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A one pager explanation I wrote after it finally clicked for me -- floating point is just binary scientific notation! Not sure why more places don't explain it like this. https://github.com/dasl-/floating-point-numbers#floating-poi...


With some important algebraic things, like -0 and 0 are distinct numbers that are equal to each other, and 1/0 is infinity (depending on exception mode), but 1/-0 is -infinity, and all of the different kinds of NaNs, etc.


Is there a way to tell if my android phone received an update to protect against this exploit?


Unless you have a Nexus or Pixel, it probably hasn't.


All of your LastPass browser extensions should be updated to version 4.1.44 or higher

On firefox, the version I'm using is still 3.3.4, which is the version available from the mozilla addon store: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lastpass-pass...

Why the discrepancy? Am I still vulnerable? In their blog post, they even note:

We want to thank our partners at Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, Yandex and others who fast-tracked our extension review and release.


I believe you have to switch to the "beta" channel, because 3.3.x is deprecated.

imho, you should do this urgently.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-Us/firefox/addon/lastpass-pass...

https://blog.lastpass.com/2017/03/plans-to-retire-the-lastpa...


I've been trying out lastpass for a few weeks. I downloaded the extension that their website directed me to. Because of this discussion, I did a version check and lo and behold, it defaults to NOT auto-update.

Luckily I've been using it only for a few unimportant sites. They've had two security issues disclosed since I started my trial. I'm impressed with the functionality. I'm decidedly unimpressed with the security experience.


I am a heavy LastPass user, but I've stopped using the browser plugins, and just copy and paste into my browser (or look up on my phone and manually type on my laptop/desktop). C&P'ing is also a bit risky as LP seems to lack a clear clipboard option on Android.

I have a month left on my paid subscription. I think I'll be leaving for a competing product shortly.


Have you made a decision, cuz I'm a new LastPass user and to me I find it clunky (not to mention it causes constant mouse flickering at times).


Not yet. I'm thinking of trying 1Password or something KeePassX-based, maybe with Google Drive or Dropbox for the syncing.


If they take security seriously they will stop distributing their addon from their website, update the deprecated version from the addon store, and start behaving like a company that has access to every single password their customers have.


That's what did it for me. switching right now


I just realized I'm running on 3.x.x too, there was no update notification. If that's how this company treats security, then this is game over for me. I've been planning to switch to 1Password for a long time; seems like the time is now.


On IE, apparently I'm running 2.0.0.0 and it's not at all clear to me how to upgrade. Sigh.


Go to last pass website, install from there I think.


Kafka is backed by spinning disks though. Am I missing something?


Generally Kafka takes advantage of the OS page cache and the fact that its data is sequential. The reason you can back Kafka effectively with spinning disks is because Kafka is just an immutable log.

OTOH you won't always have sequential access so services that store data in memory cover some of those other cases (eg a KV store like Redis).


I'm not familiar with Kafka specifically, but I reckon caching in memory is the way to work around that.


I think it's assuming that Kafka caches a lot more than your local machine, and therefore is less likely to need to access disk.

Note that it also assumes low network latency, though; if you have congestion within the data center, things change.


This comment suggests you did not read the article. The article directly contradicts your assertions.

In talking about how Japanese teaching methods are better than American teaching methods, it states: "Similarly, 96 percent of American students’ work fell into the category of “practice,” while Japanese students spent only 41 percent of their time practicing."


I had trouble getting it to recognize my "arrow"


The arrow has to be made by starting the head on the left side, drawing back to the center, and ending on the right


Same here. It seems like it's very picky.


Stroke order matters. As does amount of strokes per gesture.

Once you get that, it's fairly accurate.


What about this story is not dystopian? We have a city with a toxic sludge lake created to power our obsession with replacing our phones every year.


One problem is we don't know if it's actually toxic. It's black and ugly, sure, but is it actually harmful? The modest radiation figure he quotes (3x background) is not particularly worrisome.


Cardiff University researchers estimated in 2006 that 41 per cent of UK press articles were driven by PR, a phenomenon known as “churnalism”.

Wow.


Would you mind explaining a bit more? This is really interesting to me.


Well he decided to take mushrooms one day due to peer pressure. Unfortunately he didn't know that he had a few problems that hadn't manifested themselves yet. The mushrooms pushed him over the edge and within a couple of days he became increasingly violent and had random personality changes. This was merely after one single session.

