@prologic@twtxt.net Or maybe people do have a good intuitive understanding of complexity and they’re just way too overconfident all the time. 🤔 Is that what you’re getting at? That the “complexity budget” could be a good tool to break this behavior? 🤔
@prologic@twtxt.net Hmm, yeah, hmm, I’m not sure. 😅 It all appears very subjective to me. Is 2k lines of code a lot or not?
I mean, I’m all for reducing complexity. 😅 I just have a hard time defining it and arguing about it. What I call “too complex”, others might think of as “just fine”. 🤔
When we think of “complexity” in terms of software and software development, we have a sort-of intuitive about this right? We know when software has become too complex.
Honestly, I don’t think so. This is highly subjective. I guess it mostly depends on whether a person currently understands a particular program or not. I’ve seen this happen many times: Somebody writes code, they love it, they think it’s great and elegant and simple. As soon as that person stays away from the code for some time and forgets about all the intricate details, they start ranting about how horrible it is. 😂
Maybe this could be a measure of simplicity/complexity: How long does it take a new person who joins the team until they understand the program? (This obviously depends on the individual skills, so this has to be averaged over many people …) 🤔
@prologic@twtxt.net With the intensity of the cheering maybe. 😂
The lag is pretty much exactly 30 seconds from the point where I see the goal in the TV until the neighbors go “WWWWWWWHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” 😂
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org … exactly. %)
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Heh, that’s a good idea. 😂 I just use it to dispose of any kind of “sensitive” document. I don’t want the crazy people to rummage through my garbage. 😏😆
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Whoops. Wasn’t aware of this, either. 🤔 I don’t see this being used much, either. Most just define their own set of codes. 🤔
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Aktenvernichter is almost as violent as Reißwolf, yeah. 😅 I just call these things Schredder. (Very useful, btw. I love mine and use it quite often. 😅)
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Well, it’s one of those cases where you keep thinking “god dammit, how hard can it be?!” 😂 Quite hard, apparently, but I didn’t know that when I started. 😂
Always makes me giggle a bit like an idiot when I see OS/2’s equivalent of the “trash” or “recycle bin”. The English original calls it “shredder” (which is appropriate – it deletes files, there is no delay like in Windows 95’s “recycle bin”) …
… but the German word for it is “Reißwolf”. That used to be a more or less common term, but nowadays it’s quite archaic. And it sounds needlessly violent. 😂🐺
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yeah, it’s really, really annoying. 😂
I would have loved to transfer the contents of one particular hard drive onto a Compact Flash card, doing a 1:1 copy using dd – but that just won’t work. The card has a different CHS geometry than the HDD. I actually spent a couple of days trying to work around this: Reading/understanding/reverse-engineering OS/2’s boot loader code and trying to fix the incorrect bytes. It does indeed boot now and I learned a lot. QEMU is quite powerful and allows you to attach a gdb process to the machine, so you can single-step the instructions, read memory, and what not. But fdisk still shows errors, so I don’t trust it … Maybe writing to a particular area of the filesystem will crash the whole thing. 🫤
It’s a strange hobby that I picked there. 😂
One of the important lessons:
I like to put as little strain as possible on the floppy disks that I have, especially when installing operating systems. I thus like to prepare disk images on my modern Linux box in QEMU (where I can use floppy images instead of actual disks) and then transfer them over to my real retro box.
Older operating systems like OS/2 make extensive use of CHS addressing and even store some of this information in the HPFS filesystem header. CHS info spreads all over the place. So, simply creating a QEMU disk image, installing something and then copying to another drive probably won’t work, because QEMU guesses some CHS geometry that won’t necessarily match that of the target drive.
The solution is to a) create a QEMU disk image of the exact same size (in bytes) as the intended target drive, b) configure a matching CHS geometry in QEMU. The latter can be done like so:
-drive file=warp3.raw,if=none,id=disk1,format=raw
-device ide-hd,drive=disk1,cyls=495,heads=16,secs=32,bios-chs-trans=none
How do you know the correct CHS geometry? Ask the BIOS of the target machine.
And then be very thankful that we don’t have to deal with this anymore today. 😂
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Ha! Nice, glad to hear that. 😊
Aaaaaand finished again. 😢
I have mixed feelings about this show. On the one hand, it’s rather mediocre, to be honest. I can’t stand some of the characters/actors. Then again, the soundtrack is absolutely brilliant and the overall atmosphere is pretty great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2xxizpHuoo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f_gfOrhV2k
So basically it seems that Cloudflare has enough data that they can do machine learning to figure out whether the traffic behavior and patterns of bots even ones that fake their identity are really bots or not right?
