I'll admit I was fairly certain they were indeed allowed to fine him when I first read about. I thought it was heavy handed originally though still legal, but I'll eat my humble pie and be rather surprised that the ruling went in his favor. I guess technically speaking he wasn't doing it in a commercial capacity so these laws don't apply. Not sure I agree with them going after anything beyond a review of some of the fines they may have incorrectly levied against individuals under the same circumstance, but we will see how far they take it.
Yea, I'm well aware of how that works, but ANY exposure to the internet creates a remote attack surface that a bad actor can exploit. You are giving them a lot of credit thinking that they have locked it down so tight that it will be that difficult to get into. It may not be trivial, but I have known more than my fair share of blackhats that did that shit for fun and they weren't just a bunch of script kiddies.
You do know the summary is about Normx not Proton mail right? Are you sure you read it? They are two COMPLETELY different things. Are you referring to a review of Proton mail because I have found no such review in the 5 seconds of Google searching....
It doesn't expose itself by default to the internet with a default username and password.
.... Didn't the summary straight up say it automatically uploads the pictures to the cloud? How exactly is that not connected and exposed to the internet by default? I mean it might not have a default username and password but no company every took any shortcuts or did something outside best security practices right?
While I'll give you some of that probably is engineers protecting jobs, not all of it is that. It isn't much different than doctors being regulated. What engineers do can impact people's lives in very dramatic ways and when we live in a capitalist society there will be bad actors that want to take advantage of a lack of regulations to make a quick buck. In some spaces it may be over-reaching and may be twisted in ways that are essentially just protecting jobs and such, but I don't think all of it is bad at all.
Also, just FYI, the US isn't different for getting a P.E. You have to be endorsed by 3 active P.E. holders to get the license.
Actually in the eyes of the public and law it does. Also, the entire board is made of up valid P.E. holders in almost every state as far as I know (I think it may be required in most) and that requires them to pass the F.E. exam, the P.E. exam, and regularly resubmit documentation (think its every two years) showing they have furthered their engineering knowledge in a meaningful way (University classes, etc.) in order to renew their P.E. These are not just some bureaucrats that decide who is and who isn't given a license these are actually people within the fields. Most, if not all, would easily destroy any simple test you put before them.
Ok, two things wrong with this statement. One, your company will not be fined into oblivion for using the term engineer on the employees that do not hold valid P.E.s because the law specifically states that anyone working under the direction of a licensed engineer (within their field of focus) can be referred to as an engineer without fear of repercussion. Your company has valid P.E. holders on the payroll and this can even come into play if the company just hires a P.E. to stamp drawings/designs for a specific project, but it is only in context to that project. This is a standard statute in almost every state as far as I know (I am most familiar with my state obviously, but in my Engineering Ethics course this was part of the basic curriculum).
Two, and this is more relevant to TFA, the term engineer is only restricted when used in a publicly funded project or setting related to public projects. Engineer can be used for private projects and companies as long as it doesn't involve public funding or projects/infrastructure in general. This is where the guy got into trouble. He emailed the public engineering board about a public project/public infrastructure claiming to be an engineer with an issue. By the state laws he is misrepresenting himself as an engineer within context to what he is talking about.
I, as a software engineer, can legally talk about how shitty or great I think private entities programs/sites/apps/whatever software related thing and refer to myself as a software engineer as long as it doesn't have crap to do with public projects or public funding. If I start doing that with public stuff I can get into legal trouble (though this is a grey area for software specifically since the software P.E. is only 3 years old and it is still not well defined from what I understand how their stamping even works). I can complain all I want about those public projects or infrastructure as long as I don't claim to be an engineer. Again, if I am working under a licensed engineer this changes, but that also has to be spelled out and clear that I am not the license holder.
The last exception is if you are working on obtaining a P.E. or you hold an accredited engineering degree from a recognized university. You can then be referred to as an 'Engineer in Training' or 'Engineer Intern' if you have passed the first exams or as a graduate engineer respectively. This does not apply to non-accredited engineering degrees however (accredited actually varies state to state too if I remember correctly, some states require that the degree is ABET accredited to qualify for that distinction, others allow any recognized University degree to qualify for it).
Basically, these are laws designed to prevent joe blow from designing bridges or other things that the public relies on and funds without actually being qualified. It is the same idea as someone not wanting some jackass that watched a youtube video to attempt surgery on them or a loved one.
