Web Excursions 2021-12-28
Lessons from my PhD
Most of what I learned during my PhD had nothing to do with my dissertation topic, grad school, or even computer science.
Lead or be led
If you show up to a meeting/internship/job expecting to be told what to do,
then chances are someone will tell you something to do.
It might not be the best thing for you to be doing though.
Alternatively, if you show up to a meeting/internship/job with a convincing game plan,
then chances are people will get out of your way so you can go do it.
Sometimes they will even surprise you with the ways they can support you with it.
Topic sentences
After coming up with a rough outline for whatever you need to write, the next step is to write the topic sentences.
Write the first sentence of every paragraph you intend on having.
That is it. Don't write the paragraph bodies yet!
Now read the topic sentences.
Keep these topic sentences around.
Whenever you or a collaborator needs to skim the writing, they just need to read these bolded topic sentences to understand the story.
If you ever need to write a summary or abstract of something you have written using this process, you get the initial draft for free
Get excited
if you don't find a way to get yourself excited, then it is going to be painful and you probably won't do very well.
Unmotivated details
Before you explain something, you probably need to motivate it.
Why should this person care about what I'm going to tell them?
The ability to communicate a well articulated story is worth gold,
but it takes practice,
and unmotivated details are a sign that you don't have the story figured out.
Slides versus speaker
There are two main modes of presenting: the speaker leads and the slides assist OR the slide leads and the speaker assists.
You'll probably switch between these modes multiple times throughout any presentation.
You can't have both at once though
Another big tip: Prime the audience for what slide comes next. Do this by having a verbal segue for every slide.
A few more recommendations:
What you are saying should go with what is on the slide.
Always motivate what you are telling the audience. Unmotivated details will end anyone's attention.
Explain the axes of a graph.
If you have a complex figure, highlight where you want people to look or gray out where you don't want them to look.
You don't have to write full sentences on slides.
One idea per slide.
Managers as input/output machines
"advisors are input/output machines". You put into it your update and you get back feedback.
The meeting is for your benefit.
If all you say is "I'm still looking into that one thing" or "I'm stuck", then there is little to go off of.
A few suggestions for running update meetings with your advisor/manager:
Assume they forgot everything that was said last meeting.
Show up with things to talk about and a goal.
In 3-4 sentences, refresh everyone's memory about the last meeting and what you were supposed to accomplish since then.
In 4-6 sentences, summarize what you did, what worked, what didn't work, and what you think you should do next. Think of this as bullet points.
Avoid diving into details until you know everyone is on the same page and caught up.
If possible, show up with something tangible, like a visual aid, a demo, a draft, or at least some notes.
Daily progress tracking
Each day, I wrote down a few bullet points of what I did.
When I feel like I am stuck, it is motivating to look back and see the progress.
It makes it easy to update my resume/CV and to fill out performance reviews.
‘Widevine Dump”: Leaked Code Downloads HD Video from Disney+, Amazon, and Netflix
A GitHub user who goes by the name "Widevinedump" has published several repositories that allow people to download HD video from popular streaming platforms, including Disney+, Amazon, and Netflix. The code appears to be the real deal but the 'free' use is fairly limited and may not be very secure either.
While these leaks are a major blow to the streaming platforms, which do all they can to keep their content secure, the developer has another agenda. In addition to selling CDMs, the code was apparently leaked to “punish” some people on Discord, who we assume shared it privately.
“Hi! My name is WVDUMP. I am Leaking the CDM to burn it & punish few idiots that think themselves as dicord lords [sic],” the developer writes.
HN Cmts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29702110
arblegarble: The repo readme is pretty telling - this is being leaked to force this particular key to be blacklisted, I guess one group annoyed with others and wanting to cut off their access (and presumably the leaking group already has other L1 keys so doesn't fear this key being burned...)
etterunix2: There is something amusing about weaponizing the key revocation process like this...
atware: Everything about it is fascinating. These people all have day jobs yet they provide a better experience than the multi-trillion dollar corporations that are releasing the product in the first place.
lufers: Can we just stop the shitshow with DRM? I have NEVER encountered a TV show/movie that I could't rip using a torrent either on public p2p sites or a private tracker.
omxor:
Yeah, I don't know in what world DRM is supposed to stop people ripping stuff,
it only seems to hurt paying users, ultimately if it comes out of a screen you can always capture the output, no amount of DRM will ever prevent this so why bother <insert conspiracy vs Hanlon's razor theories here> .
The irony is that as a Linux user (only SD for us), and a user with poor internet and thus shitty streaming speed,
DRM pushes me towards torrenting everything I "buy" from these platforms anyway,
just for the privileged of being able to watch what i'm paying for without being a blurry over-compressed mess,
without having my device rooted by a third party, and not needing to be blessed with a consistent high speed internet connection.
Could GDPR policy erase your games? It happened to an Ubisoft customer | PCWorld
But by the summer of 2021, Tor decided to get back into gaming, so he purchased a new gaming PC, only to discover he was unable to log into his Ubisoft account. Tor told PCWorld he was able to reset the password, but eventually learned the account had been closed, taking several hundred dollars of purchased games with it. All Ubisoft titles from Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege series to Assassins’ Creed and more were gone. But none of the other services he uses had been cut off. Only Ubisoft disappeared, he said.
Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of games for inactivity | Hacker News
tdrdt: I think one simple legislation could help a lot: forbid to use the word 'buy' in this context. Instead it should be 'hire' or 'lease' or something.
squeaky-clean: I think the reasoning for changing the verbiage from "buy" to something more truthful is because most people don't even know this is a thing. Outside of hacker news and gaming subreddits, how many people are actually aware that digital video games they've "bought" can easily be revoked? I don't believe the average person is aware.
3np:
Words do go a long way and can make the distinction clear for potential customers.
As an example, in Sweden, a country with historically strong consumer-protection regulation, you are not allowed to market something as "gratis" (free) if you need to pay to receive it.
You can say something is "included" or "receive X without additional cost when buying Y",
but free needs to be truly free of cost.
You are also not allowed to say "the [best/fastest/strongest]" etc without pointing to an independent party backing it up.
Carlsberg gets around this with "probably the best beer in the world", for example.
They would not be allowed to drop the "probably",
and it would take more than some random magazine or website to address that.