Daily Tech News 17 October 2022

• Who is truly responsible for the $110 million loss at decentralised finance (DeFi) platform Mango Markets? Arguably, everyone except the guy who caused it. (Milky Eggs)
  
  The attack, such as it was, was basically just everyday arbitrage. The problem was more than Mango Markets is an unlicensed and untested securities exchange that could be wiped out by things that happen in the normal course of market transactions, because it is built and run by idiots.
  
  Or not necessarily idiots, because it's not the people running Mango Markets who lost money.
  
  
  
• After a five-day tour of the New South Wales countryside, my Amazon shipment arrived. I'll unpack it at some point; my new tablet is in there.
  
  Also, it's listed on Amazon as having being delivered tomorrow, which is just slightly odd.
  
  
  

• A dumb article on a dumb problem. (Substack)
  
  Don't read that unless you want to be enraged by idiots building idiotic applications on top of idiotic frameworks built by other idiots.
  
  
  
• A smart article on the same dumb problem. (Luke Plant)
  
  Money quote:

  Are the Etsy devs stupid? I suspect not. Etsy is clearly doing well, and I imagine they have enough money to hire top-notch developers. Some of their careers pages show they are happy using a variety of languages and technologies, and their engineering blog seems to be sane and competent. Even their security presentation showed considerable ingenuity and technical ability in dealing with security problems (in entirely the wrong way, unfortunately, but still impressive).
  
  I doubt they are low quality developers. Rather, I suspect that use of PHP has addled their brains. They have become far too accustomed to working in an environment in which insanity reigns...

  One bad decision made to get a product out the door can lead to years of mental - and financial - bleeding.
  
  
  
• Why are rents going up? An app named YieldStar. (Pro Publica)
  
  It turns out if you increase your rents faster than the overall market, you make more money. Right up until it turns out that all your properties are mysteriously sitting vacant.
  
  
  
• Intel's other 4-bit CPU. (Substack)
  
  There was the original 4004, built for desktop calculators, and the subsequent 4040, before Intel moved on to 8-bit chips and never looked back.
  
  But there was also the 4005. You wouldn't know it, it lived in Canada.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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