loglog (u/loglog) - Readit News

loglog commented on Rust in 2025: Targeting foundational software smallcultfollowing.com/ba... · Posted by u/wseqyrku

ninkendo · 8 days ago

Talking about foundational software but no mention of the biggest missing part of rust IMO: an ABI.

If you want to write an OS in rust and provide rich services for applications to use, you need to offer libraries they can call without needing to recompile when the OS is upgraded. Windows mostly does this with COM, Apple historically had ObjC’s dynamic dispatch (and now Swift’s ABI), Android does this with a JVM and bytecode… Rust can only really offer extern "C", and that really limits how useful dynamic libraries can be.

Doing an ABI without a VM-like layer (JVM, .NET) is really difficult though, and requires you to commit to certain implementation details without ever changing them, so I can understand why it’s not a priority. To my knowledge the only success stories are Swift (which faced the problem head-on) and COM (which has a language-independent IDL and other pain points.) ObjC has such extreme late binding that it almost feels like cheating.

If rust had a full-featured ABI it would be nearly the perfect language. (It would improve compile times as well, because we’d move to a world where dependencies could just be binaries, which would cut compile times massively.)

loglog · 8 days ago

Not your main point, but how would monomorphization of generics work with binary dependencies?

loglog commented on Good system design seangoedecke.com/good-sys... · Posted by u/dondraper36

Yokohiii · 8 days ago

I've only once tried to use stored procedures in mysql and it was almost impossible to debug back then. Very painful. Average devs already have issues being smart with their databases and stored procedures would add to that.

Stored procedures also add another risk. You have to keep them in sync with code, making releases more error prone. So you have to add extra layers of complexity to manage versioning.

I can see the advantage of extreme performance/efficiency gains, but it should be really big to be justified.

loglog · 8 days ago

> Stored procedures also add another risk. You have to keep them in sync with code, making releases more error prone.

This one is easily solved: never change a stored procedure. Every version should get a new name.

loglog commented on "Privacy preserving age verification" is bullshit pluralistic.net/2025/08/1... · Posted by u/Refreeze5224

thyristan · 10 days ago

Then please prove the possibility by doing so.

Up to now, there has only been intense wishful thinking by politicians, and strong "NOPE" by anyone with any kind of knowledge about cryptography. Either really everyone, including the likes of NSA, CIA and other spy services don't actually employ top cryptographers. Or they repeatedly tried and failed miserably. Or really nobody, including the spies, wants backdoored NOBUS encryption.

loglog · 10 days ago

NSA does probably want it, and did probably standardized at least one such scheme in the past: Dual_EC_DRBG.

loglog commented on "Privacy preserving age verification" is bullshit pluralistic.net/2025/08/1... · Posted by u/Refreeze5224

dathinab · 10 days ago

> "Privacy preserving age verification" is bullshit

it is possible if you accept that it only needs to be good enough

- it's fully okay if it can be deceived in all kinds of ways

- verifying only once per account is okay, if a adult passes their verified account to a child that their responsibility

- legally not just forbid but criminalize (with required prison sentence) the storing of any data except is adult yes/no from a age verification process

- allow a OS accounts to just tell applications (including websites) that "is 18", if a age verification was done in the account, also no singing or anything cryptographically, because again it's good enough no need to protect it against hacking, the main responsibility still lies with the parents

so then you can do a single age verification per OS account, once, and be done with

furthermore this verification could e.g. go through a process which might identify you identity but a) isn't allowed to pass anything but adult yes/no to anyone else b) isn't allowed to store that info c) on a storing it is a "criminal liability" level where a CTO ordering data collection would go to prison

through if you live in a country where everyone has a passport with NFC chips (e.g. all of EU) just adding a "adult yes/no" function(1) to it + a transparent (open source, non profit) app per country to bridge it to accounts which need verification would do the job without needing the extra strict criminalize abuse part.