This is a much nicer way of saying people don't like change. There are merits to your comment, but I also feel like if everyone isn't Apple, or what have you, and lets your use older revisions, who the fuck cares? Now, there is more to it if you are forced to update to the newest revision all the time, but even then, people need to accept to some degree the software is GOING to change and not just stubbornly yell down anything that changes the software in any way (which is what is sounds like the OP is talking about).
Hell, one of the biggest differences/advantages in software engineering vs. other types of engineering is we can change stuff quickly and without near the same impact. I once worked with a mechanical engineer that fucked up the hole punches on several thousand feet of conveyor by only about 1/2 inch, guess how costly that was? Meanwhile, it might suck if my report calculation was slightly off, but I can update my software in a mater of minutes and it barely costs anything.
Ha! If adding a few features makes the software that much worse that just means you can figure out that developer sucks a lot faster (and the code you were already using probably sucks too and is full of holes you just don't know about yet). I'll admit, I am not the biggest fan of rapid release models because of stability issues and it puts more value on unit testing over system testing which can be dangerous, but adding small feature sets should not make the software that much buggier if someone actually does it well.
That is a pretty bad assumption and very out of touch with actual development. If something really isn't worth it or would take too much time, I simply tell people that or completely ignore the suggestion if its too outrageous. However, that doesn't mean I want the users to shut up and just let daddy developer do whatever I want. I want feedback because I can't possible test everything, I can't predict all the trends for usage, and any half decent developer loves to see people using their software to accomplish things they never even envisioned when it was written (not hacking it per se, but finding use cases we hadn't thought of yet).
In fact, it is more ridiculous for the users to just immediately jump on and start bashing ideas when they have no idea how to actually engineer it or how much time it would take to implement that feature. If someone actually writes real software (not some garbage scipts they threw together either) and wants to comment concerns that is more in line, but even then, just because I write software doesn't mean I know how all software is designed... If a developer starts asking for opinions on it, different story, but people jumping all over it when THEY don't write code is much more ridiculous in my opinion.
Ideas don't cost me shit. Again, if I don't like doesn't mean I have to implement it (unless there is a contract, but that is a different ballgame then what were talking about). I'll take a glut of stupid suggestions with a few good ones over nothing at all any day.
I wish it were just that. I've been writing and deploying enterprise systems for years and it is still basically people just don't like change even if the change is vastly superior to what they had before. I've literally had people for the first month tell me how much this new system is terrible and was a waste of money and then I talk to them 3 months later after they actually have USED it and complete reversal with nothing but praise for the new system... Most people don't like learning is the bottom line. They want to show up, do the same thing they have for years, clock out and collect a pay check. Same thing for most users outside enterprise stuff too, they don't want the application to change because they hate to learn new stuff.
Everyone should also remember that Bubble sort is actually one of the best sorts if you need limited spatial complexity. Embedded system will still use this assuming the dataset won't get too large.
I'm sorry this just sounds idiotic. Isn't this basically just creating a giant standard library and making it so you write the "program" in a functional spec, which would probably get messed up if the wording syntax isn't perfect, hence the ENTIRE REASON we have highly precise programming languages that follow the exact lines the programmer wrote?
They're basically just trying to introduce either fuzzy language programming so that the same sentence written 3 ways gives you the same code (that you probably don't want) or essentially write a new version of COBOL so that non developers can write terrible code... Yea, not fearing for my job even a little bit, especially given that this "AI" even with long term development will be highly unlikely to architect a system or do much outside of a handful of languages (much less language interoperability). On top of that they straight up say in TFA that the damn thing can't solve much beyond 5 lines of code!
Only sort of (I've actually looked into technical specs on some GPS stuff). The problem with a lot of them is fine grain GPS to that level requires a LOT of power and a fairly strong signal. You are correct that they can get a pretty good idea of what lane you are in (although on a single lane two way street, which is more what I was picturing, this gets into a grey area). Since the power requirements are pretty high and most any navigation equipment has an accelerometer it can be easier to just use a little lower grain GPS and use the speed and compass data to determine direction. I don't know if all of them do that since it would depend on the software implementation, but I know at least some do.
