sigwinch28 (u/sigwinch28)

sigwinch28 commented on SQL Anti-Patterns datamethods.substack.com/... · Posted by u/zekrom

EvanAnderson · 2 months ago

> Overusing DISTINCT to “Fix” Duplicates

Any time I see DISTINCT in a query I immediately become suspicious that the query author has an incomplete understanding of the data model, a lack of comprehension of set theory, or more likely both.

sigwinch28 · 2 months ago

Or it’s simply an indicator of a schema that has not been excessively normalised (why create an addresses_cities table just to ensure no duplicate cities are ever written to the addresses table?)

sigwinch28 commented on Belkin shows tech firms getting too comfortable with bricking customers' stuff arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/speckx

superkuh · 5 months ago

This all started with software and because we didn't stop it there it'll keep happening to software that runs hardware.

There was a popular game called "Rocket League" that Psyonix company sold and ran the infrastructure for for many years. But then Epic corporation bought Psyonix for Rocket League's playerbase to bootstrap their proprietary game delivery service. 6 months later everyone who had bought the game for Mac or Linux could no longer play. Epic just stole it from them. No recourse. Not even outrage beyond the effected. It was just accepted as a standard business practice.

sigwinch28 · 5 months ago

Via Wikipedia:

> The developer offered full refunds to the game for macOS and Linux owners regardless of how long they had the game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_League#Free-to-play_tra...

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/rocket-league-ending-mac-an...

sigwinch28 commented on U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts washingtonpost.com/techno... · Posted by u/Despegar

hunglee2 · 10 months ago

US tech needs to obey the laws of the country in which it operates. I am sure the demands of UK government are more than reasonable - and, as it is a democracy - as full endorsement of the people / users

sigwinch28 · 10 months ago

I’m from the U.K. and I consider the government’s actions around digital privacy to be somewhere between incompetent and malicious.

sigwinch28 commented on Jaywalking legalized in New York City theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/Thomashuet

bragr · a year ago

Since they made this change in California last year, I cross where ever when it is safe and convenient. I'm surprised how big of difference it made to the convenience and speed of walking somewhere. No more waiting for 2 different lights just to get to the opposite corner.

sigwinch28 · a year ago

>waiting for 2 different lights just to get to the opposite corner.

A solution sometimes seen in London is a “Pedestrian Scramble”, where pedestrians are explicitly given full (and even diagonal) access to a junction with all other traffic stopped.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble

sigwinch28 commented on Ask HN: How to store and share passwords in a company? · Posted by u/hu3

thih9 · a year ago

People overwhelmingly recommend SSO. Isn’t that lowering the security level? If that single account gets taken over, the attacker has access everywhere else too.

Some places let you configure SSO+2FA, which helps; but in most cases clicking a social login button gets you full access.

And speaking of a single point of failure, cloud password managers look even worse[1].

[1]: https://thehackernews.com/2023/02/lastpass-reveals-second-at...

sigwinch28 · a year ago

With SSO, the party running the SSO decides what the authentication policy is.

For example, where the authentication request is coming from (on-site, managed device), what methods are being used (hardware second factor, Authenticator app).

These are all things that the SSO can check at time of authentication, before a token or session key gets issued to the user. Also, all of these things can be checked again when doing any auth flows for the various linked services.

So with stolen SSO credentials, they might be worth diddly squat to you if you didn’t think to also be on-site or on a managed company device (physically or virtually).

sigwinch28 commented on Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers viewfromthewing.com/airli... · Posted by u/jshprentz

jll29 · a year ago

> Here’s the full answer, along with how they triage the problem – for instance by assigning the same flight number to more than one flight a day (although that means they need for it to be flights that would never both be in the air at the same time, such as where the same plane is used and can’t reasonably be substituted)

This sounds like it's calling for trouble!

Whenever I hear that any IDs could be "recycled", I make a mental note to replace the person making such a proposal from all teams that I am involved in.

The worst is I once was put to work on a system where they even recycled GUIDs... I thought "which part of GUID do you not understand, the G part or the U part?" (from which it follows they also don't really understand what ID means)...

sigwinch28 · a year ago

Reuse of identifiers seems to be a theme in aviation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37401864

sigwinch28 commented on A skeptic's first contact with Kubernetes blog.davidv.dev/posts/fir... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

sigwinch28 · a year ago

If we replace “YAML” with “JSON” and then talk about naive text-based templating, it seems wild.

That’s because it is. Then we go back to YAML and add whitespace sensitivity and suddenly it’s the state-of-the-art for declaring infrastructure.

sigwinch28 commented on Elsevier embeds a hash in the PDF metadata that is unique for each download (2022) social.coop/@jonny/107685... · Posted by u/luu

codedokode · 2 years ago

As I understand, it is not Elsevier's fault, it is the government that allocates funding and gives promotion based on number of publications made in Elsevier journals.

sigwinch28 · 2 years ago

A lot government funding stipulates open access publication of some form.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-access_mandate

sigwinch28 commented on Google releases smart watch for kids store.google.com/US/produ... · Posted by u/goeldhru

sigwinch28 · 2 years ago

A smartwatch for kids could be so good if it was designed in a way to be educational, but most importantly, which respects a child’s privacy utmost, even from their parents in terms of tracking.

For example, a maps app, to always get the kid home if they’re lost. Medication reminders. Fitness tracking. Emergency SOS. A calendar to remind them about family birthdays and upcoming holidays. School timetables. Medical ID. Payment cards or passes for travel (in Western Europe a lot of schoolchildren commute by themselves, especially on public transport) and spending their allowance. Let the kid choose to notify their family of their location as and when they want to. Empower them to use tech to their advantage but put their privacy first.

Children are going to end up as adults in this world regardless of whether we teach them, so we should be teaching them the benefits and warning them of the many bad actors. We should be teaching our children the skills they need to navigate the modern world. This includes technology and abusive/controlling relationships.

I believe a good responsible smartwatch for kids can exist. Alas, this is Google and helicopter parents exist, so this product is not it.

sigwinch28 commented on Ticketmaster breach affects more than half a billion users mashable.com/article/tick... · Posted by u/RafelMri

aresant · 2 years ago

Interesting this is marketed for $500k as a "One Time Sale" (1)

I find the "honor amongst thieves" part so interesting in these breach stories

(1) Troy Hunt, via an "X" user has a screenshot to the actual sale -> https://x.com/troyhunt/status/1795551650553491870

sigwinch28 · 2 years ago

At 2.6 megabytes per dollar, it is at least cheaper than the price of a (very legal) kdb license, which can hover around 3 bytes per dollar.

Comparing apples and oranges here but I like thinking about the monetary value assigned to a byte.