Surprised nobody has mentioned Electric Clojure yet, with client and serverside blocks nested in _one file_.

>So it’s about being reassuringly expensive.

> It really is. You have to actually be good at what you’re doing too, of course, or the whole scheme falls apart. What the client’s money really buys, though, is that delightful feeling of making the thing somebody else’s problem. You know, we’ve turned it all over to a top-tier expert, and now we just don’t have to think about it anymore. The more that person charges, the more reassured the client feels.

Great advice.

> making the thing somebody else’s problem.

Do you keep a gardener on staff? Or hire one every couple of weeks? Or do you do it yourself? It all depends on the size and frequency of the job, your skill set, how much your time is worth, how old you are etc.

The same applies to nearly every economic transaction on the planet. It’s always more expensive to have someone else do it. IT contracting shouldn’t be any different. Sometimes there’s a job that it makes no sense to try and do yourself, or have permanent staff do.

I don’t know why, but I wish the author had done an sed s/scheme/concept

Edit: to be clear, it’s a fine word choice. It just jumped out at me.

My understanding is this preference is a little known schism in Britishisms and American English.

In American English, a scheme is an unscrupulous, nefarious plan villains make. Often accompanied with riotous laughter.

In British English, it's more general. Like a plan, but with superficial consensus and often spreadsheets. Trees die, but people don't. You see this neutral usage in government discussion regularly.

It also reminds me: Europeans speaking English often use 'simple' before they start demonstrating things. Often painfully non-obvious things. Really boxes my ears. If it was simple I wouldn't be asking for an explanation and now you're insulting me.

Exactly this. As a British English speaker that works a lot with the US it was an early learning.

In British English a "scheme" has no negative connotations. It's commonly used in all kinds of legitimate places - for example the company you work at will have a "pension scheme".

In U.S. English it has a connotation that it is nefarious in some way.

Yeah, this always throws me off. In American English I’d always use the word “program” instead.

Neither concept nor plan are appropriate alternatives for scheme. Let's not argue with the inventors of the language on word choice.

I have no desire to argue. I like understanding things and I was hopeful to understand why I felt the way I did when I read that sentence.

I learned a lot! I’m really grateful that people-who-weren’t-you read my question impartially and contributed their experiences.

I felt the same. I took that as a bit of the author’s impostor syndrome showing through (perhaps feeling, even after all this time, that charging what he’s worth feels dishonest somehow).

Schemes are inherently dishonest IMO. That’s the entire reason.

The references to Land Rover and Doctor Who make me think the author is British. In British English, "scheme" does not usually have negative connotations.

Looks like I’ve outed myself as a provincial rube! Fair point; thanks

At least in the UK people use it to describe things like pension plans. I don't think it's inherently unsavory.

I don't understand where this distinction is useful - signals are data, just a tiny bit, and data is a signal, just a lot of it. Are you talking about transmission-size? Or are we resigned to the fact that intra-computer communication is inefficient and it's enough to postulate about the sizes of bandages?

> I expect it is also easier to verify the correctness of and find bugs in my diagram if someone were to want to.

This will vary on the language in which it is implemented, right?

these machines aren't hooked up to the internet, how are you going to brute force every machine that a community uses and also requires physical proximity?

Can you brute force a BIOS password without prolonged physical access?

The leak does increase the risk of a single trusted insider messing with the system, though.

I personally don't put much trust in the security of BIOS vendors. My desktop's motherboard straight up displays the BIOS password if you read the right EFI boot variable (obfuscated with some proprietary "encryption" algorithm with a hard coded key).

Based on previous reports on the security of devices like these, I wouldn't be surprised if a quick flash dump of the NVRAM is enough to crack the password in seconds already. Perhaps voting machine manufacturers have finally made it too difficult to disassemble these machines in a short amount of time, but that's historically not been very difficult.

I would reckon the access time needed to hack+access the BIOS lies in the area of "a few minutes, twice", not the kind of prolonged physical access you'd need to brute force the password.

