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Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

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Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#211

Post by Snoozus »

severak_cz wrote: post #163
thih9 wrote: post #129

It's extremely easy to hurt yourself with audio, it almost feels like cheating. Just regular audio work provides plenty of opportunities to do that. Here's a random note from Supercollider, a platform for audio synthesis [1]: > CAUTION: macOS system volume doesn’t effectively limit audio applications’ maximum volume. Extra care has to be put in working on this platform, especially with headphones, because programs ca…

this is when developing audio I have several precautions in place: 1) system volume level pretty down (usually 30%) 2) headphones volume in the middle 3) when testing something really broken I have my headphones not on the ears but on the neck

Shouldn't you do it the other way round? Set software volume to 90% and limit to safe levels with a good old potentiometer to be safe from any software issues?

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#212

Post by sprkwd »

SSchick wrote: post #123

Reverse engineered a shock collar's protocol in order to control it via programmable SDR antenna. Implemented a basic HTTP server that'd dispatch commands with a simple access control and permission system, messed up the rate limiting, big mistake. PS: I don't have a dog.

anymore...

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#213

Post by Snoozus »

arionhardison wrote: post #40
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain more about what you did and why?

tl;dr - too much modafinil. Yes, I have Crohn's and I do not like to take the meds or listen to the doctors. This is NOT AT ALL SOMETHING I RECOMMEND, PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT IT. Crohn's is an auto-immune disease and the main class of drugs that is used to treat Crohn's like mine (long term) are called TNF inhibitors or TNF blockers. TNF alpha triggers the production of several immune system molecules, including interl…

Having worked in research on Crohn's this sounds wild. Why would you not take the biologics if you can afford them? Side effects? What you do is of high risk to yourself and of no value to others.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#214

Post by jakub_g »

While at university, late night coding an assembler assignment, I had a bug in my code, and the compiled code would lead to some CPU violation.

After running the code, the CPU started making a super loud high frequency noise. The code was a super tight infinite loop, co CTRL-C did not work to make it stop. Hell, even power button of the laptop didn't react! Everything was completely unresponsive.

It was middle of night and my laptop was about to wake the whole neighborhood, and the only solution I found quickly was to remove the laptop battery.

Luckily I had a removable battery in my laptop back then!

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#215

Post by cartoonfoxes »

ganzuul wrote: post #190

I program CNC lathes in G-code for a living, so yeah. Dodgeing shrapnel is part of the job. A missing dot could cost thousands in repairs and result in loss of life limb. There is usually an aptitude test for machinists. Not everybody can do it fast enough safely.

Good machinists are something akin to lion tamers. CNC machine tools inspire a special sort of horror. They're mechanical beasts that growl and groan, ready to lunge at a moments notice with sharpened fangs, and will disembowel you if you let them. Working with a machine that will happily blow itself to pieces with a few errant keystrokes does wonders to focus one's attention. You learn to move carefully and deliberately in their presence.

I'm a software developer who has had occasion to program a CNC mill and lathe over the past few years. The relative banality and physically harmless nature of software bugs made in my normal job made the stakes seem so much higher by contrast, when touching machine tools. I partly credit this "culture shock" in helping to keep me safe and the equipment undamaged - apart from a trio of snapped endmills on Day 1 (F100 instead of F10).

I can definitely echo that the ability to work safely, quickly, is one thing that sets the pros apart. I'm glad I have the luxury of time that light production affords.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#216

Post by ahartmetz »

12ian34 wrote: post #173
ehnto wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tinnitus. You don't want tinnitus. Silence is no longer a possibility for me. I got it messing about on computers and with loud cars in my teens, so unfortunately it was just a dumb kid thing that will last a lifetime. I hate to guess how many kids are giving themselves tinnitus right now. It's just not possible to communicate the seriousness of long term problems to kids, they have no context for what long te…

Sorry to hear that, but I appreciate your words of warning. I go to loud clubs / live music a lot (pre covid) and despite knowing I should probably wear earplugs, I don't. Perhaps club revival post-lockdown is the time for me to begin.

In a pinch, you can use rolled / crumbled scraps of paper towels from the bathroom. It's quite common here (Berlin) and absolutely no one looks at you strangely if you do that. Some good clubs only have the bass really loud but it's not as common as it should be. High frequencies are what causes ear damage.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#217

Post by maccard »

duskwuff wrote: post #96
whatshisface wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a drill be engineered to put out more torque than a human holding the handle could be expected to counterbalance?

Powerful electric drills will often come with an extra handle on the side (or a mounting point for one) so that you can brace them with both hands. It's up to the user to set an appropriate torque limit if they're only using one hand.

Using the analogies above, a drill like that could put the trigger on the awkward handle, forcing the operator to use it

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#219

Post by _pmf_ »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #59
isatty wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do robotics, I can tell you that the fact that it was the cheapest or the most hacky does not matter in the least. Everything can and will go wrong, even the priciest and well documented part. I used to have multiple clamps around the controller, message bus, the firmware and also a physical barrier, and yet would not feel safe with my fingers or person around moving parts.

Yep. When I have to work with robots, it's from a distance and with as much safety equipment as possible. I've seen too many physical, hardware, and software failures to risk anything I care about. Hearing protection is also important. A hundred pounds or more of metal slamming into itself at high speed makes a deafening sound.

Every hardware demonstration is like the board room scene from Robocop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFvqDaFpXeM

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#220

Post by ahartmetz »

severak_cz wrote: post #170
mojuba wrote: post #152

Easily. Got ear infection (!) from an unexpected, very loud random noise in my headphones (just one channel) as a result of a bug in my CoreAudio code. What does CoreAudio do if your floating point audio buffer is filled with random numbers? That's right, it plays random noise at the maximum possible level, bypassing the system volume setting. Why ear infection? I have no idea, but my GP explained that it's quite pos…

> it plays random noise at the maximum possible level, bypassing the system volume but why bypassing the system volume? It does not make sense to me.

If the system volume is a multiplier and the float values have large exponents... Small times huge ~= huge.

I guess safe volume control should ideally limit the output energy. Energy is proportional to square (or so) of frequency, so ideally it would take that into account as well. That rules out simply hard-clamping sample values because that creates high frequency / energy distortions. Not trivial, especially if low latency is also required.

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