@alcinnz@floss.social
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

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

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

jfbastien, to random
@jfbastien@mastodon.social avatar

Thought experiment: if you could attribute total energy consumed by each line of code ever written, what would be the code that’s consumed the most energy?

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@jfbastien Memory allocation!

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

The first (if I recall correctly) show really got me into reviewing audiofiction is Magus Elgar!

This a fantasy ensamble comedy set in the magical world of Hearth. Following the humorous dynamics between the theatrical Magus Thadalar Elgar, the justifiably-timid Acolyte Udo Malaaki, the serious Dr. Graw Horatio, the mischevious intern Kaley Fawn, & the diegetic narrator who tries not to interfere.

Thematically it's quite transparently about science through the allegory of magic.

1/?

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

It communicates the scientific method quite well, as a process of continual discovery.

The comedy-style is essentially non-stop dadjokes, without breaking character or world-building. Helps when the characters are essentially 2 pairs of funny/straight comedians.

If you listen to just 1 episode I recommend e4 "Sampling the Hypotenuse" where Kaley gets a taste for pyromancy & Elgar fails to do an "infinite grad" "seance" experiment of "a fusion". He has no idea what he's doing!

2/?

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Plot-wise Magus Elgar tells the story of 2 magi tidying up after a particularly disastrously-messy experiment with the aid of 2 "scientists" from another world "Earth" they met in the process of that experiment.

The secondary antagonist is Minister (of textiles) Trike with his bumbling & greed, & the primary antagonist is the pseudonymous Victus. An enjoyable performance of your typical pure-evil cartoon villain.

3/4!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

At the end of the show we learn Victus's sympathetic motivations, which to me reads as saying these pure-evil villains do not really exist. Highlighting the importance of having ethics boards.

(Reflecting on complaints about MCU villains associating sympathetic motivations with villainy, I think it's a debatable matter of execution; but making it a twist does help)

Also I love the conversation with L.I.N.U.S.! "Communication is like a game of minesweeper".

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

The amount of effort which goes into making our home computers work is absolutely incredible!

We mine the purist silicon sand we can find & extensively purify it further. We grow massive crystals from it's molten form, then slice it like deli ham using special saws.

In our cleanest & most tectonically-stable buildings we use complex expensive equipment to etch absolutely microscopic runes (mostly for memory) shaping how electricity flows through this otherwise non-conductive crystal.

1/2?

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Engineers constantly seek to exponentially improve the equipment in those factories to fulfill the expectations of "Moore's Law".

Those crystal slices are chopped into squares & packaged in a protective case, connected to external circuitry via atom-thin gold wires. Then they are assembled onto circuitboards (multi-pass printed onto wood), & on inside a metal or plastic shell. Alongside screens & batteries with their own issues.

Then there's the sheer amount of software powering them...

3/2

rysiek, to random
@rysiek@mstdn.social avatar

, time to bring back the RSS/Atom feed icon displayed when a website has an RSS/Atom feed. :rss:

It's long past-due!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@reiver @rysiek Uh, I find RSS/Atom webfeeds everywhere online! I'd say that disqualifies describing the technology as "dead"!

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Humble Chronicles: Managing State with Signals - Tonsky: https://tonsky.me/blog/humble-signals/

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Reading over the rest of LibCap...

There's a few test commands including a noop. And ones iterating over test data. And checking for security regressions.

A "PSX" sublibrary language-binds the concept of systemcalls over from C to Go, whilst juggling Go's threading. With testsuites.

There's a handful of commands, including:

  • getpcaps which upon initializing a Inherit/Ambiant/Base capabilities & parsing commandline args retrieves a PID's capabilities & outputs it.

1/?

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

  • After parsing commandline flags getcap iterates over remaining args retrieving the capabilities for those files textually outputting them.

  • (Deprecated) execcap & sucap both runs a given command under given capability.

  • (Deprecated) setpcaps parses & applies capabilities to a PID.

  • Upon parsing flags setcap might retrieve a file's capabilities & test against expected, or it applies the caps.

These have a test shellscript, and a C file holding documentation strings.

2/3!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar
  • capsh manually parses commandline flags running appropriate getters & setters on the capabilities. Or outputting help.

There's a sample sudo config file declaring which accounts have which privileges.

There's a command wrapping pam_sm_authenticate for testing.

There's a library to be used to test how it's dynamically linked.

There's a PAM dynamically-loaded extension implementing capability inheritance, with it's own testsuite.

3/3 Fin! Publish tomorrow!