Power is not as much of an issue on the autonomous cars obviously, but signal is a serious concern. GPS is an extremely weak signal designed to travel very long distances. GPS jammers are actually really cheap and easy to make because of this (all they do is blast white noise on the frequency, nothing technical to them beyond simple physics). I would imagine because of this it would be a very bad idea to rely entirely on the GPS for position on the street, especially when GPS signal can get lost even in very urban areas for fairly large stretches of road.
Apparently they don't care about having a license to operate so that second part isn't going to do much without impounding their vehicles or other sanctions...
I disagree if they know that the risk is there for this to happen. It is gross negligence to allow that. Ford sure the fuck knew the Pinto would burst into flames if it were rear ended at certain speeds, and because of this when they put it out anyway it was their ass for doing it.
If Uber didn't know, it gets into a grey area simply because with engineering (especially software) even when you take every reasonable precaution things can still go wrong. I would bet BIG though that Uber has not taken reasonable precaution (hence why these things can't even reliably follow basic traffic laws) and very much doesn't care. The more I hear about this company the more they sound like a damn Bond villian with the slowest and lamest plot to fuck up the world. They clearly have a great idea with the business, but damn they must have a made a deal with Satan to think of it and he stipulated they can't have a moral conscious.
If they don't identify lines then how the hell would it identify the center line so its not just driving all over the road careening from object to object as it tries not to hit something... The car HAS to be able to identify things in the context we see them simply because there are other drivers (and cyclist in this case) on the road that are operating that way. We are in a very strange time with autonomous vehicles simply because we have the technology to make them a reality (albeit after much development and testing), but the economics will not make it practical for the end goal of the entire road being autonomous vehicles for some time (if it gets there in our lifetimes even).
The vehicles therefore must operate like a human would otherwise it creates much greater complications on the road, such as the car just driving anywhere on the payment so long as it isn't going to hit something and its driving in the right direction (hell, the only reason the GPS knows what side of the street you are on in the display is because you are moving in a specific direction). If it worked like that it could easily drive down the wrong side of a street and make oncoming cars start swerving or acting sporadically because this thing is not operating within the normal parameters of driving conditions. The car may even not realize this because the sensors don't see anything its going to hit or even more fun it does exactly like I said earlier and simply careens from obstacle to obstacle as it tries not to hit things.
These are more extreme examples, but the same thing applies to the bikes. Are there flaws in the way bike lanes are designed? Probably, but if a car violates a law governing that you bet your ass their are liable whether a human did it or the car itself did. The only way our roads work at all is there are certain expectations of how everyone is supposed to operate (hence why people get mad and cuss/flip people off when someone acts outside those conditions).
DD-WRT actually has much better feature support than the stock firmware for most of the Netgear line. Their menu's are way easier to navigate too... Mine is very stable (been running for over a year on it) and from the research I've done anything in the R6000 and R7000 line is this way, and they absolutely support ac very well (dual bandwidth on mine, and newer versions actually support directional focusing if the hardware can handle it.
While you can't do a bridge mode because the shitty firmware they use doesn't have it, you can turn the DMZ on and forward everything to a router behind it. I know, because that is how my network is setup right now. My Netgear router running DD-WRT is MUCH more secure then the shit the provide for software (Netgear and AT&T). Love Netgear's hardware, but their firmware blows ass.
Absolutely. I actually get sideways with people that think one specific method, language, or tool is so good that it should always be used no matter what. Flexibility is key not only in code but on the business side of software development. Getting good with more common languages/methods/tools/etc. is great in the sense that they will be used more often, but anyone that has an almost religious devotion to these one thing may succeed with it in short term (and there are still too many that believe this) but eventually a problem will come along that needs something else and they are will try to force the proverbial squares into circle holes.
As I stated in my other post, if design reviews and early on demonstrations are done a lot of that can be mitigated in a waterfall project. I concede (and wouldn't really ever say otherwise) that some things will fall through the cracks, but my statement was that can happen in an agile environment too even though it probably happens less. I mean hell, sometimes even customers can be pushed by hyped up posts about new technologies (see: the cloud when it first got popular...) that they really don't need but someone wrote an impassioned article and they get convinced that it just has to happen right now.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll admit I was fairly certain they were indeed allowed to fine him when I first read about. I thought it was heavy handed originally though still legal, but I'll eat my humble pie and be rather surprised that the ruling went in his favor. I guess technically speaking he wasn't doing it in a commercial capacity so these laws don't apply. Not sure I agree with them going after anything beyond a review of some of the fines they may have incorrectly levied against individuals under the same circumstance, but we will see how far they take it.