That would be quite ironic. Using “AI” to fight “AI”, huh? 🤪
(I haven’t read the article in depth, because I don’t use Cloudflare.)
There’s something special about writing your own programs for OS/2 in C and finally getting it to work after sifting through lots of ancient docs. ✨
I’d be totally lost without KO Myung-Hun’s website and Open Watcom v2. 🙏
(I’m making a little tool to dump floppy disks to image files. I know these programs already exist – I’m doing it for fun and to learn. The task itself is not complicated, but finding the correct docs is.)
@bender@twtxt.net I actually thought about using Assembler (for a split second). 😅 I’m probably too lazy for that, though, so much to type. 😂 But maybe I’ll throw it in the mix. Some of the early puzzles should be doable. 🤔
@bender@twtxt.net It is. Does that matter? 😅 I’m looking forward to it, it has become somewhat of a tradition by now. 🥳
I needed to create a ZIP file under OS/2 2.1 and what’s the easiest™ way to do that?
Use WinZip under WIN-OS/2. 🤦
I know there are native ZIP programs for OS/2, but WinZip is what I was having readily available, and that basically sums up much of OS/2’s history. 🥴
Thinking about what to do for the next Advent of Code. 🤔
Writing the solutions as DOS programs in C was super fun last year and I don’t think I can top that. 💾
Something in the realm of retrocomputing would be nice. I wonder how far I can get using QuickBASIC 4.5. Haven’t touched this in ages – but I have a feeling that this could be rather painful. 😂
Or maybe I’ll just go for Rust again, because I’m not using that a lot and keeping up with it could be useful. Or maybe a mix of both, “as many puzzles as possible with QB 4.5, Rust for the rest”. 🤔
@bender@twtxt.net Nope! Thank you very much. Nope! 😂
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Indeed. Quite a lot of rain lately, but I don’t mind that. 👌
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org You didn’t?! Wow, I could have sworn I saw several storms in your area in the storm tracker. Guess I was wrong. 😅
Sometimes I come across a file that still uses tabs for indentation and then I find out that I haven’t touched that thing for over a decade. Boom, time flies. 😳
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yeah, the audio isn’t all too great. 😂
I’m rewatching the talk just now. My main point is still standing: Linux probably has all these features as well, but look at the slides at minute 19:30 and 19:35, pledge and unveil are really easy to use. He didn’t even shorten the code:
https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/usr.bin/nc/netcat.c#L364-L418
unveil this, unveil that, pledge this, pledge that, done. Such a simple, concise, and yet powerful API. You don’t see that very often.
@prologic@twtxt.net Nothing but the truth! 😅
@mckinley@mckinley.cc Could have happened to me as well. 🥴 I only updated just now, so I knew what was coming. 😅 (I don’t run any Linux boxes with SSH available on a public interface.)
@prologic@twtxt.net First, yes, Linux has many features in that area and that’s not a great situation as it complicates everything. 🫤
The two key advantages of landlock (or pledge/unveil) would be: a) Much easier to use / more lightweight, b) usable by non-root users.
Been a while since I watched it, I think this talk by one of the OpenBSD devs was pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvmGfpMgny4
Well, today was a productive day.
- ✅ Laundry.
- ✅ Dishes.
- ✅ Killed the alien queen in Duke 3D.
- ✅ Taxes.
@prologic@twtxt.net It’s a way for a process to lock itself down.
One common pattern would be this: Early during startup, a process reads some configuration files. Once done, it can lock itself down and tell the kernel that it won’t need any further filesystem access at all (or only access to certain paths). If the process gets hacked later on, the attacker won’t be able to read files.
As I understand it, this is better than static restrictions like AppArmor and the likes, because those apply to the entire lifespan of the process.
And it’s much easier to use than something like chroot. OpenBSD’s pledge and unveil are particularly easy to use, making it feasible to use them in almost any program (not just the ones that you might consider “security critical”):
Even something like cal (that thing that prints a calendar) uses pledge in OpenBSD: https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/usr.bin/cal/cal.c#L153
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org That … that sounds just horrible. 😂
How have I missed Linux’s landlock? 🤔 Maybe we’ll get something like OpenBSD’s pledge/unveil some day. For now, landlock appears to be more complicated, but we’ll see how it goes. Gotta play with this some time. 🤔
What a night. The first storm cluster passed us in about 25km distance.
The second one hit us right in the face. The sky was constantly flashing and there was a continuous rumble, not individual thunder. (You can’t really hear it in the video, I was too close to the window …)
https://movq.de/v/e949ae6403/MVI_7687.MOV.mp4
Most of the lightning was inside the clouds, apparently.
https://movq.de/v/e949ae6403/IMG_7648.JPG
No water damage this time, luckily.
