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machinestops

GrapheneOS has the functionality "Contact Scopes" in the same vein as "Storage Scopes" that only provides access to the specific contacts and files you allow.
Seems pretty cool, but I would probably object to `--best-effort` being enabled by default. This is a sandbox and a security boundary, and degrading security should probably be opt-in rather than opt-out.
Plan 9's cool ideas largely still haven't been surpassed or reimplemented.

https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/3rd_edition/rio/rio_slides.pdf

Re:The Siren Song of Little Languages on Monday January 13, 2025 @04:26AM (#42681615)
I struggle to take such an article seriously when it cites Brainfuck as an example. A common use of Brainfuck isn't to write programs, but rather to prove that it is possible to write programs. This isn't exactly comparable with small Lisps or Forth.
Re:Déjà vu: Ghostly CVEs in my terminal title on Thursday January 02, 2025 @11:42AM (#42575995)
I appreciate the commitment it has to backwards compatibility - the TUI apps are better by virtue of running on top of Arcan's layer, with no changes.
Re:Déjà vu: Ghostly CVEs in my terminal title on Wednesday January 01, 2025 @03:02PM (#42568810)
Have you heard of Arcan? https://arcan-fe.com
Re:I Was Wrong about the Ethics Crisis (Moshe Vardi, CACM) on Sunday December 29, 2024 @07:30PM (#42545036)
This is very funny. Let's take a different approach.

You are in a situation where you have a particular benefit. You may choose to share part of this benefit with another individual, who can be said to be deprived without it. This individual lacks the capacity to gain the benefit by their own means. Said individual shall be a permanent stranger: you will never again meet, your choice here being without future consequence as a result. Sharing your benefit diminishes it, but does not lose it.

What decision do you make?

Re:I Was Wrong about the Ethics Crisis (Moshe Vardi, CACM) on Sunday December 29, 2024 @02:06PM (#42542101)
Precisely. As of such, those with increased capacity for access will deprive access to others. No balance of care forms. Your recommended ethic is what Kant wished to address with his categorical imperative.

Of course this is a unifaceted way of posing a problem: it's a model, given we're dealing with philosophical ideas. I should hope that I needn't provide examples for the model, given the state of the world at present won't let you swing a cat without hitting one.

Re:I Was Wrong about the Ethics Crisis (Moshe Vardi, CACM) on Sunday December 29, 2024 @12:56PM (#42541550)
No, it isn't, which is why I added "definitionally". Let's say we have a limited resource, X, that is beneficial to hold, and it is more beneficial to hold more of it. As it is limited, acquiring necessarily means depriving another of it. Assuming one has the means to acquire more without impacting oneself negatively, in which situation (taking optimising for oneself as a maxim) you not seek to acquire more?
Re:I Was Wrong about the Ethics Crisis (Moshe Vardi, CACM) on Sunday December 29, 2024 @12:13PM (#42541239)
The problem with optimising exclusively for oneself is that you definitionally optimise at the expense of others. Gaps are easily widened, and your balancing idea falls apart when the scales are tipped from the start.
Re:Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15 on Sunday December 29, 2024 @05:45AM (#42539142)
I've used Lineage. I'd say it's worth a look, yes. I got a Pixel for Graphene, though.
Re:Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15 on Sunday December 29, 2024 @04:36AM (#42538853)
Graphene mitigates the locked bootloader issue by only supporting one line of phones (Pixel), which have unlocked bootloaders.

A large amount of work has been put into making Graphene specifically work with banking apps. Mine does, for instance.

Re:Framework Mystery Boxes on Monday December 16, 2024 @03:56PM (#42435329)
Makes sense.
Re:Framework Mystery Boxes on Monday December 16, 2024 @03:18PM (#42434954)
Link 404s.
Re:SVC16: Simplest Virtual Computer on Monday December 16, 2024 @01:15PM (#42433644)
For what? The simplest possible ISA? Something like an OISC or a ZISC, probably. Simplest "virtual computer"? Maybe the SK(I) combinator system? Specific improvements to this architecture? My personal preference would be to ditch the three arguments that aren't always used, have two 8bit instructions per 16bit word, use a stack (to eliminate the operands). But that's just one mode of thought for a very simple computer, not the only one. This line of thought is particularly inspired by the F18 Forth chips. They're quite minimal, simple, tight CPU designs: https://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/DB001-22...
Re:Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre operating system on Monday December 16, 2024 @12:44PM (#42433314)
The path of least resistance is to jam flags where they don't belong, sed patches, etc. Works well enough, so that's what ends up happening.
Re:Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre operating system on Sunday December 15, 2024 @07:32PM (#42426990)
See https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis for a proof of concept.

