anshargal

see also (which is a much better writing): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32263535

It's fun to see new waves of Linux UI polish attempts (like DHH's Ubuntu/Arch scripts, or this project). The Linux desktop could use some care -- and it's the kind of work a single (talented) person can actually do.

The harder problem is the underlying drivers and app ecosystem. Will some third-party package actually run, or will it require qt-2 and then crash on launch? Why is the laptop's webcam upside down, or why is wi-fi dropping every 11 minutes?

One-man distros rarely fix this (unless the person actually has same trouble). It takes a company, that would be willing to invest the sheer human-hours. We had Red Hat, Ubuntu -- companies that did a lot, but eventually capped their investment in the desktop. We need a new one. Until then, we'll keep getting the same experience under a new label.

Obj-C apps are not deprecated yet, so the approach in that GitHub repo must still work. That app is indeed written in C, but a big chunk is about building Obj-C classes and using other Obj-C objects - so it’s not quite C. You won't get much performance benefits or additional flexibility this way.

C is Turing-complete, so you can technically write anything in it. But on iOS, you'd need to build your own C library for application-level Apple SDKs, since Apple doesn't provide one. For simple apps (like small games or toy utils) - a minimal wrapper in Objective-C or Swift could be just a few hundred lines.

there are not a lot of options to get a virtual server under $1 per month, especially with IPv4 address

I wonder if anyone is working on a fantasy console with PS3-level graphics. A lot of games on Steam today have retro aesthetics and aren’t very demanding. A game runtime that works on Linux, macOS, and Windows would solve portability and digital preservation.

About 20 years ago, I was setting up a shared PC at my university. I googled for a way in Windows XP (via registry or group policy) to only let specific programs run. I added stuff like explorer.exe, iexplore.exe, winword.exe, acroread.exe, and a few others.

Fast forward a few years, and the computer was still running great. The desktop and downloads folders were full of messengers, "flash players" and other malware - but all binaries were throwing cryptic error. Since no one in IT was around or cared, nobody figured out how to edit the allow list. The computer was deemed half-broken. But when neighboring PCs were completely infested, this one could still open, edit, and print office docs flawlessly.

It felt like a magic fix for shared Windows PC security.

I wonder if there is a simple chip, similar to the 4004, 8080, or Z80, that can run at modern high frequencies — 4–5 GHz, or even higher due to its simplicity? Not much of a practical use, but it could be fun for emulation projects. 100x slower with emulation - still fast enough for retro platforms.

I'm working on QA Sphere https://qasphere.com/ - a lightweight tool for managing software testing. It’s built for QA engineers to document functional test cases and track execution, manually or via automation.

Test management tools are nothing new, but I’m focused on making this one fast and easy to use, without the bloat. The goal is to help smaller teams adopt solid QA practices without the hassle.

This may be a bit unrelated, but it is actually possible to run Xenix in a browser: https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/sys/unix/ibm/xenix/1.0/

There is also a similar thing for CSV files encoded as JSON arrays - csvj.org

Can somebody share (potentially adjusting for IKEA effect) if homemade pasta really tastes better than pre-made one? Barilla? De Secco? Artisan brands?

The days of x86 macOS are numbered. I don't think there are good ways for running ARM macOS on non-Apple ARM CPUs and I am not even sure there are ARM servers comparable with M1 in single-core performance (maybe latest AWS Graviton?)

So is nginx with http2 enabled vulnerable too? Caddy? I should I not worry about this, because a small (by Cloudflare scale) botnet may DDoS a single server completely anyway?

Interesting. I never even considered the instance stability to be a risk when using ARM CPUs on Amazon. Anybody else can share their experience?

I wrote a TUI tool (runs over SSH in a terminal) for managing simple WireGuard configuration on the server: https://github.com/andrianbdn/wg-cmd

You just run it on your server and it does most of things, including generating WireGuard keys for clients and showing QR codes.

Indeed, TempleOS had a dynamic runtime C (HolyC) compiler too. Perhaps when people see the world differently, they try to compile C code on fly.

Once I've read "Its primary purpose is to be maximally useful during the first stage of civilizational collapse," my mind started to wonder away from this blend of Forth and C. It is quite weird to think about such future. Is the novel simple and efficient OS going to be useful in this scenario?

Thank you for clarifications and thank you for your work on Homebrew. I hope that Homebrew approach is sufficient to make security risks acceptable.

It is not feasible to avoid installing any third-party software. Moreover I admitted that I use Homebrew.

However I don’t understand what makes Homebrew reliable. Homebrew is a non-profit project run entirely by unpaid volunteers.

I trust repositories controlled by corporations (RHEL, Ubuntu) or properly(?) governed non-profit organizations (Debian) more. Also I trust App Store more, because of sandboxing, static and dynamic analysis.

While I use Homebrew on my Mac — it is a major risk. I am afraid that the project is not following strict security policies and will be compromised at some point. Evil package or evil version of brew can steal or modify my data.

I think this will also hurt the Mac platform. I wish Apple would invest some effort into building an App Store for cli programs. While it may be complicated for the community(require signing, sandboxing, developer effort), it is likely to have better security guarantees than Homebrew.

That's cool - I wonder why exit code is not set to 42 in practice? binary still returns 0, must be a bug somewhere.

I had to add

  #define _GNU_SOURCE
  #include <sys/mman.h>
  #include <unistd.h>

I've tested in Fabrice Bellard JSLinux with tcc (x86 arch) and on https://replit.com/languages/c (x64). I failed to see any side effect at all. gdb "catch syscall" doesn't show anything interesting too. Looks like TINY_ELF_PROGRAM is not doing anything.

The following .gitignore is my favorite way to commit an (almost) empty folder to git:

  # Ignore everything in this directory 
  *
  # Except this file
  !.gitignore

.gitignore can be present in any directory and there is a way to unignore a wildcard

Some of it sounds similar to now defunct Crux Linux https://crux.nu/ but with rolling release

I have 20 years experience using Linux (user and administrator). Couple of years ago I tried doing roughly the same using Pi and old cheap Xerox laser printer (required some additional CUPS tinkering). It was very unstable, both network-wise and printing-wise, especially when someone was trying to print without me nearby.

New printer with AirPrint was way better than this. So while this 'hack' reviving old equipment might be useful for some people, don't expect it to do miracles in every case.

CSVJ open standard addresses many common problems of CSV. It is basically a CSV where rows are encoded as a JSON.

Unfortunately it is not widely adopted yet and the language support is yet to be improved.

If you want to write a game console emulator, but prefer to start with something simple — I suggest to look into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP-8 It could be implemented in a couple of evenings in any language.

I wonder how much the software costed in total.

I would appreciate Intel NUC-style box with GPU equipped Ryzen Pro. I know about NUCs with Intel CPU and Vega M GPU but they seem to be too expensive.

Like other people answered I am connecting from my Macbook to my Windows gaming PC at home and play games on it. This feature is called 'Steam In-Home Streaming' and it works only over local network (or VPN in my case). 30Mbit is sufficient to remotely play at full HD.