remembering PG's "lisp would have stopped 9/11" essay from September 2001

I hate hate hate this so much. This is precisely the kind of smug, reductionist, dunning-kruger, every-problem-is-a-nail-and-programming-is-my-hammer type of shit that fuels my hatred of not only TESCREAL but pretty much everyone I meet in STEM.

I wonder how much of the coder mindset is behind the anarchist diy chemistry biohacking people (which seems to distress people who have actual experience in chemistry).
- these people are full of shit. sofosbuvir contains single fluorine atom in such a place that its introduction requires either hydrogen fluoride (also as NEt3.3HF) or DAST (or other very friendly reagents like Xtalfluor-E) and even then, synthesis sucks balls as in has low-to-medium yield (15-50%) and requires extensive purification. you do not, under any circumstances, fuck around with hydrogen fluoride in your garage
  
  relevant patent https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/051842422/publication/WO2016066283A1?q=pn%3DWO2016066283 first few pages for literature review, around 97-102 for procedures. these sub-50% yields are already heavily optimized
- When I think of diy bio hacking I think of "The Thought Emporium", thankfully he knows his stuff is not suitable for the public.

I have found a way to solve world hunger with a fork bomb

I also had some extremely cringeworthy and not-even-wrong opinions 23 years ago, but at least I was 3yo then.

I maintain that we should all aspire to be a firetruck when we grow up.
- I wanted to be a train.

can't decide if it's soothing or infuriating to learn/realize that, despite insane wealth causing him to get billionairebrain, he's also always been quite the dim fuckwit

That's just being good at programming
- wut

Yea a plane hijacking is totally like a buffer overflow.

Bleeding is also a bit like a buffer overflow, since blood goes in a place it's not supposed to. Hurricanes are another example of a buffer overflow. Accidentally wearing a shirt inside out? Buffer overflow. Unskippable ads are buffer overflow. War is buffer overflow. I had my buffer overflown by some guy claiming to be a wallet inspector. Aliens are a type of buffer overflow. I sometimes have buffer overflow with my girlfriend. Buffer overflow was an inside job. I put too much shine paste in my polishing machine and you better believe that was a buffer overflow.

When a train crashes into a station building, that's not a buffer overflow, though. That's a buffer overrun.

You can totally hack a plane using a buffer overflow. C airlines don't check how many tickets they sell on a single flight. Usually if you overbook a flight, they will simply reallocate some of their buffer into business class. However, if you buy a bunch of tickets to one flight at once, you can craft a scenario where you overwrite the pilot.
- Nope, actually this used to work but the genius computer scientists at Boeing put the cockpit in a random place around the cabin, thwarting most pilot overwrite attacks.

This was so stupid.

A hijacking happens when passengers overflow into the cockpit from the cabin.

Oh no! A little kid has been invited to have a look! Passenger overflow! Hijacking!

His attempt at solution isn't as cringe worthy, if one overlooks the reasoning. Separating the cabin from the pilots is a way of preventing hijacking that has been attempted, but it has problems. Notably if the pilots get acute medical emergency or indeed if the pilot steer the plane into the ground.

Some ten years ago a french pilot locked out his second and ran the plane into the ground. For increased safety the after 911 the door to the cabin could only be opened from the inside.

@mountainriver Also of note: the Helios Airways Flight 522 disaster. (Loaded 737 crashed, everybody killed … because of a locked cockpit door: plane depressurized and pilots' oxygen failed, cabin crew—inc. a pilot—were unable to gain cockpit access in time to save the plane before it ran out of fuel and crashed.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522
- JFC that's a horrifying story
- because of a locked cockpit door
  
  Door wasn't locked and had nothing to do with the crash. In fact a flight attendant managed to get into the cockpit and turn the plane from a populated part of Athens, likely saving lives shortly before it fully crashed
  
  The plane simply never pressurized and literally as the co-pilot realized what was happening hypoxia took them and the captain, all because a switch could turn pressurization into a manual override and there was no warning before takeoff that it was that way
Did you mean the Germanwings crash from 2015? or is it a different incident?
- That's the one, thank you.
  
  German pilot, and crash in France, not French pilot. Second pilot locking out the captain, not the other way around. Otherwise my memory seem to have served.
A lot of hijackings don't even fucking involve passengers getting into the cockpit. DB Cooper never got into the cockpit.

What the hell.

I would like to think I'm a decent developer. I know what I'm talking about when it comes to code.

I do not know what I'm talking about in other fields. So I don't speak like I know what I'm talking about there.

Hopefully PG learned this skill in the last 20 or so years.

Prff typical manager mindset here.
Hopefully PG learned this skill in the last 20 or so years.

it's pretty clear he hasn't
Hopefully PG learned this skill in the last 20 or so years.

LOL.

LMAO.

I hope this was sarcastic.
As the old saying goes, hope in one hand, Lisp in the other.

If you try it, I personally hope you've got a damned good garbage collector...
@i_dont_want_to @dgerard have you bumped your head?

what came first, lisp programmers or door locks? we may never know

I think it probably comes down to which one is more likely to be touched by another human.