alxlaz

136 ms·

691.
by alxlaz 9y ago
I'm one of them and have as much extensive experience with Windows 7+ as someone who write *nix and embedded software for a living can have. Windows 2000 is the last Windows version I used exclusively. The "mostly successful effor
692.
by alxlaz 9y ago
I've read about such events and I am a little concerned about their unfolding along with the quickened pace of development in the AI field. If any artifacts are discovered on the moon, I sure as hell ain't boarding anything called
693.
by alxlaz 9y ago
That was obviously (I hope?) just one example. C++ has a huge set of overlapping features, some of which have been introduced as a better alternative of older features. Their interaction is extremely complex. It's great that your tea
694.
by alxlaz 9y ago
Knuth's arguments still hold though: "The problem that I have with them today is that... C++ is too complicated. At the moment, it's impossible for me to write portable code that I believe would work on lots of different syst
695.
by alxlaz 9y ago
> And they got the best projects and the most money. I think what they don't have is their CEO testifying in front of the Congress after building a platform whose hunger for money made it an exceptional weapon against society. Smart
696.
by alxlaz 9y ago
Feynman's own country, though, was at war; when he was recruited into the team that would eventually work on the Manhattan project, the Pearl Harbour attack had already taken place and irrevocably wounded and scarred the American publi
697.
by alxlaz 9y ago
> I was trying to describe how an api would look where the compiler would make sure you could not call a certain function from a certain context. It's not a certain set of functions that you want to forbid, it's a certain beh
698.
by alxlaz 9y ago
I really don't know what you mean by this: > That frob is forbidden isn't because the compiler detected that foo is a signal handler, but because no forbidden functions exist. or this: > not possible - if frob might be forbi
699.
by alxlaz 9y ago
If I had to guess, I'd say they were doing it because it is often installed with suid root. Edit: also, there's a challenge about this in the program's README :-) "Decide for yourself, of course, but it looks safe to me
700.
by alxlaz 9y ago
It's not something that can be solved on an API level. You can rewrite the C standard library all you want, you still won't be able to differentiate between this: void handle_signal(struct signal_handler_arg *arg) which d
701.
by alxlaz 9y ago
At a former workplace (medical systems), they had a very cool and highly useful informal policy where they'd require every programmer to attend a surgery as early after being hired as possible (ideally within the first year or so). Ob
702.
by alxlaz 9y ago
How would you differentiate a function that takes an argument of some kind and handles signals from one that just takes an argument of that kind (e.g. for debugging, logging, or some other sort of introspection)? Edit: to be clear -- I&#x
703.
by alxlaz 9y ago
This is, I guess, the uncomfortable secret about Forth :-). There's the community of Forth enthusiasts, who admire its simple, word-oriented concept, and the ease of implementation, and are super happy that you can put a working interp
704.
by alxlaz 9y ago
I'm gonna put my dinosaur hat on and remind everyone that you can still use USENET in 2018. It's alive, well, and if you don't need access to binary groups, it's also free and very straightforward. There are still some i
705.
by alxlaz 9y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16671791 I can't edit my post anymore :-)
706.
by alxlaz 9y ago
Oh, the downvote machine works here as well... Whenever the line between a technical discussion and a systemd bashing thread becomes blurry, someone who does DevOps for a living invariably pops up to say how much they like systemd -- usuall
707.
by alxlaz 9y ago
I usually refrain from distro- (and editor-, and language-) related discussions but I think Void Linux deserves an exception here: - Everything is remarkably simple, (mostly) well-documented and straightforward. - Friendly, dedicated and ve
708.
by alxlaz 9y ago
This is a lovely account and, though it may not seem when you first read it -- in my experience, it is somewhat optimistic. For instance: > The process of changing the system to have a new balancing point took work. It involved investmen
709.
by alxlaz 9y ago
> To that point, I’m wondering if all IT initiatives codenamed “Phoenix” are doomed from the start Firefox seems to be doing pretty well :-).
710.
by alxlaz 9y ago
This may be true, but FOSS does not magically make it happen. Many FOSS projects are led or dominated by large companies today; the development may happen in the open, but it is as "corporate" as it gets, and no bullshit calling o
711.
by alxlaz 9y ago
Why are you doing any kind of professional work, at such a low level, without an ICE?
712.
by alxlaz 9y ago
> What I tried to criticise was the vagueness of the linked page and the scarcity of information. So if you are not interested in "these details", but you found the page vague and the information scarce, what details should i
713.
by alxlaz 9y ago
OK, first, that sentence does not mean "smaller things are harder to click or tap". That sentence would still hold true if smaller things were easier to click or tap. Besides, in 1954, when Fitts' paper appeared, it was a
714.
by alxlaz 9y ago
What (I believe) gkya was trying to point out is that "the time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target" is a rather pointless statement. Of course it's a function of the distance to and
715.
by alxlaz 9y ago
The author does not seem to mean "the end of langsec" as in "everyone will give up on it", but rather the end of a period characterized, and not incorrectly, by the opinion that a safe programming language guarantees the
716.
by alxlaz 9y ago
Right. In the spur of the moment I wrote "a fork of ksh" as in "a shell (mostly) conforming to ksh' specs", which is technically incorrect -- the worst kind of incorrect.
717.
by alxlaz 9y ago
Frankly, all I miss from the pre-VoIP world is being able to start with "Hey, how are you" instead of "Hey, can you hear me".
718.
by alxlaz 9y ago
OpenBSD still uses a ksh fork as a default shell. mksh is also widely-available and pretty great -- I use it as my shell on Linux boxes, too.
719.
by alxlaz 9y ago
I'm really sorry you're getting downvoted, because there is a lot of useful data in your comment. And I think we definitely see eye to eye on this: > The throwaways are talking safety features. I used to think that was a benefi
720.
by alxlaz 9y ago
> What additional code? All the code that you need in order to support smart pointers, templates, move/copy semantics, exceptions and so on. To paraphrase someone whose opinions you should take far more seriously than mine, you can&

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