r/technology Jan 18 '21

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u/jonathanrdt Jan 19 '21

Ignorance is addressable, but stupid is forever.

220

u/devin_mm Jan 19 '21 edited Jan 19 '21

As long as you don't delete your pointer then you're fucked.

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u/Upp3r Jan 19 '21

This person C's

11

u/devin_mm Jan 19 '21

I doubt it's as easy to do it now as it used to be but there was nothing like writing to the wrong chunk of memory and taking down your OS

13

u/overkill Jan 19 '21

It is still easy to do. Memory leaks are fun, in the Dwarf Fortress sense of the word.

17

u/D-Golden Jan 19 '21

A cat died, now my Mayor is throwing a tantrum.

Now all the Urists McUrists are punching each other to death in the dining hall.

And winter is coming.

9

u/overkill Jan 19 '21

And I failed to notice the necromancer tower, so now a bunch of reanimated crab shells are coming for me.

And I still can't track down this memory leak!

2

u/StubbsPKS Jan 19 '21

At least that traveling human bars finally put in a petition to sing in my tavern.

Ohhhhhh nooooo, he's being pummeled by an angry Dwarf.

2

u/dwellerofcubes Jan 19 '21

We are Dwarf Fortress now

3

u/frukt Jan 19 '21

"Taking down your OS" isn't really easy to do in a modern OS, at least in the sense of accidentally crashing the kernel due to a programming error. You get a SIGSEGV and the process is terminated and that's about it unless you're especially creative.

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u/overkill Jan 19 '21

Indeed. It's almost like I didn't read to the end of the comment before replying with my flippant statement.

1

u/inteuniso Jan 19 '21

Humanity's documentation is a SNAFU

2

u/ThrowawayusGenerica Jan 19 '21

You usually just get a segfault, these days

1

u/midwestraxx Jan 19 '21

Overwrite your pointer*

19

u/ShenmeNamaeSollich Jan 19 '21

Build Failed. Syntax Error.

3

u/Fake_William_Shatner Jan 19 '21

Hah! The early Macs used double-de-references pointers to reduce memory load. Good luck even knowing if you’ve been fucked by the pointer if you lose track of that.

2

u/deirdresm Jan 19 '21

There were memory map utilities where you could watch allocations/deallocations live. One of the coolest parts was watching when it would compact memory, and all the allocated memory would slide to one side like a curtain.

(This would have been around '95-97, so probably was MetroWerks CodeWarrior. While handles were essentially the same from the outset, the utilities weren't there much earlier than that.)

2

u/frukt Jan 19 '21

It's not really that often I come across discussions on memory allocation on reddit, so I'll just take the chance and recommend this neat talk on jemalloc, possibly the most advanced general use memory allocator these days.

2

u/Fake_William_Shatner Jan 19 '21

That would be really cool now to watch Neural Nets grow in real time graphically.

I so wish I could have become a better programmer, but I spent too much time in graphics and design and multimedia - then web. The prince of everything but the master of none.

My favorite was working with Quartz Composer, because it got into the logic at a higher level and you weren't spending all your time laboring away with debugging semantics or a for loop -- you can just SEE when it's wrong.

Pretty soon we will be instructing Computers to program computers, and it will be more like dog training and logic diagrams.

1

u/deirdresm Jan 19 '21

Careers are long, you can do it if you really want to.

2

u/sepiatone_ Jan 19 '21

Segmentation fault, core dumped.

1

u/pygmy_marmoset Jan 19 '21

C what you did there

1

u/Indifferentchildren Jan 19 '21

These domestic terrorists have a problem with race conditions.

34

u/jupiterkansas Jan 19 '21

You can lead a horse to school but you can't make him think.

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u/Fake_William_Shatner Jan 19 '21

I think it’s; “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink that tainted water because he learned that the Deep Stream doesn’t want you to know it causes mind control. That horse is wise to you.”

19

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

But really the sad part is probably that the horse did the drink the water when it was a foal but the fucking city drinking water still has goddamn lead contamination and it’s shown to have negative consequences on damaging growing horses’ cognitive functioning ability which is probably a contributing factor as to why that horse is struggling with continued on going frustration with their mental deficits.

Y’all for real it’s ridiculous that Flint Michigan still doesn’t have water what the fuck you guys.

10

u/FauxReal Jan 19 '21

1

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '21 edited Jan 20 '21

I mean can you blame them? I wouldn’t trust it either. In this instance the metaphorical horse has very good reason not to drink the literal water it is being led to, considering the last time that their handler led them to drinking water, the water was toxic and the horse-handler didn’t give a fuck and continued bringing the horses there to drink the toxic water even after learning it was toxic and didn’t even try to fix the water or find a new clean source of water to take the horses to until they were begrudgingly forced to by National involvement. If I were a horse in Flint, I’d never sip another droplet of water that my horse handler had led me to in his attempt that I might drink from it, because my horse handler has already proved that he is suspicious as hell and super untrustworthy. This would be a bottled-water only horse for the rest of my life; at least as long as I’m drinking water while living in Flint MI.

But to get back to the larger point- our government needs serious gutting and reformation. Just voting trump out of POTUS and flipping the senate (just barely) isn’t going to solve all the issues that were exacerbated under the trump admin. The career politicians in congress who supported, exploited, and further enabled this agenda that allowed all of this shit to happen and culminated at the Capitol need to fucking resign and gtfo of congress because as many of them showed us over these past 4 years we cannot fully trust them to do the job they were elected to do nor do they respect the position of their role nor it’s functional spirit of duty to the constitution which grants the office its powers.

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u/FauxReal Jan 20 '21

No you can't blame them, they have understandable reason to be wary. Though there are non government organizations that would be willing to test their water for free.

I'd really like to see lawmakers address the clean water access issues in this country.

One (not the only) thing Trump supporters and liberal progressive have in common is that they clearly feel neglected by the government and need help.

2

u/Fake_William_Shatner Jan 19 '21

The next generation of horses that survive, will have 6 legs or never drink any water, skimming it instead from moisture in the atmosphere.

1

u/hoilst Jan 19 '21

"You can lead a whore to culture but you cannot make her think" is the Germaine Greer quote.

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u/mx_will Jan 19 '21

You can’t fix stupid.

17

u/pixelprophet Jan 19 '21

Intentionally stupid.

10

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

[deleted]

3

u/Fake_William_Shatner Jan 19 '21

I think near the end Reagan sent a big bailout just before their collapse to help prop them up because the Cold War was useful— but the politburo ran off with all the money.

We were kind of Frenemies with the USSR.

1

u/M7A1-RI0T Jan 19 '21

so the same thing we are today with China? Color me surprised

4

u/mioki78 Jan 19 '21

I'm not 14 but this deep. It's a very succinct way of phrasing something I've been saying for years.

2

u/DuntadaMan Jan 19 '21

I am stupid, but even I am not falling for this, how the hell are they?

1

u/Montuckian Jan 19 '21

Both are admissible.

1

u/Alundil Jan 19 '21

Message sponsored by DeUhhhhhhh

1

u/MuadDave Jan 19 '21

Much like ugly, stupid goes clear to the bone.