Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Null

popey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 196 posts

Re: Null

#141

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

m463 wrote: post #100
lyrrad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume it's a joke to test if reality is a simulation or a dream.

When Elon Musk was talking about reality vs simulation, I couldn't help but think he's onto something If you were going to play a simulation game, you would not be a normal participant. You would not play a normal person, you would play the successful guy at the top launching spaceships and making money. So - the chances of Elon Musk being in a simulation are very high compared to normal people.

I had the exact opposite take, that him talking about that is (further) evidence he's a bit off his rocker. Not that being off his rocker is necessarily a problem. In fact, it might be the only reason he's doing interesting stuff with his wealth instead of just trying to turn it into more wealth for the sake of a high score.

Re: Null

#142

Post by david422 »

msh wrote: post #28
pixl97 wrote: post #7

>While I’m not a QA or security professional, I have developed a knack for doing “stupid” things with software which causes it to malfunction. A person after my own heart. I've had many a dev go "why would you do that" In which I answer "it doesn't matter, but if you accept my input it's your job to ensure the app doesn't crash"

Why do you require software to be more resilient than other things? If I pour water in the gastank of my car, it will also fail to drive. Or gas in the sprinkler tank. So the car should somehow prevent the enduser putting the wrong thing in the tank?

I think the answer is - because the software can. And most of the time, the software can be more resilient with a trivial amount resource usage.

If there was a physical device that could filter gas and non-gas liquids that could be installed in a car we would expect car manufacturers to do that.

I have seen software that puts the onus on users to use it correctly "Hey user, don't enter more than 5 items in this list". Because the software can't be bothered. And if the user enters 6 items in the list and the software crashes and the user loses all their work, everybody can point at the user and tell them it's their fault for not following directions. But personally I'd be embarrassed if that was my software.

Re: Null

#143

Post by rkangel »

thih9 wrote: post #139
rkangel wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have an excellent (and big) QA department, but 13 years ago when I started at this company we were only just beginning to hire dedicated testers. We had a mature product which was a communication handset and it worked well and was stable. Our software engineers had pressed every button they could think of in every menu and there weren't any problems. Then we hired Kevin. Kevin had the handset for 40 minutes before…

> Good testers just think differently than software engineers. I'm sure in some cases it's useful to detect all possible crashes, e.g. to make an app as secure as possible. In other cases I'd watch out for diminishing returns; perhaps instead of "think differently than software engineers" it would be enough to "think in the similar way as product users".

There's a consideration about number of users. If 100k users are using your product a lot, in a similar way to the 'million monkeys' thing they're accidentally going to find bugs.

Software engineers tend to use products in a consistent way (based on how they know it's meant to be used) whereas good testers explore the space of possible inputs in a much more 'creative' way.

Re: Null

#144

Post by staticassertion »

marcosdumay wrote: post #119
staticassertion wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do this with any language with a type system by wrapping reads with a 'Tainted' type. ie: fn safe_read(path: str) -> Tainted { Tainted(unsafe_read(path)) } And then you can apply functions to Tainted or whatever type that convert it into something structured / validated. So long as your functions only take in those validated types (ie: you do not write functions that take str) you can ensure that new reads wi…

You can do some actually useful stuff with a real type system, instead of replicating Perl's stupidity. For example, you can convert the input into a safe representation, suitable for the exact place you'll be using the string, instead of "validating" it.

This is what I was referring to at the end of my post:

> Few work directly on strings. But they do it naturally, without enforcement - so like, a function might take a 'str', but the 'str' passed in was parsed into a wrapping structure already.

ie: Most programs in typed languages already do what you're saying - they parse the data directly into a structure, and therefor they validate some aspects of it naturally, so even when you do see a 'str' in typed code it's very often already gone through some sort of parsing phase.