Yea, I'm well aware of how that works, but ANY exposure to the internet creates a remote attack surface that a bad actor can exploit. You are giving them a lot of credit thinking that they have locked it down so tight that it will be that difficult to get into. It may not be trivial, but I have known more than my fair share of blackhats that did that shit for fun and they weren't just a bunch of script kiddies.
You do know the summary is about Normx not Proton mail right? Are you sure you read it? They are two COMPLETELY different things. Are you referring to a review of Proton mail because I have found no such review in the 5 seconds of Google searching....
So the next iteration is going to walk around your house making snarky gestures that make other people laugh?
It doesn't expose itself by default to the internet with a default username and password.
.... Didn't the summary straight up say it automatically uploads the pictures to the cloud? How exactly is that not connected and exposed to the internet by default? I mean it might not have a default username and password but no company every took any shortcuts or did something outside best security practices right?
While I'll give you some of that probably is engineers protecting jobs, not all of it is that. It isn't much different than doctors being regulated. What engineers do can impact people's lives in very dramatic ways and when we live in a capitalist society there will be bad actors that want to take advantage of a lack of regulations to make a quick buck. In some spaces it may be over-reaching and may be twisted in ways that are essentially just protecting jobs and such, but I don't think all of it is bad at all.
Also, just FYI, the US isn't different for getting a P.E. You have to be endorsed by 3 active P.E. holders to get the license.
Actually in the eyes of the public and law it does. Also, the entire board is made of up valid P.E. holders in almost every state as far as I know (I think it may be required in most) and that requires them to pass the F.E. exam, the P.E. exam, and regularly resubmit documentation (think its every two years) showing they have furthered their engineering knowledge in a meaningful way (University classes, etc.) in order to renew their P.E. These are not just some bureaucrats that decide who is and who isn't given a license these are actually people within the fields. Most, if not all, would easily destroy any simple test you put before them.
Ok, two things wrong with this statement. One, your company will not be fined into oblivion for using the term engineer on the employees that do not hold valid P.E.s because the law specifically states that anyone working under the direction of a licensed engineer (within their field of focus) can be referred to as an engineer without fear of repercussion. Your company has valid P.E. holders on the payroll and this can even come into play if the company just hires a P.E. to stamp drawings/designs for a specific project, but it is only in context to that project. This is a standard statute in almost every state as far as I know (I am most familiar with my state obviously, but in my Engineering Ethics course this was part of the basic curriculum).
Two, and this is more relevant to TFA, the term engineer is only restricted when used in a publicly funded project or setting related to public projects. Engineer can be used for private projects and companies as long as it doesn't involve public funding or projects/infrastructure in general. This is where the guy got into trouble. He emailed the public engineering board about a public project/public infrastructure claiming to be an engineer with an issue. By the state laws he is misrepresenting himself as an engineer within context to what he is talking about.
I, as a software engineer, can legally talk about how shitty or great I think private entities programs/sites/apps/whatever software related thing and refer to myself as a software engineer as long as it doesn't have crap to do with public projects or public funding. If I start doing that with public stuff I can get into legal trouble (though this is a grey area for software specifically since the software P.E. is only 3 years old and it is still not well defined from what I understand how their stamping even works). I can complain all I want about those public projects or infrastructure as long as I don't claim to be an engineer. Again, if I am working under a licensed engineer this changes, but that also has to be spelled out and clear that I am not the license holder.
The last exception is if you are working on obtaining a P.E. or you hold an accredited engineering degree from a recognized university. You can then be referred to as an 'Engineer in Training' or 'Engineer Intern' if you have passed the first exams or as a graduate engineer respectively. This does not apply to non-accredited engineering degrees however (accredited actually varies state to state too if I remember correctly, some states require that the degree is ABET accredited to qualify for that distinction, others allow any recognized University degree to qualify for it).
Basically, these are laws designed to prevent joe blow from designing bridges or other things that the public relies on and funds without actually being qualified. It is the same idea as someone not wanting some jackass that watched a youtube video to attempt surgery on them or a loved one.
