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Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

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Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#181

Post by TerrifiedMouse »

justin66 wrote: post #9
mrweasel wrote: post #7

The interviewer, Dave Plummer, is also is also an amazingly interesting person in his own right. I particularly enjoyed his retro-coding videos, such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlZe2JwrJqM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0zxIfJJLAY The videos are really interesting and his background muzak and RGB lighting puts me in a Christmas mood. He generally put Microsoft in a completely different light than I'm us…

YouTube recommendations have always been pretty awful, incentivizing people to avoid exploring videos on controversial topics once they learn that if they do so, they’ll be inundated with garbage on that topic. The recent forcing of people (including me) to turn off their ad blockers was an eye opener. Holy crap, YouTube ads are hot garbage, and it’s embarrassing to think that any humans respond to them. YouTube has…

> incentivizing people to avoid exploring videos on controversial topics once they learn that if they do so, they’ll be inundated with garbage on that topic

Not that hard to work around frankly. Just delete the offending video that trigger the avalanche of recommendations from history - make sure you did not leave a comment or vote on the video; zero interaction apart from watching (which will be forgotten when you remove it from your history)

> Holy crap, YouTube ads are hot garbage, and it’s embarrassing to think that any humans respond to them. YouTube has abandoned any pretense of offering a good user experience.

This I agree. YouTube (Google as a whole) has stopped trying to match eyeballs to relevant ads. Instead they have handed the reins to advertisers to bid for who they want to advertise to. So if advertisers was to be self-destructive and make your web experience crap, Google will happily let them as long as they get their check.

Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#182

Post by MarkSweep »

hjk_bear wrote: post #144
mrweasel wrote: post #7

The interviewer, Dave Plummer, is also is also an amazingly interesting person in his own right. I particularly enjoyed his retro-coding videos, such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlZe2JwrJqM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0zxIfJJLAY The videos are really interesting and his background muzak and RGB lighting puts me in a Christmas mood. He generally put Microsoft in a completely different light than I'm us…

Dave's Garage is a channel with genuinely interesting content and is very knowledgeable about all things Microsoft/Windows. However (I hate to be this guy) take everything he says about non Microsoft/Windows stuff with a huge grain of salt. Especially after this comment he made [1]: >" No, Windows is a closed-source operating system loved by millions. Linux is an open-source operating system which includes a binary b…

That comment is replying to someone saying "Windows is a rootkit". To me it looks like someone replying to an absurd, untrue statement about Windows with an obviously untrue, absurd statement about Linux.

Unless this is part of a larger pattern of inaccurately describing Linux, I don't believe he literally believes what he is saying in this comment.

Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#183

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

eviks wrote: post #177
vsnf wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not as devoted to Windows as Apple people are to Apple, but I will happily go on record and say that at least from the perspective of a user, I’m a fan of windows.

But you don't love it unlike some more devoted people?

You need intense love to use a mac without (real) games, or Linux without (meaningful) GUI. Windows has both, so it doesn't require devotion to use.

Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#184

Post by gregmac »

mechanicker wrote: post #145
canucker2016 wrote: post #114

Near the tail end of WinNT 3.1 development, I read an article (possibly from Usenet) about someone creating a screensaver that showed a bluescreen. I had never created a screensaver before. I could reliably cause my WinNT dev box to bluescreen due to a bug in an internal Microsoft network driver. So I read the docs for writing a Windows screensaver. After writing down the values shown for my bluescreen, I cobbled tog…

Was the BSOD screensaver from sysinternals by Mark Russinovich? I had installed the same and couple of my colleagues sitting around me had done the same. Our CTO (Robotics simulation software) was visiting and had an early morning meeting. He saw this on all screens and had a minor panic attack fearing a virus outbreak or software bug.

I installed that on a housemate's PC and waited for his reaction in the next couple days... But it never came. And so I forgot about it.

I moved out. It must have been a couple months later (we were and still are good friends), we're out somewhere and the first thing he says to me "did you install a BSOD screensaver on my computer?!?" And I suddenly remembered, realized it had been months and started laughing.

What's hilarious is he never tried pressing anything or moving the mouse.. since, being a developer, he knew that was pointless. He'd sit down, see the BSOD, (often swear,) then just press the hard reset button. In true evil fashion, I think I set it to a long interval, like 2 hours, so it only activated if he walked away but left it running.

