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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • I explained a little about buffer overflows, but in essence programming is the act of making a fancy list of commands for your computer to run one after the other.

    One concept in programming is an “array” or list of things, sometimes in languages like C the developer is responsible for keeping track of how many items are in a list. When that program accepts info from other programs (like a chat message, video call, website to render, etx) in the form of an array sometimes the sender can send more info than the developer expected to receive.

    When that extra info is received it can actually modify the fancy list of commands in such a way that the data itself is run directly on the computer instead of what the developer originally intended.

    Bad guy sends too much data, at the end of the data are secret instructions to install a new program that watches every key you type on your keyboard and send that info to the bad guy.


  • There is a ton of literature out there, but in a few words:

    Rust is built from the ground up with the intention of being safe, and fast. There are a bunch of things you can do when programming that are technically fine but often cause errors. Rust builds on decades of understanding of best practices and forces the developer to follow them. It can be frustrating at first but being forced to use best practices is actually a huge boon to the whole community.

    C is a language that lets the developer do whatever the heck they want as long as it’s technically possible. “Dereferencing pointer 0?” No problem boss. C is fast but there are many many pitfalls and mildly incorrect code can cause significant problems, buffer overflows for example can open your system to bad actors sending information packets to the program and cause your computer to do whatever the bad actor wants. You can technically write code with that problem in both c and rust, but rust has guardrails that keep you out of trouble.




  • I think Harris is trying to capture a group of Americans that hardlines on immigration, unfortunately some of what she’ll concede on during this election cycle will likely alienate progressives in favor of tempting the opposition. It’s strategically valuable because progressives will still vote for her, but maybe a few conservative voters will be swayed.

    Imo it’s more important to pay attention to how she’s voted, how she acts, and whether she will change her mind when presented with important information. In that way she’s by far our most trustworthy candidate even on issues like this one.



  • Imo cults of personality prey on human nature in the worst ways.

    When everyone you listen to and interact with sings praises about somebody or something, and villify anyone who disagrees, you are hard wired to fall in line. It’s literally human nature to sync up with those you listen to, it explains: cults, religions (not yours of course), identity politics, clubs, tribalism, nationalism, and most other isms.

    Fundamentally people are categorization machines, putting people who disagree with themselves in a “them” category makes the person in question closer to the “us” group and more likely to radicalize.

    Less fundamental/human nature related, trump has fostered the kinds of rhetoric his base likes. He himself may not be a christian anti-abortion redneck, but he has fostered an image that he is and it resonates with some people in a way that cool, collected, reasonable, well spoken politicians simply don’t. They trust him because he sounds dumb and crass.