Which brings us to the main problem:

- requiring politicians to accept a "good enough" solution, accept that the main responsibility still lies with the parent

- politicians not abusing it to spy on their population

- make laws to prevent companies from ab-using "age verification" to collect private data

and that seems indeed impossible

---

(1): Technically I think it does exist, somewhat in many passes already. But practically it not viable as it (I think) discloses too much information and has too much issues wrt. integrating it (wrt. certificate nonsense)

loglog · 10 days ago

No cryptographic verification is required for content blocking. Make it easy to set up a slightly locked down "child" account (e.g. one behind a MITM proxy that only lets through HTTP(S) and blocks some domains) by requiring it from every OS vendor. Label existing devices/software without it "18+".

loglog commented on The Big Oops in type systems: This problem extends to FP as well danieltan.weblog.lol/2025... · Posted by u/ksymph

9rx · 22 days ago

> e.g. null checks, function parameters are correct type.

Once you've tested the complex things that (almost) no language has a type system able to express, you also have tested null checks, function parameter types, etc. by virtue of you needing to visit those situations in order to test the complex logic. This isn't a real problem.

What you might be trying to suggest, though, is that half-assed type systems are easier to understand for average developers, so they are more likely to use them correctly and thus feel the benefit from that? It is true that in order to write good tests you need to share a formal proof-esq mindset, and thus they are nearly as burdensome to write as using a formal proof language. In practice, a lot of developers don't grasp that and end up writing tests that serve no purpose. That is a good point.

loglog · 21 days ago

If you need to test for null checks and function parameter types, then your dismissal of "half-assed" type systems is severely misplaced. Everyone [1] agrees that testing null checks is a huge waste of time.

[1] https://jspecify.dev/about/

loglog commented on Rust’s dependencies are starting to worry me vincents.dev/blog/rust-de... · Posted by u/chaosprint

jongjong · 3 months ago

Yes, but a lot of the complexity is unnecessary bloat. Almost every project I've ever seen or worked on was full of unnecessary complexity. People naturally tend to over-complicate things, all the programming books, including software design books focus on unimportant aspects and miss all the important ones. It's incredibly frustrating.

Yet, if someone were to write a book which explained things properly (probably a 3000 word article would suffice to turn anyone into a 10x dev), nobody would buy it. This industry is cooked.

loglog · 3 months ago

Do you mean this article?: https://grugbrain.dev/

loglog commented on Rust’s dependencies are starting to worry me vincents.dev/blog/rust-de... · Posted by u/chaosprint

notnullorvoid · 3 months ago

I don't think you need to get very complex to design a language that protects libraries from having implicit system access. If the only place that can import system APIs is in the entry program, then by design libraries need to use dependency injection to facilitate explicit passing of capabilities.

One can take just about any existing language and add this constraint, the problem however is it would break the existing ecosystem of libraries.

loglog · 3 months ago

If you want this today, Haskell might be the only choice.

loglog commented on Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant economist.com/the-america... · Posted by u/jcartw

cubefox · 5 months ago

No the DWD is not allowed to provide a weather app I believe. Because it would compete with commercial apps. It offers an app which issues weather warnings though.

loglog · 5 months ago

DWD is allowed to provide a weather app, but not for free. So they offer it for a nominal one-time fee instead.

loglog commented on Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo inpractice.yimbyaction.or... · Posted by u/viajante1882

ReptileMan · 5 months ago

The balance simple - renters have total rights as long as they pay on time and there is no damage on the property except normal wear and tear and 0 when when not paying. You as landlord can't say anything as long as the property is not damaged for the duration of the contract. You always renegotiate at market rates. There is no concept of squatting and evictions are fast.

That's it. Works like a charm. No bullshits like rent control or whatever.

loglog · 5 months ago

"renegotiate at market rates" is extremely tenant-punishing, because the cost of moving for the tenant is much higher than the cost of finding a new tenant for a landlord. It becomes better if you remove the "renegotiate" part and couple the allowed rent increase to some index.

loglog commented on The housing theory of everything (2021) worksinprogress.co/issue/... · Posted by u/lifeisstillgood

peterbecich · 6 months ago

If the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail is completed, it would be reasonably convenient to live in the Central Valley and commute to San Francisco (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Portal_(San_Francisco)).

Unfortunately, the High-Speed Rail has become exorbitantly expensive, all publicly funded a.f.a.i.k. On the other hand, housing in general and the existing 19th-century railroad network were built with private money. As an aside, this is why the internet backbones from coast-to-coast are privately owned; these are on railroad land.

loglog · 6 months ago

Even a rail line such as RER A only has a capacity of at most 40k people/h/direction. It cannot solve all, or even most, transportation problems of a large city. For that, you'd need tens of lines, as in China or Madrid.