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BirAdam

4,501 karma · joined January 19, 2022

Just a nerd. I like to tinker with Linux/UNIX, and I write computing history. Also, lots of coffee, cigars, books.

https://www.abortretry.fail

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BirAdam··on Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
Features to replace installation, cloud metadata uniformity, better secure boot support, boot loader support, and improved TPM support. None of this sounds user hostile, but taken together and handed to the corporate Linux vendors? This easily becomes a way to make Linux a licensed appliance. Yet, handed to a group like Arch, it just enables wildly cool stuff. Incentives are a thing.
BirAdam··on Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
So many people talk about wanting Linux on Apple Silicon, and while Asahi can run on M1/M2 and has some support on M3, it's not optimal. Also, software quality in Linux, while higher than most alternatives, has been trending downward. I am more eager to have NetBSD's Apple Silicon support improve than I am Linux's.

https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/apple/

BirAdam··on Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
Give IBM some time, and there will likely be similar stuff on Linux distributions. The Linux kernel has been dropping hardware support, and systemd has been getting some... interesting features.

Naturally, the benefit for Linux is still the variety available in distributions. While IBM's RHEL and Canonical's Ubuntu may adopt some questionable stuff, Slackware, Devuan, Omarchy, and such likely won't.

BirAdam··on Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
I recently had to buy RAM for some on-prem servers at work. 256GB was around $3800, and it wasn't even particularly fast RAM... it also wasn't ECC, because that would have spiked the price still higher.
BirAdam··on New Mac mini, featuring M6 and M5 Pro
Right now, demand exceeds supply. As new fabs come online, supply will rise. Eventually, either through greater efficiency of the models and inference systems or through the collapse of AI companies, the demand will drop.
BirAdam··on Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study
Regulatory capture of our legislature and regulatory bodies, intense bribery, proof of need legislation, and people consistently providing an obviously corrupt system with more money and power thinking that somehow, magically, the people who’ve obviously been corrupt and dishonest will be made angels when given more money and power.
BirAdam··on A third world engineer responds to “RISC-V: They should have known better”
There’s Vortex86 and VIA. VIA’s rights came from Cyrix, and this is where Zhaoxin‘s rights come from.
BirAdam··on Everything you do is being recorded
So much this. When my son turned 12, I told him how some of the various social media sites and smart technologies work, and he’s avoided social media altogether ever since (he’s now an adult). He always uses ad blockers and content filters, and he generally made good decisions around phone use, and other tech use from a privacy respecting perspective.

Prior to this discussion, he was eager to be on social media apps because other kids his age were on them. People respond to knowledge about these topics, but there isn’t a mainstream popular individual talking about it. Everyone is so silo’d, it would be quite difficult to reach people, and depending upon the political leanings of such a person, half the population would reactively go the opposite direction… on what really shouldn’t be partisan.

BirAdam··on I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
PalmOS and webOS were the best.
BirAdam··on Substack writers, you need a website
This saved me when X killed Substack tweets. My Substack uses a custom domain and thus was fine. People tweeted it out with no blocking.
BirAdam··on No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s
Sure, but people could also just use BSD. The point is not vim or Linux. The point is that what the author appears to enjoy, a simple editor and a book, is easily accomplished still today.
BirAdam··on No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s
Most Linux systems just symlink vim to vi, and it launches in a compatibility mode. Vim without plugins is still close. Old workflows can still be achieved. The user simply has to really want that experience.
BirAdam··on Systemd Linger
If ever handled thousands of servers running Linux with sysvinit, you get quite accustomed to it… and the tricky bits aren’t that tricky.
BirAdam··on Systemd Linger
I never found systemd difficult, but I do find prior solutions to be simpler. An init script is easy, and the order is also easy. If people are accustomed to UNIX systems, the sysvinit is better. For people who never experienced those systems, systemd is their friend. No need to use UNIX tools when Systemd ships with batteries included.
BirAdam··on No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s
You can always just use vim, no plugins, and a book. No one said that one must use a fancy IDE and online stuff.
BirAdam··on If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?
I see all these comments about Linux not having this issue, but Linux has a similar issue. Canonical’s uutils being forced before being ready, Wayland adoption initially before it was ready, KDE4, GNOME3, PulseAudio, Avahi, Bluetooth support, etc. Linux systems do tend to get better overtime, but Linux systems also tend to release without sufficient testing. So, while you can expect things to be great after several patch releases, everything may break initially.
BirAdam··on Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds
The owners of the social networks are billionaires with great lawyers and lobbyists on staff. They get politicians to introduce bills pushing the responsibility to the OS instead of the social network.

Of course, I am not sure why anyone trusts the global elite after JE. Telling any system the age of a user could be more harmful to that user than the supposed harm of the software itself.

BirAdam··on MITS: Rockets, Calculators, and Personal Computers
It is, indeed, an error. I will correct the record.
BirAdam··on MITS: Rockets, Calculators, and Personal Computers
Thank you.
BirAdam··on Computation as a universal and fundamental concept
I’ve always hated the use of the word “information” in relation to things like spin.

Information and order are effects of human perception and preference. They exist as abstractions in the mind and not in reality.

BirAdam··on Underwater suit-wearing cyborg insect capable of diving and terra-aqua travel
They’d clearly decide that the cockroach was worshipped.
BirAdam··on The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It
If the US government quit subsidizing oil companies and traditional automakers, there’d be more incentive to make good, affordable EVs, and more incentive for Americans to buy them.
BirAdam··on Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers
Same here. Applications developers and QA often can't really do their jobs, so I get roped in on every problem it seems. Plans to go out with my family on my birthday? Canceled. Plans to go kayaking with my wife on Saturday? Canceled. At this point, I am extremely tempted to leave my job, sell my house, buy some land in Wyoming or something, and just be content to be poor.
BirAdam··on The brain was not designed for this much bad news
Well, politicians are generally liars. Trump, Obama, Biden, Bush, Clinton, Reagan… we can go all the way back to McKinley and I could easily say that the campaign people voted for was not what was delivered. Even more, it was usually the opposite.
BirAdam··on The brain was not designed for this much bad news
Nah. People actively voted for a guy who said no war. Then he got the USA into a dumb war. Just like all the rest.

Voting has objectively not produced the results that the people have wanted, and this is not new. Voting doesn’t work. Being “informed” changes nothing. The only way the hoi polloi can have any effect whatever is typically through rather violent uprising. This works for maybe a generation, and then it all starts falling apart again.

BirAdam··on Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file
People also forget… XP had more than the one tonka-toy theme from Frog Design. There were several themes. Some appealed to my visual tastes, some didn’t… but I do think they were well designed, which is more than I can say for most UI design today.
BirAdam··on Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file
It was change. People don’t like change.
BirAdam··on Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file
That depends upon the type of SSD. There’s compact flash which is natively IDE, and the controllers are extremely weak, then there are modern TLC SATA drives where the controller would probably be a bit more powerful than the machine’s CPU.
BirAdam··on SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
I’m not even worried about the weight and heat. How do you do a disk swap or other service on a machine in a datacenter in orbit?
BirAdam··on LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
Are you in the USA? Brave person if so.
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