Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by silverhawk

Modern Buffer overflow

silverhawk — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 19:04:50 +0800

[youtube]GEbn3nHyKnA[/youtube]

So what did you all learn from this video?

Plain text? really?

silverhawk — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 13:17:13 +0800

This was a really fun talk, brought back some memories working with text encoding. Comment section is worth a read too.

[youtube]_mZBa3sqTrI[/youtube]

Computers shouldn't work

silverhawk — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 14:28:57 +0800

I wonder how many here know about these fundamentals and how we've overcome challenges that allow computers to function at the level they do today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaZ_RSt0KP8

[youtube]AaZ_RSt0KP8[/youtube]

Frontend Developers, what's happening?

silverhawk — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 19:28:12 +0800

There are some positions open in the company at the moment, so been doing some interviews. We have a warm-up question for the code whiteboarding session that goes like something like this

CODE

Write a function that takes an input number (e.g. 4) and prints:
1 2 3 4
1 2 3
1 2
1

and 90% of the candidates are failing this. All of the frontend candidates could not do this, even after some guidance. The opening is for a senior position with at least 5 years experience. While ability to answer the questions does not determine whether you get the offer or not, I find it quite odd that the warmup question is tripping people up.

Is anyone else facing this issue with their hiring? Should this level of problem solving ability not be expected of frontend devs?

Part-Timers needed at Cat Cafe

silverhawk — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 15:00:43 +0800

Name of Company: Purradise Cat Cafe @ TTDI KL

Role: Cat-tendant

The position is a general part-time cafe job. We operate based on 2 different shifts – 10am to 5pm, and 4pm to 11pm. Each shift is 7 hours total, inclusive of 1 hour break.

The work scope is as follows:

Introduce cats to customers
Attend to customer queries
Food and drinks preparation
Observe cat behavior, attending to them if necessary, cleaning litter boxes.

Remuneration: RM6/hour

Requirements:

Passionate about cats
Able to converse in English & Malay
Not shy to interact with strangers (customers)

Contact Person:

Interested applicants may email us at meow@purradise.my. Please state your contact details, along with a short description of relevant experience with cats and part-time jobs.

More details on Purradise Cat Cafe, please refer to our Website or Facebook

Please do not PM me here on lowyat as I do not check often and I do get a lot of PMs unrelated to this job.

Complaint against Mashixx

silverhawk — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:34:42 +0800

Forumer you are complaining against: Mashixx

Item being sold/bought: Corsair Dominator ram 2GBx3 (RM150)

Original thread link: http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopic=2657655&hl=

Date of transaction: January 8, 2013

Details of the complaint :
His thread title said 3x2GB ram, although the box showed 3GB. I asked him that its confirmed 3x2GB, he said yes. So I assumed it was just a different box he was using. During COD I didn't open it up to check the ratings on the ram itself (my mistake). Called him up later about it, and he said he would refund my money (RM150).

Its been over a month since then and I've yet to receive my refund from him. He responds once in a while to my texts, but hasn't made any arrangements to pay me back even after giving him details to bank in.

Can't be that hard to do a cash deposit/bank transfer, so I can only assume he's not being honest about his refund.

UPDATE:
I'll add a chronology of events to show his irresponsibility

8th Jan 2013: CODed at Kelana Jaya LRT station, didn't notice the mistake in RAM. Called him and he apologised, and said he will refund me the money. He tried to sell me the ram for a cheaper price (RM100, refund me RM50), but I didn't want it as its not the product I'm looking for. Gave him my bank details for him to bank the money in, once I get the money/proof of transfer, I'll poslaju the RAM back to him.
14th Jan 2013: Asked whether he's banked the money in already.
15th Jan 2013: Responds and says he hasn't, and requests to meet face to face (he will let me know when). Says his Maybank not working (BS excuse, I let it slide)
21st Jan 2013: I sms him again, as he didn't get back to me on a meet up date. Told him he can go to a standard chartered branch to deposit the cash in if he's online banking isn't working
22nd Jan 2013: He apologises for the late reply and said he'll go to the ATM the next day
30th Jan 2013: No sign of my money, so I message him again. Asking when I can resolve this.
8th Feb 2013: No word from him, I threaten to create a dispute thread
9th Feb 2013: He responds, saying he's going back to hometown and we will meet after CNY holidays
18th Feb 2013: No word from him, I sms him again asking when we can resolve this.
19th Feb 2013: No response, Dispute thread created. He responds and asks to meet on the night of the 19th (I wasn't free), so we scheduled for thursday, 21st Feb 2013
21st Feb 2013: we didn't meet up, but he said he'll transfer the money
22nd Feb 2013: He said he's banked in the money, and wants me to ship the product immediately
23rd Feb 2013: He asks whether I've shipped it out yet, I asked him to give me proof of transfer. He gives it to me, transfer has my name spelled wrong.
25th Feb 2013: I've scheduled myself to send the RAM back to him, but he was really rude about the whole thing. So I'm withholding the product until he apologises.

