Who didn't bother to test their code?
Because, you know, that's BORING, and besides, I'm too cool to make mistakes.
A two-day-old decentralized cryptocurrency called YAM collapsed on Wednesday after its creators revealed that a software bug had effectively vetoed human governance. "At approximately 6PM UTC, on Wednesday, August 12, we discovered a bug in the YAM rebasing contract that would mint far more YAM than intended to sell to the …
So, an infinite "goto" after printing one line, right?
And you think nobody can break your code?
If you put your code in a file (i.e. infinite.bas), and run it directly with a BASIC interpreter (i.e. yabasic), and without messing with STDOUT, it MIGHT be so. For example:
yabasic infinite.bas
But consider running it in another way. As you can see, there is no "hello" message and I can even replace your message with mine:
perl -e 'open(README, "yabasic infinite.bas |"); close(README); print "1:0 for me! :-) \n"; while(1){}'
"Your not as smart as your dumbest bug"
Those words of wisdom have served me well over the years....
Ah well, what you expect about in crowd dev's, bet the coder responsible's experience part of their CV reads:
PHP,
Flash,
Ruby on Rails,
Node,
react,
web assembly,
GO,
Looking at Rust
With an assumption that the github "community*" would spot it cus open source and ummm community yeah!
*Github as social media?? don't make me laugh, truth is the community is people fire and forgetting bug reports with no info to reproduce, and 2 or 3 interested parties working on a project, we go there to grab code, winge and feel arse hurt when a pull request is denied by someone trying to act as Linus in a claimed benevolent dictator role, but really is just the gate keeper to not invented here syndrome...
People: We don't trust banks, we want to entrust our money to rules set out in a computer program, which are impossible to bypass. Normally the rules would be impossible to change, but the computer program we're using has this amazing new feature: a software update routine! If the majority of people using this computer program agree, we can upgrade it to a new computer program with different rules!
Later: Oh no! The computer program had a bug in it's software update routine, now we can't update it! Whoever would have thought that a computer program that hadn't been reviewed or properly tested would have a bug in it?!!!
One of my favourite quotes from Erik Darling (talking about the legacy cardinality estimator in SQL Server, but apt nonetheless): "…advanced maths that only people who vape understand".
I'm mildly amused by the idea that $500m evaporated and I don't have the slightest idea where it came from, where it went or how. I understand how bank robberies work, they're nice and simple in theory and I've seen them in films. If somebody could analogise this one as a bank robbery for me I expect it would be harder to follow than a Mr. Robot–Westworld crossover given life by a dadaist troll.
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Not exactly a bank robbery. More like designing a tamper proof safe. Then locking the combination inside.
In the unlikely event that there is any actual money anywhere in this peculiarl scheme, it should probably be turned over to a court appointed receiver who can then dole it out to creditors (if any) and investors. In that order.
From trying to read the verbal babble that YAM have come out with... it's not so much as feck all out, it's unconstrained feck have come out. As in a limited numbers of fecks may have been worth something individually, however due to a coding error an unlimited number of fecks were genereted which instantly devalued fecks to the point that all their fecks are now worthless.
So I suppose that in some ways "feck all out" is correct, just that there should be some grammar inserted somewhere.
You need whips. Massive, massive whips.
While it's often thought that this was the case, the builders of pyramids in Egypt were highly thought of craftsmen and workers, not slaves. Generations of families lived and died building them. What's even more impressive is that Egypt had such abundance that it could afford to have so many people dedicated to building what are essentially enormous vanity projects.
"What's even more impressive is that Egypt had such abundance that it could afford to have so many people dedicated to building what are essentially enormous vanity projects."
The important point is that they had intermitent abundance. Due to the Nile's cycle of flooding, there was a ton of farming work to be done half the year, then absolutely bugger all for the rest. Most of the labour wasn't huge numbers of dedicated craftsmen spending all their time on vanity projects, it was the ordinary people being given something to do during the off season.
It’s not zero sum. Crypto-crap works in the same way as share prices. The "value" of the whole lot is set by the last transaction price multiplied by the number issued. Unless they were directly selling them to people.
So if say there were 100,000 coins/shares issued and I bought one for £10, then the total value is theoretically now £1m. If the next sale is for £9, then the total valuation plummets by £100k to £900k. But, just like shares, you only crystallise that loss when you decide to sell, nobody has taken that money from you, or gained it.
The difference is that shares gain you part ownership of the assets of a company. With voting rights, and hopefully dividends every year. Which means your asset has an actual value. Plus shares are easier to sell, because we have mature financial markets, so prices are less volatile, because there are usually lots of potential buyers.
But the huge headline figures for gains and losses are meaningless in both cases. Because not everybody can sell at the same time, as there aren’t enough buyers. Plus it would trash the price.
I would argue that it is zero sum. When you invest in a company, you do so in the expectation that it will provide earnings by selling it's products and services, will experience growth and pay dividends.
