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Don’t forget a father of a modern oil refinery:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacy_%C5%81ukasiewicz


I’m surprised there is almost no discussion about the severity of reputational damage caused by an extremely amateur bug not expected of a prominent VC firm


Yes... In my mind, there are three kinds of security bugs.

1. Caused by pure ignorance and completely avoidable (this bug).

2. Caused by subtle configurations, workflows, programming (mostly avoidable, secret scanning, security linters, code reviews, general intelligence, etc). This is where 99% of security bugs are.

3. Caused by a malicious actor aligning planets with a single intent to maximize their cause. You'll never stop these people (three letter agencies, state actors).

edit:

A must watch talk https://vimeo.com/95066828


Probably because a16z reputation has already been quite tarnished in recent years. This is par for the course. People will still take their massive bags of money and name brand boost but "these are smart, technical, 'making the world a better place' visionaries" as opposed to wealth chasing bankers, has already run the gamut.

See crypto, Clubhouse, "it's time to build [not in my Atherton neighborhood]", e/acc Nick Land manifesto, Trump '24 support, etc.


Not of this kind


That you’re aware of.


I come from security background and have been following best practices since 1997 so I’m pretty sure I have not made a blunder of this sort


Previously in the DOS era, “terminal” would allow you to render to the video buffer directly and it allowed for an ecosystem of text GUI apps to flourish. Right now, this is largely impossible because modern terminals are really emulators and you have to rely on strange things such as ncurses etc. A better terminal with some nice features such as access to a virtual video buffer would allow for exciting new possibilities



Thanks for a thoughtful comment


No. It’s a trope. Most people can’t tell the difference. It’s highly context and application specific.


Yeah the bulk of the time it doesn’t matter. The only places it really matters are if you have stronger perf requirements, or dislike stupid amounts of UB.


It uses SWAR technique for counting bits because target platform wasn’t specified in compiler flags properly. popcnt and family are specific family extensions and without specifying the target flags the compiler generates lowest common denominator among available instructions

Edit: add -msse4 and you will see popcnt appear because popcnt is the SSE4 extension


I think the issue that the article is not explaining very well, is that what it's actually trying to do is check if a number is a power of two, and one part of the compiler says "use popcnt!" and then later another part says "oh sorry, we'll have to emulate that with a ton of instructions". Whereas it could have just used a shift and and.


The power of two test is simply

x & (x-1) == 0

which could be special cased through templates too


> It was a Clang compiler, ARM-based platform

> I do think it is a bug in this case, native popcnt could maybe be defended, but should not be used if compiling for architecture that does not support it.


> If you would like to experiment yourself, Compiler Explorer snippet can be found here

https://gcc.godbolt.org/z/qGzWo39b6

Which is an x86-64 sample


It's a little impossible to show the difference between using popcnt and the expanded emulation code on a platform that doesn't support popcnt.

It doesn't change the fact that the actual program itself was being complied on a platform that doesn't support popcnt, so no amount of compiler arguments would fix that.


NEON extension on ARM comes with CNT instruction that counts set bits.


The article says all of this?


An asset produces cash flow. Primary residence can only be a speculation device because for a majority of people it does not produce a cash flow. Instead it produces expenses.


nonsense. A primary residence obviously provides utility in the form of shelter for the owner.

No assets directly produce cashflow, whether they are factories, tractors, or tools.


Utility is not an asset. When you grow up with your parents they provide shelter, you get a utility of it. No asset for you. Majority of assets produce cash flow (e.g. licensing software - IP asset, renting real estate to someone - you get monthly rent, bond - coupon payments, stock - you get dividends, etc)


Assets don't have to produce any cash flow. Most popularly, gold. Stocks that provide stable dividends are also less and less usual.

Assets can just hold their real value compared to inflation and that's useful enough - even losing value slower than inflation is still good.


FASB defines an asset as:

“A present right of an entity to an economic benefit”.

“Essential to the definition of an asset is a right to an "economic benefit" —the capacity to provide services or benefits to the entities that use them. Generally, in a business entity, that economic benefit eventually results in potential net cash inflows to the entity. In a not-for-profit entity, that economic benefit is used to provide desired or needed goods or services to beneficiaries or other constituents, which may or may not directly result in net cash inflows to the entity.“

It also says “incurring a cost to acquire an item does not in itself qualify an item to meet the definition of the asset”

https://www.fasb.org/Page/ShowPdf?path=Concepts_Statement_8-...


Not sure how is an accounting book relevant. I'd rather ask a tax consultant - the definitions are slightly but significantly different.

Anyways, even by your book's definition - later sale for a higher price is economic benefit, protection against inflation is one too.

This link considers your viewpoint too: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/asset.asp


I’m trying to say that under mortgage, a property isn’t your asset. It’s a bank’s asset. The mortgage is booked under asset side on the balance sheet of the bank. It cannot be booked as an asset on your side. The economy wouldn’t balance. Until you actually paid off stuff the home is a liability. You pay money on it every month (negative cash flow) and that cash flow accrues to the bank (positive cash flow). I don’t know in what definition an asset produces a negative cash flow. It’s a liability under most definitions. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m not an accountant.


> I’m trying to say that under mortgage, a property isn’t your asset. It’s a bank’s asset.

No, the property is your asset. The mortgage is your liability. Each month as you pay the mortgage you have an expense (the interest part of the mortgage) and a reduction in your liability.


The loan is a liability (and an asset on the bank's side) but the house itself is your asset and is treated as such. You pay capital gains tax on sold assets even if you used a loan to obtain them. For individuals there are exceptions to that specific to real estate, but corporations definitely do. It's not an asset only if it's actually owned by the bank - such as a car or machine on leasing.

I'm not an accountant either but my company has some assets we paid for with a loan, so this is a situation I know.


I think you have a very skewed perspective of assets, let alone physical assets (which housing is).

A store that owns its own real estate isnt generating cashflow with it. This is the equivalent to a Homeowner living in a home.

If you are deadset on using intangible assets, it is the same a company holding a drug patent and producing the drug. Cashflow comes from sales, not the patent.


an investment property with a renter in it produces rental income for the landlord, and cash is currently giving me 5% returns for just sitting in the bank.


I guess I wasnt very clear. I meant that generating income isnt the definition of an asset.

A house is an asset if you have a renter in it or not. It can also be utilized to generate income.


oh that makes sense


Please show me how you cp a raw device without the concept of files. I’d love to learn.

$ cp /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/my-special-backup

?


dd can copy block by block from one block device to another

ddrescue can do the same, but will handle errors better

e2image understands ext2/3/4 filesystems and can copy only the blocks in use, which can really help (though don't know how it works if it encounters an error)


A device is a file. That's the power and elegance of Unix-like systems.


The correct abstraction is that a file is a device. A file is a section of a hard disk which behaves like a whole disk. It also happens to be expandable.

cp's default behaviour for device files also happens to be very stupid.


Yes


Ha. Today I learned. Is this a portable approach across macOS, Linux and BSD family ?


> Is this a portable approach across macOS, Linux and BSD family ?

I think that feature relies in the concept of a device file, which is a direct reflection of the UNIX trait of everything being a file.

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


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