distcs

If you do not want to see articles like this on HN, you can always flag it to seek moderator attention.

The author aksh7i seems to be using HN purely for self promotion who posts self-help (and dare I say, offtopic) stuff like this. Their last post was flagged too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37963914 And in the first comment in that flagged article, they were made aware of their inappropriate and blatant self-promotional behavior:

> OP, every single one of your submissions is a blog post of your own, and every single one of your comments is a non sequitur on one of those submissions, apparently in an attempt to boost it. Get that kind of drivel off HN.

> Also, this particular article is nearly 100% insight-free, rehashed, productivity influencer pablum.

They choose to continue spamming HN regardless.

Thanks for the answer! I've got some more questions now. Sorry, but if anyone is willing to take a stab at these questions, it'd be helpful to me.

1. IIUC PE executables are Windows executables. So a Linux system that targets UEFI ends up writing a PE executable to the EFI System Partition?

2. I know that some UEFIs (or is it all?) support BIOS boot sector as backward compatibility feature? How does that work? If I write a "hello world" program in pure machine code in the 1st sector of the boot disk, would UEFI read that and execute that? How would it even know whether what's in the first sector is valid code or garbage? By checking the magic 0x55 0xaa at the end of the boot sector?

It's been a long time since I've done ASM but do I understand it right that this implementation compiles each function and then executes it immediately? Or does it really compile the whole source code and then execute the binary generated?

And where is the compiled binary saved? Is it kept temporarily in memory itself for immediate execution? Or is the compiled binary saved back to the disk?

If someone could point me to the right sections of the code that answer these questions, it'd be of great help! Thanks!

When we talk about these sector$LANG implementations, I am guessing we are talking about the boot sector that BIOS recognizes, right?

Does the 512 byte limit for a boot sector exist in UEFI too? I don't know much about UEFI so if someone could educate me about how the boot sector and its size limit differs in UEFI, I'd love to know.

> This is not a C compiler.

This is technically true! What is posted here is not a C compiler. It is an implementation of a subset of C.

I'd prefer that the title honestly mentions that like: A compiler for a subset of C that fits in the 512 byte boot sector.

It is still a remarkable feat. But honestly, when I read the original title I was in complete disbelief that someone could implement a whole C compiler in 512 bytes.

But with the new context that it is a subset of C (not the whole C), the initial great surprise is gone. It is still very impressive though.

Are there no other people who can work on the TeX and Metafont after Knuth? What if someone else wants to create bug fixes for these projects? How would they version TeX? Or do they have to fork TeX and have a new versioning system?

What a wonderful comment that so nicely describes probably what many of us experience. This is the kind of thoughtful and well written comments I come to HN for.

I wonder if there is any life hack or mind hack we could try to overcome this and dive into new complex projects with that child-like enthusiasm, energy and courage that you so well described!

Why are you literally spamming HN with your own posts?

Why hand over your browsing data to Google?

> idk what kind of legacy orgs people in this thread work for where there are Linux sysadmins working for their companies which directly manage server configs and security settings.

I don't know if you consider Amazon/AWS "legacy org". When I worked there I didn't think it was a legacy org. Yet they needed skilled Linux sysadmins. Sure they are called by fancy names like infrastructure engineer, production engineer, etc. but the work they did used core Linux kernel skills, scripting skills and programming skills, just to name a few of the skills.

A few years later I worked for another cloud provider and it was no different. I don't understand why you think only legacy orgs care about good system-administration skills.

That is totally fine. I was talking about people who CANNOT do a bash for/while loop. You are talking about people who CAN do a bash for/while loop but choose not to. We are talking about different types of people. I am comfortable with the latter type of people administrating my servers. I am not comfortable about the former.

Anyway, what has that got to do with my point though that sharing pictures on social media is not a meaningful comparison to make with something like administrating servers?

> I don’t understand why you think the fact that someone may choose to point and click to do something, a task which depending on the UI can be completely mindless and yet significantly safer eliminating any chance of making a mistake (by throwing in a typo for instance), does not know what a bash for/while loop is?

I don't think like that at all. Of course someone can know bash for/while loop and still choose to use a point-and-click tool to administrate their servers. Nothing wrong with that.

Not sure where in my message did I say that if someone chooses to point and click, then they don't know what a bash for/while loop is.

What I said in my comment was that if someone doesn't know what a bash for/while loop is, then I may be uncomfortable adminstrating my servers.

My point was to show that comparing adminstrating servers and sharing pictures on social media is not a useful comparison.

I have no problem viewing pictures shared by those who don't understand basic color blending and just want to swipe.

But I may have a problem with people who can't do a bash for/while loop or understand pipe chaining commands be responsible for administrating my company servers.

I don't see how the comparison between adminstrating servers and sharing pictures on social media is a useful comparison.

Honest question. Where you buy your clothes from? As much as I would like to buy clothes without logos, they are not easy to find where I live.

> if THEY CHOOSE to restrict themselves by requiring "pure" open source software only, thats THEIR fault, not mine.

It is nobody's fault. Just like nobody can force you to choose a "pure" open source license, nobody can force them to use your software. Just like you have the prerogative to choose whatever license you want, they have the prerogative to choose "pure" libre software. It's all fair and well and nobody is at fault for exercising their choices.

Most of the time though, the non-profits go for "pure" libre software because their legal team has already provided a blanket approval for all libre licenses. So it is less hassle for them to choose libre software available under these licenses. Choosing a noncommercial license would be more procedural hassle for them in terms of reviews, approvals, etc. Yeah it may sound stupid to not use otherwise perfectly good software due to a legal and procedural technicality, but I'm just saying how things are and not necessarily how things should be.