Bitcoin and other cryptos make no products, provides no services and pays no dividends. Every dollar that someone 'makes' from crypto has come straight from someone else's pocket. That's what makes it zero-sum, and you could even argue it's negative sum if the huge electricity costs are taken into account.
No, crypto is more like banknotes. It has no intrinsic value, but are simply tokens that *represent* a certain value. The value that each token represents depends on what people have collectively decided on, which is based on many factors including the total amount in circulation. This year a £5 note might represent the value of a pint of beer. Next decade a £5 note may represent the value of half a pint of beer. The value of beer has not increased - it is the value of the £ that has decreased.
I may be old fashioned, but I like my sentences with uppercase letters, and punctuation.
"i’m sorry everyone. i’ve failed. thank you for the insane support today. i’m sick with grief"
Communicating like that never fills me with confidence in u. (See what I did there? That one pisses me off to no end.)
(1a) The crank insulted me to no end.
(1b) The crank insulted me no end.
Many people answered that they were both acceptable, but that the meanings were different:
(2a) The crank insulted me without a goal or without achieving anything.
(2b) The crank insulted me endlessly.
(https://painintheenglish.com/case/5070/)
> A simple unit test or a code review should have caught it.
Blockchain updating may require an integration test, not a unit test—at least ours did when I tested it for my former employer. (Ours isn’t shipping anytime soon—testing always takes more time than you expect.)
Is there any legitimate use of this World Wide Web? Its just full of criminals stealing music and taking money from gullibles for dot com addresses as a scam before the bubble explodes.
I view it like academia, for now it may not even be mildly interesting, but with enough brains looking at something, be it a stick or a rock, someone will think of a use for it.
It's not as if cryptocurrency investors couldn't have seen this coming
It's not investment, but pure speculation on Yet Another Digital Tulip. It is/was a day old crypto coin that has no historical information on which to invest, and a huge implied "Beta" tag on its front door...
You probably don't want to understand it, but I can try to explain. Many big bitcoin miners are built right next to new and still unprofitable power stations as this is a win-win: bitcoin needs the cheap power to secure the network (has not been hacked ever) and the power station gets an efficiency boost until it becomes profitable (after which the prices go up and bitcoin miners seek there luck elsewhere).
As a financial system, cryptocurrencies use way less power than all banks, their infrastucture and support structures (armored vehicles moving money or gold, all kind of advisers, bank personnel, etc.) together. It never amazes me how big and shiny bank buildings are, the security efforts concerning their large computer systems and buildings in general and how much energy these all waste. And in essence, most banks now move bits too, but with way more overhead than cryptocurrencies...
Per transaction per second the IBAN, Credit Card or PayPal is a tiny fraction of any Cryptocurrency system.
Also adding money costs almost nothing, unlike mining just Bit Coin, which is the same consumption as all of Switzerland.
It's an ecologically damaging scam. It's not even scaleable to 1% of the transactions of any one of IBAN, Credit Cards or PayPal!
> As a financial system, cryptocurrencies use way less power than all banks, their infrastucture and support structures
My home made cider activities use less energy than the world's agricultural industry.
Conceptually blockchain is interesting, but these public experiments are nuts. Bitcoin itself is a flawed system. As a value trading platform it's kind of working for now, but largely because there are enough vested interests [1]. The overall chain may not have been broken but there's opportunity for corruption within the mining process and the egalitarian ideals of mining has long since gone away as it's way out of reach of individuals. Instead of trusting large corporate banks, you have to trust large anonymous and *completely unaccountable* mining pools.
[1] you could argue that is true for 'real' currencies and other forms of value exchange
Same reason that we waste power on huge printing presses that manufacture banknotes and countless server racks in banks. Cryptocurrency is just a different way to achieve the same thing. Speculating on cryptocurrency is the same as speculating in foreign exchange markets. It's just that at present cryptocurrency is new and unstable so the market is extremely volatile.
"Same reason that we waste power on huge printing presses that manufacture banknotes and countless server racks in banks"
Banknotes are either paper or plastic , they don't take much energy to create and once made no more power is required to use them until they're disposed of 5 or 10 years down the line. As for server rows in banks - they keep my and your money in them , they not purely for speculation solving deliberately difficult equations in order to keep the value of unit currencies of a digital ponzi scheme high for the suckers using it.
In one Animaniacs episode, they got the boss to reflexively sign a check for a Zillion dollars. One of them cries out "We're RICH!", breaking the 4th wall by holding the check up towards the (implied) camera. Then the boss sees the check and tears it up. With equal gusto, same one cries out "We're POOR!"
or something like that. Cue the 'runaway' leitmotif...
Many years ago I signed a purchase order for £14,000 of Lotus licences.
An enterprising techie managed to get hold of it when it had been input to the purchasing system and stamped and inserted the word Elan.
It genuinely looked like I had purchased a sports car using council funds. Oh how I laughed.
Quite acceptable to use PDFs, however what must be done is very careful comparison between what was sent and what was returned. There has been some very capable software specifically for this purpose for a while now.