Motherboard won't POST

silverhawk — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:16:00 +0800

Something weird happened earlier, I was just using the PC as usual then suddenly it turned off. This is weird because I have it connected to a UPS. Everything connected to the UPS was fine.

So I tried to restart my pc, it couldn't turn on at first. It would power up a bit and then lose power. So I thought it could have be a problem with the UPS port it was on. I tried plugging it to the main just to test, and it powered up, but did not POST.

I've tried

Resetting the bios
removeing the bios battery
unplugging everything including ram and graphic card, just to see if it gives me any error beeps. None.

Anything else I can do to try to revive it back? Otherwise I have to consider if its the CPU or motherboard that's f`ed. My guess is the motherboard, but I hope its not.

PHP OOP Getter & Setters

silverhawk — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 01:48:58 +0800

I've been noticing that a lot of PHP OOP code nowadays are using getters and setters for object properties. Personally I don't think they're of much use, what are your opinions?

For those who do not know what they are, here's example

CODE

class Product
{
private $id;
private $name;

public set_id( $value )
{
$this->id = $value;
}

public get_id()
{
return $this->id;
}

public set_name( $value )
{
$this->name = $value;
}

public get_name()
{
return $this->name;
}
}

You could use the magic methods __get() and __set() to reduce such clutter, but what's the point? Wouldn't it be better to just have those properties public to begin with? I don't see much reason to go this route, its unnecessarily verbose IMO.

I've used the __get() method to create "read-only" objects, but seeing very little reason to have both setters and getters. What exactly am I missing?

Looking for web developers

silverhawk — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 01:39:50 +0800

Hey guys

I'm looking to hire 2 people to work under my company Simpleet Sdn. Bhd.. Our market is mostly custom websites, from basic static ones, to wordpress and completely custom solutions. We're now looking into building our own internal projects and products to generate additional revenue (which is why I'm hiring). You'll be working on some interesting and challenging projects which will redefine how some systems are handled and perceived.

You can look forward to be working on:

Social Media integration & App development
Location based services & technologies
Modular system architectures
Mobile solutions integration
Interactive User Interfaces (likely alot of jQuery + AJAX)
Web services API
... and more!

I know that alot of that list sounds pretty general and vague, and some of you will be working on stuff like that in other companies anyway. However, I can promise you that we're going to be using these technologies in a new and different way. We don't want to be just another clone of another service, we want to create something new, something exciting and something which will provide the users with a superior experience.

So I'm looking for someone who can be part of the team to help make these projects successful. For that, I'm looking to hire someone who is:

Eager and willing to learn
Passionate to be part of something bigger
Self driven and motivated

What about technical expertise you ask? Well, I only require the basic understanding of the following:

LAMP Stack (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP)
xHTML/CSS
Object Oriented Programming
Javascript DOM

As long as you have the basic understanding and knowledge, the rest can be taught as long as you're willing to learn. Reference materials and books will be made available to you to increase your knowledge

Now to the part you want to know most, what's the pay and perks?

Commitment: Full-time
Location: Work from home (though preferably you stay in KL/PJ so its easy to meet up when required)
Base Salary: RM2000 (probation, 2 months) / RM2600 (after probation)
Commission: Typically ~RM160 to RM480 per external project (or higher depending on the project size)
When we assign you an external project (from a client), you'll get a commission. So after you complete an external project, your commission will be added to your base salary.
Self-Improvement: I'll be setting certain number of hours a week where you can work on anything you want on company time & resources. We can meet up for ideas and rapid prototyping as well. If your idea is good and we decide to implement it, you gain ownership of your idea within the company.

So if any of you are interested in working with us, you can PM me here on LYN or email me at career@simpleet.com

Thank you for your time and hope to hear from you soon

[DISCUSSION] Broadband performance reports

silverhawk — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:25:31 +0800

We're all pissed off at TMnet's broadband capping and throttling, and it seems like we can't do anything about it. They have the data, we don't. So its time to change that. Its time we build our own database of issues and proof of their practice.

The purpose of this topic would be to discuss the best ways to go about building this database.

