If Mullenweg attempts to fire the board that just suspended him, he would be weaponizing proxy votes against the very investors who originally granted them. While founder proxies are often structured to be irrevocable, using them to purge the board would almost certainly trigger a massive legal battle, attempts by investors to breach or revoke the proxy agreements, and severe financial instability for the company.
While he technically holds the votes required to disband the board, executing that move would ignite a corporate civil war rather than a clean transition of power.
> While he technically holds the votes required to disband the board
This is very unlikely. True Ventures almost certainly controls at least one seat. (Until Phil Black left last year they actually held two seats, but that doesn't mean they had the right to. Either way, at the moment it's just Toni Schneider.)
I agree, but there's still a big "Why now?" question in my head. I suspect the board knows of something even more spectacularly stupid he's about to do.
There is a hearing on Sep 30 as part of the WPE vs Automattic/WP trial where they will decide of Matt allegedly destroyed evidence. Matt apparently had automatic deleting messages enabled on his platforms, even throughout the period where they were supposed to be preserving it. His side said it was due to his "romantic partners", but his lawyers argued during the whole time everything had been preserved when it appears it wasn't. So the result of that hearing may came with a pretty big bill attached to it for all the legal time that was wasted for the other side, as well as instructions for the jury etc to assume the evidence was all harmful. So the timing might be related to that.
I wonder why C and C++ are usually regarded as equally insecure. In C you need to carefully check that you free allocated memory, and that you don't use it after you free it. In C++ this is automated by using classes like std::string and std::vector, once they go out of scope their memory is freed and you can't use it anymore. It is still possible, e.g. by using a for loop that iterates over a vector, and removing or adding stuff to that same vector in that loop. But my rough estimate is that such errors are at least ten times less likely in C++.
I develop in C++ for a job, and when I need to use a library written in C I always have a bad feeling about it.
> I wonder why C and C++ are usually regarded as equally insecure.
They aren't, usually.
C++ has all the C problems, and multiples more on top of those. It's a broad attack surface - literally no one is going to claim to be proficient in every single C++ feature available to their compiler. It's also quite opaque to visual inspection (making double-checking with an LLM difficult as it needs whole-program reasoning instead of localised reasoning).
One of those languages is one of the most complex programming languages ever invented, with the largest breadth of features, any of which may interact with any other feature in subtle ways.
The other is one of the most minimalistic languages created, with a dev able to keep the language standard in their head for the most part.
I disagree, the minimalism of C results in writing overly complex code to solve simple problems. Things like type punning and bit hacks are common place in C.
The end result is equivalent C code is much more complex than C++. For example, you need to remember to call free every time, forever, in every function. In C++ you just use unique ptr or shared ptr and you’re done. It’s a simpler model, enabled by the more complex feature of RAII.
Something like std::vector isn’t hard to write in C, it’s impossible. The language semantics don’t allow it. So you have to do hacks and remember to free, over and over again forever. It only takes just one time forgetting, and that’s a memory bug.
I mean, consider a large codebase. How many free calls does C++ eliminate altogether? Thousands, maybe tens of thousands? You just need to forget one of those in C, or even just put it in the wrong place.
And that’s just one class of things. Generics are much more complex in C, too. The type system in C is more complex IMO because it can be so easily defeated at every turn. C gives you practically no guarantees, no tools, for anything. The result is you are forced to write extremely defensive code everywhere, complex code.
The analogy I use is to physical tools. A screwdriver is simple, but building a house with only a screwdriver is complex. A suite of power tools is complex, but building a house with them is simple.
> The analogy I use is to physical tools. A screwdriver is simple, but building a house with only a screwdriver is complex. A suite of power tools is complex, but building a house with them is simple.
The analogy I prefer is that it's safer to ride a bike down to the store than flying a space shuttle down to the store.
The absolute danger of a space shuttle is much greater than a bike. But the absolute danger of C++ versus C is… equivalent. All the suspicious memory things you can do in C++, you can do in C. In fact, with a couple more added in C (type punning via unions, for instance, is not standards compliant in C++, there are casts for that).
That’s not to say C++ is a good language. It’s a rotten, no good evil language. And the same things apply to C# versus C++.
