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BirAdam

4,511 karma · joined January 19, 2022

Just a nerd. I like to tinker with Linux/UNIX, and I write computing history. Also, lots of coffee, cigars, books.

https://www.abortretry.fail

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BirAdam··on A Modern Web App in C
Languages aren't magic bullets.

New code bases tend to be less secure than old ones regardless of language.

PHP having a security vulnerability related to uploads isn't too shocking and it isn't a sign that C is unsuitable for language implementation. Are you willing to say the same of every other language implemented in C? Are you willing to toss out your OS?

While a safer tool is often a better tool, there are occasions in which the more hazardous tool is the correct tool for the job. If a person is cutting some flooring he/she will probably want to use a miter saw, but for some cuts, a jigsaw is more appropriate. For some applications, Ada, Rust, or Python may be appropriate, but in some situations, a developer needs to reach for ASM or C.

BirAdam··on Eight Bits of Trust: eMudhra's CA keys cracked in milliseconds
or, perhaps you need more so that one being stupid doesn't effect so much.
BirAdam··on Wayland desktop for Linux with skeuomorphic design
EFL is super lightweight, but it also offers more than does GTK. It'd be a complex rewrite.
BirAdam··on Wayland desktop for Linux with skeuomorphic design
Nope. Throw a Southern US accent on "get"

"I needda git it from the repo"

BirAdam··on Woman who rescued injured crow keeps getting 'thank-you gifts' from birds [video]
I remember having read that bees have a higher neuronal density than birds, and birds more than apes.
BirAdam··on Woman who rescued injured crow keeps getting 'thank-you gifts' from birds [video]
Owls don't really have to be smart. They just need to be quick, ferocious, and murderous. Evolution only selects for intelligence when necessary as it's metabolically expensive.
BirAdam··on Why are we even doing all this?
So, would most people, and this would mean that very little housing would be built, very little health care provided, and very little food grown or harvested.
BirAdam··on A Modern Web App in C
Code that has been tested and hardened for years? Code that is now being audited and patched quickly with the help of LLMs? Why would I worry more about such a code base than something new and not time tested?
BirAdam··on A Modern Web App in C
It's essentially a guarantee.

Linux is C.

Windows is C and C++.

macOS is C, ObjC, and C++.

BirAdam··on Ask HN: Do you want a router that has DD-WRT pre-installed?
Yeah, I have several GL.iNet routers with OpenWRT preinstalled.

By default, it runs a custom shell, but Luci is easy enough to switch to.

BirAdam··on A Modern Web App in C
fastcgi wrap.
BirAdam··on Apple/macOS removed from official Unix registry
Tahoe:

https://www.opengroup.org//openbrand/register/xy.htm

I imagine that the cert will be listed for Golden Gate soon.

BirAdam··on A third way of using Linux
Isn’t that what resolution aware ttys and screen accomplish?
BirAdam··on Apple and a Hacker's Future
Well, you don't even really need symlinks. You can just adjust the order of locations in $PATH
BirAdam··on You are no longer invited to dinner
As an introvert who grew up in a radically extroverted household, forcing oneself to be an extrovert all the time can be psychologically damaging over time.

It's also a source of chronic fatigue.

BirAdam··on 12,000-year-old Göbeklitepe burials explain scattered bones
Currently, while not a majority of cultures buried people under their homes, it was common enough.

Çatalhöyük

Non-royal Sumer and Babylon

Poorer Mayans (from what can be found, there's much of the ancient Maya unexplored)

The LoWiili culture and some other West African cultures

The Tikopia until the arrival of Christianity

Some neolithic sites in Europe, but not believed to have been too common there

BirAdam··on I am done with this shit
The difference is that some companies expect people to push back on dumb stuff.
BirAdam··on What Sun got wrong
Yeah, 1993 is when things really took off. First SLS, then Slackware, and using Slackware as the build environment: Debian.

You also had SuSE, which really started as German-localized Slackware.

BirAdam··on What Sun got wrong
IaC is really just declarative shell scripts. It's a different language, but it's often just kicked off by some bash in a git action.

Once you have git and actions, I don't think that the language really matters all that much.

BirAdam··on Leaving Linux
Yeah, when CentOS got eaten, moved to AlmaLinux. No complaints. It works. I also use Slackware. Nice and boring. Compared to macOS on my MacStudio… exceedingly boring and stable.
BirAdam··on IKEA made a mod for Skyrim [video]
https://archive.org/details/mrpibbthe3dinteractivegame
BirAdam··on I think I hate the internet
It isn't so much that lead, asbestos, and radium were cheaper, but more that the risk assessment from lenders and insurers made it nearly impossible to use any known hazardous material in any way whatever within a residential building.
BirAdam··on Nike exits the S&P 100 after 18 years and a $200B market-cap wipeout
I had the same experience with a pair of Nike Zoomfly Air. Bought in 2020, and they'd fallen apart by 2024 with extremely light use thanks to COVID and WfH. It was quite disappointing given the cost, and they had been quite comfortable shoes. Lately, I wear Brooks.
BirAdam··on Who Aligns the Aligners?
The US government is only the longest continuous democracy only if one believes that the US is still a democracy. I've read some decent arguments that the US stopped being a democracy with the McKinley administration, and others that the US ceased to be a functional democracy during the Second World War. In both cases, the claim was that the USA became an imperial oligarchy.

It is questionable whether any democracy truly exists at this point as I've seen no nation where the will of the people is typically manifested in the actions of the state.

BirAdam··on Who Aligns the Aligners?
This is quite illustrative. Warnings of a nuclear apocalypse were extremely widespread, known, and feared. The consequences were, indeed, so well known that the world was saved from the worst possible outcomes in the past by regular enlisted men and women who realized that not all instrument readings should be trusted due to the potential cost of acting on such readings alone. Given the Turkey Illusion, we would be wrong to trust the status quo in either the nuclear scenario or the AI scenario.
BirAdam··on Who Aligns the Aligners?
This isn't a new question: quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

In general, the way things work in the USA is that megacorporations write the regulatory frameworks for their own industries. These regulations are typically burdensome enough to be shouldered by the megacorporations while crushing the smaller players in the given market(s). The AI companies are now advocating for this very arrangement. They will likely get they want, and with that they will gain legal shielding for bad behavior just like Dupont, Monsanto, and so many others.

BirAdam··on IKEA made a mod for Skyrim [video]
There was also the Mr Pibb game.
BirAdam··on I think I hate the internet
I am old enough to remember the world before the web rather clearly. There are tradeoffs, but on balance, I do believe the world is better now than it was.

There has been a massive disintermediation of information, it's cheaper and easier to start and run a business, it's cheaper and easier to do accounting and taxes, it's cheaper and easier to find the exact products for which one is searching, and communication is cheaper and easier.

In general, more people have more ability, greater abundance, and a higher quality of life. Are there downsides, absolutely. There are tradeoffs for every advancement. Housing is unaffordable for many, but it is also no longer laden with lead, asbestos, or radium. For the internet, while it has been used to create addictive usage patterns, surveillance, and radicalization, it has also fostered the creation of communities, life saving interventions, cost reductions that have meaningful impacts on daily human lives, and far better optimized supply chains.

BirAdam··on The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
Buddhists and Catholics also hold interfaith dialogues.
BirAdam··on The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
If by “America” you mean Meso and South America, sure. The USA, however, was Protestant, not Catholic.
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