1. Don’t DRY Your Code Prematurely
Total comment counts : 103
Summary
The article discusses the concept of “Don’t Repeat Yourself” (DRY) in coding and argues that applying DRY principles too rigidly can lead to premature abstractions that complicate future changes. It emphasizes the importance of considering whether code is truly redundant or just superficially similar, and whether functions or classes serve different contexts and business requirements that may evolve independently over time. The article also provides an example of code that appears to violate the DRY principle but argues that maintaining separate behaviors until enough common patterns emerge can be simpler than premature abstraction. The article suggests tolerating a little duplication in the early stages of development and waiting for future requirements to indicate the need for abstraction.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses a situation where the author was contracted to work for a company that needed importers for airspace data. The original developer treated two types of airspace data, “Class Airspace” and “Special Use Airspace,” as completely separate and unrelated. However, the author suggests that the data for these two types of airspace is mostly identical and could be processed with one common codebase, with separate code for only the 10% that is different. The original developer’s philosophy was to write separate code for each similar thing until a third type comes along, but in this case, there would never be a third type. As a result, the company ended up with twice the code they needed.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the common misunderstanding of the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle. It states that DRY is not just about avoiding code duplication, but also about avoiding duplication of information or knowledge. The article argues that solely focusing on code duplication can lead to premature optimization and result in incorrectly applying the DRY principle. Instead, it suggests focusing on information duplication and using that as a guide to identify which parts of the code truly need to be DRY. The article highlights that this distinction is important and is clarified in later editions of the Pragmatic Programmer book.
2. Engineering for Slow Internet
Total comment counts : 75
Summary
The author discusses his experience with limited internet access while working in Antarctica and the challenges of engineering for slow internet. He emphasizes that his observations are based on publicly-available information and personal experience and that he is unable to disclose any non-public information. The author mentions the limited selection of satellites available for polar use and the hurdles associated with running traditional fiber to the continent. They speculate that improved connectivity will eventually arrive in Antarctica through enhanced satellite technologies or the arrival of fiber. Currently, connectivity in Antarctica is extremely limited, with speeds lower than what individuals can get on a typical 4g cellular network in an American suburb. The author notes that there have been recent developments regarding Starlink at some research stations in Antarctica, but as of October 2023, the situation at the South Pole was still dire with limited connectivity for a few hours a day.
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The author of the article discusses their struggle with accessing the internet in Beijing due to the limitations imposed by the Great Firewall. They explain that even VPNs are not always effective and can be detected by the firewall’s algorithms. State-mandated VPNs are also restricted during politically sensitive times. As a result, internet connections are often unstable and using web applications can be frustrating. The author suggests that developers should learn from the past and build applications with more agility, and they encourage testing web apps with throttling tools to ensure resilience.
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The author of the article discusses their experience commuting on underground public transportation and living and working in Australia. They state that most services are terrible for people without ideal network conditions, especially on the London Underground where apps struggle to handle the intermittent network and connection issues. However, in Australia, the network is generally reliable and close to everything, although apps may still face challenges with the N+1 request problem. The author praises WhatsApp as the only app that consistently works well, quickly reconnects, and handles calls efficiently despite latency.
3. “Imprecise” language models are smaller, speedier, and nearly as accurate
Total comment counts : 22
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The author discusses the impact of quantization on machine learning models, particularly comparing the performance of llama3 and llama2 models. They observe that llama3 models suffer more from quantization than llama2 models. The author theorizes that undertrained models are less affected by quantization because the training process has not fully utilized the weights. The llama model, which has been trained for longer on a larger dataset, outperforms larger models with quantization. The author concludes that quantization is a lossy shortcut to long training and emphasizes the importance of data quantity and quality in training models.
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The author reflects on the progress made with large language models (LLMs) and the difficulty of achieving near-perfect accuracy. They liken this challenge to trying to make a spaceship travel at the speed of light. While impressive progress has been made in accuracy, going from 90% to 99.9999999% requires a significant amount of data and computing power, similar to needing exponentially more energy to approach light speed. However, due to the complexity and ambiguity of language, there may be a practical limit to the accuracy of LLMs. Each improvement becomes more resource-intensive and yields diminishing returns. The author concludes that achieving near-perfection with LLMs is likely impossible, just like reaching the speed of light. Nonetheless, they emphasize the importance of acknowledging progress while remaining realistic about future challenges.