Even if we ignore the open source purists, restricting commercial usage still violates the popular libre software guidelines like FSD and DFSG:

* https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#fs-definition - FSD

* https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines - DFSG

It violates freedom 0 of FSD!

The problem with that is that a lot of non-profit organizations that do use libre software cannot use your software because it violates one of the fundamental requirements of libre software guidelines: No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor / The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0). So such software become automatically disqualified for non-profits that want to run themselves on libre software.

I know it is your software and you are totally entitled to release it under any license you want and make money off it. Nothing wrong with it. But I'm hoping you can see why this is a problem for those who want to use libre software who are also entitled to ignore your software and keep looking for something that is actually libre.

Didn't grow up with Apple 2, sadly! So I have to ask. The text in the OP is hard-wrapped to 40 characters. So did Apple 2 support 40 character width screen?

I open them in Emacs!

It has built-in support for reading PDFs!

But I don't see the post going into investigating this at all. Yes, most likely that is what is going on but I don't understand the point of the OP post is if the real reason of the difference in the branch predictor behavior is not explained.

I don't think I'd call "branch prediction" as "low level esoterica". It is a basic fact about how CPUs are implemented since many decades now. I learnt these things in my university coursework. Any module on CPU or computer system architecture is going to teach you all this stuff. But I'm sure you could learn these things from books on this topic too.

I know this is not going to make me an expert in Rust. That'll probably take 10 years. But this is just the kind of thing I was looking for to get started with Rust. Thanks for sharing it here.

Can someone help me understand this Wikipedia article section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan_programme#List_of_...

Check the row for Chandrayaan-2. Why does it say Unsuccessful landing but main mission success and extended missing ongoing?

What exactly are main mission and extended mission and how can they succeed or be ongoing when the landing has been unsuccessful?

> The Roomba’s Guidance System

> Date: 2002

> Established a new way for technology (and cats) to move in the physical world

> (define-behavior (bounce :start-when (or (bump?) bounce-trigger? ) :abort-when (bump-edge?) :onetime? t))

Does anyone closer to the source here know if Roomba is still written in Lisp?

Probably not enough people have flagged it as [dupe]?

This is a great perspective. I am not focus-challenged... at least I don't think I am, but your comment has been a revelation. I always had this nagging feeling about myself that I don't find myself fully immersed in the problem domain when working Go, Python, Rust like the way I feel while working with Lisp.

When I am programming in Lisp, I enter a sort of zen like state where my mind becomes one with the problem. Now don't get me wrong. I can write a lot of Go, Python, Rust, what have you on some days when I am working on a good problem and there are no meetings to distract me. On some days, I can do this for 6-10 hours straight with little breaks. So I don't think I have the ADHD problem that the parent or the OP is talking about.

But I still have this nagging feeling with other mainstream languages that their tooling, their ecosystem, the breaking dependencies, the "making the compiler happy", the stupid language restrictions and such things distract me from my problem domain.

But not so with Lisp. With Lisp, it's just me, the problem, the algorithms to solve it and the code. Nothing else. It is a feeling of hyperfocus (a word you so rightly chose). For some reason I cannot get into that state with other languages and I could never understand why.

Your comment is on to something here and this might very well explain the zen-like hyperfocus feeling of immersing fully into the problem domain I get with Lisp.

There is hardly any content on this post. What are we supposed to read? Just look at the title and rant about the first thing that comes to our minds?

> After all, most people copy&paste complex regexps rather than author their own.

They do? Somehow I have not seen this happening. But if this is really how software development is done these days, then it is highly irresponsible. Simply copy-pasting complex regexps without understanding what they do is ripe for disaster. Not to mention that every regex flavor has subtle differences from every other flavor. So at minimum the person copying has to understand it and adjust it for differences in flavors.

Life's Essential 8 from https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-lifestyle/li...

1. Eat Better (whole foods, lots of fruits and vegetables, lean protein, nuts, seeds, and cooking in non-tropical oils such as olive and canola)

2. Be More Active (2½ hours of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week)

3. Quit Tobacco

4. Get Healthy Sleep (7-9 hours of sleep each night)

5. Manage Weight (Optimal BMI is 25)

6. Control Cholesterol

7. Manage Blood Sugar

8. Manage Blood Pressure (Levels less than 120/80 mm Hg are optimal)

For the benefit of those who are unable to read due to the popup wall:

> The biggest risk factors are high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity, all of which can clog and damage the arteries and blood vessels that carry oxygen-rich blood to the heart.

> While some of these conditions may be genetic, more often they’re brought on by years of unhealthy habits like poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle that typically begin early in childhood

> COVID is known to activate inflammatory responses in the body and make blood thicker and stickier, Yang said, which can make infected people more susceptible to blood clots that can clog arteries and lead to heart attack. However, it’s still not clear why younger adults appear to be more vulnerable to COVID’s cardiovascular complications.

> The AHA recommends following “Life’s Essential 8”: key measures that, if practiced, can improve and maintain your cardiovascular health. These include a healthy diet, regular physical activity, no tobacco smoking, and sufficient sleep, as well as managing your weight, cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure.

Yeah. The title is clickbait and the post describes what every other binary protocol used to be like before JSON took over.

Honestly I can't see what the point of the post is. If you create a protocol that is optimized for bytes, you will get a protocol that is optimized for bytes. It's a trivial tautology.