However, looking at the Pentium Overdrive pinout the extra row of pins doesn’t seem to be at all essential. There is a number of extra power points and some signalling pins to support L1 cache coherency when using write-back. Nothing too much to worry about.
In Canada you can still buy that over the counter. You get id-ed and they keep a record of your purchases, but since it's now generic pills it is now much cheaper than it was before
I grew up in Germany in a household that never used nasal decongestants, probably out of some fear that they might be dangerous.
When in Canada a doctor told me to buy some pseudoephedrine pills to treat a clotted ear and I found the experience so nice, that when back in Germany I walked into a pharmacy to get some.
It is the same in the US, but the FDA calls it "behind the counter". OTC means you grab it off a shelf yourself, BTC means the pharmacy checks your ID, and gives it to you, but still no prescription required.
OTC just means "Over the counter" or "without a prescription". A good way to test this is to see if your health insurance in the US will pay for it - most won't pay for OTC drugs.
Behind the counter just means there is less chance of folks stealing it and more control over who buys it and the amounts they buy.
There is generally a good amount of things you can get at the pharmacy that are like this: Most of the time, they are simply ordered if someone wants them because there isn't enough demand to keep it on the shelf. Most require no ID either: Sweet almond oil (for ears) is the example I can think of.
Related: In some states, they require a prescription for it because their laws are stricter than the federal guidelines.
There's also an age minimum. My freshman year of college I had the sniffles and a bad cough. I went to the pharmacy to get some Sudafed but couldn't purchase since I was still 17. Went to the school's health center where the doctor happily prescribed me opioids (the infamous purple drank).
It’s not a myth so much as it’s not particularly effective: large doses of it (dangerously so, I might add, people should not do this) are quite effective in getting rid of opioid withdrawals — and not just the peripheral effects.
In extremely large doses it has a distinctly weird feeling. I wouldn’t call it getting high, so I’d suppose that is indeed a myth, but gosh it feels hard on your heart at those doses.
Typically it’s addicts trying to avoid withdrawals (and who felt they did not have access to other opioid replacement therapies for various reasons) that tried that. Some died.
Problem: taking massive amounts of loperamide to get an opiate effect is a myth.
A decade or so ago I was reading a drug forum where an addict-chemist reported that acylating loperamide extracted from OTC pills allowed it to pass the blood brain barrier and deliver a true opiate high. His only reported test subject was himself, so I don't know if it was a genuine effect or not. And I haven't kept up with drug forums in recent years to see if this idea/technique spread. If so, it could explain the pill quantity restrictions; pseudoephedrine went through many years of changes in packaging/formulation as manufacturers tried to keep their products OTC while placating governments that didn't want those pills used as illicit drug precursors.
Tell me who needs 200-ct bottles of imodium. People who observe proper hygiene have food poisoning maybe once in 10 years (and whether a motility agent is a good idea in such cases is another question).
I have chronic gastrointestinal issues and the best "treatment" for them has been taking one every morning (on the recommendation of my GI doctor). This change has made it a lot more expensive and inconvenient to deal with.
That's exactly what I mean (and the sibling posting is more of the same). If you need more than six doses in a row then you should see a physician for a thorough workup because loperamide is just for the symptoms. The package will say as much. It's really hard to find fault with the FDA coming down on the extended-family size packaging.
That really surprised me once. I was traveling in the states and wanted to buy pseudoephedrine, and the guy asked me for my id, asked me to sign a log book, and then proceeded to unlock a giant safe behind him.
New Zealand banned it some years ago and I'm still pissed off. The supposed replacement is clinically useless, and I resent suffering through massive head pain from clogged sinuses every winter, while professional gangs still make money hand over fist from meth.
I was in Vegas some years back and got some under the laxer US rules, and have enjoyed a few years of having it available, but alas my supply has run dry.
I didn’t get IDed either of the times I’ve bought a box.
First time was in 2019: I went to Walmart for something for my ears on flights, after some back and forth the pharmacist recommended me pseudoephedrine.
