Not sure why good coverage wouldn't mitigate risk in a refactor...
My mantra whenever I'm working with AI is that I want it to know what "point b" looks like and be able to tell by itself whether it's gotten there...
If you have a working implementation, it sounds like you have a basis for automated tests to be written... once you have that (assuming that the tests are written to test the interface rather than the implementation), then it should be fairly direct to have an agent extract and decompose...
I believe the Jesus Jones song, "Right Here, Right Now" has become an ironic commentary on Gen X; in that brief moment in the 90's when we thought the nuclear sword of Damocles dangling over all of us had finally been cut down...
Not a great song, but one that expresses the zeitgeist in a pretty succinct way.
We thought that we were at the cusp of a new era... one where we could overcome the injustices of the past and author a future based on the best version of ourselves.
In the end, Gen X never even got a chance to start; we watched from the sidelines as geriatric Boomers clung (and still cling) to power -- leaving less and less of that (ever more naive) dream behind.
"Right here, right now,
there's no other place I'd rather be.
Right here, right now,
watching the world wake up from history."
The song hasn't aged well & has become a cloy reminder of that time and what we didn't become.
Personally, I find this aspect of the work somewhat profound.
My graveyard of projects and dreams stretches out behind me and I feel saddened to know that these articles representing portions of my life never achieved what I had hoped for them.
However, I've come to view my work like a mandala or some representation of our mortality itself; our works and our lives are temporary.
We can make the most of the brief moment that we have – whether that be through work or through parenting or through base jumping – whatever that may be for each of us, or we can choose to do nothing with that moment, knowing that it's ephemeral and will be gone soon anyway.
I choose to try making each day's the best code I have ever written; I want it to be "beautiful" and maintainable in spite of knowing that it will be refactored, deleted or decommissioned at some point.
It wasn't an attitude of naive hope that there wouldn't be nefarious actors leveraging the protocol; there was a different kind of people using the Internet.
There's no need to design security in the system when you literally know everyone who is using it. And everyone who was using it had the same goals in mind.
So, I don't disagree with the sentiment -- people today would probably do it a little bit differently; however, I do disagree with the expression -- people designing these protocols weren't naive. They were trustful because they had to be.
In the early days of building something new, nothing works without trust; not the Internet... not Bitcoin... not a nascent venture... nothing.
Well, it seems revealing that we're discussing togas and not sponges on sticks. I'd wager that's because earlier statements made in this thread regarding the universal, unequivocal truth that no one used shared sponges on sticks may not necessarily be so easy to defend.
Judgements of competence and honesty are subjective; we can all fail to distribute them fairly (especially when it comes to ourselves).
Rarely, when it comes to a history of an entire culture that spans hundreds of years and thousands of miles, can we find one perspective that describes a universal "truth."
All we have are shades of approximation.
That doesn't mean that there's no value in that approximation, it just means that we have to be a little patient with each other while each of our generalizations don't necessarily conform to the ineffable complexity of such a large group of people over such a large area over such a large timespan.
I guess that implies that esoteric aspects of toga wearing in ancient Rome is a "basic thing" that one should know before writing anything about Roman toilets.
I'm sorry that it seems to be so problematic.
This piece seems interesting and illuminating regarding a specific aspect of a culture that we are thousands of years removed from. It's a pop-piece, meant to be approachable and to stir the curiosity of the reader.
I can't imagine how many different ways it probably gets things wrong... and I guess that in itself is interesting to think about... but because it's impure does it mean that it has no value?
Is anything with a hint of inaccuracy (according to our own perspective and understanding) deigned unworthy of inclusion and distribution?
Does one need to be perfect in order to be published?
I recon that the cutout in front of the toilet has a purpose... the existence of that cutout seems to align well with the idea that one might put a sponge on a stick through it in order to clean their back orifice.
The toga thing has been addressed by others as our cultural mores being projected on people with different values...
Otherwise, I found the article interesting and entertaining.
I believe the Washington state gas tax charged to standard internal combustion vehicles is much a lot about volume + mass; moving more stuff around less efficiently is going to inherently take more calories & therefore more tax will be paid.
That said, I've been really disappointed with the way the Washington state EV tax you reference was implemented. I mean, I'm just fine paying my fair share, but I should be taxed in the same manner as any other user of the same resources.
To that end, we have vehicle inspection stations & using those to check odometer readings on an annual basis would make for fair taxation.
As it is, I stopped paying registration, insurance and left our Leaf sitting in the driveway since the pandemic started because of the way this tax is levied.
PHP's documentation was always excellent, available and was always a quick Google search away from finding the relevant materials. It was tangibly superior at the time.
Coding with other languages at the time always involved some kind of physical reference book (or some closed off "compiled" walled "context sensitive" help system whose search capability and discoverability was little-to-none).
Although I had sooo many O'Reilly reference books, I don't think I ever had an O'Reilly PHP reference book... (Not sure there ever even was one because it would be totally unnecessary)
Not that it's either relevant or germane to a discussion regarding an organization using stolen identity to wire funds electronically.
Multiple states have been using mail-in ballots for literally decades. No widespread voter fraud has ever been reported.
Here's an anecdote for you: a few elections back, my signature didn't look quite right on the envelope of my ballot. Got a call from elections officials to verify that I had in fact filled out the ballot.
There's a lot more control involved in mail-in voting than there are in fraudulently filling-out an online form and receiving an electronic funds transfer.
The U.S. federal government had a significant amount of control and formerly had the sole resources to deal with issues like this. Ironic that the sole raison d'être one of those resources was in mitigating and coordinating responses to events just like the one we find ourselves in.
Destroying that resource is squarely on turmp.
We've been watching the tearing down of the federal government since the Reagan years. We've witnessed the slow evisceration of everything outside of the department of defense.
The federal government could have and should have led a coordinated response to this. But now that the conservative dream of having a federal government big enough that it could be drowned in a bathtub is in reach, it's nearly impossible to.
This is the consequence of forty years of coordinated effort to hollow out the federal government from within.
States have very limited resources at their disposal. There's simply no way that they can coordinate the kind of response needed for an epidemic that knows no borders.
Not sure why good coverage wouldn't mitigate risk in a refactor...
My mantra whenever I'm working with AI is that I want it to know what "point b" looks like and be able to tell by itself whether it's gotten there...
If you have a working implementation, it sounds like you have a basis for automated tests to be written... once you have that (assuming that the tests are written to test the interface rather than the implementation), then it should be fairly direct to have an agent extract and decompose...