Checks I Should Have Done Before Posting

Sorry for the self-posting. I just wanted to share my post-hoc file checks since it was due-diligence I didn't think of until after I shared.

TLDR: I redirected into a file and inspected it at least enough to say I received an mkv container with an h264 video and opus audio.

Caveats

1. I am not in any way knowledgeable about security.
2. You can do weird things with some files. I have no idea if mkv, opus, or h264 have comments or chimeras. See talks by Corkami for more information.
3. Quad9 uses a dynamic TXT record to let the user know if they have configured their DNS resolver correctly, so I imagine you could receive a different file than I did. I have included a SHA-512 checksum for convenience which only tells you anything if you trust me for some reason.

Details

I ran the command from my post in a world-readable directory with >mystery_video_file substituted for | mpv -- - and inspected the download with

sudo --user=nobody -- file -- mystery_video_file

which output

mystery_video_file: Matroska data

I ran rename --last -- '' '.mkv' mystery_video_file # the '' is the empty string delimited with apostrophes and then

sudo --user=nobody -- ffprobe -hide_banner -- mystery_video_file.mkv

which output

Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'mystery_video_file.mkv': Metadata: COMPATIBLE_BRANDS: isommp42 MAJOR_BRAND : mp42 MINOR_VERSION : 0 ENCODER : Lavf60.16.100 Duration: N/A, start: -0.007000, bitrate: N/A Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High), yuv420p(tv, bt709, progressive), 256x144 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 1k tbn (default) Metadata: HANDLER_NAME : ISO Media file produced by Google Inc. Created on: 05/29/2024. VENDOR_ID : [0][0][0][0] ENCODER : Lavc60.31.102 libx264 Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: opus, 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp (default) Metadata: HANDLER_NAME : ISO Media file produced by Google Inc. Created on: 05/29/2024. VENDOR_ID : [0][0][0][0] ENCODER : Lavc60.31.102 libopus

If you trust me and not the presenter for some inexplicable reason, the SHA-512 checksum for the video is “24345bd3ca8015c14a7d5d63d6b2a40f9d0f8c0307a65996226a496f121fa5ae934718cf58090f43ee67bc250b06804f23c73688cc871c15c1ba18d79b1a82a8”.

I just came back to comment that -- probably doesn't add security unless something like xargs which puts stdin on the command line itself is used. I have gotten in the habit of mindlessly adding it I guess.

Oh, I see the part that says “Delist…”. I did see that. I guess I was used to hearing “prompt injection” with regards to the LLM web prompts versus something that crawlers would use that I was worried I'd made a mistake sharing.

I'm sorry. I didn't read the whole page. Just the part about video-over-dns which was covered in the talk.

Are you talking about that weird logo and do you recommend I remove the link?

I completely agree with you about motivation in isolation. I've been doing a bit more this past week, but I need to keep pushing myself to stay focused on the same project after a day or so. It was easier in college because I had more external motivation. I did have the idea recently that I could learn a bit of graphics and get a bit more motivation out of what I code. I'll probably stick with that for a couple of months because it is a fairly versatile skill to know how to tell the GPU to do things. Additionally, thank you for letting me know about the Out in Tech group. It sounds like it would be helpful.

Thank you so much for replying and I'm grateful for your insight. In regards to your first point, it is interesting that it is not completely required to be an active contributor to get your foot in the door. I do think it would help with the substantive issue of being a bit rusty at coding and my confidence (as well as being a good thing to do), but it is good to know that there are differing opinions in industry about that.

I had the same impression as you in regards to the helpfulness of a degree. I had wondered how much I missed out by not going to a flagship state university or a well regarded private school, so knowing that some people view good grades at a mid-tier university as qualifying is helpful. It is also helpful to know that while not ideal, mediocre is at least acceptable in the beginning. I probably have been letting tropes about “genius tech founder” influence my perception of necessary qualifications. Even though intellectually I know that both not everyone is incredibly technically competent and that the trope is usually hype to attract VC funding.

Also, that roadmaps.sh site looks really helpful in that it shows the concrete skills necessary. Thanks!

I'd imagine you want something defined recursively like multiplication

• ( 0x = 0 )
• ( xy = x(y-1)+ x ) ( y > 0 ).

So it needs to be

• ( x^0 = c ) (c is some constant)
• ( x^y = xx^{y-1} ) (( y > 0 ) (to see why, replace multiplication with exponentiation and addition with multiplication). So what could ( c ) be? Well, the recursive exponentiation definition we want refers to ( x^0 ) in ( x^1 ). ( x^1 ) must be ( x ) by the thing we wish to capture in the formalism (multiplication repeated a single time). So the proposed formalism has ( x = x^1 = xx^0 = xc ). So ( cx = x ) hence ( c = 1 ), the multiplicative identity. Anything else would leave exponentiation to a zeroth power undefined, require a special case for a zeroth power and make the base definition that of ( x^1 ), or violate the intuition that exponentiation is repeated multiplication.

On an unrelated note, it'd be nice if Lemmy had Mathjax. I just wrote all this on mobile with that assumption, and I'm not rewriting now that I know better.

Thank you for the quick advice. I remember seeing something similar to the two years you'd mentioned when I was applying. The MS route scares me a bit because the CS degree itself is a second bachelors and I could imagine rationalizing pursuing more education because I'm scared of how the workforce would treat me. But I remember meeting a few people doing a Masters program for that reason, so could see taking that path if necessary.

I would've appreciated a trigger warning on the post since it uses a slur, but wow, it is amusing (I'm sure it'll be less amusing once I experience more overt transphobia).

They just said :wq in school, so thanks for the tip. Hard to believe it saves even when the file hasn't been changed if you use :wq. What is the use case for that? If the file gets changed in another program and you want to revert?? Edit: Just saw the comment about the modification times being updated.

You must know my parents 😅

Whoops, looks like someone forgot to make the base juice class abstract…