This is a much nicer way of saying people don't like change. There are merits to your comment, but I also feel like if everyone isn't Apple, or what have you, and lets your use older revisions, who the fuck cares? Now, there is more to it if you are forced to update to the newest revision all the time, but even then, people need to accept to some degree the software is GOING to change and not just stubbornly yell down anything that changes the software in any way (which is what is sounds like the OP is talking about).
Hell, one of the biggest differences/advantages in software engineering vs. other types of engineering is we can change stuff quickly and without near the same impact. I once worked with a mechanical engineer that fucked up the hole punches on several thousand feet of conveyor by only about 1/2 inch, guess how costly that was? Meanwhile, it might suck if my report calculation was slightly off, but I can update my software in a mater of minutes and it barely costs anything.
Ha! If adding a few features makes the software that much worse that just means you can figure out that developer sucks a lot faster (and the code you were already using probably sucks too and is full of holes you just don't know about yet). I'll admit, I am not the biggest fan of rapid release models because of stability issues and it puts more value on unit testing over system testing which can be dangerous, but adding small feature sets should not make the software that much buggier if someone actually does it well.
That is a pretty bad assumption and very out of touch with actual development. If something really isn't worth it or would take too much time, I simply tell people that or completely ignore the suggestion if its too outrageous. However, that doesn't mean I want the users to shut up and just let daddy developer do whatever I want. I want feedback because I can't possible test everything, I can't predict all the trends for usage, and any half decent developer loves to see people using their software to accomplish things they never even envisioned when it was written (not hacking it per se, but finding use cases we hadn't thought of yet).
In fact, it is more ridiculous for the users to just immediately jump on and start bashing ideas when they have no idea how to actually engineer it or how much time it would take to implement that feature. If someone actually writes real software (not some garbage scipts they threw together either) and wants to comment concerns that is more in line, but even then, just because I write software doesn't mean I know how all software is designed... If a developer starts asking for opinions on it, different story, but people jumping all over it when THEY don't write code is much more ridiculous in my opinion.
Ideas don't cost me shit. Again, if I don't like doesn't mean I have to implement it (unless there is a contract, but that is a different ballgame then what were talking about). I'll take a glut of stupid suggestions with a few good ones over nothing at all any day.
I wish it were just that. I've been writing and deploying enterprise systems for years and it is still basically people just don't like change even if the change is vastly superior to what they had before. I've literally had people for the first month tell me how much this new system is terrible and was a waste of money and then I talk to them 3 months later after they actually have USED it and complete reversal with nothing but praise for the new system... Most people don't like learning is the bottom line. They want to show up, do the same thing they have for years, clock out and collect a pay check. Same thing for most users outside enterprise stuff too, they don't want the application to change because they hate to learn new stuff.
Everyone should also remember that Bubble sort is actually one of the best sorts if you need limited spatial complexity. Embedded system will still use this assuming the dataset won't get too large.
Funny, Slashdot posted this in 2012 too, by searching 'ketchup' I found the damn article in about 10 seconds....
https://science.slashdot.org/s...
I'm sorry this just sounds idiotic. Isn't this basically just creating a giant standard library and making it so you write the "program" in a functional spec, which would probably get messed up if the wording syntax isn't perfect, hence the ENTIRE REASON we have highly precise programming languages that follow the exact lines the programmer wrote?
They're basically just trying to introduce either fuzzy language programming so that the same sentence written 3 ways gives you the same code (that you probably don't want) or essentially write a new version of COBOL so that non developers can write terrible code... Yea, not fearing for my job even a little bit, especially given that this "AI" even with long term development will be highly unlikely to architect a system or do much outside of a handful of languages (much less language interoperability). On top of that they straight up say in TFA that the damn thing can't solve much beyond 5 lines of code!
Only sort of (I've actually looked into technical specs on some GPS stuff). The problem with a lot of them is fine grain GPS to that level requires a LOT of power and a fairly strong signal. You are correct that they can get a pretty good idea of what lane you are in (although on a single lane two way street, which is more what I was picturing, this gets into a grey area). Since the power requirements are pretty high and most any navigation equipment has an accelerometer it can be easier to just use a little lower grain GPS and use the speed and compass data to determine direction. I don't know if all of them do that since it would depend on the software implementation, but I know at least some do.
