alcinnz

alcinnz, 13 hours ago to random

When I discuss what should be in the web & what I consider to be bloat, it becomes clear that different people want different things from the web!

What I want are inter-connected documents, which can be rendered (given appropriate software) beautifully to any device!

I want it to be feasible for a small team to build their own!

And I don't mind extra features being added to the web as long as it has graceful degradation. So smaller browsers don't have to implement it!

alcinnz, 16 hours ago to random

Perhaps the most vital dev tools for our hypothethetical string-centric hardware would be those for converting from a human-legible form (stick to text status-quo since this hardware is string-centric, caveat) to what each of our coprocessors can reasonable be expected to understand!

And back! Though I'd minimize the need for that by shipping updates as source code where I can.

Also tools to run these programs, providing an intuition over their behaviour.

Topics for next several days!

1/4?

alcinnz, 18 hours ago to random

To load additional code into kernel-space, you can use various commandline tools which call the appropriate syscalls & device files. With the kmod command dispatching to the appropriate subcommand.

After parsing commandline flags insmod converts remaining arguments into a multi-string, & constructs a Module object to (with preprocessing) call the init_module syscall.

There's someadditional logging infrastructure, which might write to Syslog.

1/3?

alcinnz, 19 hours ago to random

Detect JavaScript Support - Robin Rendle "The Cascade":
https://www.csscade.com/detect-javascript-support

Detect JavaScript Support in CSS - Ryan Mulligan:
https://ryanmulligan.dev/blog/detect-js-support-in-css/

alcinnz, 1 day ago to random

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, 1 day ago to random

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, 2 days ago to random

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, 2 days ago to random

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

alcinnz, 3 days ago to random

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, 3 days ago (edited 2 days ago) to random

New twist on the polls which just ended...

Choose your fighter!

alcinnz, 3 days ago to random

OpenSSL (which I've now confirmed that I've finished studying) relies on sourcing truly random inputs an attacker cannot predict. Linux provides this via the /dev/random device-file!

The source code I'm reading has some good comments: https://lxr.missinglinkelectronics.com/linux/drivers/char/random.c

The central add-rotate-xor hashing (+ fastpath) function here is a variation on CRC checks, apparently not cryptographically-secure but rapid enough to be called upon every CPU interrupt. May be wrapped in logging and/or mutexes.

1/?

alcinnz, 3 days ago to random

Oblivian - Olivia Colman @ Make My Money Matter (UK):
https://iv.datura.network/watch?v=EeZwnnOkrvw (YouTube via Invidious)

alcinnz, 4 days ago to random

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, 4 days ago to random

I strongly desire to see a UBI, or any other measure which means we don't require money to live!

Aside from a position that people shouldn't need to show their value to society in order to live... Looking at my own industry I think capitalists with the funds to spend are generally doing an atrocious job making these judgments!

(there's exceptions which prove the rule)

alcinnz, 4 days ago to random

I'm linking heavily to https://www.timeanddate.com/ since searching these topics is difficult, everyone else takes these concepts for granted!

alcinnz, 4 days ago to random

LibPoppler's vendored "FoFi" library provides a couple classes to aid parsing binary files (with lookuptables for charsets), & uses themto simplistically parse the major font formats common in PDFs.

I expected LibFreeType to be involved... But all the sophisticated handling of font files is, for worse, precomputed in PDFs prior to saving the file.

0.5/0.5 Tomorrow: Something totally random!

alcinnz, 4 days ago to random

Links and photos (6 May 2024) - Baldur Bjarnason:
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/links-15/

Some links from it...

Why monopolies are harmful - Richard Murphy "Funding the Future":
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/04/30/why-monopolies-are-harmful/ (embedded YouTube)

Custom Element Naming - Joe Gregorio:
https://bitworking.org/news/2024/04/custom-element-naming/

My approach to HTML web components - Jeremy Keith "adactio":
https://adactio.com/journal/21078

How do you accidentally run for President of Iceland? - Anna Anderson @ UX Collective:
https://scribe.rip/how-do-you-accidentally-run-for-president-of-iceland-0d71a4785a1e (Medium via Scribe)

alcinnz, 5 days ago (edited 5 days ago) to random

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!

alcinnz, 5 days ago to random

This morning's link haul for discussing time:

https://zachholman.com/talk/utc-is-enough-for-everyone-right
https://www.wired.com/2012/06/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time/
https://everything-everywhere.com/whats-the-deal-with-daylight-savings/
https://www.ipses.com/eng/in-depth-analysis/standard-of-time-definition/
https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/julian-gregorian-switch.html
https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/julian-calendar.html

Any more great links for discussing you wish to share?

Should have my text fully linkified very soon!

alcinnz, 5 days ago to random

Amongst various extra-validated shallow LibC (and FreeType) wrappers, LibPoppler's vendored Goo library its own C++ classes abstracting files, directories, strings, & time-period measurements. Reimplementing interpretation of format strings.

As well as a common API upon writing JPEG (via LibJPEG), PNG (via LibPNG), TIFF (via LibTiffIO), or NetPBM (manually prepending headers).

0.5/0.5 That was quick! Tomorrow: FoFi!

alcinnz, 6 days ago (edited 3 days ago) to random

I'll run a few polls to see how many of my followers have heard some of my favourite shows.

Vote for all of you've listened to!

alcinnz, 6 days ago to random

Thanks to @bkil for linking to several examples of mounting IMAP as a filesystem! I had to choose just one of those links though for the version of my text I'm publishing to my personal site...

I don't know how to incorporate @alilly feedback of wanting a uniform design beyond continuing as I am. Nice to hear from you!

P.S. For discussing alternative stylesheets I found:
https://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/alternatives.en.html
https://alistapart.com/article/alternate/

alcinnz, 6 days ago to random

What would HTML do? - "The Cascade":
https://www.csscade.com/what-would-html-do

Responding to...

Composability in Design Systems - adactio:
https://adactio.com/journal/21084

My approach to HTML web components:
https://adactio.com/journal/21078

alcinnz, 6 days ago to random

The tech industry doesn't deserve optimism it has earned skepticism - Cory Dransfeldt:
https://feedpress.me/link/23795/16674517/the-tech-industry-doesnt-deserve-optimism-it-has-earned-skepticism

Pretty much how I think...

And there's one subfield of the tech industry which has earnt more healthy skepticism than any other: The one we're meant to be excited for right now!

Personally I put plenty of the blame on our economic incentives...

alcinnz, 7 days ago to random

I figure RISC32imv running at multiple megahertz would be plenty for decent realtime audio & graphics. Without any external audio & graphics cards! Though the V extension standardizes 128bit vectors, not 32bit like we minimally need.

Meanwhile early home computers are prized for how simple & understandable their OSs are.

Who can paint me a picture of bringing that appeal to risc32imv?

Abstractions might you want over an audio queue & framebuffer?

Programming language? Input? Simplifications?