What I propose:
We should provide a tutorial where people can download a bandwidth monitoring software (hopefully one which supports exporting a report in the form of an image). I would also upload a file about 30-40MB in size to several locations/servers (others may provide files to be downloaded too). You guys can then download it to see how fast your speeds are and how long it takes to download.

I would then set up a website with a simple form. You will fill up some basic information like

Date / Time
Service / Package
File Downloaded / Activity
Upload bandwidth report

If enough of you submit the reports, we can get a good picture on the capping with some strong data and evidence. I would also provide you an option to tweet your report on twitter (if you have one), to help spread the message.

What we will need:

Bandwidth monitoring software (must be easy to setup and use)
Servers to host files (I have a few, and filesharing services like rapidshare, hotfile, fileserve etc. can be used)

So what do you guys think? Would you submit reports to such a service? Also, any of you know of a good bandwidth monitoring software to use?

Lowyat on XKCD

silverhawk — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:53:43 +0800

http://xkcd.com/802_large/

Scroll down to the bottom right on the isle of forums, you will see the nation of lowyat

The map of the internet, and lowyat is big enough to be on it

Cable faults again

silverhawk — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:04:58 +0800

http://www.tm.com.my/about-tm/media-centre...PTION-1606.aspx

I think we should really begin to start monitoring tmnet's cable faults and see if there's a pattern. It seems that somewhere middle of the month, there would be a cable fault.

New Project (QR code + database)

silverhawk — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:37:39 +0800

Hey guys

Once again, posting in here before I post on the jobs section. I'm looking for a programmer who can help me get a project up quick. Its a simple one for a proof of concept.

Project Brief
To write a program that can use a webcam from a PC to read QR Codes. The QR Codes will be encoded in a JSON format, so its both human readable and easy to parse. When the program reads the QR code it can interact with a database to either add/update the item in the database. Its going to work something like a stock inventory system.

Right now this is for a proof of concept, if it goes through a more robust system will be built and there's potentially good money here. You would most likely be brought in to this project as well.

There's no limitations on what language you want to use, JAVA does have a pretty good library for this called "zxing". Not sure what other libraries are on other platforms, but that is for you to propose

Summary:

Webcam QR Reader
Database to store QR data
Connect Item 1 & 2

When
Within the next 2 weeks if possible.

PM Me if you're interested.

MySQL ORDER BY problem

silverhawk — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:00:43 +0800

Hey guys

Any of you faced this problem before? It used to be a problem in Windows as well. Basically if you have a bunch of rows with strings like these

6 donkeys
12 donkeys
24 donkeys
48 donkeys

If you use mysql to order the rows by this field, the result you'll get is

12 donkeys
24 donkeys
48 donkeys
6 donkeys

Because mysql sees 6 is bigger than "1", "2", "4" which is the starting of the string. I've googled around but can't seem to find any solution to this problem (not sure what keywords to use either).

Any one know of a solution? Keep in mind that not all the rows start as numbers, some may start as letters, its basically quite a free field, but this little bit is messing up with the display order.

Cheers
Hawk

Gender Wars!

silverhawk — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:07:16 +0800

Thought I'd create a different sort of topic.

As the topic says, this is GENDER WARS. We can talk about any sort of stereotype of each gender, attacking their silly flaws and defending their great strengths. We shall talk about how bad female drivers are, how men can't ask for directions, men growing beer bellies, women PMSing, guys getting mid-life crisis, etc.

Anything you want to attack the other gender with, lets do it here! Of course, keep everything civil and light hearted. Nothing should be personal, all in the name of good fun. We used to have this in some forums, and it can be loads of fun If you guys can't control the flames/trolling

I shall start with.. Women have too many shoes! Why?? Its not like you got that many legs!

Looking for Team members for a project

silverhawk — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:33:47 +0800

Hey guys

This isn't exactly a job offer, which is why I'm posting here and not in the Jobs forum. I'm looking for people who will join in as part of the team, you'll get paid for it, but I can't afford to pay you much, so its unlikely that you can take this as a full time job.

This project is to build an Asia Pacific Joint Registry for orthopaedic surgeons. I'll give a very brief description of what is required of the application.

Client

Portable, installed in thumbdrive and doesn't require anything to be installed on the pc
Portable application must be encrypted and password protected
Application connects to server to send anonymous medical data
Application connects to server and requests medical data for comparison purposes
Modular Forms (allow new forms to be developed and plugged in to the application)

Server

Store data anonymously but still able to identify patients so that data doesn't get duplicated
Scalable to include new data forms
Able to handle data coming in from various universities/hospitals

Funding for this project will likely come from MDEC's pre-seed fund. That would give each team member an allowance of RM1,500 a month. I'm also looking for alternative funding for this project, so in terms of monthly pay, assume an MDEC allowance first and see if you can work for that amount.

