• 1 Post
  • 59 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: November 2nd, 2023

help-circle








  • Having worked in classified areas, both as an admin and an unprivileged user, CDs were normally the method of transferring data up the network. (Transferring down rarely occurred, and even then you’d be limited to plaintext files or printouts.)

    I’ve seen more places use data diodes to perform one- or two-way transfers so that requests can be streamlined and there’s no loose media to worry about tracking. It’s not super fast and higher speeds mean more expensive equipment, but it covers 98% of software update needs, and most non-admin file transfers were under 20MB anyways.

    Anything that did require a USB drive, like special test equipment (STE) or BIOS updates, had to use a FIPS-140-1 approved drive that offered a ready-only mode via PIN. This drive could only be written to from a specific workstation that was isolated from the rest of the machines (where data was transferred via CDs of course) and required two persons to perform the job to ensure accountability.

    Not the most time-efficient way of doing things, and not completely bulletproof, but it works well enough to keep things moving forward.






  • we use different search engine so you didn’t find this particular hit

    Tangential due to personal curiosity, but which engine did you use? I was testing via Google while logged in. Most of my development at work and at home uses Python with some Rust once or twice a month. I just realized that when I’m searching I usually am not looking for books to purchase but instead trying to find answers in forums or Stackoverflow. Perhaps the reading material was not presented as Google was trying to personalize results to match my search habits.

    I was a bit cranky

    As was I, and I apologize for that since it triggered all of this.

    I’m quite fed up with the attitude that it is someone elses obligation to spoon feed you with knowledge that exists right under the nose

    I suggested it in response to someone else’s comment, but I believe part of the issue is a lack of a polished collection of material aimed towards newcomers from particular languages. By that I mean there’s definitely volumes of “good” material, don’t get me wrong, but learning from them individually doesn’t necessarily help with understanding how to think and plan things out with a Rust mindset.

    In my own journey I’ve found many guides, posts, and videos that help you get launched into writing basic code. However I struggle to discover ones that go beyond the code to plan and anticipate pitfalls you normally may not encounter from another language. I brought up static lifetimes because halfway through coding a multithreaded project I’ll get an error about this or a struct being partially moved. At which point I would need to refactor things somewhat to make the compiler and borrow checker happy, but mentally it didn’t make sense as to how to correctly do so with what I sought to achieve.

    A community-compiled collection of resources that guides you in your journey from Novice to Expert would probably help stem the tide of requests people make for getting into Rust. The official YouTube channel has some interesting videos from conferences but nothing that walks you through proficiency. And the forums, as far as I can tell, don’t have something pinned for users to point towards when someone asks the same thing.

    Perhaps if people are asking to be spoon-fed when a lot is available, we should be asking them if they’ve tried to search and why they need help looking for more. Maybe it’s not laziness; perhaps there’s something specific they can’t quite find that helps fill in the gap of their understanding, and we should work towards making those resources easier to discover autonomously.


  • I didn’t say they were bad. I was pointing out that:

    1. Blaming a user for not hitting the same results on search engines is a flawed argument; my search did not present the book that was linked in the original comment, even while using the title of the book as the search phrase. It instead was a mix of forums, social media, and YouTube tutorials, all of which do not have the same depth as a good book.
    2. The material presented in some of the “Rust for C++ programmers” videos and posts focused more on direct translation of syntax. This is good “first step” material to make the user more comfortable, but again they didn’t cover the common pitfalls that a C++ developer will encounter when they’re still approaching Rust with a C++ mindset.

    That said, the guide you’ve shared was in fact on the first page of my results, and is definitely a good example of the type of content that is available. What I think should take place is a compilation of similar guides and books to be posted either in the Rust forums as a pin or a YouTube playlist in the official channel, perhaps even with a small list of suggested crates to review the source code of as pristine examples.


  • There are lots of guides, tutorials and documentation.

    is one I found using a tool called search engine…

    Strange. That’s not what I get when I search for “Rust for C++ programmers”. I get flooded with anecdotal accounts/posts from people on Reddit and YouTube talking about their love or hate towards Rust.

    Then there’s 3 hour-or-longer videos about Rust which target C++ devs directly. Two are from 2022 and 2019 with one from 2023. Only the 2022 video starts from basics with features that a C++ dev would actually need to understand, like ownership, borrowing, and references. One jumps right into multithreading ideas by discussing mutex. The other jumps into how everything is made “easier” because the compile does borrow-checking instead of having the developer manage it.

    These videos probably aren’t bad, but they don’t touch on the larger “gotchas” that C++ maintainers will be scratching their head at, like explicit lifetimes, inevitable headaches with error handling, and reference/target mutability. Some of them are a good start, but they mostly focus on just technical features. It’s difficult to find a resource that helps you learn how to plan out your project early on so you’re not refactoring later due to the topics mentioned earlier.

    And to be honest, if you are unable to use them to learn rust, maybe your c++ skills isn’t that impressive either.

    And this is why 6% of non-Rust users have cited the community as a barrier of entry. Immediate pettiness and hostility rather than trying to get the best resources into the hands of newcomers.



  • One of the articles linked by this one goes into detail how automation has impacted union workers at ports.

    An estimated 572 full-time jobs at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach were lost in 2020 and 2021 to automation. Meanwhile, profits for the global shipping industry soared during the pandemic to over $190 billion in 2021, as the rate to ship a 40-foot container increased from less than $2,000 in 2019 to as much as $20,000 in 2021

    The union is demanding that “no automated or semi-automated” systems be introduced. This will be an interesting strike to watch out for.


  • Unfortunately this is a product not many care for nor know about, and I had a personal working relationship with this vendor, so even if it were “leaked anonymously” they could point back at me and make things a living hell.

    At this point it’s been almost five years. They made their stance known. The exploit isn’t one that can be done completely remote without some internal knowledge to the setup of the equipment. It’s old news and they’re better off fading away in obscurity. I just won’t bother to try helping them make their products better and more secure.



  • Oh most certainly. I attended BYU Provo and there was a lot of effort from students to allow the sale of caffeinated soda on campus, but the belief was that the university was holding out only because a large number of alumni might stop donating if it were to occur.

    (This was more recent though.)

    The culture amongst members can and often will have items that seem to go against or misinterpret official doctrine. I don’t disagree that the church would need to reiterate the doctrine to clear that up for people. What I personally don’t know is how often is appropriate for such corrections to take place. If you correct them too often they may choose to not seek out answers themselves but instead wait for a leader to explain it to them, which runs against the teaching of proactive scripture study.

    Ok, I should stop there. Starting to nitpick human nature as though I’m any better (and we know that’s not fucking true in the slightest, lol)