@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.

ghostzero, to random

netcat, 1995

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@gsuberland @fribbledom @ghostzero I miss having 6m channels...

(Yes, I know they're still around [I enjoy them], just making a point that these complaints are from another era. Seems we can never please everyone)

khm, to random
@khm@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    @khm Well, there's a massive disconnect when I discuss this with Chrome devs who are asking for it.

    They (or at least the one I've discussed with) think browsers have to be as complex as they've made them, & when we suggest that the web should have tighter scope they say that there are devs who need these features.

    Personally I question whether the web has to be the one to deliver those features...

    boilingsteam, (edited ) to random
    @boilingsteam@mastodon.cloud avatar

    Gemini ?

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    @boilingsteam I vote "meh, but I see the appeal".

    I have no sense of it's momentum!

    DuncanWatson, to internet

    Does anyone else find that has now just become the comment section of a newspaper? That sewer you just don't read because you have some self-love.

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    @DuncanWatson Pro-tip: Especially don't read the comment section on a news article about an event you've personal witnessed! That only makes the sewer more self-evident!

    alcinnz, to random
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    Some notes on my language:

    1. I do use jargon to aid with clarity & concision. In my blogposts I make an effort to add links to any jargon I write, & feel free to ask for definitions. Also, jargon helps me gloss over all the parsers I see in my studies.

    2. When I use the term "edgecase" that's me asking the question "How do I handle it when these 2 things meet?" If you use the term to discard potential users, shame on you!

    1/2

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    1. I mostly say "software freedom", but I alternate between "free software" & "opensource" because I don't want to be in that decades-old new-true-scottsman argument.

    2. I don't consider "Linux" to be a reasonable way to demarcate operating systems, & I think grouping all this choice under a single brand is actively harmful to our growth. If I want to generalize I find "freedesktop" suits my needs well. I say "Linux" regarding hardware support & the mechanations of how that piece works.

    2/2

    alcinnz, to random
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    I got into audiofiction for the political cause of avoiding DRM (not risking perceived endorsement or justification of action opposing my work), I stay because I love these stories! I have no regrets leaving popculture largely behind.

    If you think I'm missing out, I say: No, you are!

    I see plenty of anti-capitalism beyond occasional evil capitalists. Representation. Great historical depictions. Scifi that's more than an aesthetic. I see art creators are intrinsically compelled to make!

    1/2

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    Welcome to Night Vale is my (high) bar for absurdity.
    The Magnus Archives are the best (british urban) horror.
    ars Paradoxica is the most convoluted yet clearly told time-travel stories.
    The Red Panda Adventures are the best superhero stories.
    The Bright Sessions feels like what X-Men wanted to be.
    Zero Hours is beautifully melancholic.
    Magus Elgar always cracks me up!
    Wolf359 is topnotch sci-fi, with the best fictional AI. & evil boss.

    Dare to disagree?

    2/2

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    @trevorflowers If you've enjoyed Wolf359, definitely check out Zero Hours! Same cast & crew, alongside The Bright Sessions' & ars Paradoxica's cast!

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    @mmeier Yes, Magus Elgar is just the one season.

    And King Falls seems like a solid alternative for those who find Night Vale too absurd! Sunk my tooth into it a bit, but I've got so much else I'd rather be listening too.

    alcinnz, (edited ) to random
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    Published Haskell Stylist 2.6!

    https://hackage.haskell.org/package/stylist

    With improved infrastructure to forward pseudoelements to the objects parsing CSS properties, @counter support, bugfixes to text generation, oh & numerous builtin counter-styles! Both within & between languages!

    Thanks to W3C for the localizations, even if they said I didn't need to include them all! I think this helps show goodwill towards internationalization...

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    P.P.S. Tweaked my README after publishing to hackage, so the usage instructions are more straightforward & up to date.

    https://git.argonaut-constellation.org/~alcinnz/haskell-stylist

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    P.S. Interesting, I just noticed that by packaging for Hackage I've been automatically packaging for Nix...

    alcinnz, to random
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    I'll see how many more of Shadow's authorization/accounts commandline tools I can cover this morning...

    After initializing internationalization, some vars & SysConf id validates the count of commandline args (possibly ouputting usage), retrieves the process's user & group IDs followed by the corresponding password/group entries outputting them if non-NULL, possibly iterates over the user's groups looking up & outputting each of them, & cleans up.

    1/?

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    Then it parses the remaining -h commandline flag, checks that /etc/gshadow is present & can be opened under a lock, & linear-scans that file to find the entry to overwrite setting the password.

