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Kary Mullis, a Nobel Prize winner (in Chemistry), could probably be brought onboard, but first he'll need to know the alien mummy's star sign. No doubt the talking fluorescent raccoon that visited him was from the same planet.
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Actually, how about I just give them a list of chumps with a PhD?
Anyways, I think I'll just wait until we hear from some credible outside scientists with relevant domain knowledge.
EDIT: And I just want to clarify that none of this was taking a swipe at you, OP. Your summary was very reasonable and fact-based.
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Comment on The myth and reality of Mac OS X Snow Leopard in ~tech
brandt LinkIn the keynote where Mac OS X 10.6 was announced, they referred to it as "a better Leopard." The number of features was >0, but from an end user perspective it was still very few. There were a lot...In the keynote where Mac OS X 10.6 was announced, they referred to it as "a better Leopard." The number of features was >0, but from an end user perspective it was still very few. There were a lot of under-the-hood changes, but "no new features" is not the same as "no changes."
It'd be more accurate to call Snow Leopard a quality-focused update rather than a "bug fix" update. Sometimes the prerequisite to fixing a set of problems is rewriting a component, updating a dependency, or taking a different approach to a problem altogether.
Wisdom is knowing when to/not to reach for the bigger hammer. Bigger changes -- even when made for the sake of quality -- increase the risk of negative side-effects. Sometimes it's still worth it. Sometimes it's what you have to do to loosen the chains of past decisions that bind your options for the present.
But was 10.6.0 an especially buggy initial release?
Possibly. I don't think the release notes they've listed for 10.6.1—10.6.4 look that different from those for 10.5.1, 10.5.2, 10.5.3, and 10.5.4. Leopard 10.5.0 even had it's own big data loss bug. For many of the items the author listed, it's difficult to know whether they were bugs introduced in 10.6 or if they were fixes for issues also present in earlier versions. After 10.6 was released, Apple seems to have only released security updates for 10.5 so we don't have contemporaneous release notes to compare.
Conclusion
While I disagree with the author on the history, I agree that pace and feature pressure could well be the cause of recent quality issues. I'd argue there are likely other issues at play, but that's another discussion.
I also largely agree with their prescription to slow down. However, deadlines are good. They hone focus. The only real question is what you'll focus on.
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tildes
brandt Link ParentThese were like every other comment on Digg back ~2007.These were like every other comment on Digg back ~2007.
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Comment on A Qanon cult set up a compound in a small town. The locals are fighting back. in ~life
brandt Link ParentWish I could take credit, but I got that from Judge Jeffrey Middleton, a district court judge in a small town in southern Michigan. Most sovcits object to their beliefs being labeled "sovereign...Wish I could take credit, but I got that from Judge Jeffrey Middleton, a district court judge in a small town in southern Michigan. Most sovcits object to their beliefs being labeled "sovereign citizen" so he started using the term "borogoves" because it's the same pseudolegal jabberwocky. I like that judge.
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Comment on A Qanon cult set up a compound in a small town. The locals are fighting back. in ~life
brandt Link ParentIt's ironic that these people are so gullible and yet so firmly entrenched in their beliefs. Search YouTube for "sovereign citizen in court" and you'll find loads of videos where the judge -- the...It's ironic that these people are so gullible and yet so firmly entrenched in their beliefs. Search YouTube for "sovereign citizen in court" and you'll find loads of videos where the judge -- the very person overseeing their trial -- patiently tries to explain why their theory of the law is wrong, and the sovcit won't have any of it. The "quantum grammar" ones are especially lost.
I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. A couple years ago a book full of this stuff was one of the top selling legal books on Amazon. YouTube has tons of videos of deluded fools explaining this BS to the extent that it's even possible to be explained. There are more videos of them failing in court, but those probably aren't recommended to someone intent on finding the borogoves.
