alcinnz

alcinnz, 14 days ago to random

... iterates over "masks" & ELF headers twice validating & aggregating initializers & finalizers, sizes the memory required for a symbol table, iterates over the sections allocating (rabbithole) them transferring any necessary data over, works around some memory-leak checks, performs optional logging (rabbithole), adds it to a collection of "unformed" modules, & tracks the aggregated reliability from all module's self-declared metadata.

4/4 Resume tomorrow!

alcinnz, 14 days ago to random

I Stopped Mastodon DDoSing Me (I Think) - Kev Quirk:
https://kevquirk.com/i-stopped-mastodon-ddosing-me-i-think

Glad to see that this was resolved, but... Maybe don't share links titled "Don't share this on Mastodon"? Though I do understand the difficulty of doing a don't.

I questioned whether to directly link to this one.

And I'll concur with Quirk to blame Mastodon: Sites shouldn't need to be managed by pros so your social media can be handled amateurs, irresponsible externalization of costs!

alcinnz, 15 days 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, 15 days 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, 15 days 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, 15 days ago to random

Unleash the power of scroll-driven animations - The Cascade:
https://www.csscade.com/unleash-the-power-of-scroll-driven-animations

Scroll-driven Animations - Bramus Van Damme:
https://scroll-driven-animations.style/

Introduction | Unleash the power of Scroll-Driven Animations (1/10) - Chrome for Developers:
https://invidious.protokolla.fi/watch?v=5noL_qFobm0 (YouTube via Invidious)

alcinnz, 15 days 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, 16 days 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, 16 days 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, 17 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, 17 days ago to random

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

alcinnz, 18 days ago (edited 11 days ago) to random

New twist on the polls which just ended...

Choose your fighter!

alcinnz, 18 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, 18 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, 18 days ago to random

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

alcinnz, 19 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, 19 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, 19 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, 19 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, 19 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, 20 days ago (edited 20 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, 20 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, 20 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, 21 days ago (edited 18 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, 21 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/