HackerNews Summary (2023-04-26 11AM)

Source: Interpretation of objective video quality metrics

Summary
Objective metrics such as PSNR, SSIM, and VMAF are widely used to measure video quality on different devices. In order to minimize data loss and lower quality, video quality control tools are used during the various stages of transcoding. However, only using objective metrics can make it complicated to interpret the results, which is why a qualitative interpretation of the quantitative values of metrics is necessary.

Fact

📈 Objective metrics such as PSNR, SSIM, and VMAF are widely used to measure video quality on different devices.

🎥 Video quality control tools are used during the various stages of transcoding to minimize data loss and lower quality.

🤔 Only using objective metrics can make it complicated to interpret the results, which is why a qualitative interpretation of the quantitative values of metrics is necessary.

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Source: Database branching: three-way merge for schema changes

Summary
PlanetScale offers three-way merge for schema branches, allowing for simpler and safer collaboration on schema changes. Developers branch the main database, work on their copies of the schema without affecting production, and create deploy requests that are reviewed before being deployed.

Fact

🛡️ PlanetScale uses three-way merge for schema changes to determine whether branches slated to be merged conflict with one another, overlap one another, or are completely unrelated and have no impact on one another.

📝 PlanetScale presents a semantic diff of the changes made between the production branch and the developer’s branch using Vitess’s schemadiff library.

💻 PlanetScale uses a declarative approach to schema changes, examining the schema and computing the diff in the branch once the developer creates a deploy request, using SQL statements that would get main to look like the branch.

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Source: Bringing Memory Safety to sudo and su

Summary
Prossimo project, which aims to create safer software on network boundaries, is investing in implementing the widely-used and critical function sudo and su utilities in Rust to address the memory safety issues caused by C language. Ferrous Systems and Tweede Golf joint teams with Amazon Web Service’s support are working on this project.

Facts

🔒 Sudo and su are critical utilities for making changes to an operating system with minimum risk, but the vulnerabilities caused by memory safety issues, in sudo, have increased due to its C language.

🦀 The widely-used, important and memory-unsafe C language based sudo & su will be implemented in Rust, a safer programming language for performance-critical systems.

💼 Support from AWS and joint teams of Ferrous Systems and Tweede Golf are working on the project.

💰 ISRG, a nonprofit organization dependent on donations, is supporting the work.

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Source: Why is OAuth still hard in 2023?

Summary
Implementing OAuth for any API is not as easy as it seems, as every API has its own interpretation of the standard, implementation quirks, and nonstandard behaviors and extensions. The OAuth standard is complex and overwhelming, with 17 different documents defining how OAuth 2 works. Most teams building public APIs only implement the parts of OAuth they think they need for their API’s use case.

Facts

🤔 OAuth 2.0 is a big standard, with 17 different documents defining how it works.

🤯 There are 72 official OAuth parameters with a defined meaning and behavior.

👀 Most teams building public APIs only implement a subset of OAuth 2.0, rather than the full standard.

📚 If an API provider were to implement the full standard, consumers would have to read a small book!

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