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Comment Re:They don't pay attention to Coverity (Score 1) 379

You'll kick yourself later if you hit a bug that was revealed by a warning which was ignored.

Yes, it's called highsight bias, and there's an entire subfield of psychology devoted to its study, and a related subfield of behavioural economics which applies cost/benefit analysis to the human self-kick behavioural reflex arc.

There are educated self-kicks and there are also blind mice self-kicks.

Comment Re:Not the same, but tangentially related... (Score 2) 93

Insurance is a weird thing: it works because you pool a bunch of risk and spread the associated costs across all your insured. At the moment, Snapshot only gives discounts to those drivers that establish that they are in fact in the lowest risk pool: few miles driven, during "safe" times, in a "safe" manner (e.g., few hard stops). There's no incentive, currently, for otherwise safe drivers to participate -- such as those that drive too many miles.

However, I consider myself a safe driver but just have too many miles. Heck, I even have a dashcam (I don't live in Russia, either). But other than my clean driving record, I don't have any other driving behavior-based way to lower my risk profile or premium. I would LOVE if Progressive mandated Snapshot, increased rates of those that had poor overall driving techniques (fast acceleration, hard braking, etc.) and lowered the rates for the rest. People whose rates increased would likely flee Progressive, but the risk for the pool would go down (and with it my premiums). Mandated Snapshot won't happen of course for lots of non-obvious reasons, though.

Comment Re:Hipsters generally do ok (Score 1) 336

The hipsters should arm themselves. Michigan's gun laws aren't too restrictive, and with the money saved on housing they should be able to afford to arm and train themselves well. Your average hoodlum barely knows how to operate his gun, which is often a piece of junk, so the bar isn't too high.

Comment Re:Nothing new - Always had tech jobs (Score 1) 336

Top two cities with the highest density of engineers are Huntsville Alabama and Palm Bay/Melbourne Florida for what should be obvious reasons.

I'm sure that's true if you're counting traditional engineering fields, meaning not including software engineers. I'm not sure it would still be true if you included software. Of course many would argue that software engineering isn't yet mature enough to be a real engineering discipline, but it definitely is a big part of "tech", which is the subject of discussion.

Comment Re:do they have a progressive view? (Score 1) 336

I've spent about half of my life in Texas. I've lived in Houston, Dallas, and Austin. I've also lived in Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Southern California.

Every conversation about living in Texas I've had with a West Coaster: "How can you stand living in Texas. Everyone is so bigoted and prejudicial?" "Oh really, have you ever been there?" "No." "..."

And, of course, they completely miss the irony in their own statements.

Comment Re:Security compiler? (Score 1) 235

Why not a security compiler? Seems some clever, creative hackers could work up something which would take raw code, subject it to some scrutiny and give output/feedback. Perhaps even a security switch to the standard compilers or even a security test suite. Shouldn't be that hard to do.

Shouldn't be too hard... in the sense that solving the Halting Problem shouldn't be too difficult. I conjecture that with an appropriate set of assumptions it's possible to use Rice's Theorem to prove that security analysis is equivalent to the Halting Problem.

Of course, static analysis can catch some vulnerabilities, and can highlight potential vulnerabilities. That's what Coverity does. But I don't think any mechanical process can defeat a creative attacker.

Comment Inductive Fallacy (Score 1) 235

This analysis is based on an erroneous assumption which is derived from an inductive fallacy. Specifically, the author assumes that because one researcher who found one bug believes he could have found a second for roughly the same level of effort means that the researcher believes this process could be repeated indefinitely. I'm certain that if Kohno were asked he would deny the validity of this assumption. I'm sure he would say that his team could find a handful of similar bugs for similar level of effort, but once the pool of low-hanging fruit bugs was exhausted, the cost and difficulty would rise.

Comment Re:I switched from sitting to standing. (Score 1) 312

The desk I have is motorized. Push a button, takes about five seconds. Another option is to get a desk that is always positioned at standing level and a tall chair. That seems cheaper and more convenient but there are some downsides. One is that you have far fewer options in chairs than if you're getting normal-height chairs. Another is that changing the level of the desk is difficult, which is particularly problematic if the seating gets rearranged regularly.

