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verisimilitudes

276 karma · joined April 16, 2019

I am a programmer focused on creating what I find to be novel programs.

My Gopher hole is under the verisimilitudes.net domain at port 70. I also have a Finger service at port 79.

My website is here: http://verisimilitudes.net

The particular Finger information is here: finger://Prince-Trippy@verisimilitudes.net

My current main project is an interactive machine code development tool, Meta-Machine Code (MMC). You may find it through the WWW or Gopher.

The Gopher selector is 2017-07-07 for a menu.

Here is the URL: http://verisimilitudes.net/2017-07-07

Here is the Gopher URL: gopher://verisimilitudes.net/12017-07-07

submissionscomments
verisimilitudes··on TCP Connection Repair
Multics used segments and Lisp Machines had a single address space. UNIX breaks down quickly without multiple fake single address spaces for each program.

> Programs just have to be compiled relocatable.

Yes, and with unrestricted memory access, one program can crash the entire system.

> You know, like what happens with shared libraries: which are written in C, and get loaded at different addresses in the same space, yet access their own functions and variables just fine.

That is except when one piece manipulates global state in a way with which another piece can't cope, and at best the whole thing crashes. Dynamic linking in UNIX is so bad some believe it can't work, and instead use static linking exclusively.

verisimilitudes··on TCP Connection Repair
> But this isn't state of the process image that needs to be serialised, it's state of the connection between two hosts and some kernel configuration on those hosts. Programming language doesn't play into it at all.

It is because UNIX is written in the C language that there are even multiple flat address spaces instead of segments or a single address space systemwide. The fact that the kernel exists at all is also due to this. It has everything to do with the implementation language.

> Languages "such as Lisp" will have the exact same problem, for the same reason.

Under UNIX, yes.

> Collecting all of the "components" of the connection and sending them to a different host won't make the other host start sending packets to the new recipient, or replay the in-flight packets (which is state on intermediate routers, different computers than the connected ones entirely), or fix the ARP tables on the neighbouring hosts. None of that is available, and certainly isn't writeable, to the host doing the serialising.

It may very well require some specialized machinery, but not nearly so much as one may think to be necessary.

> To play some silly semantics games, this isn't so much about _serialising_ a connection as it is about _deserialising_ the connection and having it work afterwards.

That's implicit. I needn't write of deserializing when writing of serializing, as one is worthless without the other, at least in most cases.

> That act has literally nothing to do with programming language.

Look at what Lisp and Smalltalk systems could do before UNIX existed and tell me that again.

verisimilitudes··on TCP Connection Repair
Some languages provide serialization of most anything by default, such as Lisp. Now, even in Lisp there are objects which don't make sense to serialize, including a TCP connection; however, the components thereof can be collected and sent across the wire or wherever else in a standardized way. The C language, in comparison, offers a few serialization routines for non-structured types, and that's about all.

So, my point is the ability to take running state, serialize it, and reinstate it elsewhere is only impressive to those who have misused computers for so long that they don't understand this was something basic in 1970 at the latest.

verisimilitudes··on TCP Connection Repair
So, this is making a TCP Connection serializable in an ad hoc fashion.

> It is natural to want those connections to follow the container to its new host, preferably without the remote end even noticing that something has changed, but the Linux networking stack was not written with this kind of move in mind.

Yes, it was written in the C language.

verisimilitudes··on Google profits plummet 27 percent in Q3 2022 earnings report
Watching advertisements is completely optional.
verisimilitudes··on Optimizing Assembly – Agner Fog [pdf]
This is right up my alley as it were. I'm not going to read the entire document, but I can remark on how the assembler language model is inferior to something I've created. Details are in my user page. In brief, an assembler language is not only a batch tool, but hides details from the hacker. Optimizing machine code requires the ability to use instructions as data when the opportunity be noticed, but that requires noticing it at all, which requires seeing the numerical values; and an assembler language also makes it difficult to do things such as put labels in the middle of an instruction. Assembler languages often introduce arbitrary name arithmetic and special names to handle this and other cases, but I found that to be inelegant; I've found such to be unnecessary; merely naming individual octets is generally sufficient.
verisimilitudes··on Ask HN: Is DRM on firefox another nail in the coffin of free internet?
Hey, Dang. Why do I keep getting flagged or killed? I was told to start posting about things other than my website, but all of those end up dead just the same? What am I doing wrong here?
verisimilitudes··on [dead]
Take a break from discussing tape to talk about a topic truly relevant to hackerdom, the censorship of websites.
verisimilitudes··on [dead]
Dang told me I should upload links to places other than my website, so that's what I'm doing. What does it mean for society, when people realize "go build your own" won't be tolerated either? Democracy requires the ability for people to speak, does it not? What does it mean for democracy when one side is told it mustn't have a voice?
verisimilitudes··on Nearly Half of San Franciscans Have Been Victims of Theft, New Poll Says
Diversity.
verisimilitudes··on We are still early with the cloud
It's easy to support the status quo, until someone points out numerous issues with it, I know.

At least read my website before calling me unhinged.

verisimilitudes··on We are still early with the cloud
Congratulations on understanding what an abstraction is. Do I need to worry about the transistors or individual atoms in a computer? Why should UNIX be the right level of abstraction forever?
verisimilitudes··on We are still early with the cloud
I'm being trolled by someone who finds a DNS lookup and an encrypted TCP connection to send a textual command to another machine is somehow impressive, rather than entirely basic and, again, unimpressive.

It then puts the result into a form that can be used programmatically by the local shell.

That does sound better than returns one octet with two well-defined values, sure.

And already the expert. Impressive.

I know UNIX is shit with a legion of cultists.

