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  • 31 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 27th, 2023

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  • Well they said .NET Framework, and I also wouldn’t be surprised if they more or less wrapped that up - .NET Framework specifically means the old implementation of the CLR, and it’s been pretty much superseded by an implementation just called .NET, formerly known as .NET Core (definitely not confusing at all, thanks Microsoft). .NET Framework was only written for Windows, hence the need for Mono/Xamarin on other platforms. In contrast, .NET is cross-platform by default.




  • I was very intrigued by a follow-up to the recent numberphile video about divergent series. It was a return to the idea that the sum of the integers greater than zero can be assigned the value -1/12. There were some places this could be used, but as far as I know it was viewed as shaky math by a lot of experts.

    As far as I recall the story goes something like this: now, using a new technique Terrence Tao found, a team was seemingly able to “fix” previous infinities in quantum field theory - there’s a certain way to make at least some divergent series work out to being a real number, and the presenter proposed that this can be explained as the universe “protecting us” from the infinities inherent in the math.

    It made me think about other places infinities show up in modern physics (namely, singularities in general relativity) and whether a technique something like this could “solve” them without a whole new framework like string theory is.


  • The issue is that, in the function passed to reduce, you’re adding each object directly to the accumulator rather than to its intended parent. These are the problem lines:

    if (index == array.length - 1) {
    	accumulator[val] = value;
    } else if (!accumulator.hasOwnProperty(val)) {
    	accumulator[val] = {}; // update the accumulator object
    }
    

    There’s no pretty way (that I can think of at least) to do what you want using methods like reduce in vanilla JS, so I’d suggest using a for loop instead - especially if you’re new to programming. Something along these lines (not written to be actual code, just to give you an idea):

    let curr = settings;
    const split = url.split("/");
    for (let i = 0; i < split.length: i++) {
        const val = split[i];
        if (i != split.length-1) {
            //add a check to see if curr[val] exists
            let next = {};
            curr[val] = next;
            curr = next;
        }
        //add else branch
    }
    

    It’s missing some things, but the important part is there - every time we move one level deeper in the URL, we update curr so that we keep our place instead of always adding to the top level.











  • The issue is not just that a bad update went out. Freak accidents can happen. Software is complicated and you can never be 100% sure. The problem is the specifics. A fat finger should never be able to push a bad update to a system in customers’ hands, forget a system easily capable of killing people in a multitude of ways. I’m not quite as critical as the above commentor but this is a serious issue that should raise major questions about their culture and procedures.

    This isn’t just some website where a fat finger at worst means the site is down for a while (assuming you do the bare minimum and back up your db). This is a vehicle. That’s what they meant about the CAN bus - not that that’s really a concern when the infotainment system just gets bricked, but that they have such lax procedures around software that touches a safety-critical system.

    Having systems in place to ensure only tested, known good builds are pushed is pretty damn basic safety practice. Swiss cheese model. If they can’t even handle the basics, what other bad practices do they have?

    Again, not that I think this is necessarily as bad as the other person - perhaps this is the only mistake they’ve made in their safety procedures and otherwise they’re industry leaders - we don’t know that yet. But this is extremely concerning and until proven otherwise should be investigated and treated as a very serious safety violation. Safety first.