The Insider News

Re: Microsoft adds File Explorer integration to Windows Subsystem for Linux in new Windows 10 Fast Ring build

9-Apr-20 15:55

I don't think Raymond Chen makes any attempts to hide his identity on the net.
Why would he? He markets his competence and professional interests well enough under his real name!

Dan Neely10-Apr-20 2:52

Dan Neely

10-Apr-20 2:52

Dunno about that. Really long path support was available in a halfbaked fashion for a number of years. I first ran into it at a previous job on an XP system ~15 years ago while trying to use IBM irRational Clearcase 💩💩. The part of it's code that initially pulled files from the remote server could handle <260 char paths. The part of its code that updated files (sent changes back to the server???) did not. Nor did whatever version of MS office[1] we were using at the time. The version that instead of having local files instead created a network share IIRC didn't have that problem[2]; but it also slowed VS builds down by a factor of 10 or 20. D'Oh! | :doh:

[1] Clearcase was a hammer, version controlling our documents was a nail. And to be fair, even with all of its warts CC (never mind SVN when we switched a few years later) was a better document management tool than Sharepoint[3]. Dead | X|

[2] This made keeping overly nested folder paths in check a pain, since the management types who loved the idea of having the most of the path repeated in each folder level never saw the problems that left me unable to access their docs.

[3] Terrifyingly I've come to the conclusion that Google Drive sucks even worse than Sharepoint at this. Google both obfuscates the folder location you're at by default; and makes you jump through hoops to do searches rooted at your current location instead of globally. Searching for ex "database setup" against every project my current employer has done for the last decade guarantees that the results won't contain anything relevant. D'Oh! | :doh:

Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius

Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt

Developers working with mature DevOps practices much more likely to enjoy their work

Kent Sharkey8-Apr-20 8:15

Re: Developers working with mature DevOps practices much more likely to enjoy their work

8-Apr-20 8:15

Developer Tech[^]:
Enterprise software provider Sonatype has found a clear connection between DevOps and developer job satisfaction in its seventh annual DevSecOps Community Survey.

If you're happy and you know it, deploy your code

Mark_Wallace8-Apr-20 11:08

Play Stadia Pro for free, starting today

8-Apr-20 11:08

Golly, it's so good to have completely unbiased companies [^] looking into such things.

Yes, their product is used to:
Automate DevSecOps

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

Kent Sharkey8-Apr-20 8:15

Does time really flow? New clues come from a century-old approach to math.

8-Apr-20 8:15

Google[^]:
Anyone who signs up will get two free months of Stadia Pro with instant access to nine games, including GRID, Destiny 2: The Collection, and Thumper.

I guess they worked out the scaling issues?

This one's a "usual": "Give us your credit card and sign up for a subscription, but we promise not to charge you for two months. Oh yeah, and we might forget to tell you when the two months are up. So sad." type of offer.

Kent Sharkey8-Apr-20 7:45

Re: Does time really flow? New clues come from a century-old approach to math.

8-Apr-20 7:45

Quanta Magazine[^]:
The laws of physics imply that the passage of time is an illusion. To avoid this conclusion, we might have to rethink the reality of infinitely precise numbers.

Just another reminder that physicists (and theoretical mathematicians) have been doing this, "stay isolated at home long enough to start thinking about weird stuff" for a long time

Mark_Wallace8-Apr-20 8:08

Re: Does time really flow? New clues come from a century-old approach to math.

8-Apr-20 8:08

Quote:
a century-old mathematical language called intuitionist mathematics, which rejects the existence of numbers with infinitely many digits.

I'm a strong supporter of this.

In fact, we shouldn't really need more than one number.

I propose that it be four, because three's not enough, and five can get too noisy.

Quote:
If numbers are finite and limited in their precision, then nature itself is inherently imprecise, and thus unpredictable.

Exactly!

So if there is only one number, then all the unexpected things in the universe can be explained!

(Like I say, though, let's stick with four, because I've got a headache.)

Essentially, what he's saying is that because we'll probably never have enough data to reliably predict absolutely everything, we should give up trying to figure out the causes and effects of how the universe works.

