I've gone a step further, I have built a 50 TB NAS and I'm loading up as much as I possibly can.

The ballpark math is easy to do in your head too. The diameter of Earth is 8,000 miles, and the deepest point in the ocean, the Mariana Trench, is only 7 miles deep. It's immediately apparent that the oceans are tiny by comparison to the rest of the mass that is Earth.

1303789

Serious question - why do so many people remember our ICQ numbers? I don’t remember what user-facing function it served. Was that actually the identifier we shared with people to connect?

I suppose it also came at a time for a lot of us where things seemed to wedge into our brains more easily.

If you haven't already, I would start with Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment by Stevens

https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Programming-UNIX-Environment...

It is about using all Unix APIs from user space, including signals and processes.

(I am not sure what to recommend if you want to implement signals in the kernel, maybe https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6.html )

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It's honestly a breath of fresh air to simply read a book that explains clearly how Unix works, with self-contained examples, and which is comprehensive and organized. (If you don't know C, that can be a barrier, but that's also a barrier reading blog posts)

I don't believe the equivalent information is anywhere on the web. (I have a lot of Unix trivia on my blog, which people still read, but it's not the same)

IMO there are some things for which it's really inefficient to use blog posts or Google or LLMs, and if you want to understand Unix signals that's probably one of them.

(This book isn't "cheap" even used, but IMO it survives with a high price precisely because the information is valuable. You get what you pay for, etc. And for a working programmer it is cheap, relatively speaking.)

Whenever this topic comes up on HN it strikes me as bizarre that anyone thinks they can genetically modify a bacteria, release it into the wild - and that it'll stay genetically modified? Like the author mentions, bacteria are constantly swapping genes via horizontal gene transfer. Surely the bacteria in our mouths have found the optimal metabolism for their environment? Why wouldn't we expect our genetically modified bacteria to adopt the same strategy?

I imagine that you could, at least on paper, create a Rube Goldberg machine in their genes that, say, killed them if they produced lactic acid, and made it very difficult to delete these genes without destroying their ability to reproduce. But you'll probably also handicap them in the process and make it difficult for them to adapt to competitive adaptations from other bacteria.

And raising speed limits where appropriate. US speed limits right now are often set at about the right level on urban and suburban roads, but far too low on highways and other roads intended for long-distance travel. This effectively causes people to speed at dangerous levels in the suburbs and cities - it does not slow everyone down everywhere.

Edit: The statement "speed limits are about right" does not mean "current travel speeds are about right." If you read the rest of the comment, it means that current travel speeds are about 5-10 mph too fast for most roads, but you don't actually need to change any signs if you start making speed limits a credible fact about the actual speed limit of the road.