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Praise for my ebooks 'The Intelligence Illusion' and 'Out of the Software Crisis' - Baldur Bjarnason: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2023/praise-for-books/

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

V-Discs - Music from the longest strike in American history - Andrew Roach: https://ajroach42.com/v-discs-music-from-the-longest-strike-in-american-history/

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

WebKit Features in Safari 16.5 - WebKit: https://webkit.org/blog/14154/webkit-features-in-safari-16-5/

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

llm, ttok and strip-tags - CLI tools for working with ChatGPT and other LLMs - Simon Willison: http://simonwillison.net/2023/May/18/cli-tools-for-llms/#atom-everything

lmdb.tcl - antirez: https://gist.github.com/antirez/6ca04dd191bdb82aad9fb241013e88a8 (Github Gist)
Simon Willison's description: http://simonwillison.net/2023/May/18/lmdb/#atom-everything

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

SQLite Release 3.42.0 - SQLite: https://sqlite.org/releaselog/3_42_0.html
Simon Willison's highlights: https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/18/sqlite/

Writing a chat application in Django 4.2 using async StreamingHttpResponse, Server-Sent Events and PostgreSQL LISTEN/NOTIFY - Valberg: https://valberg.dk/django-sse-postgresql-listen-notify.html
Simon Willison's summary: https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/19/chat-application-in-django/

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

How to build lean efficient websites in 2023 - Go Make Things: https://gomakethings.com/how-to-build-lean-efficient-websites-in-2023/

lightweight, to random
@lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz avatar

Free AWS or Azure training... it's a trap. Don't fall for it. They want you to learn their non-transferable, proprietary interfaces so that you're trapped in their monoculture, and recommend their vastly overpriced services to your customers. Many people who work with these technologies as consultants can make a lot of $ because their fees seem low compared to the massive costs of those cloud services (compared to competing services). They're exploiting the broad ignorance of the market.

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@lightweight I suspect the skills are more transferrable than they let on...

Judging by my experience listening to others speak AWS jargon!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@lightweight Honestly, I can't blame them. But it does make our job harder!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@lightweight At the same time I'm sure there's people who say I'm not embracing change when NFTs or metaverse or GPTs fail to excite me...

Or when I insist there has to be a technical (not financial) reason why some software should be made a service.

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

There was some interest in my rambly-spoilery review yesterday, & I'm not sure what else to discuss today, so: Horror!

Honestly this is a genre I've struggled to engage with. I want the scares horror promises, but until recently I rarely feel more than a physiological jump. (Though I do know people who enjoy the cheesiness)

Jonathon Simms on the other hand...

He consistantly mixes a perfect concoction of the supernatural, mundanity, unsolved mystery, & skepticism for 200 episodes!

1/?

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

By their 20s Raimi & his friends had made several short films, one of which ("Within The Woods") they wanted to remake into feature-length. So in 1980 they raised 90k from their local Michigan community (not quite as much as he hoped) & filmed in a cheap & lenient if miserable Tennessee location.

Co-producer Bruce Campbell was the lead & only actor willing to stay the entire shoot.

Acting's quite poor & it's hard to say whether the humour was intentional, but it did succeed in the frights!
2'/

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Oh, and the camera work was inventive! (Kodak 16mm)

Raimi gave the film to a Detroit firm for editing, where it helped launch the career of then assistant-editor Joel Coen of the later Coen Brothers.

He had a gimmicky premier in 1981 at a local theatre, and showed it to everyone in the film industry he could. One Irvan Shapiro (who produced a film which inspired this one) convinced them to change the name to "The Evil Dead" & got them a screening at Cannes Film Festival.

3'/?

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Out of that The Evil Dead got positive critical reception (including from the likes of Steven King) & greater funding for an international debut, which Shapiro was keen to help Raimi take advantage of.

With this newfound fame Raimi wanted to make a medieval comedy-adventure for a sequel, but producers first wanted to see him make sequel/remake with a decent budget. There it's clear the comedy is intentional!

He still needed to push, but he did make a few 1990s small budget films.

4'/5'

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Bruce Campbell continued to have at least a cameo in every one o Raimi's films.

In the early 2000s Columbia Pictures gave Raimi the opportunity to adapt one of his favourite childhood comicbooks. Yielding the much-beloved (including by me) Spider-man trilogy which helped launch the superhero boom we're currently living. And being a popular early 2000s movie, I see it heavily meme'd online!

Moral I want to highlight: Chase your dreams! See whether you succeed. Computers make this cheaper.
5'/5'

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • provamag3
  • Durango
  • mdbf
  • osvaldo12
  • magazineikmin
  • tacticalgear
  • rosin
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • InstantRegret
  • slotface
  • everett
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • JUstTest
  • khanakhh
  • ethstaker
  • cubers
  • tester
  • modclub
  • ngwrru68w68
  • GTA5RPClips
  • cisconetworking
  • megavids
  • anitta
  • normalnudes
  • Leos
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •