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tormeh

8,440 karma · joined February 8, 2014

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tormeh··on Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days
The purpose of good writing style has always been to signal education and class. Well, your style no longer does. The future is now.
tormeh··on Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days
And it's my impression the code is often in assembly, which is even less structured.
tormeh··on Jolla Phone (October 2026)
If it has the "security" architecture of Linux (it's really more of a multi-tenant architecture) then that's a complete deal breaker. Wouldn't want it if it was 1000x faster/betterer than Android.

Our desktop OSes are just incompatible with running untrusted software, and you're gonna want to do that.

tormeh··on Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem
Everything I've ever heard about railway and train software suggests AI cannot possibly make things any worse than they already are. Conservatism causes no changes to be possible, which means many changes have to be made via workarounds and virtualization wrappers which cause a giant mess over time which create breakage which creates a conservative culture/laws.
tormeh··on AURpocalypse now: a look at the recent AUR attacks
To me, installing software from the AUR sounds a lot like downloading Windows software from .info sites and torrents. It's mostly fine, but it's not exactly a surprise when things go wrong.
tormeh··on Google Hits 50% IPv6
I think it's more that Google and Meta have the surplus engineering resources to implement IPv6 for what is essentially no reason.
tormeh··on Google Hits 50% IPv6
> apart from the chicken egg problem

"But other than that, Ms. Lincoln, how was the play?"

tormeh··on Google Hits 50% IPv6
This stuff is obvious now, but I think back then this was probably quite clever.
tormeh··on Google Hits 50% IPv6
I accidentally became the user of an IPv6-only device a while back for some obscure reason I never could figure out. Let me tell you: There are no IPv6-only users. Absolutely nothing except Google, Facebook, and YouTube works. Any website not in the top 20 are IPv4-only. It was so bad I briefly thought I didn't have an internet connection at all. Anyone stuck on an IPv6-only connection would immediately cancel their contract on the grounds that they don't have de-facto internet access.
tormeh··on AURpocalypse now: a look at the recent AUR attacks
Windows where you just download .exe and .msi files from random websites. Not a Linux distro, but the closest security model I can think of.
tormeh··on How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)
True, but it's a provocative and widely understood example. Some things are lost in steamrolling everyone, basically, but it's still not a mistake.
tormeh··on How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)
Visited China recently and it's pretty astonishing what can be achieved if you just ignore the whiners, complainers, environmentalists, and local governments. NIMBYs? Get lost. Have unique local culture? Funny but no. There's a special kind of beetle living there? Tough shit. It's ugly? So is your face. Etc. This is how the West built its infrastructure back in the day - nobody consulted NIMBYs or the native Americans on railway construction - but now we're too good for this, and we reap the consequences.

I'm still on team democracy, and we'll see how long it takes before China regresses to the norm of dictatorships. Xi has already broken the term limits. Nothing suggests he won't slowly lose his grip on reality like most dictators. But for now China has its charms.

tormeh··on Vibe Coder vs. Software Engineer
In big enough projects this is the job of a civil engineer. The architect vs engineer fight that ensues is widely memed. This is of course mostly an issue in one-off projects with ambitious architects.
tormeh··on Doing nothing at work
I learned this early in a conservative org. Preventing things is risky. Just keep the solution ready for when things go wrong because then you'll get approval.
tormeh··on Who's the smartest corvid?
I'd say the evil lies in the infliction of suffering, not the killing or eating.
tormeh··on A crime doesn't make a child an adult
Criminal gangs specifically recruit legal minors because they are able to do things legal adults can't: Repeatedly and with impunity violate the law. Whether it's smuggling or assassinations, using legal minors make it all a lot less risky.

Would it stop stupid kids from doing stupid kid stuff? No. Would it make minors less attractive to organized crime? Yes.

tormeh··on Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use
That sounds like a lot, but your music player probably costs that much in RAM anyway.

Seriously, with the current RAM prices we as an industry have to figure out a way to use less of it. Laptops with 4GB of RAM are still common and are going to remain so for the rest of the decade. Spotify using more than 1GB of RAM is obscene.

tormeh··on Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux
This is when you say "We support Ubuntu", and honestly that's fine.
tormeh··on Accenture to acquire Ookla
I've been in an acquisition where code quality was important. But it was probably an edge case since the buyer just wanted to turn the company into a feature, and ease of integration into the buyer was important.
tormeh··on Let's talk about EU Sovereignty (2025)
I think in order to call youself a cloud you must offer blob storage, managed Kubernetes, and managed Postgres. That is the absolute minimum to me.
tormeh··on Let's talk about EU Sovereignty (2025)
You cannot possibly with a straight face claim that Scaleway is a VPS provider. Hetzner, sure, but Scaleway offers compute and database services in the same way that AWS does - just fewer.
tormeh··on Naphtha shortages in Japan
If packaging and marketing stopped mattering so much Coca-cola would go out of business immediately. Sugar water is cheap and simple to make. The off-brands taste just as good if not better in blind testing. The only defense they have is their brand and the amount of money they spend on marketing. Same with Red Bull.
tormeh··on Notes from the Mistral AI Now Summit
It's a bit strange, but a huge handout from the EU/France and a huge AI lab investment round are different orders of magnitude. The necessary sums are just not politically possible. How do you sell spending the equivalent of ten USS Gerald Fords on a start-up? You don't.
tormeh··on Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion
It's not like the US has that many either. It's not the kind of winner-takes-all network effects industry that attracts venture capital outside of the Musk reality distortion field.
tormeh··on Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion
Yeah, this is just the difference between the "cash cow" and "question mark" companies on the BCG growth-share matrix. The Chinese companies will sooner or later turn into stodgy cash cows themselves.
tormeh··on Valve hikes Steam Deck prices by more than 40%, blaming rising costs
I have to disagree. The low resolution of the screen is my biggest issue. Many UI elements and such are just genuinely difficult to read. Modern games are designed for 1080p or more. Rendering them at 800p gives quite poor results. I mostly use my Deck hooked up to the TV now.
tormeh··on Commission fines Temu €200M for breaching the Digital Services Act
This is a key observation and I also remember those dumb discussions. The top end of the fine scale is more or less theoretical if you demonstrate any willingness to improve. Looks like Temu has engaged in really bad practices, and they still only get what's (to them) a gentle reminder that there are rules.
tormeh··on Mistral AI acquires Emmi AI
Mistral is not large, though.
tormeh··on EU weighs restricting use of US cloud platforms to process government data
It's the opposite, if anything. The US has the best conditions for running a company. It is only natural that the highest margin sectors of the day (whatever that may be) is located there. Anything else would be evidence of market distortion.
tormeh··on EU weighs restricting use of US cloud platforms to process government data
Why would anyone build that when you get curb stomped by the three US providers if you try? There's a reason EU providers don't attack that market directly.

Now, if there was a market that were prohibited from using US cloud providers that would give EU providers an actual way to move upmarket.

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