I do still feel a bit bad about it. But only a bit. :)

Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#185

Post by astrange »

Veserv wrote: post #167
astrange wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding the word "formal" to something doesn't mean it can do the impossible. It's not realistic to prove things correct, since it's both an impossible amount of work and you'll end up finding that your definition of "correct" was incorrect. (CompCert, a "formally correct C compiler", has had bugs found in it.)

I do not see how that is relevant to my statement that formal methods, as required by the higher Common Criteria levels, do not constitute “box-ticking exercises”. Or are you arguing that these standards which require proofs of correctness are useless because proofs of correctness are much less impressive than box ticking?

They are extremely expensive box ticking exercises.

Furthermore, I don't think anything except box ticking exercises exists or could ever exist.

You can only write down ways to make a process worse, not better.

Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#186

Post by esafak »

eviks wrote: post #179
esafak wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs pushed individual contributors to perfect products before shipping them. Bill Gates had no taste to justify any sort of perfectionism, or compunction against shipping buggy products ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW7Rqwwth84 ). It was all dollars and cents, as far as I can tell.

Why would you believe this easily disproven (via brief use of Apple products) myth???

I do use them. The hardware is impeccable. The software is admittedly more spotty. But even then, the OS is great. All in all, I can't think of a better platform or I'd use it.

Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#187

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

Veserv wrote: post #167
astrange wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding the word "formal" to something doesn't mean it can do the impossible. It's not realistic to prove things correct, since it's both an impossible amount of work and you'll end up finding that your definition of "correct" was incorrect. (CompCert, a "formally correct C compiler", has had bugs found in it.)

I do not see how that is relevant to my statement that formal methods, as required by the higher Common Criteria levels, do not constitute “box-ticking exercises”. Or are you arguing that these standards which require proofs of correctness are useless because proofs of correctness are much less impressive than box ticking?

Nothing realistically complex can be proven "correct". There is even a mathematical theorem about it - given a program's code, one can't even prove that it ever stops.

One can, of course, apply proof of correctness to simple curcuits, where all possible inputs and outputs can be enumerated.

Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#188

Post by kccqzy »

spondyl wrote: post #122

I haven't watched this video yet but I'm looking forward to it, having read Showstopper[1] quite a few years back. One thing that stuck out to me when I was still in my early 20s thinking I needed to work all the time was the mention that Dave would always take holidays on time, every time without any debate. While I may not love Microsoft, it was probably my first real exposure of a highly competent and qualified pe…

I read the same book you did. How is it that I got the impression from the book that most people (Microsofties) actually did overtime voluntarily? I mean Microsoft didn't have to pay overtime because the employees all thought they were sufficiently compensated by the stock price going up!

Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#189

Post by fulafel »

naikrovek wrote: post #14
jotato wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! I didn't know he had adhd. I watched one video of his last week and ever since my feed is all adhd stuff. I was so confused, but now it makes sense.

I feel like no one on the planet understands how YouTube recommendations work. the same for Large Language Models. YouTube keeps a watch history of every user. users can clean up their view of their watch history, but YouTube keeps it all. if you watch any particular video, YouTube will start suggesting videos watched by other people who watched the video you just watched. YouTube does not know or care what the subje…

Is there documented reverse engineering about the algorithm and about which properties have strong evidence?

edit: here's something at least gleaned from some research papers from Google - https://ecoaerem.com/youtube-recommendation-system-code

Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#190

Post by Veserv »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #187
Veserv wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not see how that is relevant to my statement that formal methods, as required by the higher Common Criteria levels, do not constitute “box-ticking exercises”. Or are you arguing that these standards which require proofs of correctness are useless because proofs of correctness are much less impressive than box ticking?

Nothing realistically complex can be proven "correct". There is even a mathematical theorem about it - given a program's code, one can't even prove that it ever stops. One can, of course, apply proof of correctness to simple curcuits, where all possible inputs and outputs can be enumerated.

That is a complete misunderstanding of consequences of Rice’s theorem which generalizes the halting problem.

You can not prove non-trivial properties about all programs that could could ever exist with no false positives or false negatives.

You can prove non-trivial properties about almost every program.

For instance, if I want to disallow programs that will not halt, I can just reject any program with a unbounded loop. I may also reject programs with a unbounded loop that will halt, a false negative, but I do not care. I just want to be certain that I will never run a program that will not halt. I just decided: “will definitely halt for my purposes” even though the halting problem is unsolvable in general.

This is generically true and is why formal methods work at all.

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