Comments by "Anony Mousse" (@anon_y_mousse) on "Low Level" channel.

  1. Most important message to be conveyed here, never trust user input. Always check it, always restrict what you do with it.
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  2.  @tiranito2834  I'm starting to think that all the people not understanding why GC would be bad for spacecrafts just don't understand how GC works.
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  3. You should post the generated code somewhere and add a link to it in the description. I have a feeling that there's more vulnerabilities in the first example than just a possible buffer exploit, such as not flushing the file buffers possibly causing an issue with subsequent reads, and the most obvious issue which you hinted at but didn't expand on about file permissions. Running as root would give remote access to all the files on the system.
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  4. My favorite seed for rand() is 42. When you use that seed it returns a string that says "The answer to life, the universe and everything".
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  5. It annoys me when people group C and C++ together as though they're the same language. It was already easy to make a program that was valid in one but invalid in the other by C99, but now it's nearly impossible to not hit that wall. Java kind of pisses me off due to how little foresight they had in designing it. Not merely removing goto but making it a reserved keyword that generates an error at compile time, and then they had to add functionality to break and continue just to make up for the deficiency which caused a lot of problems that C++ already solved but in a more elegant way while still allowing you to use goto for those problems where it was still somewhat necessary. I guess what I'm driving at is that these ideological stances that people take based on inexperienced programmers misusing tools leads to garbage language design as well as garbage program design and I wish the lies that perpetuate them would stop cropping up. The old Knuth quote about premature optimization really irks me too.
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  6. The program `strings` is exactly why if I want to protect my own programs I just encode my own strings. I don't always write things that I want to protect, but it's still fun to play with different methods of encoding to stave off passive RE.
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  7. It would also be helpful to demonstrate how to write test cases and how best to separate into multiple modules. Also, you should check the number only once when read in from the user as well as stop using magic numbers. Might also want to demonstrate using `gdb` even if your program isn't crashing.
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  8. I wonder how easy it would be to build a terminal from scratch. It's not like satellite communication is hard, just need to know the frequencies and be able to scan for it, then figure out the protocol, which would likely involve figuring out how they encrypt their communications, assuming that they do that. Never underestimate the stupidity of some programmers.
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  9.  @AnttiBrax  I'll say it again, but banning is absolutely the wrong approach. The person being "toxic" to Lasse wasn't even the same ID that became the new maintainer. That ID was only ever nice and helpful. Whether it was multiple people or one very dedicated person is irrelevant, as is whether it was a state sponsored attack. The fact is that the ID which was used to compromise everyone was only ever nice.
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  10. I'm sure you've already figured it out by now, but the lower power draw is because the Go program isn't spending that much time freeing memory. It's kind of a lazy evaluation technique for free(). I would be interested in long term averaging of the power consumption, as I'd bet it would even out. Though, I'd rather use C++'s technique of automatically calling destructors when objects fall out of scope. Then you'd have more memory readily available when you need it for repeated allocations. Using a GC may lead to hitting that boundary too often and having to wait on it to run the collection thread. Slowdowns like that should probably be avoided in an embedded context.
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  11. If enough people keep making this error they'll just change the dictionary. Sad.
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  12. This is an interesting idea, but I'll say it again, the actual biggest source of errors is not checking user input. If you use gets() or if you use scanf() in that way, you are not checking user input at all. That is the real error. The memory corruption is merely a side effect of what you've already done wrong.
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  13. This is pretty cool, though if you wanted to make it easier to follow I'd do it outline instead and get syntax highlighting. I prefer nasm syntax over gas Intel, but at least you didn't do it with AT&T syntax. That would've been the worst.
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  14.  @Leonhart_93  No, sarcasm doesn't depend on brevity. But if you seriously meant that, then you have no clue how a lot of things work, and that's just plain sad.
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  15. This is why a static analysis tool, such as Valgrind, should be mandatory for every large and/or important project. Just not for every build cycle.
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  16. You should be using sizeof() instead of hard coding magic numbers. Magic numbers make it even more of a PITA when you need to send different types. Ideally you should also be abstracting that somewhat with macros.
