Have you ever actually met backend Linux engineers? They are, typically anyways, a very salty and unhappy bunch. I definitely include myself in that lot as something I'm working on.

yeah, I work on commandline based compilers and code analysis tools and I'm very happy doing it! apart from the work itself being interesting, I find it really nice to just have to care about stdin, stdout, and filesystem access. I enjoy working on desktop gui apps too, but at least to my mind IPC and networking add a layer of unpleasantly error-prone concerns to deal with, and web apps dial that up to eleven.

Hear, hear. Compilers are so much fun: you get data in, you put data out, and in between it's all algorithms and data structures. Nothing but the good stuff.

I guess this will still be bellow Therac-25 for CS and CE students, but above for EE, ME, and Civil Engineering.

There's a 3rd failure: the failure to install/upgrade dolphins that could deflect a modern containership, despite the identified need for such. That proposed project seems cheap in retrospect.

Yes, 100%. Lots of failures across the board here. Especially with large ships and how many different nations they might be registered in, I can't imagine it's easy to have a lot of regulatory oversight into their construction, mechanical inspection or maintenance schedules. I'm curious how modern ports handle this problem, feels like it could cause a ton of issues beyond just catastrophic ones like this one.

Well the FBI prosecuted a guy who provided training on how to beat it.

Indeed, the FBI participated in the criminal investigation of the late Doug Williams, who offered training on how to pass or beat a polygraph "test." Because there was no actual crime for which to prosecute him, federal agents set out to stage one in a "sting" operation they dubbed "Operation Lie Busters":

https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2016/04/26/operation-lie-bust...

Yes, the polygraph has one purpose, instill fear. It's an over the top interrogation. Level 1 torture.

>There are millions of companies even century or decade old ones without a hacking incident with data extraction.

Name five.

The pedantic answer is to point to a bunch of shell companies without any electronic presence. However in terms of actual businesses there’s decent odds the closest dry cleaners, independent restaurant, car wash, etc has not had its data extracted by a hacking incident.

Having a minimal attack surface and not being actively targeted is a meaningful advantage here.

>there’s decent odds the closest dry cleaners, independent restaurant, car wash, etc has not had its data extracted by a hacking incident.

And there's also a decent chance they have. Did we not just have a years long spate of ransomware targeting small businesses?

Most ransomeware isn’t exfiltrating data. For small business you can automate the ‘pay to unencrypt your HDD’ model easy without care for what’s on the disk.

There are definitely companies who have never been breached and it's not that hard. Defense in depth is all you need

Isn't defense in depth's whole point that some of your defenses will get breached?

Take the OP. What defenses were breached? An old abandoned system running unmantained in the background with old user data still attached. There is no excuse.

If it causes a crash, that's denial of service, so medium would be appropriate. But it's true that medium CVEs aren't that bad in most situations.

This bug can most likely lead to RCE, proving that it can’t is generally a very difficult problem.

There’s absolutely no reason to assume that it does not lead to RCE, and certainly no reason whatsoever to invest significant time to prove that one way or the other unless you make a living selling exploits.

If you need this kind of security, build ffmpeg with only decoders you find acceptable

The legal terms seem pretty evil for what this is. I'll allow that evil may not be the intent. Perhaps you just asked a lawyer for the most bulletproof terms possible, but what you've end up with is a very one sided set of terms. Honestly the more I read, the weirder they get. If I tell a lie to another user, them I'm liable to be banned? I see what you are going for in that section, but as written, any normal, day to day, social lubricant style lie/falsehood could get you banned? On a social network?

Edit: reading further, I suspect these were just taken from somewhere unless in 2025 they've got some Flash code to protect:

>Copy or adapt the Services' software, including but not limited to Flash, PHP, HTML, JavaScript, or other code.

Yeah, that is a good point. I might need to tone it down a bit. Not trying to be evil, the intent was to protect myself and the users. I worried about what could go wrong like chatrooms turning into toxic places or the service being used for nefarious purposes. I wanted set some rules. I am a student though and I don't have money for lawyers so I just copied a boilerplate legal contract from a service and didn't change much.

I'm trying to keep in mind this isn't something you approached as a product to release or anything, and you're a student. I feel like I'm coming off pretty harshly here, but... you should be more worried about the "nefarious purposes" part than anything else, right now. I feel like offering this sort of service publicly - particularly in 2025 - requires some legal counsel.

One other concern about the implementation: it sounds like Hub administrators - who is just the first person to create a Hub in a particular area - are given a lot of power. No more Hubs are able to be created in an area? So if a Hub admin abuses their power that area is screwed, unless of course you (or whoever would be handling such cases, if indeed that would happen) agreed that they've overstepped, which may or may not be the case, particularly with a vague TOS

Anyway I think the idea is intriguing, and like new ways of exploring social media/communities.

It is evil to not allow lies?

That does not seem to be so evil .. but I did not found the legal terms on a first glance, so maybe there is more?

I think it's evil - by a small stretch of the word - to think that it's appropriate to forbid lying in general on a social chat platform, particularly as a bannable offence. It's also foolish to think that such terms could be reasonably enforced.

One of these statements is a lie:

I live in America

I have red hair

I like bluebirds

Do you think it is good and just and fair to ban someone for one of these falsehoods?

Depends what your intentions are. If I want a authentic community, I would not want people to participate who lie where they live.

Otherwise there is the concept of making a prank which is fine by me.

But intentionally spreading lies for political propaganda or scam is very much a reason to ban someone like this for me.