Hey, if we live in the best of all possible worlds, explain the market dominance of Windows. Did MicroSoft give Windows away for nothing, to poor unsuspecting university students who decided to hack on it instead of learn what a real computer is, until none remained?

verisimilitudes··on We are still early with the cloud
That is far, far more than transferring a byte of data.

Educate me.

It's much more meaningful and useful than "something simple" "running little functions floating in the void" which just sounds like some vapid marketing pitch.

That was a quick response to what I thought would be better than administrating a UNIX system on an Amazon machine. Don't be an ass. I've no experience with the real distributed computing systems created before UNIX.

The great thing about Linux as the base layer is that it allows a commodity common ground with a very capable system that also facilitates more specialized layers to be implemented on top of it.

No, that's the vapid marketing pitch. The Linux kernel randomly kills processes when it starts exhausting memory. It's garbage.

Hey, Brainfuck also facilitates more specialized layers to be implemented on top of it. Now, what's stupid about doing that, however?

verisimilitudes··on We are still early with the cloud
I don't use k8s or whatever garbage gets thrown around nowadays.

I well remember my disgust when I learned AWS was just using UNIX virtual machines or whatever, rather than something simple, such as allowing people to run little functions floating in the void. I know nothing about AWS, but I've not been mistaken, right?

verisimilitudes··on Stop Writing Dead Programs [video]
I like pointing out that millions of lines of code in the Linux kernel have no real memory exhaustion strategy beyond randomly killing a process. Those are millions of lines of code, few of which are reusable, and they do so very little.
verisimilitudes··on Stop Writing Dead Programs [video]
It's a shame he doesn't mention Ada, which is static but oh so nice about it.

Right, but the problem is – as Peter Harkins mentions here – that programmers have this tendency to, once they master something hard (often pointlessly hard), rather than then making it easy they feel proud of themselves for having done it and just perpetuate the hard nonsense.

Yes, see the entire history of UNIX. I convinced someone programming was a bad choice for his major because of this stupid attitude.

I'm still reading, but I like how he takes issue with what currently passes for machine text. Some of my work covers the same problem. I should send him an e-mail.

verisimilitudes··on Uncovering a 24-year-old bug in the Linux Kernel (2021)
This is a bad language failure, however. The same logic, ported to Brainfuck, would exhibit the same stupidity.

The C language makes it unreasonably difficult to write anything, even before proving it to be correct.

verisimilitudes··on Microsoft Full Circle
This describes a mainframe with dumb terminals.
verisimilitudes··on GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion
Never forget this is how people who dare to reverse engineer Windows are treated: https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/03/reactos_windows_resea... https://marc.info/?l=ros-dev&m=118775346131654&w=2

I don't use Github, but fuckers upload my code there anyway.

Copyright is evil, but only large corporations having copyright, even more than they already do, is even worse.

verisimilitudes··on Your website should work without JavaScript (2021)
It's funny how this argument doesn't fly with people when it comes to blocking advertisements, with one man claiming it takes food out of his child's mouth.
verisimilitudes··on Uncovering a 24-year-old bug in the Linux Kernel (2021)
How is it possible for a TCP bug that leads to stuck connections to go unnoticed for 24 years?

It's because the fools responsible never rewrite their code, use a broken language, and don't even try to prove half of the broken garbage they write. Then, when it turns out to have been broken for decades, they chuckle and shove another finger into another crack, never understanding how they misuse computers.

verisimilitudes··on Possibly a new way of drawing boxes in the terminal
Not all CEOs of tech startups have the time to write code. Fortunately while Textualize is still in its development phase I have plenty of opportunity to get my hands dirty.

Oh, so this is something unimpressive being used to disguise an advertisement.

I've designed such interfaces, and drawing boxen is superfluous to the point I realized it's not worthwhile. Regardless, this solution seems obvious for anyone who actually had this issue, and I'm doubtful there were many.

verisimilitudes··on Your website should work without JavaScript (2021)
I go further than handwritten HTML and CSS. I also have a Gopher hole. The only advantage a browser such as Emacs' eww has over an Emacs Gopher client is that eww is included by default. It also leads to good practices such as avoiding superfluous images and styling. Another advantage is the relatively small set of people using Gopher, meaning people who use it are more likely to reach out or similar things, like the older Internet.
verisimilitudes··on Code of Ethics – IEEE Computer Society
I'm tired, dang. I wanted to delete this account, but I'm not allowed to do so. I didn't use it for years until I tried to contact someone here. Now, when I even try to submit something here into which I've poured effort, it doesn't appear in the new section until after it can no longer qualify for the front page, as an underhanded method of trying to make me believe no one cares about it.

Why is Hacker News filled with political nonsense that gets hundreds of comments, while the programming topics get few or go ignored? It is so frustrating to try to have a conversation here, where people rather downvote and flag than write rebuttals. I tried to contribute to this forum, but my novel work goes ignored; my submission here with highest score merely hit hipster bingo.

What am I supposed to do?

verisimilitudes··on Claims AI can boost workplace diversity are ‘spurious and dangerous’
How could that be, if we be all the same?
verisimilitudes··on Claims AI can boost workplace diversity are ‘spurious and dangerous’
White people who don't want to date black people and lesbians who don't want to have sex with transsexuals already suffer this.
verisimilitudes··on Transmission 4.0.0 beta 1
I like how expecting real torrent clients to bend over for the WWW is in any way considered to be a reasonable stance.
verisimilitudes··on Code of Ethics – IEEE Computer Society
His self-interest makes his position understandable. Why, programming is just as real as other engineering, except for those nasty consequences for gross negligence, such as using the C/C++ languages or garbage similar to them.
verisimilitudes··on Code of Ethics – IEEE Computer Society
The simple fact is most programmers would be too incompetent to exist in such a world.
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