Power is not as much of an issue on the autonomous cars obviously, but signal is a serious concern. GPS is an extremely weak signal designed to travel very long distances. GPS jammers are actually really cheap and easy to make because of this (all they do is blast white noise on the frequency, nothing technical to them beyond simple physics). I would imagine because of this it would be a very bad idea to rely entirely on the GPS for position on the street, especially when GPS signal can get lost even in very urban areas for fairly large stretches of road.
Absolutely agree. There is a very slim chance they didn't know.
Apparently they don't care about having a license to operate so that second part isn't going to do much without impounding their vehicles or other sanctions...
I disagree if they know that the risk is there for this to happen. It is gross negligence to allow that. Ford sure the fuck knew the Pinto would burst into flames if it were rear ended at certain speeds, and because of this when they put it out anyway it was their ass for doing it.
If Uber didn't know, it gets into a grey area simply because with engineering (especially software) even when you take every reasonable precaution things can still go wrong. I would bet BIG though that Uber has not taken reasonable precaution (hence why these things can't even reliably follow basic traffic laws) and very much doesn't care. The more I hear about this company the more they sound like a damn Bond villian with the slowest and lamest plot to fuck up the world. They clearly have a great idea with the business, but damn they must have a made a deal with Satan to think of it and he stipulated they can't have a moral conscious.
If they don't identify lines then how the hell would it identify the center line so its not just driving all over the road careening from object to object as it tries not to hit something... The car HAS to be able to identify things in the context we see them simply because there are other drivers (and cyclist in this case) on the road that are operating that way. We are in a very strange time with autonomous vehicles simply because we have the technology to make them a reality (albeit after much development and testing), but the economics will not make it practical for the end goal of the entire road being autonomous vehicles for some time (if it gets there in our lifetimes even).
The vehicles therefore must operate like a human would otherwise it creates much greater complications on the road, such as the car just driving anywhere on the payment so long as it isn't going to hit something and its driving in the right direction (hell, the only reason the GPS knows what side of the street you are on in the display is because you are moving in a specific direction). If it worked like that it could easily drive down the wrong side of a street and make oncoming cars start swerving or acting sporadically because this thing is not operating within the normal parameters of driving conditions. The car may even not realize this because the sensors don't see anything its going to hit or even more fun it does exactly like I said earlier and simply careens from obstacle to obstacle as it tries not to hit things.
These are more extreme examples, but the same thing applies to the bikes. Are there flaws in the way bike lanes are designed? Probably, but if a car violates a law governing that you bet your ass their are liable whether a human did it or the car itself did. The only way our roads work at all is there are certain expectations of how everyone is supposed to operate (hence why people get mad and cuss/flip people off when someone acts outside those conditions).
DD-WRT actually has much better feature support than the stock firmware for most of the Netgear line. Their menu's are way easier to navigate too... Mine is very stable (been running for over a year on it) and from the research I've done anything in the R6000 and R7000 line is this way, and they absolutely support ac very well (dual bandwidth on mine, and newer versions actually support directional focusing if the hardware can handle it.
Could be .250 for the last octet... Mine is actually neither, but I have a custom setup thats not exactly standard.
While you can't do a bridge mode because the shitty firmware they use doesn't have it, you can turn the DMZ on and forward everything to a router behind it. I know, because that is how my network is setup right now. My Netgear router running DD-WRT is MUCH more secure then the shit the provide for software (Netgear and AT&T). Love Netgear's hardware, but their firmware blows ass.
Absolutely. I actually get sideways with people that think one specific method, language, or tool is so good that it should always be used no matter what. Flexibility is key not only in code but on the business side of software development. Getting good with more common languages/methods/tools/etc. is great in the sense that they will be used more often, but anyone that has an almost religious devotion to these one thing may succeed with it in short term (and there are still too many that believe this) but eventually a problem will come along that needs something else and they are will try to force the proverbial squares into circle holes.
As I stated in my other post, if design reviews and early on demonstrations are done a lot of that can be mitigated in a waterfall project. I concede (and wouldn't really ever say otherwise) that some things will fall through the cracks, but my statement was that can happen in an agile environment too even though it probably happens less. I mean hell, sometimes even customers can be pushed by hyped up posts about new technologies (see: the cloud when it first got popular...) that they really don't need but someone wrote an impassioned article and they get convinced that it just has to happen right now.