liw

@liw@toot.liw.fi

Currently working full time on https://radicle.xyz/. On the side, I do training in the Rust language (https://liw.fi/training/rust-basics/)

I have almost 40 years of experience, almost 30 of it working full time. I have code running on billions of devices, on all continents, on all oceans, in orbit, and on Mars.

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

liw, to random

@mastohost Does masto.host support authenticated fetch? As in https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/config/#authorized_fetch

liw, to random

I do all my prompt engineering with the Rust program "starship", these days. https://starship.rs/

liw, to random

The abstract syntax tree as JSON would make an interesting and interoperable document exchange format, except it's very stable. That'd be fixable, though. With a little effort, it could be specified quite formally.

Imagine using that for, say, emails, or instead of markdown. No need to understand badly defined HTML subsets or markdown flavors, except for you local client. Everyone could interoperate.

It's not human-readable, or human-writable, but it's powerful.

liw,

Pure plain text, and markdown, and various other light-weight markup languages, are nice. I enjoy using them.

But anything non-trivial tends to end up being an interoperability headache.

Imagine a world where "text" could be "rich text", but still easily processed by any software. And also text, not random binary junk.

federicomena, to random
@federicomena@mstdn.mx avatar

Months ago my NUT setup (UPS daemon thing) stopped working after an update. It more or less coincided with NUT changing the driver used for my particular UPS, so I thought, no problem, I'll change the config file one of these days and figure it out.

Today I finally debugged it.

"upsd: Can't connect to UPS [myups] (usbhid-ups-myups): No such file or directory" - after stracing the daemon at startup, it wasn't able to connect() to a Unix socket for the UPS driver.

liw,

@federicomena Writing software that not just notices errors but tells the user something useful about them is difficult.

liw, to random

To understand the country and people of Great Britain: watch

  • Black Adder for history
  • Fawlty Towers to for hotels and tourism
  • Yes, Minister for politics
djm, to random
@djm@cybervillains.com avatar

The "robustness principle" is the most destructive concept in protocol design and implementation of all time. We should be embracing its inverse: strict, explicit state-machines with model-checked proofs

liw,

@djm While I agree that the Postel / RFC robustness principle, especially as widely understood today, is largely the wrong thing to do in protocols in 2023, things were different in the early Internet and early web. Then the problem was not "how do I do this networking thing really well", but "how do I and others do this at all so that it gets wide use?". The principle mattered more back then. Without it, we might not have the Internet at all today. We might only have closed gardens.

rolle, to threads Finnish
@rolle@mementomori.social avatar

”Virallinen virta vie pois X:stä. Jo aiemmin yksittäisiä käyttäjiä oli alkanut siirtyä palvelusta pienempiin kilpailijoihin, lähinnä Bluesky-palveluun.”

”Tekstimuotoinen sosiaalinen media on jäänyt Tiktokin, Instagramin ja muiden visuaalisten alustojen jalkoihin.”

”Pienten palvelujen menestyksen todennäköisyydet ovat pienet.”

Fuck that shit! Miksi kaiken pitää olla jokin vitun kaupallinen kilpajuoksu? Vapaa ja avoin tekstipohjainen pelikenttä on unohdettu yhtälöstä täysin. Fediversumi, RSS, avoimet protokollat? Onko tämän artikkelin näkymä oikeasti se miten haluamme maailmaa tarkastella? Että rikkaan mulkun paskapalvelu on se joka tätä palloa pyörittää? Rohkenen olla eri mieltä.

https://www.hs.fi/talous/art-2000010061547.html

liw,

@rolle Olin vastaamassa, etten ymmärrä miksi kaupallinen media melkein aina jättää fediversumin huomiotta. Sitten huomasin kirjoittaneeni sanan kaupallinen. Nyt luulen, että siinä on osasyy. Kaupallinen media pyrkii maksimoimaan voittonsa, jota varten pyrkivät maksmoimaan tulonsa, jota varten haluavat "saavuttaa" mahdollisimman monia, mahdollisimman nopeasti. Sen lisäksi elävät mainosrahoitteisessa maailmassa itse. Luulen, että tämä tekee heille vaikean ymmärtää mitään muuta.

liw, to random

"OpenPGP for Application Developers" is now public. I did some proof reading on that, so I'm biased, but I think it's a neat and clear intro to OpenPGP . It's more on the conceptual level than nitty-gritty bit level formats or details of the cryptographic algorithms, but it should help developers using OpenPGP understand what's happening. The site is not quite complete, but a very good start and you can help make it better.

