Complete (4.5h) interview and transcript are linked from https://amturing.acm.org/interviews/thompson_4588371.cfm
Readit Newsbrontitall commented on Ken Thompson on How a Disk Scheduling Algorithm Became Unix [video] youtube.com/watch?v=8E2cC... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
brontitall commented on Alan.app – Add a Border to macOS Active Window tyler.io/2025/11/alan/... · Posted by u/donatj
need this for my tmux panes!
In the default config, tmux panes _do_ have a highlighted border. It takes a bit to get used to how it’s done when there’s only 2 panes though (half the border is highlighted for each pane)
brontitall commented on Installing and using HP-UX 9 thejpster.org.uk/blog/blo... · Posted by u/TMWNN
The "context dependent filesystem" concept is a bit trippy, but I think it's a pretty neat solution to "some systems need a their own version of a file, other files ought to be universal".
It reminds me a little of a thing used in clustering of DECs (later HPs) Tru64 Unix.
The clusters had a shared OS image - that is a single, shared root filesystem for all members. To allow node-specific config files, there was a type of symbolic link called a “Context Dependent Symbolic Link” (CDSL). They were just like a normal symlink, but had a `{memb}` component in the target, which was resolved at runtime to the member ID of the current system. These would be used to resolve to a path under `/cluster/members/{memb}`, so each host could have its own version of a config file.
The single shared root filesystem made upgrades and patching of the OS extra fun. There was a multi-phase process where both old and new copies of files were present and hosts were rebooted one at a time, switching from the old to the new OS.
brontitall commented on A File Format Uncracked for 20 Years landaire.net/a-file-forma... · Posted by u/signa11
> For example, one format I use is just to concatenate multiple files into a single one, I use it to group video timeline seeker images into one file - it is faster than using archive or tar/gzip
I did something like this when I was moving my files onto a new computer like 25 years ago, and all I had was a floppy drive. Just continuously dump the data onto a floppy until space runs out and ask for another one until there are no more files.
This almost IS the tar format. It’s just a 512 byte header with metadata per file then the file data. Repeat for each file. The cpio format is similar but the header is shorter.
Details of the contents of the headers vary, hence the different flavours. And I believe POSIX added extensible extra metadata fields that are saved as a kinda pseudo file
brontitall commented on Elements of C Style (1994) teamten.com/lawrence/styl... · Posted by u/signa11
> if (success = true) // Oops!
Hence the better way of comparing literals or consts to vars:
if ( true = success ) // Compile-time error will enlighten youit's like that Mach 20 razor. keep adding more!
Interesting! I hadn’t seen that Mad TV ad before. It’s quite reminiscent of this one from The Late Show on Australian TV in 1992. I can totally see people having a similar idea from the same blade escalation process.
brontitall commented on The new geography of stolen goods economist.com/interactive... · Posted by u/tlb
I have a Tesla. It is trivial to steal; you just get my phone and you have my car. It is tied to the car through Bluetooth that auto unlocks AND drives without any other security measures beyond just being close to it with the devise. You don't even have to unlock my phone. Getting my phone would be the harder part, but it just would take a lapse in paying attention (like left in on the table to get a drink refill).
The comforting part (unless you consider the immense privacy issues) is, as you mention, how tied the auto is to Tesla and my account. I could have the car disabled and tracked probably less than 10 minutes of discovering it was taken. I could also lock/erase my stolen phone remotely which would then disable driving the car again once it was put into park for the first time.
There is the option of PIN to drive. Evaluate your threat model and decide if you want to enable it.
How can “should of” sound bad to you, when it sounds identical to (a not super carefully enunciated pronunciation of) “should have”, at least in every dialect I’m aware of
Except in rapid speech, and particularly at the end of sentences, I can definitely hear “should of” being used by some people in local Australian English.
brontitall commented on Replacing tmux in my dev workflow bower.sh/you-might-not-ne... · Posted by u/elashri
Mosh does not support OSC52, so it's a barrier to getting copy/paste to work.
On mobile so I’m not sure which case OSC52 applies to, but I use mosh+tmux 8-10 hours a day. Both bracketed paste and tmux selection setting local clipboard work fine
I think there’s a bug in Figure 3. The unsigned m will always be >= 0 so the while loop will not terminate.