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Comment by balder1991 | Hacker News Reader

balder1991

That got me confused too.

It was pretty clear to me that the comment was a description of the respective characteristics of glibc and musl in terms of security, while avoiding any conclusion: glibc has heap hardening, which is good for security, but a complex codebase, which is bad for security. Meanwhile, musl is small and understandable, which is good for security, but with a naive codebase that lacks hardening, which is bad for security. Which is better is intentionally left to the reader to avoid flamewars.

That's a charitable reading but it doesn't track with what they actually said. The first paragraph says that all modern Linux binaries are compiled with PIE, so Alpine has no advantage there. The second paragraph says that glibc is more secure than musl heap-wise. The third paragraph is the conclusion, which is that Alpine is less secure because it uses musl.

A sentence thrown on to the end of the conclusion should normally be read as reemphasizing the reasons for the conclusion unless it starts with a word like "though" or "however".

Yeah, sorry guys. I did write too fast.

The last sentence should be :

So in that regard, Alpine is less secure by using musl. However, having a small and understandable system is a real advantage when it comes to security.

wow. what a thread.

Upvoted even though I'm guilty. But then again so are you. ;)

nerds have the best arguments

If you're smart enough to construct this analysis and critique, then you're smart enough to have reached the same conclusion the parent and I did.

I'm not charitable, it's just what made sense, like mentally fixing a typo instead of acting like you don't know, and can't figure out from context what someone meant just because they flubbed a letter or a word or something.

When a letter gets flubbed, it's nearly always possible to correct it from context alone. When a word is missing, it's sometimes possible to retrieve the original meaning but other times the missing word creates an ambiguity and you have to just pick a meaning. Faced with the ambiguity, your brain jumped in one direction, mine in another. You landed on the correct answer, I didn't, but there's no need to imply that my reconstruction was done in bad faith.

> I'm not charitable, it's just what made sense, like mentally fixing a typo instead of acting like you don't know, and can't figure out from context what someone meant just because they flubbed a letter or a word or something.

I mean, that's just what's called in Philosophy the principle of charity [0]. When evaluating a claim you should read it in its best light, which include glossing over minor inaccuracies and going straight to the main point.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

A line break in between the two sentences of the last paragraph may have made the commenter’s point clearer.

It seems to be they were only comparing the relatives benefits/drawbacks of glibc and musl, but with the way it is written the pro-musl comment feels out of place.

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