@alcinnz@floss.social
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alcinnz

@alcinnz@floss.social

A browser developer posting mostly about how free software projects work, and occasionally about climate change.

Though I do enjoy german board games given an opponent.

Pronouns: he/him

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alcinnz, to random
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As a massive project Linux is split into several mostly-but-not-really-independent "modules" which get dynamically linked together as the kernel is running! Userspace (rarely) generally initiate this via the topic of today's study: LibKMod!

There's an iterator over the multistring in a modules.builtin.modinfo file. It may use OpenSSL to check cryptographic signatures. It implements a doubly-linked list datastructure. There's a parser & builder for KMod options.

1/2?

alcinnz,
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LibKMod may parse binary ELF files to simplify the work done in (hostile) kernel-space. There's a layer integrating a runtime-choice of decompression libraries, in case the kernel doesn't support these formats. There's abstractions around files, including memory-mapped BTree lookups.

Perhaps one of the 2 most central sourcecode files models & parses a ref-counted kernel-module object, abstracting those support routines & certain device files, & e.g. the init_module syscall.

2/3!

alcinnz,
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The other main file (aside from implementing some logging infrastructure) defines a ref-counted "context" object with accessors some of which may be sourced from device files, & queries collections via various device files with in-process caching.

2.5/2.5 Fin for today! Tomorrow: KMod commands, then: kernelspace side!

alcinnz, to random
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If you oppose DRM, I encourage you to explore what's been made officially available without it! Pay for it if you can! Share it with your friends.

Broaden your entertainment horizons! How about make your own?

There's plenty to choose from!

Please don't suggest "piracy": I'm not opposing it but as political action it backfires...

If ars Paradoxica can become as much of a must-hear as Back to the Future is a must see, that'd undermine Hollywood's narrative of why they need DRM!

alcinnz, to random
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Something I frequently find about many openweb-original shows: Many seem to be very good at doing their research!

I'm not the best to judge this, but those set in the past frequently seem to capture their time periods well. Certainly judging by her editor's notes Tracy Butler holds her Lackadaisy to high standards!

And when they tackle science, the technobabble passes my scrutiny. The Red Panda Adventures is an exception in that it emulates 1930s technobabble, see previous point.

alcinnz, to random
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Over spent the past year I explored how I'd build a browser truly from scratch, hardware on up, over the next month or so I'll explore tooling to help us build this!

Can we self-host the development? Without pulling in other OSs, being self reliant?

Not for the AI models (text prediction, speech recognition, machine translation, etc) since that would require faster hardware. The AI coprocessor I described would get worn out training itself.

1/3?

alcinnz,
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And not initially: Before we can write software on our device we'd already need most of this software already running on it! Unless...

The easiest way to get started is probably to hook the device up to external hardware or (ideally) software terminal (via RS232 over USB?)! Giving us text entry & rendering (with retro flair!) as well as the ability paste text from the web, filesystems, or text editors before we reimplement these things for ourselves as we gain self-reliance!

2/3!

alcinnz,
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In designing these dev tools I'll strive to make the software easy to study & (minor caveats) modify on-device, whilst hindering the ability for others (whom you interact with over the internet) to claim that control for themselves.

I won't extend the hardware to aid implementing these dev tools, since they're not the main point of the device. Though at times I will discuss "clever hacks".

3/3 Fin for today! Tomorrow: Introduce compilers & code-runners.

alcinnz, to random
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Hints & Suggestions (First, Do No Harm) - Miriamme Suzanne @ The 11ty International Symposium on Making Web Sites Real Good:
https://yt.drgnz.club/watch?v=iLxJ6PtuF9M&t=4191s (YouTube via Invidious)
Endorsed by Robin Rendle "The Cascade":
https://www.csscade.com/hints-and-suggestions

alcinnz, to random
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Against the commercial internet - Cory Dransfeldt:
https://feedpress.me/link/23795/16678902/against-the-commercial-web

alcinnz, to random
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Calculating all possible rankings for The Circle USA Season 6 - Kevin Gal:
https://kevingal.com/blog/thecircle.html

alcinnz, to random
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Web Components Demystified by Scott Jehl:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/scott-jehl/web-components-demystified (Kickstarter)
Robin Rendle "The Cascade"'s excited:
https://www.csscade.com/web-components-demystified