Not just limited to PDFs either: print a document, post it to the other party, they sign and return it. How do you know that they haven't replaced one of the pages? Obviously paper quality and watermarks can help with this, but there is nothing stopping somebody taking a document in any form, printing it to an intermediary form, making adjustments, then printing it to paper.
The software we had would scan the returned printed copies as well, OCR the lot, then compare. It was tedious at times but at other times invaluable seeing what had been attempted at times.
This is exactly why no-one ever should send a PDF for someone to print and sign as a contract. You may think it legally binding when it comes back signed but its beyond most companies tech to prove its the same contract that was sent out.
No, no ... PDF is actually GOOD for this, but the "signature" must be a digital signature, not a cut/pasted image of a written signature.
A digital signature will be invalidated if any part of the PDF file is changed, and the subterfuge made evident.
I've seen that happen in a union contract negotiation. The employer sent what it thought was a final draft for the union to sign, the union surreptitiously added a few extra clauses and sent it back signed.
The employer counter-signed, only discovering a few days later that they'd agreed to give everyone extra leave.
My father told me of someone who worked for a bank who:
1. opened up an account
2. wrote a check for $1,000,000.00 on the account
3. deposited the check in the account he just opened.
So he generated a balance of a million and then when the check cleared it wiped out the million.
The bank management was not amused and said, "We don't do that around here."
This reminds me of the South Sea Bubble (ca 1720). It was an early financial scam, which involved talking up share prices to ridiculous levels, without any solid business to invest in. They sucked in plenty of government money too. There was a business that tried to operate in S America, but was barely profitable, because Spain controlled trade in S America, and England was not friendly with Spain at the time.
Does this sound familiar in today's financial climate? I cannot understand so much money being piled into companies that show no signs of making a profit. It seems to happen a lot these days. Somebody makes money out of this kind of thing, but I doubt it is the small investors.
There were several bubbles, in Europe as well, france has a paticulary nasty one.
iirc newton lost the shirt on his back from the south seas bubble.
Then you get crazy stuff like the Darien expedition. Lets take ginger scottish people, and export them, and 2/3 of ALL THE WEALTH IN SCOTLAND to a disease filled swamp on the equator. People who get sunburnt at night when theres a full moon decided to create a colony on the equator.
That went as well as youd expect.
And then got worse when the spanish noticed them living in what was at the time a spanish colony.
Epic fail all round.
Have you never looked at crypto before?
But wankword is great name for a new crypto project! Should devise it to set seed values for mining based on the number of wankwords detected in competeing crypto's press releases and pyramid scheme smelling investment opportunity emails. And make a point of calling blockchains (over simplified but wankwords!!!!) recrypyt and appends
"This bug would likely have been caught by in-depth outside review or audit," said Prestwich, who observed that the project attracted interest because its creators leveraged relationships with influencers in the crypto community. "It would certainly have been caught by industry-standard testing practices."
Hipsters invested in it because of a hipster developer. The sort of hipster developer that would say "We want to be infrastructure free" or "We don't do testing. That is so last year. We are agile. Move with the times grandad"
I long for the day when one ends up in front of me in an interveiw:
So what exposure to widely USED not Talked about languages do you have?
Can you explain to me why javascript is unsuitable for high performance realtime code
Can you explain type safety and immutability
Can you explain why Javascript has to 2 ways of checking boolean equivilancy, the true way and the truthier way
No, neck/hand tattoo removal is not covered by the health plan
No we dont have separate vegan fridges
No failing tests are not Passing Impaired, they failed your code is wrong fix it
No reorganising post it notes and playing pass the ball is not project managment
No lives matter the solar system is as significant to the universe as a fly smeared on your windscreen, sorry i forgot, a fly smeared on the shades of your mate who your liftsharing with on there escooter....
I'm not a crypto currency expert, but this problem seems so fundamental that it makes me wonder if this was perhaps the first time they ever executed the code.
And to top it all, they waste not a second to announce plans for a community-funded code review. It's like they don't even try not to make it look like they're burning everyone( else)'s money.
"I thought of calling the secretary of the treasury, Kermit Winkler, a man who had graduated from Harvard two years after me, and saying this to him: “I just tried out two of your dimes on Times Square, and they worked like a dream. It looks like another great day for the coinage!”"
Kurt Vonnegut
From what I can see a Cryptocurrency is for geeks, criminals and gamblers with the disadvantage that it is actually way more vulnerable than cash. Sure, cash can be stolen and in time if there is rampant inflation it does get devalued but an unregulated electronic currency is simply a disaster waiting to happen. At least the new plastic notes don't get eaten by bugs....
Having said that I past on Bitcoin in the early days as it SO SO SO SO looked like a Ponzi scheme. Could of made a killing. Oh well. I'm also the same person that, in the 90s, said "Mobile phones? I don't want one as they are just a fade. They appeared in the 80s and never took off so they won't this time either".
I think I was wrong about that also.
I've stayed away from digital coins ever since.