brianbarker

Alright, I'm burnt out and I don't want to think about work for a few mins, so:

I tire of the logic such as "well...what IF...someone...did that intentionally!" Then people think they're smarter than everyone else, using words like sheeple and such.

Shit happens. Merges fail. Teams miss stuff. I once randomly discovered a hole in a web app where data was being leaked from an ajax call without logging in. No conspiracy.

Yes, if I were a 1337 haxxor and I wanted to disguise a commit to, say, Linux for my backdoor I would disguise it as a mistake. Totally right, that would be smart and awesome. I'd have something to say on the next HN post of "What makes a Senior Software Engineer", because a junior engineer would not be this smart.

As an aside, long before the NSA reveals of 2013 there had been reports of back doors in skype. My clock skew causes me to forget how many years ago that was, but I'm gonna say somewhere 2005-2008. As 2013 passed, I thought back on that and laughed.

So yeah, Skype is backdoored. Is this one of them? Perhaps. Or it's yet another big corp fail. Orrrr...getting crazy now....it's a bug, but then it was discovered long ago by smart people and has been exploited. So it wasn't internal conspiracy, just a good find by some NSA dude.

Anyway. Back to my code.

- Not you personally. I have experience with HN comments. Just covering my bases.

- No, it's not the case here. Unless you can prove it. There's no evidence it was done intentionally.

No. A backdoor is considered to be deliberate and obfuscated from easy discovery, with the intent to be secret access.

If every system flaw or coding bug is a backdoor, then defects like OpenSSL's Heartbleed would be deemed backdoors, and they're not.

Unless you're wearing a heavy tin foil hat and think the coding mistake for Heartbleed was intentional. I guess I can't dissuade you from that train of thought.

OP isn't clueless, just pointing out the obvious.

One less dependency is not a bad thing.

Download Fare and keep your eye on RideAustin when you return. Fare is doing great, plenty of cars out and no surge.

Arcade City has worked really well via the FB group. You post a ride request, multiple drivers respond. Many link their uber/lyft profiles. Then the client chooses their driver (big key to AC's premise) and a ride is arranged.

AC is also launching an app to replace the FB group and be directly p2p, which will be fascinating to watch.

Also, as of this last weekend, Fare has tons of cars and had cheaper-than-uber prices like Lyft. Very good, very stable app. The RideAustin app also is showing cars, but Fare looks better.

I'd recommend Fare. It sucks that visitors won't know, but maybe Fare can get a sign at the airport?

Some data scientists I work with prefer Julia or Erlang, but the real interest is now Spark. Since Scala works with Spark and is more of a datsci's type of language (similar to Julia, Erlang, functional languages), people are moving to it. Spark made Scala relevant and interesting.

YES! to both parents here. Type erasure is a bitch.

Need to pass in a class type, but it's of a list?

List<YourType> list = new ArrayList<>(); yourfunc(list.getClass());

C# got all this junk right.

Think you missed the sarcasm.

I just want uber and lyft back. The alternatives are awful. My friends have changed their weekend habits. I tried GetMe but it really sucks. Even the drivers were complaining the software had several bugs about billing, payment and mapping.

I don't think uber and lyft should have left over background checking and fingerprints. Idk which side will acquiesce first, I just hope someone does.

Orphan Black neolution territory. Other actors will do it. Scientists who want to do it will find a place where they can.

While the US debates such efforts in fear what could happen, other nations who don't see it as a problem will do this. It has always been a matter of time.