Miscellaneous Tech News

Danp

For almost 11 years, hackers could easily bypass 3rd-party macOS signature checks

DustinB3403

@danp said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

For almost 11 years, hackers could easily bypass 3rd-party macOS signature checks

But they've finally fixed it . . . .

Danp

@dustinb3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

But they've finally fixed it . . . .

Apparently it was never broken...

“To be clear, this is not a vulnerability or bug in Apple’s code... basically just unclear/confusing documentation that led to people using their API incorrectly,” Wardle told Ars. “Apple updated [its] documents to be more clear, and third-party developers just have to invoke the API with a more comprehensive flag (that was always available).”

DustinB3403

@danp that still counts as broken in my world. If the people developing the software don't understand how to use the tools they need to develop the software. . . well then there is a break there. .

FiyaFly

@dustinb3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@danp that still counts as broken in my world. If the people developing the software don't understand how to use the tools they need to develop the software. . . well then there is a break there. .

Let this be a lesson to everyone who is writing scripts and programming...
COMMENT YOUR CODE.

scottalanmiller

@fiyafly said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@dustinb3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@danp that still counts as broken in my world. If the people developing the software don't understand how to use the tools they need to develop the software. . . well then there is a break there. .

Let this be a lesson to everyone who is writing scripts and programming...
COMMENT YOUR CODE.

Better to just write code that is readable, if you need to comment it, check to see if there isn't a better way.

dafyre

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@fiyafly said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@dustinb3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@danp that still counts as broken in my world. If the people developing the software don't understand how to use the tools they need to develop the software. . . well then there is a break there. .

Let this be a lesson to everyone who is writing scripts and programming...
COMMENT YOUR CODE.

Better to just write code that is readable, if you need to comment it, check to see if there isn't a better way.

There's never an excuse to not comment code -- even clean code.

Edit: I don't mean comment excessively.

JaredBusch

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@fiyafly said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@dustinb3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@danp that still counts as broken in my world. If the people developing the software don't understand how to use the tools they need to develop the software. . . well then there is a break there. .

Let this be a lesson to everyone who is writing scripts and programming...
COMMENT YOUR CODE.

Better to just write code that is readable, if you need to comment it, check to see if there isn't a better way.

Readable doens't mean shit. All code is inherently readble because it is a logical process flow.

It might be horribly inefficient, but it is always readable.

Even the cleanest code tells you jack shit about what the though process was for the design. That is what comments are for.

scottalanmiller

@jaredbusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@fiyafly said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@dustinb3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@danp that still counts as broken in my world. If the people developing the software don't understand how to use the tools they need to develop the software. . . well then there is a break there. .

Let this be a lesson to everyone who is writing scripts and programming...
COMMENT YOUR CODE.

Better to just write code that is readable, if you need to comment it, check to see if there isn't a better way.

Readable doens't mean shit. All code is inherently readble because it is a logical process flow.

It might be horribly inefficient, but it is always readable.

Even the cleanest code tells you jack shit about what the though process was for the design. That is what comments are for.

It means a lot. All code tells you what the programmer decided to do, comments to say what they failed to do is a silly thing to have in code.

Readability applies to code just like it applies to English. You can make technically correct English that is hard to read, or easy to read. Same with code. Readability is very real, and standard study material for SD and CS courses. Knuth, the father of CS, was a key advocate and researcher in this area.

DustinB3403

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@jaredbusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@fiyafly said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@dustinb3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@danp that still counts as broken in my world. If the people developing the software don't understand how to use the tools they need to develop the software. . . well then there is a break there. .

Let this be a lesson to everyone who is writing scripts and programming...
COMMENT YOUR CODE.

Better to just write code that is readable, if you need to comment it, check to see if there isn't a better way.

Readable doens't mean shit. All code is inherently readble because it is a logical process flow.

It might be horribly inefficient, but it is always readable.

Even the cleanest code tells you jack shit about what the though process was for the design. That is what comments are for.

