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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?

#261

Post by dharmab »

maccard wrote: post #217
duskwuff wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The second handle sometimes needs to be removed to fit into a narrow space. In that case, you set a torque limit and operate the drill with one hand.

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

#262

Post by alternatetwo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #256
skciva wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love this, thanks for sharing. I'm sure I'm not alone in the HN crowd of having fond memories of BW playing days. The sonic weapon, while accidental, feels similar to tactics used to disrupt concentration and logical thinking. E.g. taunting, trolling, cheese strategies, or your opponent getting tilted from something you didn't intend to annoy them with. Often think of how keeping a cool head is incredibly important i…

> feels similar to tactics used to disrupt concentration and logical thinking (...) trolling, cheese strategies Yes, we did plenty of that. Between Internet cafe days and high-school SCBW matches, I think I've got a dozen people to fall for the simple trick of writing "[a bunch of spaces to manually center the message] nuclear launch detected" on chat[0]. Most of the times it only caused a laugh from everyone, but on…

This works in Age of Empires 2, too! I've seen a number of videos where a player writes "x has arrived in the Imperial Age" at a point where it would be devastating and the other player resigns.

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

#263

Post by toomuchtodo »

bijant wrote: post #128
AlexC04 wrote: post #82

I wrote a layoff database for Nortel Networks from ~1998 to 2001. The way I got my notice of termination was while I was running some tests on the production database and needed a "negative" so I searched for a userid that was not present in the database: my own. When I saw my name in the list I called my manager and asked him what was going on. He said "Alex, why don't you head on home for the day and I'll call you…

DELETE FROM LayoffDB WHERE EmployeeName='Alex';

This is what triggers are for :)

“Some say Alex is still collecting a check to this day.”

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

#264

Post by agency »

gxs wrote: post #254
msrenee wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's lots of safety mechanisms like this in manufacturing. I've also seen "light curtains" which are essentially 2 bars on either side of a hazard. If anything crosses that plane, the machine stops automatically. There are also pressure pads. For one type, you have to be standing on for the machine to operate so that you are in a safe location when it starts. For the other, the pad covers the danger area and the m…

Another one is machinery where you have to "enter" the machine to do maintenance. Think industrial ovens. You're supposed to turn off the circuit breaker and lock it with your own personal lock that only you have the key to. That way no one can turn it on even if they wanted to. I've heard no one, under any circumstances is allowed to take the lock off. If the person leaves after their shift and forgets to take it of…

I think this is called lock out tag out

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockout–tagout

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

#265

Post by JoelMcCracken »

tl;dr I got myself banned from #emacs accidentally because of a bug in my code.

One time I was writing a little emacs lisp module to automatically reconnect me to #emacs on freenode, but it was buggy, but it was still in my .emacs at the time, so when i restarted emacs, it started running, and I didnt notice it.

fast forward a little bit, i notice the irc buffers open in my list of buffers, and lo and behold, my code was constantly disconnecting/reconnecting in #emacs and it was spamming the channel with those messages. They banned me (briefly) so it would stop.

It was just funny to see like a flood of connects/disconnects in the chat log, and people being like "whats going on" and "must be a bug in something".

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

#266

Post by SamBam »

contriban wrote: post #189
pjc50 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "system doesn't work with negative datum" bug allegedly hit F-16 flight control software, resulting in a plane that would flip upside down on crossing the equator.

They are upside down down there, so it was a reasonable feature.

Right, it was trying to keep them upright. Northerners' bodies aren't designed to work upside down...

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

#267

Post by [deleted] »

_pmf_ wrote: post #219
AlotOfReading wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

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

#268

Post by jccooper »

whatshisface wrote: post #90
dharmab wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A cordless handheld drill is hardly a tool that most people would call 'hazardous'. You turn the trigger, the thing rotates, grab the chuck and you can likely stall it. But that much energy in something driven by code is extremely dangerous, it's waiting for any of who knows how many conditions to take off, a common one is that putting your hands in/on something that seems to be not moving can 'make' a sensor and t…

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

The amount of torque you can handle with the drill horizontal and close to the body is rather different than vertical and leaning over an engine bay.

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

#269

Post by blablabla123 »

AlexC04 wrote: post #82

I wrote a layoff database for Nortel Networks from ~1998 to 2001. The way I got my notice of termination was while I was running some tests on the production database and needed a "negative" so I searched for a userid that was not present in the database: my own. When I saw my name in the list I called my manager and asked him what was going on. He said "Alex, why don't you head on home for the day and I'll call you…

> why don't you head on home for the day and I'll call you there?

As non-native English speaker this expression really puzzles me.

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

#270

Post by cedricd »

blablabla123 wrote: post #269
AlexC04 wrote: post #82

I wrote a layoff database for Nortel Networks from ~1998 to 2001. The way I got my notice of termination was while I was running some tests on the production database and needed a "negative" so I searched for a userid that was not present in the database: my own. When I saw my name in the list I called my manager and asked him what was going on. He said "Alex, why don't you head on home for the day and I'll call you…

> why don't you head on home for the day and I'll call you there? As non-native English speaker this expression really puzzles me.

In other words: please go home and I'll call you.

'Head on home' is a real expression. Similar ones are 'head over there', 'head to ...', all of which just mean 'go to'.

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