Second time was in Sobeys last month (can fly again, yaaay) and I asked for it directly. The pharmacist had some trouble finding it, but sold it to me with no further issue.
Chances are that you bought the useless Sudafed PE. The (original) Sudafed is pseudoephedrine. Sudafed PE is phenylephrine. The molecules are similar, but the latter cannot be easily converted to methamphetamine so it is not regulated like the former. Sudafed is an effective nasal decongestant, while Sudafed PE is equivalent to a placebo. [1]
Keep an eye out if you purchased Sudafed PE or Sudafed original. PE is a new product that has old fashion Acetaminophen and is sold just like any other painkiller since that's all it is. It doesn't work well at all compared to the pseudoephedrine found in the behind the counter product.
Sudafed PE is phenylephrine. It is not a pain killer, and it does not have the same safety profile as acetaminophen (Paracetamol for some of you). Not saying either is actually unsafe, but the drug interactions will most definitely differ and you might find yourself suffering.
A bit of a change was that it became pharmacy-only in many (most?all?) provinces. But pharmacies are everywhere, so not a huge deal.
Sad thing is many products were reformulated with phenylephrine, an uncontrolled similarly structured molecule that's completely junk as a decongestant.
"Viable" as in "you have no other choice sometimes". This forces you to deal with 3 libraries each with their own quirks, pitfalls and incompatibilities. Sometimes you even deal with dependencies reimplementing some parts in a 4th or 5th library to deal with shortcomings.
I really don't care that much which of them survive, I just want to rely on less of them
Zen of Python is an ideal, and at this point, kind of tongue-in-cheek.
This is the same language that shipped with at least 3 different methods to apply functions across iterables when the Zen of Python was adopted as a PEP in 2004.
There is at least some recognition in those cases that they introduced the new thing because they got it wrong in the old thing. That's different than saying they should co-exist on equal terms.
Yes, that says each has good and bad points and you should weigh them against each other in the context of your application, to figure out which one to use. I.e. equal terms.
Zen would be: pick one of the two approaches, keep its strengths while fixing it to get rid of its weaknesses, then declare the fixed version as the one obvious way to do it. You might still have to keep the other one around for legacy support, but that's similar to the situation with applying functions across iterables.
This is what Go did. Go has one way to do concurrency (goroutines) and they are superior to both of Python's current approaches. Erlang has of course been in the background all along, doing something similar.
int, float, and complex are for different purposes. async and threads paper over each others' weaknesses, instead of fixing the weaknesses at the start. Async itself is an antipattern (technical opinion, so there) but Python uses it because of the hazards and high costs of threads. Chuck Moore figured out 50 years ago to keep the async stuff out of the programmer's way, when he put multitasking into Polyforth, which ran on tiny machines. Python (and Node) still make the programmer deal with it.
If you look at Haskell, Erlang/Elixir, and Go, they all let you write performant sequential code by pushing the async into the runtime where the programmer doesn't have to see it. Python had an opportunity to do the same, but stayed with async and coroutines. What a pain.
Oh, you meant like, why don't Python didn't reimplement the whole interpreter around concurrency instead of using the tools it already had to find solutions to problems?
Well, that question is as old as engineering itself, and it's always a matter of resources, cost, history and knowledge.
"Ability to commit to the Linux kernel with my school email" isn't likely to be a major issue for many. It's a non-issue for undergrad work, and even most grad students are unlikely to be affected. Other than this research, only one other person associated with UMN has committed code to the kernel.
This impacts any direct school-sponsored research work, but if some random student wants to write a patch, they'll just do it from a personal address - no kernel committer is going to go do social media stalking of every contributor.
Maybe practically this doesn’t prevent most students or faculty from doing anything, but it is a huge reputation problem. How many universities (or organizations in general) are banned from contributing to the Linux kernel? When people search for why, they’ll find a research group basically screwing over their collaborators and anyone else who uses Linux. That that exists at UMN could be viewed as a serious cultural problem at the university and dissuade prospective students and collaborators from contact with UMN. That in real terms costs the university prestige and money.
