takluyver

9 ms·

61.
by takluyver 4y ago
> I speculate [fork] isn't common, or at least it isn't required for ordinary desktop apps. From a science perspective, the ability to fork is really convenient for parallel processing. Load some data and then fork a pool of wo
62.
by takluyver 4y ago
I believe the kernel OOM killer only fires when you're completely out of memory. But it's not unusual for swap thrashing to make the system unusable before that, forcing the user to either try to kill a likely culprit by hand, or
63.
by takluyver 5y ago
> I'm not entirely convinced this is a big deal since you're usually pretty hosed if you've installed a malicious native app anyway. This specific restriction is part of a more general push for sandboxing, to limit the dam
64.
by takluyver 5y ago
That's broadly true, but I suspect it's a bit more difficult, at least on Android. Updating the operating system involves the company making the device (at least it used to, I'm not sure if that is changing), and it's mu
65.
by takluyver 5y ago
I would generally agree, but this puts a lot of trust in whoever is running the store: if Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Apple build and sign every application, they can quietly modify the code. It wouldn't necessarily be easy
66.
by takluyver 5y ago
Agreed. Of course it's possible in theory for every developer to have their own secure, reliable auto-update mechanism. But it's not easy - the docs of The Update Framework describe some of the challenges. If every app handles its
67.
by takluyver 5y ago
Malware certainly exists on the Play store, but when Google spot it, they can unilaterally remove it. IIRC, they also have the ability to remove it from devices where it was already installed. The app store model probably also delivers secu
68.
by takluyver 5y ago
I think this could be done without being too obnoxious: 'We try not to send emails to people who're not interested - click here to confirm that you still want to get this newsletter'. It doesn't have to be every month -
69.
by takluyver 5y ago
I guess the issue is that a modern web browser is a sandboxed application runtime which also happens to function as a document browser. It's been going in that direction for a long time (since webmail became common), and there are real
70.
by takluyver 5y ago
People object to the massive effort it takes to create or maintain a browser engine which can practically browse the modern web. We're down to 3 players now actually trying to do this (Mozilla, Google, Apple). It conflicts with the ide
71.
by takluyver 6y ago
There are quite a lot of people working on better packaging (look at the Python discourse forum, for instance), but this is not really a topic that Guido has got involved in, at least in the time I've been paying attention. But with or
72.
by takluyver 6y ago
Flit is definitely opinionated, and not suitable for every use case. As Carreau hinted, I think its bigger impact will be from the specifications, especially PEP 517, which it helped to prompt, rather than people using Flit directly. The sp
73.
by takluyver 6y ago
Flit isn't (mostly) a wrapper around other tools - it has its own code to create and upload packages. This was one of the motivating cases for the PEPs (517, 518) defining a standard interface for build tools, so it's practical to
74.
by takluyver 6y ago
Poetry does much more than Flit, like resolving dependencies, creating a lock file, and managing an environment where you can run your code. In particular, Poetry is meant to support application development (where you want to have a fixed v
75.
by takluyver 6y ago
You're thinking about malicious apps, where the developer would just request all permissions they can. But sandboxing is also about limiting the impact of security issues in apps from honest, well meaning developers who (hopefully) won
76.
by takluyver 6y ago
Yup, it's a classic catch 22. Sandboxing doesn't really work without developer cooperation. But there's little incentive for developers to work on it in apps that are easy to get outside the sandbox - or when it's easy t
77.
by takluyver 6y ago
The upside of having the system draw file dialogs is that file dialogs from different apps look consistent, rather than getting out-of-place dialogs depending on what toolkit the app used. It might sound silly, but it's a real annoyanc
78.
by takluyver 6y ago
In some cases it does request permissions when you try to do things. E.g. sandboxed apps without full filesystem access can open & save files through a 'portal' - the system presents the user with an open/save dialog, and
79.
by takluyver 6y ago
> Debian successfully packages a ton of Python software, notorious for its complicated dependency graphs. I guess this depends on your definition of success, but from my perspective as a Python developer, it doesn't really. Most Pyt
80.
by takluyver 6y ago
The specific problem of syncing bookmarks is probably solvable with an extension. But the move suggests that Google doesn't view Chromium as something that people will use directly, like they're not interested in people using open
81.
by takluyver 6y ago
I think a lot of Android apps use Sqlite as well. But the achilles heel of Sqlite in my experience is network filesystems - it's well known & documented that Sqlite can suffer corruption on NFS, because of issues with locking. That
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by takluyver 6y ago
They didn't abandon the technological effort that went into Rust & Servo - they just decided to bring it into Firefox piece by piece under the name 'Quantum' rather than launching a brand new browser with a different name
83.
by takluyver 6y ago
On some level, Firefox has to 'beat' Chrome in order to get/keep a significant level of marketshare. It needs people to see it as better in some way if they're to choose to use it, especially on mobile where Chrome is th
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by takluyver 6y ago
I periodically see sites broken in Firefox until I turn off uBlock and/or Privacy Badger - including issues with paying like you describe. But I've always assumed that the same would happen in Chrome if I had the same extensions i
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by takluyver 6y ago
The Mozilla foundation owns the corporation, so it's not 'run by shareholders' in the normal sense. Any profit it makes stays in Mozilla. I think they set it up like this because some things are legally easier to do as a for-
86.
by takluyver 6y ago
If there was some big central fund to pay for CI for many open source projects, it would probably be for-profit companies donating much of the money to support that. Is that much different to for-profit companies making in-kind donations of
87.
by takluyver 6y ago
I'm talking about setting up the infrastructure before you get to either of those points. I don't want CI running on my laptop - especially for an open project where anyone can submit a merge request - and I don't have a serv
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by takluyver 6y ago
What was the better option? Should small OSS projects have lived without CI for the last few years? Or should everyone who publishes an OSS project set up and maintain a self-hosted CI service for it? Either option would be a massive drag o
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by takluyver 6y ago
The PSF's tax returns are published on python.org, and 'revenue less expenses' for 2018 was just under $280k. IANA accountant, so maybe that's the wrong line to look at.
90.
by takluyver 6y ago
I assume there's some difference in e.g. speed or reliability between Fastly (8 c/GB) and CDN77 (1.6 c/GB)? Even if you can negotiate it to 0.8 c/GB, you're still talking about a huge piece of the PSF's budget.

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