That's not exactly "someone posing as a voter could hack the machine", luckily, but then again apparently at least one hacker at DEF CON found a vulnerability in voting machines this year that won't be fixed before the upcoming American elections, so who knows if there's an exploit like that lying around.

Every vote counts. The problem is that some votes are counted twice.

"Can you without prolonged access?" Hahaha have you heard of any of the three letter agencies and what they have on hand? Do you know what a rainbow table is? Is this a tech forum, or just newbies trolling experts?

I guess I wasn't clear. I'm asking you to describe exactly what scenario you're imagining. You can't simply assume the attacker already has the bios password hash. How do they get that? And if they can get that, why do they still need to brute force the bios password? Why can't they do what they need to do already?

Do you know of a vulnerability that allows someone to access the bios password hash but can't also be used to hack the election without bothering with the bios password?

As is the consumption of Carbon-dioxide...

career drunks voting me down

Aren't you suggesting that we use the ear term for the eye term instead of the eye term for the ear term? ;)

Signal-to-noise is often used as a modality independent term.

Someone might reference signal-to-noise issues with modern news sources, body language, or a data set of any particular origin.

I noticed intense fatigue wandering Tokyo with my friend who wore magnifying lenses and he could not understand why I was tired. I said it's all the visual stimulation, the signs, the lights, the billboards. I think he was at an advantage with the eyewear, in retrospect.

I found the opposite personally. Something about the neatness and tidiness let my mind relax and see everything similar to a calm flowing stream. Tokyo is one of the most peaceful cities I've been to, even in the busy areas, and by far the biggest and most populated.

isn't this the counter example? japanese ads, magazines, documents, websites, are often super visually cluttered. seems counter to the paper to me

if this clutter has negatie affects why has japanese design settled on it?

This may just be one small point, but I recall reading that visual clutter signifies a good bargain while lots of white space gives the impression of luxary. Most consumers want a good deal.

Its same for TimeSquare still people pay big dollars. Both things can be right, it has negative effect however it is still engaging and effective. It gets the eyeballs

Tangential: staring at a computer screen while having a phone call is distracting. Recommend looking at not-a-screen while talking on-the-phone :)

I have a (IMO bad) habit of looking away from my computer screen (at visual nothingness) when having concentrated discussions over video calls.

For whatever reason it’s just easier to talk when staring out the window at a tree than staring at a face on a screen. I call it a bad habit because it results in accidentally ignoring body language of the person on the other end

100% with phone calls. I typically just slowly pace around around my house when on a phone call without video.

Strange, for me it is obvious how it works.

It goes for locations and activities too but mostly if I look at something it locks and unlocks memories but the thing I'm looking at also becomes part of the active memory.

You have a bunch of stuff hashed against the tree or against a dead gaze or you don't want the person to be part of the thought process.

I forgot the code for the warehouse at a previous job. Typing the wrong one locks the place down. I somewhat panicked but went there anyway, got distracted by something and typed the code without even thinking about it. I also remembered it after walking inside. Took some coffee and it was gone again. I thought, I've been typing that code for years but had never realized I only remember it when looking at the door.

As I reflect and re-read my comment, I think for me it’s simply I’m overloaded.

Looking at a face while talking vs. a tree just increases the mental energy necessary for the call. When you’re chronically exhausted, you start cutting out the little things that seemingly don’t matter (like someone’s body language or facial expression during a call)

Definitely a tangent here. Love the warehouse example though. Similarly, I can’t for the life of me recite my iphone, Apple Watch, or home security alarm PIN codes. It’s just pure muscle memory at this point. When I try to recall the PIN codes in my head, my mind immediately tries to recall the numbers by visualizing my phone (or alarm keypad) and attempting to remember the movement of my fingers in order to deduce what the numbers are.

There’s a saddle point of reading body language that improves communication. But at the point you read micro expressions of dishonesty then it becomes problematic. Nobody likes being called on their bullshit. Detectives get away with it because it’s their job. But none of the suspects like them or want to spend any time around them afterward. They’re effective but they’re also assholes by most cultural standards.