larschdk (u/larschdk)

larschdk commented on Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids blog.smartere.dk/2026/01/... · Posted by u/mchro

elzbardico · 2 months ago

Floppy disks are getting hard to come by, and will soon be too expensive.

A good option would be to have the same data printed as QR codes in labels glued to small domino sized wood blocks that could be inserted in a slot in a box and read by a cheap camera module.

larschdk · 2 months ago

An 125 kHz RFID reader would be a way simpler and cheaper solution. Could still have a 3D-printed box/slot.

larschdk commented on FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub twitter.com/FFmpeg/status... · Posted by u/merlindru

habibur · 3 months ago

LGPL allows compiling the whole of ffmpeg into a so or lib and then dynamically linking from there for your closed source code. That's the main difference between LGPL and GPL.

But if you change or add something in building ffmpeg.so that should be GPLed.

Apparently they copied some files from ffmpeg mixed with their propitiatory code and compiled it as a whole. That's the problem here.

larschdk · 3 months ago

Copyright law defines derivative work by substantial similarity and dependence, not by technical mechanisms like linking. Technical measures such as linking is not a copyright concept.

Dynamic linking is a condition for LGPL compliance, but it is not sufficient. Dynamic linking does not automatically prevent a combined work from being a derived work.

larschdk commented on What's New with Firefox 142 mozilla.org/en-US/firefox... · Posted by u/keepamovin

larschdk · 6 months ago

Here's a feature request: Disallow any and all unsolicited attention-seeking pop-ups or notifications from the browser itself.

larschdk commented on SQLite (with WAL) doesn't do `fsync` on each commit under default settings avi.im/blag/2025/sqlite-f... · Posted by u/Bogdanp

avinassh · 7 months ago

hey, I just tested and `NORMAL` is default:

    $ sqlite3 test.db
    
    SQLite version 3.43.2 2023-10-10 13:08:14
    Enter ".help" for usage hints.
    sqlite> PRAGMA journal_mode=wal;
    wal
    sqlite> PRAGMA synchronous;
    1
    sqlite>

edit: fresh installation from homebrew shows default as FULL:

    /opt/homebrew/opt/sqlite/bin/sqlite3 test.db
    SQLite version 3.50.4 2025-07-30 19:33:53
    Enter ".help" for usage hints.
    sqlite> PRAGMA journal_mode=wal;
    wal
    sqlite> PRAGMA synchronous;
    2
    sqlite>

I will update the post, thanks!

larschdk · 7 months ago

Just checked debian/ubuntu/alpine/fedora/arch docker images. All are FULL by default.

larschdk commented on Yet Another Zip Trick hackarcana.com/article/ye... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

mlyle · 8 months ago

The trick depends upon different implementations doing different things. Not likely for Word (though I suppose it is -possible- across different versions or different OSes).

larschdk · 8 months ago

The Office365 online and desktop implementations of zip could be different.

larschdk commented on JSLinux bellard.org/jslinux/... · Posted by u/TechTechTech

pveierland · a year ago

Considering the extremes of prolific developers gives interesting contrast to dogmas such as "functions/files should never be above x lines", where `quickjs.c` is 50k lines and has functions that are hundreds of lines long:

https://github.com/bellard/quickjs/blob/master/quickjs.c

(Obviously different approaches suits different circumstances.)

larschdk · a year ago

Rather one long function than does one thing well than multiple function that are strongly coupled and difficult to reason about. Programmers who apply dogmas can be harmful.

larschdk commented on Nvidia’s $589B DeepSeek rout finance.yahoo.com/news/as... · Posted by u/rcarmo

WJW · a year ago

It's a reflection of expectations about the future economy. Obviously, such expectations are not always accurate because humans are quite fallible when trying to predict the future. This is even more true when there is a lot of hype about a certain product.

Yesterdays price of (say) NVidia was based on the expectation that companies would need to buy N billion of USD of GPUs per year. Now Deepseek comes out and makes a point that N/10 would be enough. From there it can go two ways:

- NVidia's expected future sales drop by 90%.

- The reduced price for LLMs should allow companies to push AI into markets that were previously not cost effective. Maybe this can 10x the total available market, but since the estimated total available market was already ~everything (due to hype) that seems unlikely.

- NVidia finds another usecase for GPUs to offset the reduced demand from AI companies.

In practice, it will probably be some combination of all three. The real problems are not caused for the "shovel sellers" but for companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, who now suddenly have to compete against a competitor that can produce the same product at (apparently) a fraction of the price.

larschdk · a year ago

I think it is more expectation about expectation. You buy/sell based on whether you expect other people to expect earn or lose. It is self-referential, hence irrational. If a new play enters and peoples expectations shift, that affects your expectation of value even though the companies involved are not immediately or directly affects.

larschdk commented on Who Can Understand the Proof? A Window on Formalized Mathematics writings.stephenwolfram.c... · Posted by u/ColinWright

cjfd · a year ago

What is this central dot? I thought a central dot in boolean logic means logical and but then the axiom is clearly false..... I don't get what this is about.

larschdk · a year ago

The source uses ○, not •, for the NAND operation.

larschdk commented on Review of Mullvad VPN x41-dsec.de/news/2024/12/... · Posted by u/ylk

arlort · a year ago

They accept cash in an envelope

larschdk · a year ago

Banknotes have serial numbers. Don't think that they are impossible to track.

larschdk commented on Making memcpy(NULL, NULL, 0) well-defined developers.redhat.com/art... · Posted by u/gslin

voidUpdate · a year ago

Why didn't they just... define it, back when they wrote it?

larschdk · a year ago

When C was conceived, CPU architectures and platforms were more varied than what we see today. In order to remain portable and yet performant, some details were left as either implementation defined, or completely undefined (i.e. the responsibility of the programmer). Seems archaic today, but it was necessary when C compilers had to be two-pass and run in mere kilobytes of RAM. Even warnings for risky and undefined behavior is a relatively modern concept (last 10-20 years) compared to the age of C.