A garbage collector is much, much more complex than reference counting and RAII, particularly the CLR GC which is a beast. But the extra complexity makes applications simpler, not more complex.
> The absolute danger of a space shuttle is much greater than a bike. But the absolute danger of C++ versus C is… equivalent.
Okay, let's pretend, for the sake of this conversation, that the absolute danger in the event of failure for both the bike and the space shuttle are exactly the same.
My analogy still holds in this hypothetical case: the odds of a failure operating a space shuttle is much much larger than the odds of a failure when operating a bicycle. Using C++ is a much larger cognitive load than using C, same as launching and piloting a space shuttle is a much larger cognitive load than riding a bicycle.
It doesn't matter that the space shuttle has hundreds, if not thousands, of safeguards built into both the vehicle and the process, while the bicycle doesn't have so much as a seatbelt; the bicycle is still safer to operate because of the lower cognitive burden.
There are simply more rules to remember in C++ to ensure that you don't get exploited than in C. Ask the average working C++ devs about the danger between virtual vs concrete destructors in derived classes and half of them won't know what you mean. Ask about putting objects into a std vector, and maybe half of them will remember the surprise they felt when it first broke (because it worked until that point).
C++ provides global ways of avoiding footguns, but those global ways are not easily inspectable in the local scope. The problem is the sheer number of C++ footguns is simply overwhelming[1]. There's a handful of C footguns to commit to memory (signed overflows, used-after-free, etc), and they're all visually inspectable in the local scope.
When I need to a language better than C, I don't reach for C++.
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[1] Even world-renowned C++ superstars with decades under their belt can't come back to it after a mere 2 years. You don't see that with C.
I’m not an American. Those not American are frankly gobsmacked that U.S. citizens voted the current President in a second time. You all literally saw what he did in his first term!
> You all literally saw what he did in his first term!
False, unfortunately. Disparate news outlets covered events very differently and folks watching pro-Trump outlets (or only listening to friends who do) through the first term were under the impression that he did an excellent job. They may even still believe that the 2020 election was actually stolen. Heck, there are depositions this year while vetting appointees who refuse to admit (despite all available evidence) that the 2020 election was valid.
I live in California and even though Trump lost here he still got 1/4 to 1/2 the vote even in the coastal areas so a lot of people one might work with support Trump - there’s always an undercurrent of racist dog whistles in GOP campaigns that with Trump became daily broadcasts on social media and conservative news sources - these MAGA hear it and believe in that and the ones I’ve talked to are like cultists - they won’t believe any other evidence to the contrary and they like the simple message and the messenger - others are to blame and he can fix it.
“ As President Trump publicly declared last week that he was "sending an armada" to the Sea of Japan in an attempt to send a message to North Korea, the carrier group was actually sailing thousands of miles in the other direction to war game with the Australian Navy, per the NYT, which reported that the mixup was due to "a glitch-ridden sequence of events."”
What’s funny is he started an UNE essay war with Iran, strengthened the Iranian regime and gave them a guaranteed income source from a toll Trump can’t get rid of. And this is your argument? You’re funny.
Green names posting inflammatory shit deserve to be flagged in the age of bots.
At least build up some reputation before dropping hot takes. It’s not like this is Reddit where you’re stuck in a catch 22 of not participating in a lot of serious subreddits without a level of karma already, which can only be gained by engaging with the unserious bits.
LOL - I remember saying this would not be something that could be policed, and a bunch of my fellow countrymen tut-tutting at me saying things like “it’s the thought that counts”, etc.
Now it’s gone underground and it’s worse than ever. Meantime, there are kids in high schools across the nation who can’t watch World War II documentaries on Youtube because that’s considered “restricted content”.
The law basically said these companies have to have reasonable measures. They could make a dent if they actually required age verification. But people think it's some civil rights violation like you have some fundamental right to use social media.
Also it's not underground. Kids aren't allowed to create accounts and just lie about their age. Below 13yo did that before as that's the min she already.
Best ban them at the DNS level if you want to get into it.
And not by age.
Edit: any rule/law has ways around it. It’s the intent of the law that matters, and I do not think the sentiment in the community that made it possible is worried about your LOL.
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