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  17.  @damouze  Most people probably won't understand this, but cache invalidation can be worked around, while branch prediction can't. Security vulnerabilities caused by it can be, but then it invalidates every advantage that the branch prediction gets you. The speed increases really aren't that much unless you have tons of long-running very tight loops. Most long-running loops aren't so tight as to benefit from this, and most tight loops don't run long enough.
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  18.  @gavintantleff  Interesting non-rebuttal, but honestly you can't dispute the truth. If you don't support the right to free speech, even for people you disagree with and who say distasteful things then you don't support freedom. If you don't support the right to self defense, then you don't support anyone's right to life, even your own. If you wish to reply, go for it. In fact I encourage it, even if it's likely you'll just respond with a strawman.
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  19.  @Leonhart_93  Are you being sarcastic? I'm assuming you are given the "Pffft", but it's hard to tell, because some people really are that stupid and misinformed.
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  20.  @Leonhart_93  If you had any clue how memory worked and how GC's actually manage it, you'd realize that it's a completely ridiculous statement to say that multiple cores or even just processes will prevent stutters from a collection cycle. If you knew how rockets were actually engineered, you'd know how stupid it is to say that rockets don't have limited RAM. With the weight restrictions being down to the gram, they're not going to just slap a 64 gig stick of RAM in there and call it a day.
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  21.  @Leonhart_93  I probably don't need to say it again, but you have no clue about the real world.
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  22. Seems like nearly every video I'm warning about magic numbers. He really needs to tighten up his examples.
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  23. To clarify, it's not that C, or for that matter C++, are unsafe languages, rather that too many programmers are unsafe. Rust doesn't actually provide a guarantee about safety, regardless of what its proponents will say, but it makes it slightly more difficult to do certain unsafe things by mistake. However, if you have to use an unsafe keyword, already a design mistake there, then you're going to be without certain protections. If you have to abstract around the use of the unsafe keyword it separates your code in an unnatural way that will make it harder to debug. So either you overuse the unsafe keyword and constructs that go with it, or you abstract. Neither is good, especially at kernel level. What we really need is better programmers who actually understand the underlying hardware and can write safe code. The most prevalent errors that programmers make are ones that are super easy to prevent, regardless of language. At least if you're not a dingus.
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  24.  @DrewTNaylor  I have to admit, my expectations have been subverted, because I never expected to see racism here.
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  25.  @shanehanna  No, don't use ChatGPT or any LLM, especially not if you're trying to learn how to program. It isn't a sentient being and will be incapable of finding deep mistakes. It's better to learn from a sentient being which can point out these deep mistakes.
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  26. Thanks for reminding me that I'm old.
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  27.  @mieszkomazurek3033  I keep telling people that, but it's a lost cause because no one learns.
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  28. I disagree with the assertion that the language is great. It's not C after all.
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  29.  @QUINTIX256  Given that they didn't use any such ableist slur, as if that's an actual thing, and with you calling people with firearms toxic, I'm inclined to think you're not actually armed or a supporter of equality, which is ironic because you actually are toxic.
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  30.  @Those_Weirdos  Great response. "He had to run it as root", but not if he'd taken either of these two steps I'm enumerating that prove he didn't have to.
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  31.  @ybergik  Yeah, I'd rather see them with an AR15, at least something American designed, if not built, but preferably built as well, especially if the conference occurs in the US.
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  32. @Sinneslöschen And Valgrind for what the compiler doesn't catch. And a programmer should never think they're safe by using a programming language, that's a failing of Rust, IMO.
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  33. Now you just need to make some vacuum tubes and silicon transistors and you'll be set to really do low level learning.
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  34.  @BilboSwagginsTheThird  How about if the keyword were skip_rest_of_loop_resume_from_top?
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  35. For security's sake, our government, whether through the FDA or by crafting new legislation, should require that all medical devices are open, in source, firmware and hardware. Anything less is honestly malfeasance on their part. Anyone that thinks otherwise should probably be monitored with one of these devices.