So you agree with me then? I'm confused.

You edited your post, so not sure what your point is.

Either way, I would not agree that banning liers is evil.

What is your credit card info? Don't lie.

I don't want to tell you

is a truth and a perfectly safe answer

It did answer your question. One can also refuse a answer - that is not lying, neither by omission or anything else.

Ok so it was tongue-in-cheek if not obvious but thanks whoever for the downvote. Then a bit more serious... There might be even better examples but let's consider that someone is part of a community that can use what is considered a slur, depending on context, or a term of endearment, depending on context and who uses it etc... If someone else uses it but fails to disclose their appartenance to said group. When asked, they can refuse to disclose it.

Is it fair to get them banned from the community? Can we consider that they might be lying by omission? After all they didn't answer and they might pass themselves as part of a community.

There are also colloquial considerations in online interactions that might be taken into account.

This is not really what I was veering toward initially but simply as a way to bring some more nuance since humor doesn't work here apparently.

This is the sort of things we see on twitter/X etc. You can't force people to speak differently, you can't force people to disclose information they would not want to disclose, but you may want to have some sort of policy to rule these kind of issues.

"When asked, they can refuse to disclose it."

Yes and that is still not a lie. Your comment above seems to imply otherwise and it was not humor to me, but arguing in bad faith.

"Is it fair to get them banned from the community?"

If the rules say no lying, then yes.

"You can't force people to speak differently"

Of course you can. Why do you think I am around here and not on reddit or alike? There are clear rules around discourse and they are enforced.

It is a lie if they use it as if they were a full-fledged member of a community while not actually being a true member of said community.

If I disguise myself as a man, that does not mean that I can go the male restrooms. If I am asked for proof that I am actually female for some reason, can I decline showing such proof?

And regarding arguing in bad faith, I was not arguing. Maybe you are not aware of the expression 'lying by omission'? But the smileys I used were supposed to make obvious that it was a joke/tongue-in-cheek. Even the initial question was tongue-in-cheek. Do you sincerely believe that I expect to receive some credit card info?!!!

Ack that this example might not be best since the lie in the first place is the disguise. But, not everything is ruled by law, especially online. Which is also the point of the question.

"It is a lie if they use it as if they were a full-fledged member of a community while not actually being a true member of said community."

That would be a lie, yes. (I found your example above not clearly written and still am not quite sure what you meant exactly)

"And regarding arguing in bad faith, I was not arguing. Maybe you are not aware of the expression 'lying by omission'? But the smileys I used were supposed to make obvious that it was a joke/tongue-in-cheek. Even the initial question was tongue-in-cheek. Do you sincerely believe that I expect to receive some credit card info?!!!"

Asking for information and someone declining that information has nothing to do with lying by ommision. That you try to make a connection here is what makes me believe you are not debating (or talking about or whatever) in good faith.

"But, not everything is ruled by law, especially online. Which is also the point of the question."

But this is about a concrete community, where my point is, they can very much rule certain things by their law.

And to me by default, lying is evil. And not banning those who lie (which was the starting point here).

So on an online forum, do you really think that you can force people to choose a profile picture that represents them accurately? Or is it a lie and it is a bannable offense? How do you enforce the truth?

> Asking for information and someone declining that information has nothing to do with lying by omission.

You may want to look up the definition of 'lying by omission'. Within the context of asking for profile information, it might well be. My point is that you need to be more measured. Even lying can be for protection at times. Sometimes it is not. It is not as straightforward as you make it seem.

An interesting thesis if you have time: https://theses.hal.science/tel-02170022/file/Icard-2019-Thes...

"Even lying can be for protection at times."

Oh for sure. But the idea (to me) is, if you have am honest online community with lots of trust build up, you don't need to.

"do you really think that you can force people to choose a profile picture that represents them accurately"

Of course you can. But that does not mean it is a must. That depends on the specific rules.

"You may want to look up the definition of 'lying by omission'. Within the context of asking for profile information, it might well be"

But not with the examples you gave.

I will check out the paper later, but I doubt I will learn much new. It is not a new topic to me.

How did you even find a TOS? The link to both that and the privacy policy on the Sign Up modal don't work.

The poster appears to be Indian from their HN profile. How about we extend some grace for a slight misunderstanding of the nuances of a term that isn't particularly common in day to day discussions?

I see your point, but I think the anger comes from the fact that

1. the title was unneccessarily editorialized, 2. the word gamified is used wrong here, and 3. There was never any good reason to add the word gamified to the title, other than adding a buzzword.

The feedback people give is probably a bit harsh, but I find it understandable. If you don’t know what a term means, don’t use it - especially not if it’s completely unnecessary as in this case.

Agreed. Shouldn't have used the term without proper understanding as it gives a totally different meaning in hindsight. Sorry for that

Your and GP's two statements are not mutually exclusive. This paradigm can have significant benefits, and at the same time be too cumbersome for people to want to use consistently.

All things that were compromised with physical attacks? What are mod chips if not physical attack as a service?

I'm not aware of working jailbreaks for either Xbox Series or PS5. Its possible that's just a matter of time, but they've both been out for quite a while now it seems like the console manufacturers have finally worked out how to secure them.

Older firmware versions of PS5 are in fact jailbroken (google ps5 jailbreak and you’ll find a bunch of info). I’m not aware of any for Xbox Series but I think that’s more due to lack of interest and the fact that you can run homebrew in development mode already.