4. Japan’s push to make all research open access
Total comment counts : 16
Summary
The Japanese government is implementing a plan to make all publicly funded research available to read on institutional repositories. The move is expected to enhance the traceability of research information, facilitate secondary research, and promote collaboration. Japan is one of the first Asian countries to make significant progress in open access, following the influential Plan S introduced by cOAlition S in the United States and Europe. The Japanese plan focuses on ‘green OA’, where authors make the unfinalized versions of their papers available on digital repositories. This approach ensures compliance with an open access policy while minimizing the cost of making every paper freely available. The use of institutional repositories also ensures inclusivity for research published in Japanese. Japan’s progress in open access is seen as a pioneering step towards greater accessibility to research.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author argues that the term “open access” is misleading and should be termed “pay to publish”. They claim that open access is a drain on public money and that publishers no longer compete for the quality of research, resulting in a flood of low-quality scientific literature. The author suggests funding volunteer expert communities to edit and publish their own papers as an alternative to traditional publishers.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the current system in Australia where research funded by a national funder must be deposited in the institute’s research repository. However, this system is not strongly enforced and there are no consequences for not uploading papers. The repositories are also not easily accessible and do not include associated data. The article also mentions that this system does not change how researchers are evaluated and the competition to publish in prestigious journals like Nature and Science continues. The author argues that making all papers freely available on journal sites would be too expensive for universities, primarily due to the high costs imposed by for-profit publishers. The author criticizes the exorbitant fees charged for services like typesetting a PDF and hosting it on the journal’s website.
5. Things you wish you didn’t need to know about S3
Total comment counts : 26
Summary
The article discusses various oddities and quirks related to Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) in AWS (Amazon Web Services) environments. It highlights that while S3 is robust and well-tested, it has a quirky API compared to other services. The article explains that some API requests for S3 require HTTP requests to be sent to generic S3 endpoints, while most requests must be sent to the URL of a target bucket. This can lead to confusion about authentication requirements for different API operations. The article also mentions the possibility of anonymous API requests for S3 operations, which can result in anonymous CloudTrail entries and make it difficult to track who performed certain actions. Additionally, the article discusses the potential vulnerabilities and risks associated with S3 buckets, including the ability for unauthorized individuals to delete or access bucket content without authentication.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author finds several points in the article interesting, but disagrees with the complaint that the file system is case sensitive. They believe that case sensitivity is the correct approach and express annoyance at macOS for not having it.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses an unintuitive aspect of S3 paths. It explains that while S3 paths accept uploads and allow listing of files, it is actually a simulation. Uploading a file with a name like “/builds/1/installer.exe” actually creates a file with the forward slashes ("/") as part of the name. The article also mentions that uploading files with additional forward slashes in the path will create different files, as there are no actual directories in S3.
6. Every mountain, building and tree shadow in the world simulated for any time
Total comment counts : 1
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The article mentions that comments have been moved to a specific link on the website.