Consequentially the chain of events is pretty obvious but ultimately everyone kicked him out, especially his girlfriend who couldn't cope with him kicking the shit out of her randomly and then being completely normal 20 seconds later.

Eventually they managed to help him get control over it with a cocktail of drugs but he's not the same now. The drugs they give him take away most of his good traits as well as the bad ones.

A shell of a human for the sake of one mistake.

Not saying the problems may never have manifested themselves at all but the sudden change was unbelievable.

Being 100% honest, I did some experimentation back in my student days and was damn lucky. Now in my late 30s, people who stayed with it aren't the same anymore. It's destroyed them entirely. I'm sure I'll get some 20-year old jump in now and say that smoking hash is fine but it's not - you won't know it until you're that fried person in your 30's and it's too late. One of my friends got a first in his degree (electrical engineering) but is so fucked up now from just smoking pot that he can't even hold down a job stacking shelves in Tesco.

All I see is self-destruction and it makes me very sad and angry.

Edit: I expect downvotes as you can't have rational discussion with the pro-drugs crowd on the Internet. I'm not interested in your opinion; experience says the opposite and your lack of experience says otherwise. Even the fact I have to suffix the post with this shows the sad state of affairs.

Edit: 3 downvotes from the pro drugs crowd.


You write about having a rational discussion but all you come up with are some non-representative anecdotes and the "argument" of "you'll understand when you are my age". Does that make sense to you?

> . I'm sure I'll get some 20-year old jump in now and say that smoking hash is fine but it's not - you won't know it until you're that fried person in your 30's and it's too late.

Okay, I'm gonna be that 25-year old: It seems to depend on the dosage, like almost any substance use. It's fine to smoke some hash every two weeks or maybe even a bit every evening, but if your friend is one of those who spend most of their day doing nothing besides smoking pot, then of course that destroys you just like drinking beer for the whole day.


> I'm not interested in your opinion; experience says the opposite and your lack of experience says otherwise. > Edit: 2 downvotes from the pro drugs crowd.

Or the downvotes could relate to your unwillingness to consider viewpoints other than your own.


You write that "he had a few problems that hadn't manifested themselves yet". It sounds like he would have eventually reached the same behavior pattern even had he not had that experience with mushrooms.

Still, sad to hear.


He may not have. Most psych issues have a trigger i.e an emotional or stress experience. Something that violently changes your brain chemistry has the same effect.


As I understand it, things like schizophrenia are primarily hereditary, and the trauma pushes you over the edge. So, people with a family history of schizophrenia or related conditions shouldn't do these drugs.


>Well he decided to take mushrooms one day due to peer pressure

Well, that was definitely mistake #1; psychedelics require the right set & setting. That with the possibility of him not knowing he had a mental illness is probably what did it. Also, there is a possibility that he was given a different kind of mushrooms, like amanita.

Drugs, food, anything for that matter, when taken to excess can be damaging, like what happened with your friend.

Personal anecdote, which you've been relying on so far.. LSD helped my depression and allowed me to quit adderall and weed. With shrooms, my anxiety got better and I quit my fap/porn addiction. I will be going to Peru in 2 weeks to do Ayahuasca (DMT) to help me get over my childhood sexual trauma. You can't lump all drugs into one category; psychedelics might as well be called "medicine".


I agree with you that the traffic speed improvements being due to the bike lanes is poorly supported.

But still, this shows that there is room for intersection/street design improvements that do not slow down cars while making it safer for bikes.


I didn't consider this thought until reading your comment, but this is a potential example of Bastiat's "Seen and Unseen."[1] By re-engineering the roads with bikers in mind, they have created slightly faster roads for cars apparently by accident. But all of engineering is about tradeoffs, so presumably there would have been some way to make traffic even better if they didn't have to consider the fate of bicyclists at all. The authors seem to be portraying this as if it's something of a free lunch (although obviously reengineering the road has some monetary cost), but it's not. If they had spent that same money on an engineering effort directed solely at automobile traffic, they could have done better by drivers (again, presumably).

Of course, if they had actually drawn a lot of people to use bikes instead of cars thus reducing traffic, then it could be argued that engineering for bicyclists advantages drivers directly, but that doesn't seem to have happened.

1: The Seen is the result of the engineering effort that they undertook. The Unseen is the result of an alternative engineering effort with different goals.


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