That heat is driving me crazy. Do I have a fever? Is everything ok? Feels like my head is on fire. 🥵
@prologic@twtxt.net It’s a slippery slope, to be honest. If you believe that kind of shit, you’re going to believe anything. It’s no surprise that flat earthers and, say, esotericism and right wing idiots mix so well. 🫤
@prologic@twtxt.net Don’t you make it sound like that’s a legitimate thing to believe … 😂
^C to copy it (it’s called the CLIPBOARD selection). They have intentionally not included the PRIMARY selection of X11 where you can just select some text to copy it and use the middle-mouse button to paste it.
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yeah, it’s super handy, right? Especially when copying text between terminals.
It looks like this protocol has been sitting in “unstable” for at least 5 years now:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/tree/main/unstable/primary-selection
Some months ago, they tried to move it (and others) to “staging”:
And that’s where it is now.
I’m not sure what “unstable” actually means in this context, nor “staging”/“stable”. Is there someone actively working on this? How bad is it really if it just sits in “unstable” for years? What are the consequences of a move to “stable” – do clients need to be updated to request the new version? 🤔
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Phew! 😅
It was just moist walls, luckily. Never happened before, as far as I can tell. Still, it’s a little disconcerting, yeah. 😅
^C to copy it (it’s called the CLIPBOARD selection). They have intentionally not included the PRIMARY selection of X11 where you can just select some text to copy it and use the middle-mouse button to paste it.
(I’m not necessarily trying to rant against Wayland, btw. I just started using it more often lately, so I’m noticing more of the quirks. And I’m noticing all the little things that X11 did and that I used, and that now work differently on Wayland or not at all. Just trying to make sense of all of this and writing it down helps.)
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Bah. 🫤 Well, fingers crossed. (It’s only going to get worse every year, though …)
I had some water in my apartment, too, last week. Different situation, it’s a tower building and I’m far away from ground level. We checked afterwards but we have no idea how that water got in. It was a heavy thunderstorm, so the theory is that the massive air pressure just pushed it in through tiny cracks somewhere …
So I’ve been wondering why some copy-and-paste actions “don’t work” on Wayland. Turns out, in Wayland there’s only one clipboard (like in probably most other OSes): The one where you select something and then hit ^C to copy it (it’s called the CLIPBOARD selection). They have intentionally not included the PRIMARY selection of X11 where you can just select some text to copy it and use the middle-mouse button to paste it.
Almost 10 years ago, they started an initiative to bring back PRIMARY:
https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/Wayland/PrimarySelection
That protocol is still “unstable” and thus not every Wayland client supports it:
https://wayland.app/protocols/primary-selection-unstable-v1
I honestly didn’t really look into this before and I didn’t know that it’s still unstable/unsupported, hence my confusion. (To be fair, I don’t know for certain if that particular protocol is already 10 years old. It looks like it because the copyright notice at the bottom says so, but no idea if that’s a reliable source.)
This is one of those things that are very subjective. The Wayland guys apparently thought that it was a “usability problem” to have two clipboards, so they removed one of them. Actually, the mechanism of X11 is totally generic, there are an “infinite” number of clipboards and we have just settled on using only two.
This is an interesting topic because Wayland is so old now that it looks like it has missed the developments of the last ~10 years or more: Way back in the past, I was indeed very confused about the different X11 clipboards because some clients used CLIPBOARD (hit ^C) and others only used PRIMARY (middle-mouse) – but this has long settled down. Most clients now have something like ^C to explicitly copy data into CLIPBOARD and ^V to paste it. It’s the standard thing now. And then on top of that power-users can additionally use PRIMARY where you just select text. This is a good and powerful thing, if you ask me.
I use both clipboards all the time. My mental model knows where the data goes. PRIMARY is like a short-term clipboard and CLIPBOARD is long-term. I think this is much better than just having one clipboard and I kind of feel like making good use of this is what keeps me from having to install a clipboard manager.
@mckinley@twtxt.net Whoop whoop. 🥳
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Aarrrgh. 🙈🙈🙈 There’s nothing you can do to prevent that next time, is there?
@prologic@twtxt.net Dunno, maybe you just love Tasmanian devils? 😅
@prologic@twtxt.net 8.9 people per km², sounds awesome. 😃 Even less than Finland. 😅 (On average.)
@prologic@twtxt.net I’d be fine with that, too. 😅
Iceland seems like a nice place to be right now.
A little improv on double bass with a live echo effect, turned out better than expected:
https://movq.de/v/0a0969059a/2024-06-25–19-59-29–58376.ogg
Still a noob, but I can see some progress and I enjoy playing very much. 😊
(Use headphones, probably sounds like crap otherwise.)
😆 I’ll take a close up next time. 😅