Huh, this story sounds familiar. I read a HN comment the other day telling this same story. They didn't just turn a random HN comment into a news article, did they?
Yup. They did. At least they cited it I suppose.
Readit Newsutensil4778 commented on CrowdStrike broke Debian and Rocky Linux months ago neowin.net/news/crowdstri... · Posted by u/taubek
utensil4778 commented on CrowdStrike broke Debian and Rocky Linux months ago neowin.net/news/crowdstri... · Posted by u/taubek
What gets me is that much of the OSS/Linux ecosystem consists of thousandas of lashed together piles of code written by independent and only very loosely coordinated groups, much of it code and lashed together by amateurs for free, and it is still more robust than software created by multi-billion dollar corporations.
Perhaps one reason is that OSS system programmers are washing their dirty linen in public; not a matter of "many eyes make bugs shallow", but that "any eyes make bad code embarassing".
Just for example, I'm planning to make one of my commercial projects open source, and I am going to have to do a lot of fixing up before I'm willing to show the source code in public. It's not terrible code, and it works perfectly well, but it's not the sort of code I'd be willing to show to the world in general. Better documentation, TODO and FIXME fixing, checking comments still reflect the code, etc. etc.
But for all my sense of shame for this (perfectly good and working) software, I've seen the insides of several closed-source commercial code bases and seen far, far worse. I would imagine most "enterprise" software is written to a similar standard.
> Perhaps one reason is that OSS system programmers are washing their dirty linen in public; not a matter of "many eyes make bugs shallow", but that "any eyes make bad code embarassing".
I've committed sins in production code that I would never dream of doing in one of my published open source projects. The allure of " no one will ever see this" is pretty strong
utensil4778 commented on Type in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut github.com/veggiedefender... · Posted by u/OuterVale
The clit?
The Thinkpad TrackPoint mouse has over 20,000 nerve endings
utensil4778 commented on The only tourist in Moldova telegraph.co.uk/travel/de... · Posted by u/dotcoma
Do you even Prague, bro...
Prague is fantastic if you can avoid the tourist crowds.
I lived there briefly with a Czech roommate who took me on tours through the "real" city. Also had a British friend there and we went through the usual tourist destinations now and then. The astronomical clock was neat, but the castle was so much more interesting and far less crowded than the old town.
Incidentally, I didn't drink before said roommate introduced me to Czech beer. What I wouldn't give for a nice frosty Kozel here in the states...
utensil4778 commented on SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/spa... · Posted by u/speckx
Something that few people remember is that if you have access to a filesystem through SSH, then you can have a remote Git repository with no configuration!
In the remote machine, you only need to create a bare repository:
git init --bare
And in your "client" machines you use it like any other remotes:
git remote add my_remote my_user@my_host:path_to_repo
It can be useful if for some reason you don't want to use GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket/etc or as a glorified scp
For quite a while before I built my homelab, my git server was a flash drive plugged into my OpenWRT router.
Honestly I still kind of prefer that to gitlab et al. It's nice to not have to leave my terminal to setup a new repo. It takes so much more effort to log into a website and dismiss a bunch of notifications before I can click even more buttons to create a new repo.
I like having all my repos accessible through the website, but I really just want to create new projects through ssh like a civilized person.
utensil4778 commented on Will space-based solar power ever make sense? arstechnica.com/science/2... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar
I doubt that wireless energy transmission at this scale and distance will ever be practical. It will probably never be economic compared to terrestrial panels and batteries.
If/when we build space elevators, then orbital solar might make sense to use the tether to transfer power. Even with the lower cost of putting mass in orbit, I don't think it'd be any cheaper than terrestrial solar.
Besides, by the time we figure put space elevators, we'll already have commercial fusion, right?
You'll be glad to hear that SMS already doesn't have reactions
<iPhone user> reacted haha to your message
<iPhone user> liked your message
I kind of get why we don’t like this in email, but for SMS and Slack I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reactions. They’re a way to say “I received this and have a positive reaction to it, with no further communication necessary”.
Replaces a lot of useless typing I had to do to sound polite when saying “fine, no further comment”. And then getting a notification from the other party acknowledging my acknowledgment… yuck.
It should be entirely socially acceptable to respond to any trivial message with "ACKNOWLEDGED" á la Picard
utensil4778 commented on How do jewellers capture every last particle of gold dust? (2017) ft.com/content/0512638c-b... · Posted by u/EndXA
Fascinating. Now I wonder why jewelers don't always just work in sealed containers with vacuums like what is used for sand blasting.
I wonder now how much gold dust gets accumulated in the lungs of goldsmiths. I wonder if they take organs to check for sweeps.
Because the work is remarkably intricate. It requires you to get real close and personal with the work, usually with magnification. It requires complete and unimpeded dexterity of your fingers, so bulky gloves are absolutely not an option.
Depending on the work, it may also require frequent trips to the hearth for torch work. You really don't want to use an oxy/propane torch in a sealed glovebox.
In short, it's too much hassle and makes the work more difficult and much slower.
Expanding the scope beyond the economy, one could certainly make the claim that the Age of Consequences is upon us, and that William Gibsons "Jackpot" isn't far off either. We're increasingly and collectively impacted by the fallout from decades of bad decisions.
It really does feel like we (humanity) are on the precipice of something. We're smack in the middle of an era that entire books will be written about. I really don't like thinking about the decades to come and what kind of world our grandchildren will have.