I feel you're overvaluing the ability to contribute to the linux kernel - this is definitely a bad thing and the university should work to correct the situation. But when I was looking at colleges and universties (for undergrad - I didn't pursue a grad degree) I didn't ever ask if the university was blacklisted by any open source organizations.
I don't think anyone would notice this ban - it'd just be an odd curiosity and impediment to any student that tried to submit a patch... that is assuming it doesn't hit the main news circuit.... But, if I hear about this on Colbert tonight I'll be amazed.
The fact that the FBI raided Steve Jackson Games[1] over GURPS: Cyberpunk is, I think, completely absent from general public knowledge at this point - even though that incident[2] led to the creation of the EFF which most folks on HN will certainly be familiar with. Notoriety is a fickle thing and no matter how negative the incident is it'll usually either fade into nothingness or give a positive boost to the organization - this is where the concept of "there's no such thing as bad press" comes from. I, at least, am far more aware of UMN now than I was this morning.
> I feel you're overvaluing the ability to contribute to the linux kernel - this is definitely a bad thing and the university should work to correct the situation. But when I was looking at colleges and universties (for undergrad - I didn't pursue a grad degree) I didn't ever ask if the university was blacklisted by any open source organizations.
You are not looking at it the right way. This is an issue for the President and the Provost because of alumni donations.
When the choice is between firing an adjunct/assistant and not getting a 100k from alumni the adjunct/assistant has no chance.
The question isn't whether they need to be able to commit to the Linux kernel. Probably they don't. But the question is, what reputation does a CS department (and consequently a university) have, that has been banned from submitting patches to one of the most prolific open source projects around?
I think you underestimate the shade this puts on the UMN name. I've never even heard of UMN before, but I doubt I'll ever forget hearing about this university fraudulently trying to sabotage the Linux project, and will probably treat anything and anyone with an UMN background with great suspicion in the future.
Very appropriate. Until yesterday I was happy to have a CS degree from the UMN. Now that is tainted and I want to hide who gave me the degree. I have to wonder if they taught me some things that were unethical that I'm not doing without knowing better. I wouldn't hire a UMN grad because of their reputation.
For now I'm assuming that my degree was more than 20 years ago, and things change in that time (most of the professors I remember best are dead...). However this is doubt in my mind.
If this was just one patch and it was caught early, it could be excused as a rogue solo stunt. But papers have been published. IRB board granted exemptions. A whole team worked on it. Too many people conspiring on pissing in the pool and wasting kernel maintainers time and casting doubt on 190+ commits indicates a complete institutional failure. No colleagues, co-students or supervisors stopped to ask if this behavior was appropriate? It taints the entire UMN.
What if a car or medical device running linux turns out to have buggy mutex locking either due to a malicious commit or a now-hastily reverted commit? As a Linux user of both computers, appliances and vehicles, I am not impressed.
I don't think that's the case (due to how fame works) and I don't even think it's particularly productive to bring up that point.
Their actions should be rectified since they did wrong - not out of fear of a punishment. When we bring only a specific punishment in as a consequence then the question of how to respond can be shifted over to a "which is worse" proposition which means that the punishment needs to be properly proportioned.
At any rate - I doubt admissions would be appreciably impacted even if they handled this incident extremely poorly - some potential grad students might look elsewhere while most would likely be ignorant of the whole incident.
I certainly wouldn't do so - this looks like it was a research topic by one professor and one grad student... So nearly no one with a degree from UMN was involved with this. Even the specific grad student was college aged at the time and we all did stupid stuff when we were young. I think this only really rubs off on the professor since they clearly should've known better. Honestly I think the biggest blow to the university will be when it comes to hiring CS professors - those are the only folks likely to do the due diligence on this topic or be passively aware of it.
I’ve read and re-read that statement, and it seems like the ban is the focus – not what led to the ban.
I get that they may not know anything, but there are other ways to word that without admitting liability, making it seem less like the focus is on the ban and more on the allegedly shady stuff.