I don't think I'll be subscribing to his newsletter.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

Nelek8-Apr-20 8:35

Nelek

8-Apr-20 8:35

Mark_Wallace wrote:
So if there is only one number, then all the unexpected things in the universe can be explained!

Of course... 42

Sorry for the obvious, but it was too tempting

M.D.V.

If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.

Re: Does time really flow? New clues come from a century-old approach to math.

Mark_Wallace8-Apr-20 9:30

Re: Does time really flow? New clues come from a century-old approach to math.

8-Apr-20 9:30

Are you sure that's the answer to the right question?

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

Nelek8-Apr-20 10:42

Nelek

8-Apr-20 10:42

Liquid nitrogen

Sorry for the obvious, but it was too tempting II

I am leaving it here... enough silly comments from my side for today

M.D.V.

Scientists ponder how jugglers seem to defy limits to human reaction times

Kent Sharkey8-Apr-20 6:46

Re: Scientists ponder how jugglers seem to defy limits to human reaction times

8-Apr-20 6:46

Ars Technica[^]:
The accuracy required is a measure of how unstable and difficult a juggling pattern is.

If they didn't, the balls would fall

Mark_Wallace8-Apr-20 7:15

Re: Scientists ponder how jugglers seem to defy limits to human reaction times

8-Apr-20 7:15

In other news, bees can't fly.

But "reaction times" don't come into the juggling thing. Jugglers don't stand there and wonder which ball is going to fall next or where; there's no thinking involved.

Each throw, catch, and movement has to be practised heavily, until it practically becomes autonomic.

So by basing the study on reaction times, they're looking in entirely the wrong direction.

I suppose that's what you get when you let a mechanical engineer and a mathematician make choices on how the body and brain work.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

modified 8-Apr-20 13:24pm.

kalberts9-Apr-20 9:48

Jugglers ponder how scientists defy limits of human stupidity

9-Apr-20 9:48

Right. Besides, you don't need any fast reaction time to know what happens if you throw a ball straight up: It comes straight down. If you throw a ball against the wall at a 45 degree angle, it will bounce back at a 45 degree angle. These are elementary rules of physics. When you have internalized then, you know what is going to happen; you don't have to analyze a visual impression of it to know.

David O'Neil8-Apr-20 16:45

David O'Neil

8-Apr-20 16:45

Just restating Mark's valid point.

The forgotten roots of science | C++ Programming | DWinLib

Re: Jugglers ponder how scientists defy limits of human stupidity

GenJerDan8-Apr-20 20:36

GenJerDan

8-Apr-20 20:36

A real test would be for a juggler to just stand there and have people throw balls at him randomly from different directions at varying velocities.

Which sounds like fun. Smile | :)

We won't sit down.
We won't shut up.
We won't go quietly away.

YouTube, VidMe and My Mu[sic], Films and Windows Programs, etc. and FB

Re: Jugglers ponder how scientists defy limits of human stupidity

Mark_Wallace8-Apr-20 22:05

Attackers can bypass fingerprint authentication with an ~80% success rate

8-Apr-20 22:05

I'm not very accurate in ball-throwing, and worry that that could skew the figures.

Would it be OK if I threw darts, instead?

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

Kent Sharkey8-Apr-20 6:46

Re: Attackers can bypass fingerprint authentication with an ~80% success rate

8-Apr-20 6:46

Ars Technica[^]:
Fingerprint-based authentication is fine for most people, but it's hardly foolproof.

All those surprised, don't raise a finger

Mark_Wallace8-Apr-20 7:03

Re: Attackers can bypass fingerprint authentication with an ~80% success rate

8-Apr-20 7:03

Kent Sharkey wrote:
don't raise a finger

Damn these KSS rules!

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

Nelek8-Apr-20 8:32

Nelek

8-Apr-20 8:32

Kent Sharkey wrote:
don't raise a finger

OK

(I raise 3) .|||.

Can they read between lines? Roll eyes | :rolleyes:

M.D.V.

Re: Attackers can bypass fingerprint authentication with an ~80% success rate

Dan Neely9-Apr-20 3:00

Dan Neely

9-Apr-20 3:00

Kent Sharkey wrote:
All those surprised, don't raise a finger

How about two?