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Comment on Installing a SATA SSD in a Lenovo x270 (shielding vs no shielding) in ~tech
brandt Link ParentI agree. FWIW, I think any modification invalidates the laptop's original certification. But the new SSD had to pass its own certification. While not precisely the same thing, you don't hear about...I agree. FWIW, I think any modification invalidates the laptop's original certification. But the new SSD had to pass its own certification. While not precisely the same thing, you don't hear about people who built their own PCs having EMI problems very often.
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Comment on How native English speakers can stop confusing everyone else in ~humanities.languages
brandt (edited )Link ParentOur VP of Engineering used the phrase "balls to the wall" at an all-hands meeting. At the next all-hands we got a presentation on the phrase's origin.Our VP of Engineering used the phrase "balls to the wall" at an all-hands meeting. At the next all-hands we got a presentation on the phrase's origin.
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Comment on Does “and” mean “and”? Or “or”? The US Supreme Court will decide. in ~humanities.languages
brandt Link ParentCatala is an attempt to create a "legislative literate programming language", though it's geared towards tax law annotations. You probably couldn't create something quite that concrete for less...Catala is an attempt to create a "legislative literate programming language", though it's geared towards tax law annotations.
You probably couldn't create something quite that concrete for less structured types of law, but I can see something like what you've described being a nice reference to help start one's research.
There would be some real challenges to getting initial contributions and moderating something like that though.
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Comment on This is financial advice in ~tech
brandt LinkWhen Prophecy Fails is a 1956 book detailing three social psychologists' study of how members of a UFO cult reacted when their predicted date of the apocalypse failed to materialize. This is the...- Exemplary
When Prophecy Fails is a 1956 book detailing three social psychologists' study of how members of a UFO cult reacted when their predicted date of the apocalypse failed to materialize.
This is the intro:
A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.
We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions, managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks.
But man’s resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.
They suggest that this phenomenon can occur when five conditions are met. This table from the book's wikipedia article puts it nicely:
Condition Effect "1. A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he or she behaves." Makes the belief resistant to change. "2. The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual's commitment to the belief." Makes the belief resistant to change. "3. The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief." Exposes believers to the possibility of their belief being disproved. "4. Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief." Exerts pressure on believers to abandon their belief. "5. The individual believer must have social support." While an individual might be unable to resist the pressure to abandon their belief in the face of disconfirming facts, a group might be able to support each other to maintain the belief. That internal reenforcement in their beliefs works like a flywheel of delusion.
It's been years since I read it, but I remember it being a fascinating read. Here's a link to it on Amazon.
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Comment on What is your most annoying (minor) movie trope? in ~movies
brandt Link ParentFunny enough, the least contrived scenario you could get Hollywood-style cracking of one digit at a time would actually depend on it taking longer to crack each successive character until the...Funny enough, the least contrived scenario you could get Hollywood-style cracking of one digit at a time would actually depend on it taking longer to crack each successive character until the last. (But we're talking nanosecond-scale differences.)
Say the passcode is
34397and the system is vulnerable to a string comparison timing attack.The general idea is that the system will reject
30000faster than it will reject34000because the first one takes two character comparisons (3=3: true,0=4: false) to tell know it's wrong while the second takes three. So you run through the numbers one place at a time (10000,20000) until you find one that takes slightly longer to reject (30000).The difference is so minor that it probably won't be apparent on your first try, but after enough failed attempts you start to see that
[012456789]0000are rejected faster than30000. Therefore the first character of the passcode is3.To get it to go as slow as it does in the movies, we'll need to add a couple more contrivances to this scenario:
- The system sleeps for a few milliseconds after incorrect guesses forcing us to make a lot more attempts to get the timing statistics we need.
- The interface must only allow for a small number of concurrent login attempts so that our guesses can't be parallelized.
All that said, cracking the last character is different. It will probably be faster than the ones before it because we don't have to use timing information to figure out if a guess was correct. If it's correct we'll know it because the system unlocked.
An excerpt from the Late Night with Conan O'Brien 10th Anniversary Special (2003):
It took them a few years to get their stride, but eventually it got really damn funny.