Not once do they talk about getting the ban removed, instead they talk about figuring out why it happened and how to be better at having research done being ethical.
Was the ban the trigger to them (the heads) looking into it ? Of course since they do already have safeguards and review processes in place, this happened despite those, so they're saying they will investigate them to figure out how this project was validated and make sure to strengthen these processes as needed.
The end goal they give themselves in that message is not a ban removal but "safeguard against future [such] issues".
> Not once do they talk about getting the ban removed, instead they talk about figuring out why it happened and how to be better at having research done being ethical.
I feel as if we’re discussing two different statements.
> The research method used raised serious concerns in the Linux Kernel community and, as of today, this has resulted in the University being banned from contributing to the Linux Kernel.
Here the cause is that "the research method used raised serious concerns in the Linux Kernel community"
Not that it was unethical, or potentially how it was. It’s not that something clearly went wrong. The cause can be read as the response, rather than the action.
Yes that's called the trigger. You have a trigger, that leads you to focus on and review what caused said trigger, and reach conclusions.
The ban is the trigger. The review is about to happen, so they really can't talk about its result yet. For all you and me know, said review will say their processes are just fine which I would personally disagree with but it could happen. Then, if there was an issue, they will update their processes, which is the end goal stated.
So your quote:
> the ban is the focus – not what led to the ban
The ban is the trigger that starts it, but the focus, the thing on which they will work, is their process. "Something important happened so we will spend lots of time figuring it out how it could have happened despite our processes made to protect against it" makes it pretty clear the focus, the thing they will spend their time on, is the review of their processes.
I think we’re mostly in agreement. The ban is clearly the trigger, and it’s pretty transparent.
> For all you and me know, said review will say their processes are just fine which I would personally disagree with but it could happen.
Agreed. For what it’s worth, I don’t actually think there’s much they can really do besides acknowledge it and make sure their ethics board is competent and consulted.
> the ban is the focus – not what led to the ban
I was talking about the ban being the focus of the statement, as it’s the point at which there’s a clear shift from the situation to the fix. This is unfortunate, because to me it is placing the emphasis on the trigger, rather than the cause.
I believe it could have been written in a way that mentioned the ban, left room to investigate, but made it crystal clear that the community concerns and the ban were not the problem. It makes it feel to me as though their primary motivation to investigate is to get unbanned – which, to be fair, it probably is – rather than to be committed to root out alleged unethical practices. Even if the short-term consequences are the same, it’s a subtle but important distinction.
I suppose it’s a form of honesty, and I could instead embrace its transparency.
I'm not sure how you get that. The ban is mentioned as part of a single sentence that acknowledges the current state of the situation, which seems obligatory, so of course it's there. Then the whole second paragraph is talking about how they're shutting down the activity that led to that situation while they work on getting to the bottom of it.
This seems like an entirely appropriate balance of text and emphasis for a statement that is short and to the point. Which is also appropriate and laudable. Typically when an organization says any more, it's to try and do some spin doctoring.
> The research method used raised serious concerns in the Linux Kernel community and, as of today, this has resulted in the University being banned from contributing to the Linux Kernel.
> We take this situation extremely seriously.
I think it’s because the last bit of the first paragraph – the ban – flows onto the second paragraph – the situation.
Once you’ve had the two linked, it’s like one of those ambiguous optical illusions, where you just can’t see the other.
If I were writing that statement, I’d be concerned it looked that had there been no ban, there would be no situation. Said statement doesn’t do that for me.
> I think it’s because the last bit of the first paragraph – the ban – flows onto the second paragraph – the situation.
So, as long as you ignore the formatting they presented it with and decide to read it without it, you can come to a different conclusion?
I don't think contortions such as that to link sentences is fair, nor the fault of the organization that put forth for a statement specifically separating them.
> So, as long as you ignore the formatting they presented it with and decide to read it without it, you can come to a different conclusion?