Submission + - Earth-sized planet discovered in its star's habitable zone

The Bad Astronomer writes: Astronomers have announced the discovery of Kepler-186f, a very nearly Earth-sized planet in its star's habitable zone. The planet is the fifth in a system of five orbiting a red dwarf star 500 light years away, and is located in the region where liquid water could exist on its surface. It's not know if this planet is Earth-like — that is, with water and air and the potential for life — but it's the closest we've yet seen where one could be like our own planet.

Comment Re:I switched from sitting to standing. (Score 4, Interesting) 312

I'd recommend a standing desk to anyone with the willpower to make it through the transition.

And I'd recommend a sit-stand desk to anyone at all. Even if you don't stand all the time (I don't), being able to spend part of your day standing will make you feel better without discomfort, in fact being able to switch back and forth is more comfortable than sitting.

Comment Re:Information = Wealth = Power (Score 1) 98

Then it's not the same as mine. I've also followed the company from the beginning... and I have the benefit of the insider view.

Unless your insider view involved board meetings making top-level executive decisions, I'm not impressed.

Obviously not, but you may not realize how open the company is internally. Larry Page stands up in front of the entire company every week, for example, and takes -- and answers -- live questions. There are no negative consequences for asking hard questions, and hard questions do get asked. Sometimes the executives duck or dance around them, but not very often, and questions that aren't really answered continue getting asked until they do get answered.

In addition to that, other than things like acquisitions there are very few "top-level executive decisions" at Google. Most decisionmaking is driven from the bottom up.

You're probably still not impressed. Whatever. I'm just giving you my perspective and opinion. I would think that an intelligent insider's viewpoint would be of use to you; you're certainly free to dismiss it, whether or not that makes any sense. Time will tell, and I'm quite confident that the future will bear out my statements.

YouTube was a very obvious acquisition. What YouTube needed to survive and grow was low-cost scalability and a way to monetize the views it was getting. What Google had was massive data centers and network connectivity, plus a proven revenue model.

YouTube managed to grow to epic proportions before Google had to "save" them, as you imply. They also good have slapped ads onto their service at any time without Google buying them out.

Not according to YouTube employees who made the transition.

Comment Re:This would go over so well on IT (Score 5, Interesting) 312

I do development and I work a standing desk (and for a couple of years did a walking desk when I worked at home). I'm actually vastly more comfortable not just at work now but in the rest of my life since switching:

- issues I had with sciatica went away
- I am in better shape/have more endurance & energy
- I sleep better
- I used to feel like shit if I went on a 10 hour coding binge (sluggish and exhausted) but now I just feel pretty much normal

It's only uncomfortable at first, but once you figure out good shoes to wear, good anti-fatigue mats to use and good posture it's much MUCH more comfortable (at least in my experience) and makes your non-work life better as well.

At my office we have 5 people in our engineering team (some IT, some developers) who use standing desks and a few more who are considering making the switch. The oldest stander is me (42) so it's not just something 20-somethings can do.

Comment Re:Well it makes sense (Score 1) 798

I completely understand your points, but let me offer a few things:

Shit like this happens to people every single day. Often vastly worse; I volunteered with an organization that sought clemency for people who were wrongly convicted and imprisoned (and in the US that means being subjected to some truly horrific shit). Yet, by and large, despite being completely fucked over by the system and having had years - sometimes decades - of their lives taken away, despite being tortured by beatings, rapes, solitary confinement, these people didn't lose their shit and go on a killing spree. They kept their shit together. My point here is that people get fucked over and there are ways of dealing with it, and sometimes things get handled and sometimes they don't, and you need to move along and get past it.

But, as you say, that takes perspective. Which gets me to my next point: The kid himself may not have perspective, but his parents sure as hell should. Or some other adult. Someone should have sat him down and explained that he was right, the people in power were assholes, and that while he probably is plenty pissed about how it all went down, in the grand scheme of things it's just a run in with assholes, and he's better than that. It is the job of parents not just to teach kids how to not be assholes, but how to deal with the fact that assholes exist and they will try to fuck up your life.

I definitely agree that dealing with bullying needs to be handled better not just because it's the right thing, but because it's an immediate safety issue and letting it keep going perpetuates a culture that accepts it. The problem is that school administrators are short sighted in this country (actually, pretty much everyone involved in public education in this country is extremely short sighted), and they want to maintain control with a minimum amount of hassle.

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