No dynamic linking locks you out of Clang+LLVM (mostly: static clang isn't an officially supported configuration, but it can probably be forced to exist. I haven't properly looked into it yet.), Firefox, Chromium, QtWebEngine, (so no alt browsers, either), and probably a lot more. Statically linking every single package out there requires a lot of patches to build systems to get them to properly do it. Many build systems don't respect LDFLAGS and CFLAGS, or respect one or the other, or only partially respect them, causing a great deal of annoyance if you have a nonstandard desired result, such as fully static builds.

Re:SVC16: Simplest Virtual Computer on Sunday December 15, 2024 @05:34PM (#42426455)
The ISA leaves something to be desired for "simplest". Simple, sure, but parameters (and unused ones, at that!)? Memory copy instructions? Multiply and no shifts? Addition _and_ subtraction?

Others have mentioned Subleq (Subtract And Branch If Less Than Or Equal To), but there's more useful designs that meet all the design constraints. They state that "It is also not intended to be as simple and elegant as it could possibly be.", but it's called "The Simplest Virtual Computer" - that kind of name is a challenge.

PDFs support JavaScript. Here's Adobe's guide on how to add JS to your PDFs: https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/acrobat/using/applying-actions-sc...
Re:"Rules" that terminal programs follow on Thursday December 12, 2024 @05:29PM (#42404091)
Note: Child processes can't change the working directory of the parent. An external command (that is, not a shell builtin, shell function, or externally loaded module) cannot change the working directory, because they're launched as child processes.
Re:I made an ls alternative for my personal use on Monday November 25, 2024 @02:21AM (#42233979)
In past, there have been Linux-based operating systems that have been certified as Single Unix Specification compliant, and part of said specification is POSIX. I would imagine GNU and Busybox and Musl will be willing to implement the changes proposed by POSIX 2024, which inevitably leads down the road of newlines being banned.
Re:I made an ls alternative for my personal use on Monday November 25, 2024 @02:18AM (#42233968)
Most utilities that create files are encouraged to error on newline filenames, which makes this effective illegality stronger. The post also discusses the future of this encouragement, which is turning it into a requirement.

> However, older systems will not be enforcing this

Eventually, newlines in filenames will go the way of /usr/xpg4/bin/sh.

I'd like to note that up until this point, there hasn't (and isn't) been a fully POSIX compliant way to do many shell operations on newline containing filenames. They are already effectively unsupported, and the standard that adds support also discourages them from being created and used. The best way to handle them up until this point has been to not use sh(1).

Re:I made an ls alternative for my personal use on Sunday November 24, 2024 @03:16PM (#42230178)
A lot of this post hinges on the fact that newlines in filenames were legal, and that people wrote shell without handling quoting correctly. While quoting (as well as ls altering filenames) is still an issue, find -print0, read -d '', and similar are no longer neccessary. Newlines are now forbidden in filenames: https://blog.toast.cafe/posix2024-xcu
Re:Ask HN: Would you recommend a framework laptop on Sunday November 24, 2024 @06:18AM (#42227297)
I'm not joking. I used to be an Alpine user, but I ran it in disk mode. Any OS can probably be made to boot to RAM. You just need to get the initramfs to extract a rootfs image to RAM (tmpfs), and set that filesystem as root before handing off to init. What makes Puppy special is the stuff it does to persist changes.
Re:Ask HN: Would you recommend a framework laptop on Monday November 18, 2024 @11:56AM (#42174289)
Maybe I should reconfigure my OS to run out of RAM.
Re:Ask HN: Would you recommend a framework laptop on Monday November 18, 2024 @11:55AM (#42174280)
External drives disconnecting themselves isn't an unknown issue. It's a bit different when it is your boot drive.
Re:Ask HN: Would you recommend a framework laptop on Monday November 18, 2024 @11:54AM (#42174268)
Preventing the issue from ocurring by not selling a known incompatible configuration is the approach I'd take personally. It's the combination of the 512GB WD Black and the i5.
Re:Ask HN: Would you recommend a framework laptop on Sunday November 17, 2024 @06:39AM (#42163602)
I use a Framework. I would advise looking up the parts you select prior to ordering. I didn't, and I accidentally selected an SSD that has known firmware issues (it unmounts itself randomly while in use). No fixes for this issue in 2 years has me skeptical of buying again, but I'm otherwise pretty happy with the device.

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