No. It reads that way with the formatting they provided. You can’t take that paragraph break out without putting one back exactly there. It’s refreshingly transparent, and perfect if you expect them not to care about the underlying cause as much as they care about the ban.
> I don't think contortions such as that to link sentences is fair, nor the fault of the organization that put forth for a statement specifically separating them.
It’s not a contortion, it’s just how it reads to me. I’m not taking some deliberately contrarian stance – I was really quite shocked at the multiple comments saying how great the statement was when it inadvertently or otherwise conveyed the very message I believe they should have avoided – the one where they simply do the least they need to do to get unbanned, which may well be closer to the real objective. It’s the difference between being shamed into action and recognising why action is necessary.
I would not want to be the person to have to write such a statement
> You can’t take that paragraph break out without putting one back exactly there.
Exactly. And paragraphs are used to separate concepts and statements into conceptual units. That you're letting a concept and interpretation from one apply to and influence the reading of another as if there is no break is the problem.
> It’s not a contortion, it’s just how it reads to me.
I think you have some interesting ideas of how to read. I don't think that follows necessarily for the majority of other people, and I don't think that's what was intended by the writer.
At he same time, I'm not entirely surprised. This is why writing is hard, and sometimes thankless. Regardless of intention and how clear you think you're being, someone will always read it otherwise. It's just the nature of the medium, to some degree. It can happen through something like this, where you're inferring intent across boundaries where I think that boundary is intended to clearly separate it, and it can happen if they are absolutely literally clear and denounce other stances, because people will read those denouncements as indicators of the opposite, as crazy as that sounds ("The lady doth protest too much, methinks").
I think you're better off taking a separate paragraph for what it usually meant to be. A way to separate statements so they are clearly distinct.
> Exactly. And paragraphs are used to separate concepts and statements into conceptual units. That you're letting a concept and interpretation from one apply to and influence the reading of another as if there is no break is the problem.
Their second paragraph says they "take the situation very seriously".
The focus is rescinding the ban, but they acknowledge that the way to do so is review their actions and set up safeguards to prevent similar things from happening. There's too much bureaucracy involved for them to already publicly review their actions.
Why else would they take the ban extremely seriously and take the actions mentioned? I guess it's possible they're worried about the ban spreading, but rescinding the ban seems more likely.
Or, maybe they don't want to be in a position where they are getting banned just in general? Like, maybe you don't mind getting banned from a specific bar, but you do mind being the kind of person that is getting banned from bars.
Of course, no PR person with anything would allow such a thing into their statements. The UMN is far too big to allow someone without some competency in PR.
My take on that is that it's up to the kernel maintainers to unban them. If they end up the investigation with: "Yeah, that was bad but we won't do anything about it", it's unlikely to get the banning side to move an inch.
This indeed looks like a FUD statement, implying that they can have an infinite amount of potential vulnerabilities. Realistically though, writing parsers that do not yield control of your whole device is not that complex. The people exploiting iOS zero days can certainly do it.
You're not wrong at all, but if they're shipping these garbage ancient versions of ffmpeg, there are likely oodles of other bugs lurking around. And, if Cellebrite acts like most other companies who've had their awful security exposed, they will fix only this bug and leave everything else.
the signal are capable for finding more exploit with more time. important piece is that exists now a reasonable doubt on data from the celebrite, so it are not so good for evedince.
It seems to be a retaliatory measure against this:
> When Cellebrite announced that they added Signal support to their software, all it really meant was that they had added support to Physical Analyzer for the file formats used by Signal.
Your case is valid about potential judiciary impact, but it would require for Signal to monitor cases involving Cellebrite and step forward to help the defense while unprompted to do so. Furthermore, Cellebrite clients seems to include entities that do not care so much about a fair trial.
We live in a society (many of us) where "low calory food" is synonym of "healthy". I think it's one of the ultimate modern luxury, to look for food that will yield little energy for you.
China showed a few years ago that blasting satellites with missiles is neither subtle or sustainable. This kind of thing could be weaponized much more efficiently
Uh... sure, if you say so.