https://openpgp.dev/
https://fosstodon.org/@hko/111573842808340744

liw, to random Finnish

Muuten olen sitä mieltä, että startup-yrittäjien menestyksen ihailusta ja idolisoinnista puuttuu liian usein huomio, että onnella ja sattumalla on ollut iso osuus. Se ei tarkoita, etteikö menestynyt olisi osannut tai tehnyt paljon työtä, mutta onnekkaa sattumat ovat melkein aina välttämättömiä menestykseen.

liw, to random

Do those who write code that runs in Formula 1 cars care about race conditions?

liw, to Matrix

What's a good Linux desktop client for that supports the Matrix encryption schemes? I'm becoming less happy with time.

liw, to random

A healthy open source project or ecosystem sees people working together to make things better for people needing the software. Any group of people is going to have disagreements: it matters how those are handled.

When people are unwilling to try to understand other people's point of view, things turn sour and in the long run, there's no hope of collaboration.

It's sad, even devastating, to watch that happen.

liw, to random

On this day in 2002 version 1.0 of the Creative Commons licenses were released.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#History_and_international_use

liw, to random

As I was looking for something else in an old blog of mine, I found this: "Linux: Linus did not write Linux". It documents the actual origins of Linux.

http://liw.iki.fi/liw/log/2004-Linux.html#20040518b

liw, to random

Kaupunki pakottaa lapset käyttämään tietokoneita opiskeluun. Kaupunki lainaa lapsille koneen opiskelua varten. Koneet ovat "lukittuja". Kaupunki jotenkin onnistuu antamaan pääsyn levyn salausavaimeen. Osa lapsista löytää tämän ja hankkii omassa käytössään olevaan koneeseen oikeudet asentaa pelejä. Kaupunkii saa tietää tästä. Lapsia rangaistaan.

Tarinassa on kyllä opetus, mutta minusta se ei ole, että lapset tekivät mitään väárin.

https://www.hs.fi/kaupunki/art-2000010009161.html

liw, to random

When creating a "hello, world" program, make sure your o key works correctly.

liw, to random

Digital computers have existed since at least 1945 (ENIAC). That's 78 years ago. The pace of change in computing is remarkably fast, and it's unusual to have things that have existed for a long time. Here's a few that have been used for at least 50 years (i.e., they existed in 1973), even if they've changed over time and the original version may not be compatible with the modern world:

  • 3.5 mm TRS audio plug (1950s)
  • ASCII (1963)
  • EBCDIC (1963)
  • C (1972)

Can you think of others?

liw,

@suihkulokki Also:

  • COBOL (1960)
  • LISP (1960)
liw, to random

Does anyone know of something that makes it easier to review the whole code base on a tablet like the reMarkable?

I'm thinking of something that produces a PDF: pretty printed source files, and a table of contents of modules and functions, and an index of symbols (functions, modules, etc), and other useful navigation aids. In source code, any symbol would be a link to the definition of the symbol.

Apart from clickable links this'd work printed on paper.

Does something like that exist?

liw,

@apgarcia Is there a sample site available where one could look at the doxygen output for a project?

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Retailers are getting more bold about where they place ads! I was going to buy something online from Lands End and went to pay, selected my card ready to send them money and do you know what they did? They put up a pop up ad! You can’t complete the transaction until you hear a pitch from “hello fresh” and “do you want to apply for an apple card?” etc. (I have pretty robust adblockers at home, is this how people live now?) Of course, I canceled the purchase.

liw,

@futurebird How tell your customer you don't want their money, without saying it outright.

Anarcat, to random
@Anarcat@kolektiva.social avatar

contributor license agreements (CLAs) are such a turn-off for frequent drive-by contributors like me

liw,

@Anarcat I, too, will not sign a CLA unless I'm paid for the work. It's a hard no for me.

I don't care why the project has a CLA. The FOSS copyright license is meant to protect the freedom of all parties, and the CLA just adds more protection and privilege to one party.

liw, to random

If you found a piece of paper, what writing on it would convince you it was dropped by a time traveler?

bagder, to random
@bagder@mastodon.social avatar

Someone mentioned another OS. has run on these 93 operating systems. Do you know of one not yet mentioned?

liw,

@bagder You know, you could count every Linux distribution as a separate operating system, if you wanted to. I'm absolutely certain nobody, exactly nobody, would complain, in any way, at all. Everyone would just silently agree and cheer!

(I use this font when I am being sarcastic.)

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