Re: Null

#145

Post by raphlinus »

m463 wrote: post #57
xyst wrote: post #11

People like that is the reason why this list was created https://github.com/minimaxir/big-list-of-naughty-strings/blo... My personal favorite is this one though "If you're reading this, you've been in a coma for almost 20 years now. We're trying a new technique. We don't know where this message will end up in your dream, but we hope it works. Please wake up, we miss you.",

what a great github repo. I enjoyed: # Strings that may occur on IRC clients that make security products freak out DCC SEND STARTKEYLOGGER 0 0 0 and everything under: # Innocuous strings which may be blocked by profanity filters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem)

My favorite of these was the discussion section of a popular lefty blog where any mention of "socialism" or "socialist" was routed to moderation and had to be unblocked manually. Not because of profanity, but a particularly pernicious spam problem at the time.

Re: Null

#146

Post by nkrisc »

m463 wrote: post #100
lyrrad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume it's a joke to test if reality is a simulation or a dream.

When Elon Musk was talking about reality vs simulation, I couldn't help but think he's onto something If you were going to play a simulation game, you would not be a normal participant. You would not play a normal person, you would play the successful guy at the top launching spaceships and making money. So - the chances of Elon Musk being in a simulation are very high compared to normal people.

But I'm not Elon Musk, and I'm not super rich and successful, so therefore I am real and he is as well and not a simulation. I don't know what things are like your simulation, however.

Re: Null

#147

Post by nkrisc »

rkangel wrote: post #122
pixl97 wrote: post #7

>While I’m not a QA or security professional, I have developed a knack for doing “stupid” things with software which causes it to malfunction. A person after my own heart. I've had many a dev go "why would you do that" In which I answer "it doesn't matter, but if you accept my input it's your job to ensure the app doesn't crash"

We have an excellent (and big) QA department, but 13 years ago when I started at this company we were only just beginning to hire dedicated testers. We had a mature product which was a communication handset and it worked well and was stable. Our software engineers had pressed every button they could think of in every menu and there weren't any problems. Then we hired Kevin. Kevin had the handset for 40 minutes before…

A good tester looks at all the expected cases, and then infers all the cases that exist in between those. They explore the negative space between what we're supposed to do.

Re: Null

#148

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

xyst wrote: post #11

People like that is the reason why this list was created https://github.com/minimaxir/big-list-of-naughty-strings/blo... My personal favorite is this one though "If you're reading this, you've been in a coma for almost 20 years now. We're trying a new technique. We don't know where this message will end up in your dream, but we hope it works. Please wake up, we miss you.",

Why is "nop" your personal favorite? I don't get it.

Re: Null

#149

Post by Ashanmaril »

rkangel wrote: post #122
pixl97 wrote: post #7

>While I’m not a QA or security professional, I have developed a knack for doing “stupid” things with software which causes it to malfunction. A person after my own heart. I've had many a dev go "why would you do that" In which I answer "it doesn't matter, but if you accept my input it's your job to ensure the app doesn't crash"

We have an excellent (and big) QA department, but 13 years ago when I started at this company we were only just beginning to hire dedicated testers. We had a mature product which was a communication handset and it worked well and was stable. Our software engineers had pressed every button they could think of in every menu and there weren't any problems. Then we hired Kevin. Kevin had the handset for 40 minutes before…

I'm pretty sure I subconsciously try to use my software safely and as-intended cause I don't want to crash it. Obviously saying out loud I know this is dumb, but why would I want to break something I created?!

There aren't any bugs as long as I don't look for them!

Re: Null

#150

Post by sumtechguy »

m463 wrote: post #100
lyrrad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume it's a joke to test if reality is a simulation or a dream.

When Elon Musk was talking about reality vs simulation, I couldn't help but think he's onto something If you were going to play a simulation game, you would not be a normal participant. You would not play a normal person, you would play the successful guy at the top launching spaceships and making money. So - the chances of Elon Musk being in a simulation are very high compared to normal people.

His mistake in his assumption is all games are the same. Sometimes I play a game that is kind of 'boring' and relaxing like a bit of solitaire. Other times I play a fragfest with 15 other people looking to take my head off. Sometimes I intend to play something exciting and end up playing max/min stats. Sometimes I just suck at the game...
Post reply on HN