3 ms·

i dont think maintainer changes is even the endgame for this stuff. its hard to get a new person in, but a nation state can likely more trivially attack a curre

i dont think maintainer changes is even the endgame for this stuff. its hard to get a new person in, but a nation state can likely more trivially attack a current maintainer.. everyone has a button somewhere. the only solution to this is tooling which can flawlessly reason about code changes being malicious or not, being applied to every change in a project. and then still its a lost cause. a lot of issues and vilnerabilities come from how softwarw interoperates witj other software. will you be able to reason about all possible package combinations and how they are secure or not when they come together in certain ways? it should be easier to write systems from scratch, rather than to have to use third party code for everything. computers currently are not condusive to this. they need to be built different, to allow software to be built different. maybe while we are at it we can also make it so computers reduce complexity in peoples lives instead of adding to it.

transpute 2y ago
> it should be easier to write systems from scratch, rather than to have to use third party code for everything. computers currently are not condusive to this. they need to be built different, to allow software to be built different. Yes. We also need to encourage user scripting of first party library APIs on devices. iOS Shortcuts are a step in the right direction, but they need better tooling to maintain and distribute source-controlled shortcuts.
- sim7c00 2y ago
  theres definitely improvements ofcourse. apple is not wrong trying to have more of the chain as a single vendor. i would hope amd/intel and such places might offer more help also to implement their devices easily. (implementing amd64 is really difficult imho, only acpi has some good code from the vendor and thats such a small part of whats needed). we know kot to build a house on a bad foundation, but somehow built our techstack on a flimsy one (no one to blame, just times changing..). reinventing the wheel is the way to go, but ofcourse commercially and maybe generally kind of inviable as likely it would breal everything. i hope as stuff moves forward perhaps theres some tech leap that would allow this to naturally happen. some other architecture or so which is better and requires the rethink/rewrite. i spend my days trying to reason about different foundations (software/firmware), but its an impossible mission, and for me merely a thought excersize. cant expect anything practical to come out of it unfortunately. and i think this last part is part of the issue. 'open source' has not the resources to fix the issues we are facing. its not meant to.
  - transpute 2y ago
    > we know not to build a house on a bad foundation, but somehow built our techstack on a flimsy one Good analogy. Extending it further, homebuilders have liability and regulation for safety, while software has been a contest of incentives for creation, extraction and influence. With the convergence of "cyber" and physical reality, liability is coming to software development. Alan Kay's VPRI has a few papers on new approaches to software, https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Papers_from_Viewpoints_Research_Institute https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Papers_from_Viewpoints_Re... https://tinlizzie.org/VPRIPapers/M2013004_agere.pdf https://tinlizzie.org/VPRIPapers/M2013004_agere.pdf The software for today’s personal computing environments has become so complex that no single person can understand an entire system. Our group’s early experiences with personal computing led us to understand that the essential model of personal computing can be expressed much more compactly. Our group engaged in.. the STEPS project) to materialize that vision over the last six years.. There are various meta-language implementations. A new stream-processing language called Nile was invented. The syntax of Nile allows a fully-featured vector graphics engine.. to be written in a clean, mathematical manner in less than 500 lines of code. .. Another direction is to take the idea of loose-coupling to the next level; objects should not know about other objects directly but should always negotiate and “find” other objects.. J.C.R. Licklider already foresaw the need for program components to discover each other on a huge network of computers. From that viewpoint, what we are trying to do is to carry the vision forward.
    - sim7c00 2y ago
      Thanks a lot for the elaboration and resources, very interesting!

transpute 2y ago

> it should be easier to write systems from scratch, rather than to have to use third party code for everything. computers currently are not condusive to this. they need to be built different, to allow software to be built different. Yes. We also need to encourage user scripting of first party library APIs on devices. iOS Shortcuts are a step in the right direction, but they need better tooling to maintain and distribute source-controlled shortcuts.

sim7c00 2y ago
theres definitely improvements ofcourse. apple is not wrong trying to have more of the chain as a single vendor. i would hope amd/intel and such places might offer more help also to implement their devices easily. (implementing amd64 is really difficult imho, only acpi has some good code from the vendor and thats such a small part of whats needed). we know kot to build a house on a bad foundation, but somehow built our techstack on a flimsy one (no one to blame, just times changing..). reinventing the wheel is the way to go, but ofcourse commercially and maybe generally kind of inviable as likely it would breal everything. i hope as stuff moves forward perhaps theres some tech leap that would allow this to naturally happen. some other architecture or so which is better and requires the rethink/rewrite. i spend my days trying to reason about different foundations (software/firmware), but its an impossible mission, and for me merely a thought excersize. cant expect anything practical to come out of it unfortunately. and i think this last part is part of the issue. 'open source' has not the resources to fix the issues we are facing. its not meant to.
- transpute 2y ago
  > we know not to build a house on a bad foundation, but somehow built our techstack on a flimsy one Good analogy. Extending it further, homebuilders have liability and regulation for safety, while software has been a contest of incentives for creation, extraction and influence. With the convergence of "cyber" and physical reality, liability is coming to software development. Alan Kay's VPRI has a few papers on new approaches to software, https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Papers_from_Viewpoints_Research_Institute https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Papers_from_Viewpoints_Re... https://tinlizzie.org/VPRIPapers/M2013004_agere.pdf https://tinlizzie.org/VPRIPapers/M2013004_agere.pdf The software for today’s personal computing environments has become so complex that no single person can understand an entire system. Our group’s early experiences with personal computing led us to understand that the essential model of personal computing can be expressed much more compactly. Our group engaged in.. the STEPS project) to materialize that vision over the last six years.. There are various meta-language implementations. A new stream-processing language called Nile was invented. The syntax of Nile allows a fully-featured vector graphics engine.. to be written in a clean, mathematical manner in less than 500 lines of code. .. Another direction is to take the idea of loose-coupling to the next level; objects should not know about other objects directly but should always negotiate and “find” other objects.. J.C.R. Licklider already foresaw the need for program components to discover each other on a huge network of computers. From that viewpoint, what we are trying to do is to carry the vision forward.
  - sim7c00 2y ago
    Thanks a lot for the elaboration and resources, very interesting!