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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?

#331
post #118

I’ve not been physically hurt but lessons were learnt : A friend of mine once gave me an old computer (I don’t remember exactly but it was some random Compaq running Windows 98 and this happened in ~2010). I installed some distro in it but tbh, it was barely usable. I decided it was a great opportunity to see with my own eyes what would happen when you intentionally « sudo rm -rf /* ». Well, no surprise, it erases ev…

I remember doing something similar a long time ago (~22 years ago), and it'd actually stop removing files at some point because it deleted a file it required for the rm operation. Though I might be mixing it up with dd.

And then there was that one infamous time in Debian libc broke in Testing/Unstable. Suddenly literally every application, minor or big, was broken (everything used libc).

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

#332
post #7

I have. Back in early days of Oculus, I was using one of the development kits (DK2?, maybe DK1) and making something in Unity. The Oculus had one screen, with lenses over the left and right halves. To give depth perception, it renders a view for each eye, and shows them in a vertical split screen. Some script had a bug, and none of that happened; Instead it simply stretched a normal view across both screens. I put th…

My bachelor's degree is in neurobiology and it would have been very interesting if this was reproducible in other people. Experiencing physical pain from visual stimuli (stimuli unrelated to light intensity, at least) is not something I've ever really heard of. You may have discovered the visual equivalent to the Brown Note.

I know in the past I felt pain while trying to say certain lies. I do not mean I felt uncomfortable, I mean I felt real pain. It is weird, but sometimes you can cause pain without a direct physical cause.

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

#333
post #7

I have. Back in early days of Oculus, I was using one of the development kits (DK2?, maybe DK1) and making something in Unity. The Oculus had one screen, with lenses over the left and right halves. To give depth perception, it renders a view for each eye, and shows them in a vertical split screen. Some script had a bug, and none of that happened; Instead it simply stretched a normal view across both screens. I put th…

Whoa that's interesting! Glad you're alright. Where was the pain?

For me it was in the back of the neck.

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

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they do not scale and they are not required. I would love to go into more detail if you shoot me an email we can discuss.

Let's discuss in public, I think others might be interested. What do you mean by scale? Are you saying that the biologica are too expensive and you are looking for cheaper solutions? Apart from the price AFAIK they are the best known solution. In that case hurting yourself trying to find sth. cheaper is not worth it, because: a) it is bad for you b) it doesn't help others either, since even if your special cocktail e…

FYI he replied to your comment but replied to the wrong person here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27305183

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

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

I mean more the "Why don't you ..." It's quite obvious that it's rethorical but it seems so nonsensical to put this into a question while camouflaging what is really going on.

What an interesting question!

As others have said, it's definitely a 'softening' of a request to make it more polite ('Go home' vs 'Would it be possible for you to go home?').

But I think there are some status games going on here, too. A subordinate would never use that phrasing with a superior.

While the phrase uses conditional language to 'soften' the request, it's also an imperative (an order) that's made to look like a request.

Try to imagine the boss saying this. How would they have said it - with an upward inflection at the end, as in a question like this one? Definitely not! The phrase would definitely end on a downward inflection, as in an order like 'Please go home'.

It's a curious turn of phrase that I'd suggest is particular to managers, parents, and other authority figures that need to maintain a veneer of respect for their subordinates. It also strikes me as uniquely American; I couldn't imagine a Brit or an Australian saying something like this (but happy to be corrected).

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

#337
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.

Used to work in robotics. The QA folk were obviously very much sticklers for the full process of enabling the hardware interlocks before getting near the moving bits. One time a manager got mad at them for taking so long going through the full interlock process while repeating a failure mode. He therefore went up to the machine saying "look, it failed so it's stopped, that's how the code works!" At that point our bet…

Oddly enough, I'm right now watching Shake Hands with Danger[0].

[0] https://www.rifftrax.com/shake-hands-with-danger

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

#338
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.

Used to work in robotics. The QA folk were obviously very much sticklers for the full process of enabling the hardware interlocks before getting near the moving bits. One time a manager got mad at them for taking so long going through the full interlock process while repeating a failure mode. He therefore went up to the machine saying "look, it failed so it's stopped, that's how the code works!" At that point our bet…

Out of curiosity, what was that manager's attitude towards safety afterwards?

I would assume he'd be the poster-child for following safety protocols after that. But I'm still learning a lot about human nature.

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

#339

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 awesome safety system is the SawStop which uses the conductivity of skin to monitor for contact against the blade in a tablesaw. If it detects contact a small explosive charge goes off, instantly sending a block of aluminum into the path of the blade, stopping it dead. Even a serious accident like leaning with an elbow against a moving blade is likely to result in little more than the scratch from hitting a s…

One thing I'm still unsure of regarding table saws: is there really much risk of injury if you follow all of the typically recommended safety practices?

Every tablesaw injury I remember hearing about involved the operator failing to follow some of those guidelines.

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

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite robotics, but some of our servers kept powercycling , had to plug in the physical terminal. It was close to lunch, so I kept eating. The finale was a jar of mayo spilled into the guts of a 50k server. Best mayo I ever had.

Is mayo mayonnaise? Do people eat mayonnaise by jars?

If the movie Undercover Brother is to be believed, then yes. Typically on a slice of Wonder Bread.
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