    After init'ing i18n logout might fork if the debug flag is set, initializes logging & LibShadow, & repeatedly iterates over the utmp[x] file checking if they're allowed to be logged in at this time. If not it forks, sends a message to their terminal, killing their process, & syslogging.

    3/3 today!

    alcinnz, to random
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    Leaked Google document: "We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI" - Simon Willison: http://simonwillison.net/2023/May/4/no-moat/#atom-everything

    Midjourney 5.1: http://simonwillison.net/2023/May/4/midjourney-51/#atom-everything

    Mojo may be the biggest programming language advance in decades - Jeremy Howard @ fast.ai: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2023-05-03-mojo-launch.html
    Simon Willison's summary: https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/4/mojo/
    Julia or Lua's more interesting to me...

    alcinnz, to random
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    The Gracie Allen Murder Case - @ajroach42 : http://ajroach42.com/the-gracie-allen-murder-case/

    alcinnz, to random
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    Dracula Daily - Bram Stoker's text reformatted by Matt Kirkland: https://draculadaily.substack.com/ (Substack)

    alcinnz, to random
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    replit-code-v1-3b - Replit: https://huggingface.co/replit/replit-code-v1-3b
    Simon Willison's summary: https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/3/replit-code-v1-3b/

    OpenLLaMA: An Open Reproduction of LLaMA - OpenLM Research: https://github.com/openlm-research/open_llama
    Simon Willison's synopsis: https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/3/openllama/

    What interests me is how far we can go with how little, not how far we can go with how much. Free software to be steering LLMs towards that direction!

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    @sl007 Well, I figure that engineering these things to use smaller training sets allows us to use more ethical ones!

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    @sl007 Fair enough, & thank you!

    alcinnz, to random
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    How to style links that don't look ugly - Go Make Things: https://gomakethings.com/how-to-style-links-that-dont-look-ugly/

    alcinnz, to random
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    From latest blogpost:

    Moving With Prototypes - Jim Nielsen: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/moving-with-prototypes/
    API - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API (my definition)
    Amateurs talk implementation; professionals talk interfaces - Ben Lorantfy: https://www.benlorantfy.com/amateurs-talk-implementation-professionals-talk-interfaces
    Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_and_vertical_writing_in_East_Asian_scripts

    alcinnz, to random
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    This morning I'll study a few more of Shadow's commands!

    Amongst them I see routines for parsing the superusers group to determine whether the user is authorized to use su or sulogin.

    After init'ing the terminal, LibShadow, i18n, & envvars sulogin considers overwriting the standard stdin/etc, validates the current env, saves envvars, configures a timeout, iterates over the passwords file to get root's password comparing against userinput, carefully cleans up, & runs the given command.

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    Depending on flags vipw/vigr may:

    • Given -p & not -g (main differentiator between these commands) & -s it might lookup the TCB entry & will run the core logic under shadow lock; followed by a warning message.
    • Given -p & not -g & not -s it runs the core logic under password lock, then checks whether to warn about the need for the -s flag.
    • Given -g or not -p & -s with a buildflag set it runs the core logic under SGR lock followed by a warning to use vigr.

    4/5!

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    Otherwise it runs the core logic under the GR lock, possibly followed by a warning (if SGR file is present) to provide the -s flag. Regardless it flushes several caches.

    This core logic involves possibly generating a backup TCB file, checking the file to edit exists, (re)configuring SELinux on it, claiming relevant privileges & locks, opening the file, creating a backup, looking up the configured editor, fork/exec'ing that subcommand in foreground, & once it closes extensively cleans up.

    5/5

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    After initializing LibShadow, internationalization, & logging pwunconv parses a couple commandline flags (-R handled seperately), validates the environment & opens the passwords file under lock, iterates over that passwords file & corresponding shadow passwords, considers calling pw_update for each, & cleans up with error reporting to both stdout & syslog.

    pwconv has similar initialization & cleanup, but with 2 iterations over the passwords file.

    2/?

    alcinnz,
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    The 1st removes shadow passwords for non-existant accounts. The 2nd moves passwords out of the general access passwords file to the limited access shadow file, replacing those passwords with the "x" indicator.

    There's a shared utility consults /etc/login.access syslogging invalid syntax which controls who can login as who given password authentication.

    After initializing LibShadow, internationalization, & logging vipw parses a few commandline flags validate no args remain.

    3/4?

    alcinnz, to random
    @alcinnz@floss.social avatar

    Emacs for P2P Deliberation - Joseph Turner @ LibrePlanet 2023: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/emacs-for-p2p-deliberation/ (video)

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