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  36. So basically C++. I would argue that C needs to have its own scope related lifetime mechanisms, which you can already do manually anyway, but C needs some syntactic sugar to make it as clean as C++, and I would argue that C++ syntax here looks better than Rust, despite C++ in general being ugly.
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  37. Did you seriously pronounce claripy as clari-pee? I think I'm going to pronounce Python as Pee-Thon from now on.
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  38.  @rj7250a  More like C++ if it had worse syntax. I thought C++ had disgusting syntax until I learned Rust. Now I know where all the brain damaged people that learned Haskell went. Moral of the story is, you actually can have a worse language and Rustaceans have shown us the way.
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  39.  @psd993  You overestimate the complexity. Off the shelf components can be used for the bulk of satellite communications. Once you've found the frequencies, which aren't hard to scan for, you can hack on it. The hard parts are the protocol and whatever encryption they use, which can be done by one person without a degree. Obviously encryption won't be broken by just attempting to run every combination, but that's where humint and packet sniffing come into play. Some dingus on the network with the password of 'drowssap' will make it considerably easier. The protocol having "bugs", as in thinking it's secure just because "no one can guess the frequency we're using" or "if you've passed secret packet 43 you must be authorized" are only stumbling blocks.
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  40. It's interesting that you can name a bash function as ':'. Though, it'd make it too obvious what it's doing if you just named it 'a' or some such.
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  41. Rust won't prevent all errors and triggers errors on code that would otherwise work 100% perfectly fine. It's training wheels for newbies, but no one who wants the language to get out of the way so they can do real work should use it. If you write your code in a way similar to how Rust wants you to write your code then literally any language would work equally as "safely", except that most others will let you get on with the task of actually writing the code. If you have to integrate with anything closed source, and I know Rust hates closed source, but you introduce a possible security hole and if you're writing real code you're going to use someone else's libraries instead of implementing everything from scratch yourself. If you want to write code that's safe, using a library written in an older language, and which has been debugged for decades, will give you the best path to success. Also, from a purely aesthetic point of view, Rust is uglier than C++, and from a usability point of view it's far, far slower to compile which makes iterative design harder to do.
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  42.  @Heater-v1.0.0  I think you missed the obvious sarcasm in that line of "took over the world", because we all know it did not.
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  43.  @spaghettiking653  It could be as simple as an xor scheme, but no matter what method I use, it wouldn't be secure because the means to decode it would be in the binary. It's at best a first step.
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  44. Yeah, and his passive aggressive "hearts" on posts that tow the cult line is kind of shitty too.
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  45.  @herrpez  Clarify, not clarity. And it's not attitude, it's an attempt at humor that apparently no one gets. Whatever.
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  46.  @rockytom5889  I think it's definitely overused, but it can be useful when used effectively. Most C++ programmers do it wrong, but you can do OOP in any language and most C programmers who write OO code do it right.
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  47.  @oxycodin2253  C++ inherited C's standard library, so any vulnerabilities that exist in the library, such as the obvious ones like getc() and scanf() and all the rest are also in C++. As for the language sans library, the only vulnerabilities are introduced by the programmer and exist for C++ too.
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  48.  @grafspee9463  Sounds like I triggered another bad programmer. When a good programmer writes their code, they simply pair things. There's no huge investment of time in doing that. At the end everything works because you wrote it correctly and there are no leaks. The hitch of a GC might seem small on a desktop, but on an embedded device it's a killer. It can cause the device to freeze up permanently as things are being waited on and don't occur in a timely manner.
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  49.  @dinoscheidt  Anyone saying that it's not bloated today or wasn't originally is laughably wrong. It requires a VM to run and always has. Outside of a few niche cases you won't even be running it outside of a browser, and yeah, electron apps incorporate a browser.
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  50. @@bb-sky But it is telling it to continue, from the top of the loop. Though, I wouldn't be opposed to using next as the keyword to start the next iteration of a for loop, it wouldn't make sense in the context of a while or do/while loop, and in the interest of lowering the keyword count I'd delete the one that's the odd man out.
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