Whether you want to do this part-time/full-time is fine by me, as long as the project can be finished. I'm looking at timeline of 9 months from funding approval.

If you're interested or want to know more, PM me and I'll provide more details for you This project has a huge potential and I would like team members who join to eventually become full-time in the company

Navigation Menu designs

silverhawk — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:47:28 +0800

For those of you who've developed/designed your own CMS, how do you handle your site's navigation? Add links to the menu, creating navigations from different modules etc. I've got my own version running, but the design/code is rather messy at the moment and I think it can be better. I want to bounce ideas off the community here and see what we can come up with.

I'll explain the goal/design/requirements of the navigation system.

Requirements:

Easily display/control menus in code (e.g. Navigation::display($menu_name); )
Modular, allows links of different types to be pulled and updated automatically. For example, if I add a "Products" type link to the menu, the product links and its sub links will be pulled from the products table. I can also choose which level I want to start with, like I can say I want the link to show products from the "T-shirt category" instead of listing all the categories.
Data & View separation, same menu should be able to be displayed in different formats/styles
Unlimited levels of hierarchy
Ability to limit hierarchy levels
Minimal SQL queries (avoid recursive queries)

What I've done
The table design:

menu( menu_id, name, depth );
menu_link( link_id, menu_id, type, ref_id, ref_key, name, location, parent, parent_type, parent_list, sequence)

type stores the type of link that's in the menu. Typically the class name of the module.
ref_id is the module's corresponding ID. (e.g. product_id, news_id, article_id, etc.)
ref_key is any key used by the module, this is optional, but I use it for better SEO and makes it easy to identify links when coding.
location is only typically used by what I call "external links".
parent is the link_id of parent link
parent_type is the link type of parent
parent_list is a full list of parent link_ids (helps determine location in hierarchy)
sequence is the order of the links

Right now, whenever I load a menu, I store it statically in an array like this

CODE

Array
(
[menu_name] => Array
(
[type:ref_id] => link object,
[type:ref_id] => link object,
[type:ref_id] => link object,
[type:ref_id] => link object
)
)

When I want to set one of the links as active, I just loop through the menus and find the node with the right type/LYN combination.
When I want to display the menu, I read it from the static list, parse it and create a tree.

Problems

When parsing the list to create a tree, I can't reference the static objects because it will affect the static list. If I don't create a reference, any changes to the status of the link in the list may not be passed on to where the menu is being displayed.
Tree parsing, what would the fastest and most reliable way to do it? Right now what I do is I loop the list once to first get the highest level of hierarchy, then look the same number of times as the level hierarchy. 1st creating the top level, then the sub level, then the sub-sub level. Is there a better way to do this?
Using a list of parents to determine depth has create a big of a problem for me. If I start a link from the 2nd hierarchy level, what is supposed to be "0" is now "2". The calculation is then messed up.

All in all, the design and code works... just not very elegantly.

The art of Romance

silverhawk — Sun, 24 May 2009 23:40:22 +0800

Before I begin, let me say that if you're entering this topic in hopes to find a step-by-step guide to do something romantic, I'm sorry you're in the wrong place. This topic is to discuss the idea of romance, and to build the proper mindset to create a romantic environment/event. You won't find short cuts here. So if you want to learn how to think romantically, then continue reading, if not, then don't continue hurting your eyes

What I'm about to write and share with you all, are my own opinions and believes on what constitutes romance for a woman and how a man should think to achieve it. I'm no expert, but I have learnt quite a lot and I'm still learning . Disagreements and discussion is most welcome, even if you just want to play Devil's Advocate. Lets help each other understand romance a bit more.

Romance isn't rational

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Expectations

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Be unique, be creative

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Intentions

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

I think that pretty much covers the essentials, now let the discussion begin!

Do 2 wrongs make a right?

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 07:30:00 +0800

Phone Jack keeps getting burnt

silverhawk — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 01:40:07 +0800

Hey guys

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, so move if it the proper place if one exists

The phone jack I use for my streamyx keeps burning up. I've changed the wall socket TWICE, and I've already used up 3-4 wires. It starts of brand new with nice shiny gold connectors, and within a few days it turns black. The line is still usable, but it can get VERY unstable. Its getting very annoying.

Anyone have any idea what may be causing this? I'm going to call an electrician to take a look, but I would like to be given some information prior, so at least I have an idea of the problem.