Daily Archives: 2020-09-07

On finally learning to program at the age of 40

Source: Hacker News

Article note: There are several interesting this about this. 1. I've run into the "Very high level languages are too magic and/or too coercive, so you can't feel their power" thing before, and it makes sense to me. 2. It's neat that rust's combination of exposing you to all the details and extremely helpful compiler messages makes a good antidote to problem 1 for people who experience that. 3. The idea of watching people stream programming as a way to pick up programming is pretty novel to me, my experience has been that showing people programming on a screen leads to little-to-no retention, but maybe it works for some folks.
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The ‘Brushing’ Scam That’s Behind Mystery Parcels

Source: Slashdot

Article note: This is the first compelling explanation for that phenomenon I've seen. It's just another form of gaming the bizarre incentives of modern online retail.

If you've ever received a parcel from a shopping platform that you didn't order, and nobody you know seems to have bought it for you, you might have been caught up in a "brushing" scam. From a report: It has hit the headlines after thousands of Americans received unsolicited packets of seeds in the mail, but it is not new. It's an illicit way for sellers to get reviews for their products. And it doesn't mean your account has been hacked. Here's an example of how it works: let's say I set myself up as a seller on Amazon, for my product, Kleinman Candles, which cost $3 each. I then set up a load of fake accounts, and I find random names and addresses either from publicly available information or from a leaked database that's doing the rounds from a previous data breach. I order Kleinman Candles from my fake accounts and have them delivered to the addresses I have found, with no information about where they have been sent from. I then leave positive reviews for Kleinman Candles from each fake account -- which has genuinely made a purchase. This way my candle shop page gets filled with glowing reviews (sorry), my sales figures give me an algorithmic popularity boost as a credible merchant -- and nobody knows that the only person buying and reviewing my candles is myself. It tends to happen with low-cost products, including cheap electronics. It's more a case of fake marketing than cyber-crime, but "brushing" and fake reviews are against Amazon's policies. Campaign group Which? advises that you inform the platform they are sent by of any unsolicited goods.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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12-year-old suspended over toy gun seen in virtual class

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Let's be clear: This was a goofy neon green Nerf blaster. As much as I'm generally pretty bullish about a world where a lot of things don't require people commute for no compelling reason, the side effect of inviting the eyes of institutions and their petty bullshit made existential threat via massive power imbalance into our homes is going to be a lasting problem.
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The DayStar Genesis MP

Source: OSNews

Article note: That's a bit of Apple history I didn't know. Not only did DayStar develop the patches to let the (creaking mess that was) classic MacOS do multiprocessing of a sort (It's not SMP, it's more like an attached co-processor model), they also developed the processor card that Apple put in the 9500/180 MP.

When Apple announced that it was going to be licensing Mac OS to other PC makers, DayStar essentially bet its business on converting from being a manufacturer of high-end upgrades for Apple-built Macs to being a manufacturer of high-end Mac clones. DayStar’s clone was the Genesis MP, and the MP stood for multiprocessing. It was the very first Mac to combine the work of multiple processors toward a common goal.

The problem: Classic Mac OS wasn’t built for multiple processor cores. The operating system knew about its processor, and it used it, and that was it. But the engineers at DayStar had been working on something novel for its high-end audience.

There was such a wealth of innovation coming out of the clone program that Apple itself simply couldn’t do. As consumers, there’s lessons to be learned from the clone program – artificial limitations do not serve us. They only serve corporations.

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