Applying P3 colours on an existing project - Andy Bell "Piccalilli":
https://piccalil.li/blog/applying-p3-colours-on-an-existing-project/
Endorsed by Robin Rendle "The Cascade":
https://www.csscade.com/applying-p3-colors

alcinnz, to random
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Sharing too much about too little - Manuel Moreale:
https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/WPBTSuKkUg3HjS9d

alcinnz, to browsers
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I've spent this morning publishing my threads on OpenSSL & /dev/random: https://adrian.geek.nz/gnu_docs/data#openssl-encryption

LibPoppler PDF rendering + supporting libraries: https://adrian.geek.nz/graphics_docs/viewers#pdfs-via-libpoppler

And I put most of my writing effort into my hardware-browser hypothetical: https://adrian.geek.nz/from-scratch/#browsers-from-logic-gates
This time, primarily: https://adrian.geek.nz/from-scratch/browser-messaging
Other pages got updates directly & indirectly related to that.

Tomorrow I'll study kmod, then some PDF tools. And I've been excited to get back to the hypothetical with devtools!

alcinnz, to random
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I've made a final couple adjustments to my hypothetical hardware-Internet Communicator hypothetical before publishing it.

I put in an extra sentence that I can't expect my hypothetical hardware to prefetch all memory, I'd need a fallback strategy.

And prompted by @gabrielesvelto 's thread ( https://fosstodon.org/@gabrielesvelto/112407741329145666 ), I put a few sentences in regarding error detection/correction. I've just located a bunch of links (Ben Eater & eBlue1Brown) to fill that paragraph.

alcinnz, to random
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More ways to instantiate Web Components -Go Make Things:
https://gomakethings.com/more-ways-to-instantiate-web-components/

alcinnz, to random
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Cool queries - The Cascade:
https://www.csscade.com/cool-queries

alcinnz, to random
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Methods Should Be Object Safe - Leonora Tindall:
https://nora.codes/post/methods-should-be-object-safe/

alcinnz, to random
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The webs - Manuel Moreale:
https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/eJyAyJFmqTDaPmad

alcinnz, to random
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Doctorow's article from Tuesday (I read it yesterday) made heavy reference to his fight at the W3C against EME (their DRM standard).

That brings me back... Frustrating times! The arguments defending EME felt spurious as they accused us of being spurious. Splitting meaningless hairs over whether EME is DRM in-and-of itself. In the end advertising EME as being DRM.

Under the insistence that Flash needed to die, & the Web required Netflix et al.

alcinnz,
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The way I think about DRM: Its an (injust) law masquarading as technology.

It would've been great if W3C took a stance, but in attempting to be neutral they sided with the status quo. At the very least we made it utterly clear this is controversial!

And I think those championing it know what they're meant to believe, but not why. In practice DRM isn't meant to constrain audiences directly, its meant to constrain developers of playback hardware/software. Shaping technological reality.

2/1!

alcinnz, to random
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Passkeys: A Shattered Dream - William Brown "Firstyear's blog-a-log":
https://fy.blackhats.net.au/blog/2024-04-26-passkeys-a-shattered-dream/

From the outside, a lot of this looks like bikeshedding over threat models (personally I don't care for attestation, but I see why that's in there now). Which yes, easily gets coopted into lock-in.

Passwords (aka "shared secrets") are a poor solution for webservice authenticates, & I hope password managers like BitWarden can do away with most of their issues whilst paving the path away from them!

alcinnz, to random
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Pluralistic: The disenshittified internet starts with loyal "user agents" (07 May 2024) - Cory Doctorow:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/

Pretty much describes what gets me into browser dev... I'm sure we all think we know what's best for users though...

alcinnz, to random
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The web is not dying - Manuel Moreale:
https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/SWz1dvj7fs0CM5Zw

I have this debate somewhat regularly, & I strongly agree with Moreale here. I believe we're coming from the same perspective!

alcinnz, (edited ) to random
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Developer's PSA: The way you & your culture do things isn't the way everyone does things! Be wary of cultural constructs, no matter how basic they may seem!

Time & dates. Text. Punctuation. Names. Addresses. Iconography.

What else am I forgetting?

P.S. This is also a politics PSA. Very topical to NZ right now!

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