July 25, 2022

Jul 25, 2022

New York Times Pitchbot @DougJBalloon

Historians say that cannibalism has been rare in the United States for at least two centuries. But in this Ohio diner, they aren't so sure.

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Dan Luu @danluu

Great, practical, guide on how to write a successful library. When people talk about why X is great, most trendy topics are highly overrated and the topics in this post are highly underrated. cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2015/09/librar…

X. People will just copy-paste your example code.

This is obvious but is something to keep in mind. Example code should never be sketches. It should be production ready. People will not read the comments. I had lots of spots in example code where I would write comments like "this is just a sketch and not ready for production; production code needs to check error returns and handle failures and be endian-independent" etc.. and of course people just copy-pasted it and didn't change it. That's not their fault, that's my fault. Example code is one of the main ways people get into your library.

X. People will not read the docs.

Docs are almost useless. Nobody reads them. They'll read a one page quick start, and then they want to just start digging in writing code. Keep the intros very minimal and very focused on getting things working.

Also be aware that if you feel you need to write a lot of docs about something, that's a sign that maybe things are too complicated.

X. Peripheral h...

X. Simplicity is better.

Make everything as simple as possible. Fewer arguments on your functions. Remove extra functions. Cut everywhere. If you sacrifice a tiny bit of possible efficiency, or lose some rare functionality, that's fine. Cut cut cut.

For example, to plug in an allocator for Oodle used to require 7 function pointers : { Malloc, Free, MallocAligned, FreeSized, MallocPage, FreePage, PageSize }. (FreeSized for efficiency, and the Page stuff because async IO needs page alignment). It's now down just 2 : { MallocAligned, Free }. Yes it's a tiny bit slower but who cares. (and the runtime can work without any provided allocators)

X. Micro-efficiency is not important.

Yes, being fast and lean is good, but not when it makes things too complex or difficult to use. There's a danger of a kind of mental-masturbation that us RAD-type guys can get caught in. Yes, your big stream processing stuff needs to be competitive (eg. Oodle's LZ decompress, or Bink's frame decode time). B...

X. Special case stuff should be external (and callbacks are bad).

Anything that's unique to a few users, or that people will want to be different should be out of the library. Make it possible to do that stuff through client-side code. As much as possible, avoid callbacks to make this work, try to do it through imperative sequential code.

eg. if they want to do some incremental post-processing of data in place, it should be possible via : { decode a bit, process some, decode a bit , process some } on the client side. Don't do it with a callback that does decode_it_all( process_per_bit_callback ).

Don't crud up the library feature set trying to please everyone. Some of these things can go in example code, or in your "back pocket code" that you send out as needed.

X. You are writing the library for evaluators and new users.

When you're designing the library, the main person to think about is evaluators and new users. Things need to be easy and clear and just work for them.

Peop...

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Electrospaces @electrospaces

Huawei equipment atop cell towers near US military bases in the rural Midwest was capable of capturing and disrupting US nuclear command and control communications:

edition.cnn.comCNN Exclusive: FBI investigation determined Chinese-made Huawei equipment could disrupt US nuclear arsenal communicationsOn paper, it looked like a fantastic deal. In 2017, the Chinese government was offering to spend $100 million to build an ornate Chinese garden at the National Arboretum in Washington DC. Complete with temples, pavilions and a 70-foot white pagoda, the project thrilled local officials, who hoped it…

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Opposing force tactics, aka. Russian doctrine.

https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/tc7_100x2.pdf

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Molly Crabapple🇵🇷 @mollycrabapple

In Riga, there is a mansion built by a rich guy whose turrets are topped by cats with their tails in the air and their asses pointing at a professional guild that had rejected him

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jamie @gnuman1979

You better call for backup.

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Old French Crime @OldFrenchCrime

1913 German police watch tango performance as training to enforce new law forbidding the dance bit.ly/13nPJD5

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Cory Doctorow @doctorow

One interesting element of being in a very remote place with very very slow internet is it reveals the extent to which apps do a round trip server call for the most trivial action. For example, tapping a radio button triggers a server call before the button toggles.

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hackerfantastic.crypto @hackerfantastic

Fantastic's Ultimate TOP TEN hacker movies of all time. 1. Sneakers 2. Wargames 3. Enemy of the State 4. Terminator 2 5. Jurassic Park 6. Hackers 7. Swordfish 8. The Net 9. 23 10. Who Am I

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Chinese APTs: Interlinked networks and side hustles – Intrusion Truth

https://intrusiontruth.wordpress.com/2022/07/24/chinese-apts-interlinked-networks-and-side-hustles/

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Mick Ryan, AM @WarintheFuture

“Wars typically don’t happen by accident. They happen when countries knowingly take military risks to achieve their political objectives.” A fine essay from ⁦@HalBrands⁩ on lessons for the US-China Rivalry

bloomberg.comBloomberg - Are you a robot?

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Taking burner phones to a whole new level 🔥 @MCH2022Camp

POC @ MCH2022 @mch2022poc

Call burn (2876) for our next gen phone ringer. Powered By @mikew42 and @MicroPOC Have fun. @MCH2022Camp #mch2022 https://t.co/wt5sD2EwYQ

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Clément Labro @itm4n

The July 2022 update of Windows 10/11 killed PPLdump 💀😢 Find out how in this blog post... 👉 itm4n.github.io/the-end-of-ppl…

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No Context Brits @NoContextBrits

Jesus, would you look at the time.

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Chris Blume @ProgramMax

@adenilsonc @sheevink I'm a bit of a C++ nerd -- I used to teach modern C++ to fellow Googlers -- and this was a fun aside I would take students down. So the 'auto' keyword existed in C and was brought into C++ as a result of being a superset language. The meaning was storage duration. 1/x

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Dreadnought Holiday @TheDreadShips

There are many techniques to help you relax when going to the toilet. Some people imagine the sound of running water. Others visualise a waterfall. Or you can try listening to the gentle screeching as hundreds of tons of ship takes an unscheduled beach vacation.

A smallish - these things are of course relative, and it's 64m long - cargo ship stranded on a shingle beach. It's very much high, and regrettably dry.

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Alexandra Haddow @MissAHaddow

Paul McCartney is a great advert for vegetarianism, look at him, 80! John Lennon never embraced it and he didn’t live half as long. Makes you think

Alexandra Haddow @MissAHaddow

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