sebleblanc's comments

On: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

[sebleblanc]

"If Microsoft forced either SmartScreen OR AppLocker"

Meh, just add a button or clickable link that allows the sysadmin to swiftly disable such warnings. Just make sure to put a scary-enough disclaimer that doing so can expose you to very bad, malicious stuff, from ill-intentioned people. It might get more application publishers to implement signing, just as Vista and 7 got rid of the "run everything as administrator" mentality through the use of UAC warnings.

[bsznjyewgd → sebleblanc]

Whatever the default level SmartScreen is already has a ding and a warning pop up about unknown executables. But it's amber and not red, and most people just click through it (I know I do).

[codedokode → sebleblanc]

I think there should be a separate UI for installing or running a downloaded program (with a huge red warning) so the users cannot accidentally run anything.

On: Newly discovered earliest draft of a Unix manual (...

[sebleblanc]

Tuple support, which in essence are anonymous structs, would have been very nice in C, too.

On: Ask HN: Examples of good code?

[sebleblanc]

SQLAlchemy[1] is a large project with a very solid codebase; it is very well documented and the API is exemplary.

1: https://github.com/zzzeek/sqlalchemy/

On: How necessary are var, let, and const?

[sebleblanc]

That behaviour is not exclusive to standards committees. The government and private companies do it all the time.

[CrossEye → sebleblanc]

"governments and private companies" certainly do not preclude committees. Quite to the contrary, in fact.

On: Windows Hello – Biometric authentication to Window...

[sebleblanc]

Great! Now the FBI does not even have to arrest me to get my fingerprints and retina scanned!

[jongalloway2 → sebleblanc]

The video says it never stores image on the device: https://youtu.be/1AsoSnOmhvU?t=3m12s

I'd assume it's doing the equivalent of password hashing, so the authentication mechanism just verifies a hash match.

[therobot24 → sebleblanc]

come on, no one uses retina anymore

On: Algorithms Every Programmer Should Know: Reservoir...

[sebleblanc]

Regarding the C++ code:

    /* This is standard modern C++ random number generation.
       It means, using the random generator "engine", return 
       a number according to distribution "dist". In this
       "dist" is a uniform distribution from "i" to "max-min".
       "auto" is the new way to type variables in C++: it
       infers the type of the variable from the type of the
       expression */
    22: auto index = dist(engine);

    /* The following lines are a bit more complex, as they
       contain a nested expression. Let us focus on the inner
       expression:
           (index < size ) ? array[index]
              : map.insert({index, min + index}).first->second

       This is in the form:
           test-expr ? when-true-expr
              : when-false-expr

       This expression is a ternary condition. What it means
       is that the expression before the question mark is
       computed (index < size), and if it evaluates to true,
       the overall expression will resolve to the result of
       the expression between the question mark and the colon,
       otherwise it resolves to what is after the colon.

       Here, it means that if "index" is smaller than "size",
       use "array[index]", otherwise insert a new entry in the
       map, with key "index" and value "min+index", then reuse
       the result of the operation by accessing member "second"
       of the member "first". I am not familiar with STL maps;
       here is an explanation of the map::insert method from
       cplusplus.com:

           The single element versions (1) return a pair, with
           its member pair::first set to an iterator pointing 
           to either the newly inserted element or to the 
           element with an equivalent key in the map. The 
           pair::second element in the pair is set to true if 
           a new element was inserted or false if an equivalent
           key already existed.
    */

    23: std::swap(array[i], index < size
    24:                         ? array[index]
    25:                         : map.insert({index, min + index}).first->second);

    /* Then, the std::swap operation simply swaps the two indicated
       values in the array. */

On: Why is perl losing its touch?

[sebleblanc]

And if you want to emulate static variables in a function, you can do that:

    def counter():
        counter.x += 1
        return counter.x

    counter.x = 0
    counter()
    > 1
    counter()
    > 2

Beware! singleton variables, mutable state, etc.

[knome → sebleblanc]

You can do it by closing over a variable as well. Python closes over things just fine, it just has problems rebinding variables in outer scopes that aren't the global one. Here, I just make the variable a container, so I can alter a value inside it, instead of rebinding it ( only python2 has this problem, python3 has a "nonlocal" keyword to work around this in the language )

    >>> def counter():
    ...   x = [ 1 ]
    ...   def count():
    ...     y = x[ 0 ]
    ...     x[ 0 ] += 1
    ...     return y
    ...   return count
    ... 
    >>> count = counter()
    >>> count()
    1
    >>> count()
    2
    >>> count()
    3
    >>> count()
    4
    >>> 
    >>> otherCount = counter()
    >>> otherCount()
    1
    >>> otherCount()
    2
    >>> count()
    5
    >>> count()
    6
    >>> otherCount()
    3
    >>>

On: Tough Times on the Road to StarCraft

[sebleblanc]

But it is an implementation, albeit a non-standard one.