dwheeler

42 ms·

511.
by dwheeler 5y ago
> there is a black cat, which is also in keeping with the wizard theme, but I'm not sure whether it corresponds to anything specific in UNIX either "cat" is a common command in Unix, it concatenates files (and if you give
512.
by dwheeler 5y ago
There is a non-Jewish use for this. I remember developing code for a simulated elevator system, and Sabbath mode is an excellent backup mode if you detect that the elevator floor buttons are not working. While it's nowhere near as effi
513.
by dwheeler 6y ago
> it's less a question of ethics, and more a question of bad judgement. I disagree. I think it's easier to excuse bad judgment, in part because we all sometimes make mistakes in complicated situations. But this is an example of
514.
by dwheeler 6y ago
It's not just "out of fashion". Red teaming, without consent of the owners of the system being analyzed, is typically illegal . You generally must have consent from the people being experimented on within the US.
515.
by dwheeler 6y ago
It appears that the U of MN researchers experimented on Linux kernel developers without those developers' consent. The researchers didn't even go through their Institutional Review Board (IRB) until the experiment was done, which
516.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Obligatory portal 2 snippet: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0S3_YJC6OFs
517.
by dwheeler 6y ago
This page says RTEMS was written in "C and Ada" https://www.sigada.org/links.html But I think that information must be old, the current info seems to just say C.
518.
by dwheeler 6y ago
> Would this make Linux the first *NIX-based OS that is written in a language other than C? At least, with high usage... It depends, but it's certainly not the first POSIX implementation in some high level language other than C. For
519.
by dwheeler 6y ago
> 16-bit characters... work fine in 99% of the cases. In other words, they don't work :-). UTF-16 is also variable-length. Sometimes a character fits in 16 bits, and sometimes it doesn't. From a practical view it's worse
520.
by dwheeler 6y ago
There are so many robocalls, typically for scams, that our phones have been effectively stolen from us. We can often no longer practically use them for their intended purpose. I hope the FCC gets serious.
521.
by dwheeler 6y ago
You're right about the graphemes. If you need it, you need it, but I recommend writing code that does not need to count graphemes if you can avoid them. In many cases strings are best considered units that can be concatenated at wi
522.
by dwheeler 6y ago
This guide omits an IMPORTANT issue: handling characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). JavaScript, like some other languages, suffers from the UCS-2 curse - that is, it assumes that all characters fit inside 16 bits, even thou
523.
by dwheeler 6y ago
The USG cannot hold copyright in the US in certain cases, but it can still apply copyright outside the US. So one approach is to say "no copyright within the US, outside the US use this license". The USG can hold copyright i
524.
by dwheeler 6y ago
I love the "long options start with two dashes" convention. It means that you can chose short options that are easily combined (in cases where the command and its options are often used), or you can use long options that are muc
525.
by dwheeler 6y ago
I frankly don't trust hibernation on any computer, using any operating system. Too much can go wrong, and testing it is so hard that I don't think any organization really has it solved. It's also hard to beat the power
526.
by dwheeler 6y ago
> A bias towards "beauty" or simplicity of some form is inevitable and part of good science. > For every theory, you can generate a more complicated theory with more moving parts that generates the exact same predictions. I
527.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Yes, there also exists readable Lisp: https://readable.sourceforge.io/
528.
by dwheeler 6y ago
I'm replying-to-myself, because I think this text from YAML 1.2 (explaining its changes) are key: > The primary objective of this revision is to bring YAML into compliance with JSON as an official subset. YAML 1.2 is compatible with
529.
by dwheeler 6y ago
The YAML specification eliminated this problem in 2009, with the release of version 1.2. That spec also eliminated some other problematic problems. The real problem is that YAML parsers in wide use have not been updated to the spec that was
530.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Quite possible. I've never seen a perfectly clean dataset of any significant size. Big datasets have all sorts of weirdness unless there was an extraordinary effort to keep them pristine.
531.
by dwheeler 6y ago
This is still one of the best Language tutorial books ever. The cartoons are both funny and illuminating.
532.
by dwheeler 6y ago
If you prefer a video, you might check out my 3-part autotools tutorial, starting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q_inV9M_us The video shows an animation about how the autotools work (which I think helps understandin
533.
by dwheeler 6y ago
There are active discussions about this to eventually do that, yes. It was hard to kick that off during a pandemic, so the decision was made to create the foundation first so it could be discussed and eventually worked out. In the meantime
534.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Quick explanation: the original song is from one of the video games in the video game series Touhou. The creator of the video game series allows fans to create derivative works. As a result, there are lots of interesting works that its pass
535.
by dwheeler 6y ago
The video's been around since 2009. Video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FtutLA63Cp8 Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Apple !! I recommend watching this video, "Bad Apple
536.
by dwheeler 6y ago
It is certainly not the best environment. It is, however, hilarious. It does provide immediate feedback on cycle counts. That could be useful. But if you are programming a 6502 in 2021, utility is not the point :-).
537.
by dwheeler 6y ago
The article gets it: the problem isn't COBOL, the problem is lack of maintenance. The analogy is apt, too: if you never put oil in a car & it fails, the problem is not how the car the built. There are materials for learning COBOL.
538.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Spaceship Earth has terrible steering, which in the very long term will be a problem as the Sun starts becoming a red giant. But over time I can imagine steering becoming possible: https://dwheeler.com/essays/move-space
539.
by dwheeler 6y ago
The actual title is, "Why are Climate models written in programming languages from 1950?". I think the assumption that "old is bad" is the cause of many, many, many foolish decisions. Useless code rewrites, company reorg
540.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Interesting, I don't see any announcement of a fork about Minux.

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