7. Snowflake breach: Hacker confirms access through infostealer infection
Total comment counts : 34
Summary
The article discusses a major data breach at Snowflake, a cloud storage company. Researchers from Hudson Rock communicated with the threat actor responsible for the breach and gained insights into the impact of Infostealer infections. The threat actor claimed to have hacked major companies including Ticketmaster and Santander Bank. The breach at Snowflake was allegedly caused by the hack of a single vendor, and the threat actor was able to exfiltrate data from numerous companies that used Snowflake. The threat actor attempted to blackmail Snowflake but the company was not responsive. Evidence of the hack includes a CSV file showing access to Snowflake servers. It is unknown which other companies were impacted. The article also mentions the rise of info-stealer infections as a primary attack vector used by threat actors. Hudson Rock offers cybersecurity solutions to protect against intrusions caused by info-stealer infections.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the practice of Snowflake Solutions Engineers (SEs) using demonstration environments created on Snowflake’s demo accounts to work with clients. The SEs are granted access by the clients to manipulate and work on the data in these demo environments. The author suggests that the recent publication of a demo environment’s name by Hudson Rock is a result of clients failing to expire access credentials, allowing a threat actor to obtain them. The article also criticizes Hudson Rock for revealing personal information about an individual who had their credentials stolen, comparing it to giving credentials to a contractor that gets stolen.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a potential data breach at Snowflake, a company that provides data warehousing services. It argues that the headline claiming “hundreds of breached customers” is not consistent with the evidence presented. The password breach only allowed access to a servicenow portal, not customer accounts. The screenshot provided shows compromised credentials for only a few Snowflake accounts, which may explain the compromised accounts of a few customers. Assuming all the compromised credentials belonged to customers working with Snowflake, the number of compromised customers would be in the low double digits. Therefore, it is a big leap to suggest that the entire customer base of Snowflake is compromised due to a “refresh token issue” in the internal Okta portal that is not linked to any customer Snowflake accounts.
8. YOLOv5 on FPGA with Hailo-8 and 4 Pi Cameras
Total comment counts : 8
Summary
The article describes a project involving the use of an AI accelerator called Hailo-8 to run intelligent vision algorithms on a Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC. The Hailo-8 is an external AI accelerator that offers high throughput and power efficiency. The project involves running YOLOv5 on four Raspberry Pi cameras simultaneously, with the Hailo-8 providing acceleration. The article provides a detailed description of the design and instructions for building and running the system. The architecture of the system involves capture pipelines for the Raspberry Pi cameras, as well as a display pipeline for combining and displaying the video streams. The article concludes that the project has created a useful reference platform for others interested in building similar systems.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author is questioning the practical applications of image recognition technology in real life. They suggest that it could be useful in manufacturing for detecting defects or layout mismatches. They also inquire about any open source projects that utilize image recognition for useful tasks. The author expresses skepticism about the current state of image recognition technology, as they have only seen simple demos where a box is drawn around an object. They wonder who is using this information and how it is being used. Additionally, the author mentions their experience with Kinect technology and the difficulty in convincing coworkers that it is not just surveillance technology.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article highlights that there were individuals who seemed unhappy about being filmed, but despite their discomfort, the footage was later shared online for everyone to view.
9. IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
Total comment counts : 19
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the successful implementation of a government project that focused on filing taxes. Despite the limitations, such as only targeting a small set of tax situations and states initially, it was considered a significant achievement. The project’s ability to deliver a minimum viable product (MVP) and file 150,000 taxes within a nine-month period was praised as a great success.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author argues that filing taxes through a third-party accountant or service is not only a form of forced commerce, but also a flawed economic system. They believe that although it may create jobs, these jobs are redundant and do not add value. The author questions where crimes are more likely to occur and suggests that financial crimes are more prevalent among those who earn higher incomes. They propose that accountants should focus on forensic work and targeting wealthy tax evaders. The author also opposes the idea of reducing IRS staffing, as they believe a well-staffed IRS is necessary to go after tax evaders, especially the wealthy.
10. A man ordered to hide his boat painted the boat on his fence
Total comment counts : 25
Summary
The article discusses a website that is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The security solution is triggered by various actions, such as submitting a specific word or phrase, a SQL command, or malformed data. If you are blocked, you can email the site owner to notify them. It is recommended to include details about what you were doing when the block occurred and the Cloudflare Ray ID. The Cloudflare Ray ID provided is 88ca8a405d6e171e and the user’s IP address is 107.174.253.120. The website’s performance and security are provided by Cloudflare.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article highlights the irony in the United States, where it is allowed to bring guns to school, but individuals can face fines for having tall grass in certain residential areas. The author finds amusement in these stories and questions why people choose to live in places with such strict rules.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The city of Seaside, California sent a letter to a person regarding a violation of their municipal code. The city sees this violation as a problem and it is not related to a Homeowners’ Association (HOA). The article highlights that while the author is not a fan of HOAs, in this case, they are not responsible for the issue.