,|,, ,,|,

Re: Attackers can bypass fingerprint authentication with an ~80% success rate

kalberts9-Apr-20 10:37

“Unit tests are a design smell. Do not write unit tests.”

9-Apr-20 10:37

There was an earlier wave of fingerprint reading, maybe 20 years ago, years before smartphone readers were available. We had exactly the same kind of debunkers then. Mythbusters did a program on it, and for years people lost faith in it.

It doesn't matter that the stealing of your fingerprint requires a whole lot of effort (you don't meet that many possible intruders at the pub, and anyone who steals your empty beer glass before the waiter picks it up is somewhat suspicious!) The process from picking up the fingerprint to creating a false finger that can be used is rather complex and expensive. The lock to be opened must be available to the intruder - he must steal your smartphone or portable, or break into the house where the big PC is placed. In most cases, the risk is near-epsilon.

In those days, fingerprint readers were separate devices. Nanufacturers added safety features, like thermosensors to distinguish between a live finger and a cold rubber one. Intruders had to make hollow rubber fingers to be filled with lukewarm water. The sensors got sensors for electrical resistance between two points on the fingertip; intruders had to switch to a semiconducting rubber mixture. Software was extended to store all 10 fingers, asking you to present a randomly selected one - few intruders have picked up your left hand pinky! (Some fingerprint login systems demanded left hand fingerprint for privileged accounts, for improved security.)

And so on. The best readers became very resistant to fake fingers. But media had no interest in reporting about this; everyone "knew" that fingerprints don't work, as proven by Mythbusters; there was no need to reconsider that conclusion!

Until Apple started it up again. Who would raise any critical comment to something that Apple promotes? It had no thermosensing, no conductance reading, it lacked a lot of the safety features that the separate readers (the good ones) had. But coming from Apple, it must be good!

I wish that we could get back the old, advanced readers for use on plain PCs, either integrated (as they were for some years on the ThinkPad portables, although I don't think they had any conductivity or thermosensors), or as USB devices. Especially when used in 2FA, where you both must provide e.g. a password and a fingerprint, the security is way beyond what is needed in 99.99% of all systems. You wouldn't get the same security on your smartphone (until they add an advanced reader with all bells and whistles, and 2FA), but few smartphones hold information that needs military grade top secret protection.

Kent Sharkey7-Apr-20 10:31

Re: “Unit tests are a design smell. Do not write unit tests.”

7-Apr-20 10:31

George Stocker[^]:
"Thinking of tests as validation, it just bakes all these assumptions about your system into a file you run all the time. It creates stasis."

"All headlines are clickbait." (some more than others)

Mark_Wallace7-Apr-20 17:36

Re: “Unit tests are a design smell. Do not write unit tests.”

7-Apr-20 17:36

Oh, I see!

TDD done this guy's way doesn't check outputs based on inputs!

Is that what he's saying? I have no idea what he's saying. It's like reading alphabet soup -- all the letters and words are there, but if you try to find any solid underlying meaning, your spoon just splashes soup onto the nice, clean tablecloth.

He seems to be saying that if you write new tests before you change your implementation, you won't need to write new tests after you change your implementation.

Six, meet half a dozen; half a dozen, six.

What I do know is that evangelists will turn TDD, which should be a functional and reasonably usable methodology, into a morass of "Lets follow multiple patterns, rather than get the job done" unnecessary work.

When thinking of adopting a new methodology, it's always wise to check the evangelism level, and to find out how many exceptional circumstances there are, where you have to do things differently.

Of course, to do things differently to this guy, you have to first figure out what he expects you to do.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

kalberts9-Apr-20 11:07

How are .NET APIs designed?

9-Apr-20 11:07

Agile development implies that a developer can change his code at any time, to return another result, or perform a different operation, as requested by some new requirement. Any test regime is incompatible with agile principles. The outputs of a module is defined by what the module returns right now, after the new updates. Module tests for checking that the outputs are the way the outputs are, are meaningless. TDD, module tests, system tests or integration tests are all incompatible with agile development principles.

Kent Sharkey7-Apr-20 10:01