It means a lot. All code tells you what the programmer decided to do, comments to say what they failed to do is a silly thing to have in code.

Readability applies to code just like it applies to English. You can make technically correct English that is hard to read, or easy to read. Same with code. Readability is very real, and standard study material for SD and CS courses. Knuth, the father of CS, was a key advocate and researcher in this area.

But reading something and understanding what the heck is going on are two different things. I know people who have sat down and programmed for hours, and then went and looked at the code and had no idea what they did "or how it works".

Comments are meant to be a simple "this does this" in plain language, not programming language that would require you to look at the entire code to understand what is going on.

scottalanmiller

@dustinb3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@jaredbusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@fiyafly said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@dustinb3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@danp that still counts as broken in my world. If the people developing the software don't understand how to use the tools they need to develop the software. . . well then there is a break there. .

Let this be a lesson to everyone who is writing scripts and programming...
COMMENT YOUR CODE.

Better to just write code that is readable, if you need to comment it, check to see if there isn't a better way.

Readable doens't mean shit. All code is inherently readble because it is a logical process flow.

It might be horribly inefficient, but it is always readable.

Even the cleanest code tells you jack shit about what the though process was for the design. That is what comments are for.

It means a lot. All code tells you what the programmer decided to do, comments to say what they failed to do is a silly thing to have in code.

Readability applies to code just like it applies to English. You can make technically correct English that is hard to read, or easy to read. Same with code. Readability is very real, and standard study material for SD and CS courses. Knuth, the father of CS, was a key advocate and researcher in this area.

But reading something and understanding what the heck is going on are two different things. I know people who have sat down and programmed for hours, and then went and looked at the code and had no idea what they did "or how it works".

Comments are meant to be a simple "this does this" in plain language, not programming language that would require you to look at the entire code to understand what is going on.

Right, so they DIDN'T make it readable, hence the problem. If they had, and knew how to program and weren't just guessing - you still have to be literate, then the comments would have been superfluous. Just because you know people who make unreadable code doesn't mean readable code is the issue, it means they didn't do it and then had to use the bandaid of comments for that very reason.

DustinB3403

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@dustinb3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@jaredbusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@fiyafly said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@dustinb3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@danp that still counts as broken in my world. If the people developing the software don't understand how to use the tools they need to develop the software. . . well then there is a break there. .

Let this be a lesson to everyone who is writing scripts and programming...
COMMENT YOUR CODE.

Better to just write code that is readable, if you need to comment it, check to see if there isn't a better way.

Readable doens't mean shit. All code is inherently readble because it is a logical process flow.

It might be horribly inefficient, but it is always readable.

Even the cleanest code tells you jack shit about what the though process was for the design. That is what comments are for.

It means a lot. All code tells you what the programmer decided to do, comments to say what they failed to do is a silly thing to have in code.

Readability applies to code just like it applies to English. You can make technically correct English that is hard to read, or easy to read. Same with code. Readability is very real, and standard study material for SD and CS courses. Knuth, the father of CS, was a key advocate and researcher in this area.

But reading something and understanding what the heck is going on are two different things. I know people who have sat down and programmed for hours, and then went and looked at the code and had no idea what they did "or how it works".

Comments are meant to be a simple "this does this" in plain language, not programming language that would require you to look at the entire code to understand what is going on.

Right, so they DIDN'T make it readable, hence the problem. If they had, and knew how to program and weren't just guessing - you still have to be literate, then the comments would have been superfluous. Just because you know people who make unreadable code doesn't mean readable code is the issue, it means they didn't do it and then had to use the bandaid of comments for that very reason.

Comprehension and being able to read are different things. I can read English, it doesn't mean that I might understand what the author was attempting to convey.

Notes are meant for as "plain English" definitions of what is going on.

Think of it like this, someone who wants to learn how to program can read my GitHub, but likely would have no idea what any of it does without the comments.