Posts by that one in the corner

Why do younger coders struggle to break through the FOSS graybeard barrier?

Re: Also ...

Not going to argue with you, those are all good reasons for looking for an active project to start with.

Sadly, the person I was referring to was (apparently) already a contributor to projects, so wasn't trying to break into the game. I think it really stuck in my head because, on that page at least, nobody disagreed with them (or I'd've gleefully recounted the hordes of Redditors slashing away in response).

> Some of them might be worried about whether they're wasting their time, whether they will be able to use skills they aren't certain of without either breaking something or getting shouted at, or many more understandable things.

FWIW[1] I'd suggest looking for a project that doesn't have a mass of activity, is a piece of software that you actually use, a lot, and which has something you believe is missing/needs improvement[2]. That way you can do the changes to improve your day to day experience, without spending hours integrating a mass of code churn[3], and you get the time to do a load of real-world testing of your idea & your code before taking the plunge and offering it up. And because it is something that is demonstrably useful to you, even if it gets rejected a couple of times (coding style, whatever) there is still purpose behind continuing with that code, which makes it sensible to then keep your mods alive, locally, for a while before working up to submitting it again. Finally, this approach means that there actually is a really good reason for you to try - and try again: if it gets accepted you'll be spared having to merge your changes back in every time the project updates!

[1] not a lot, really, but I have your attention now, bwa ha haah

[2] yes, this is simply the "scratching an itch" approach, nothing novel, just wanted to expand on why it is a sensible one for a newbie contributor to take

[3] as you gain experience, this just becomes "one of those things" but it is always easier if people just stay the heck away from the area you are working on!

> These toy controllers are too basic to make something remotely interesting with them

IBM PC 5150 released with 16KiB of memory (motherboard can hold up to 256KiB, expansion cards up to 650Kib), 16-bit CPU (8 bit bus) at 4.77MHz; basic model ($1,565 woth 16KiB) had no floppy. Dual floppies held 350KiB each. Mains power required. Expansion required to add video output (CGA included in that price), RAM expansion and any i/o (serial or parallel printer ports).

Raspberry Pi RP2350 MCU: bare processor provides 520KiB RAM, dual-core 32-bit CPU at 133MHz; available with in-package 2MiB Flash storage; expansion allows up to 16MiB of RAM/Flash mix; USB 1.1 including PHY; 2x UART TTL serial, lots of other GPIO, timers, PWM. Runs off 5V USB, battery power very possible.

Basic Raspberry Pi Pico 2 board: "Basic" RP2350 with 4MiB Flash (£4.80 at Pi Hut).

Ah yes, I fondly remember the early '80's, when we were paid to sit around all day with our single-floppy IBM PCs, playing cards, reading the newspaper and dunking digestive biscuits whilst we reassured our managers that in only a few years time they'd release an IBM PC compatible that had enough resources that we could *finally* do something remotely interesting with them.

Re: A different take

OTOH once you get enough experience under your belt, let the years roll by and your beard whiten, it is the damn fools who stick in your mind - and certainly make for better anecdotes in a forum like this. So that is what you are going to read about here.

Like your drive home - you remember vividly the two prats who tailgated you but the two or three hundred other cars who were also sharing the motorway this afternoon made no impression on you at all, just a gentle background drone.

I've also had many pleasurable days in work, going over the ins and outs of code with colleagues - who all seemed progressively younger! But how well I successfully "mentored" them? Haven't a clue! I just took enough encouragement from the occasional "Ta" to keep on getting up, wandering over and seeing how things were getting on, what new toys they had found that I could then pick their brains about. There you are, that was a riveting read, eh!

Re: Also ...

I wish I'd kept the URL, but one of the comments I remember from my introductory experiences with Reddit (admittedly, I was rather late to that particular party, so it was probably within the last five years) was from some random person who described how they scanned through the open issues on GitHub, looking for projects that were sufficiently important/had enough downloads/lots of stars in order to find ones that were worthy of his contribution.

Nearly 10 years after Data and Goliath, Bruce Schneier says: Privacy’s still screwed

The problem there is that the marketing department is chock full of people who are paid professionals, trained in the art of the snow job, pulling the wool other every sensory organ and polishing turds. All of which can be as easily turned against the CFO scrutinising at the products marketing like to use as it can the buyers of the products their company sells.

Courts have taken the fact that someone left their cell phone at home

> as evidence that they did not want to be tracked.

They must be so suspicious of me by now, better just turn myself in, I guess.

LibreOffice still kicking at 40, now with browser tricks and real-time collab

Re: Opening a document in a web page can pull in a gigabyte or so of code

Ah, now *there* is the Agile mindset!

(Because optimisation attempts might not work, debugging takes an unknown amount of time and the "number of days card game" is useless on it; but we can always just spend 5 days on a new feature and if it isn't finished we can just say we did the MVP version and need to pass it by the user rep).

Re: Opening a document in a web page can pull in a gigabyte or so of code

Agile guys?

Sod off.

That was the mantra from at least the 1980s.[1]

Gawd, those guys will try to claim everything as theirs!

And too few of the "Agile guys" knew what the profiler is to ever locate the *correct* bits of the code that are actually worth speeding up. (Exit stage left, pursued by a barely controlled urge to rant how mind boggingly slow some code was).

[1] and before then we were more about trying to get it all to fit into the machine in the first place, so "fast" was fourth on the list.

Re: All you need

And the gene sequences that were renamed because it was easier for the international community of geneticists to change than to stop Excel crapping on their data.

(OTOH another classic "have you considered a database?" moment, but...)

AI summaries turn real news into nonsense, BBC finds

Re: LLMs cannot summarise

> The main thing is that I'm getting better (and quicker) and writing the right prompts rather than having to refine lots of prompts over and over.

Are you reusing the same prompt (plus copy'n'paste the article text)?

If not, and you are thinking up new prompts (and are those 100 words or less)?

If your task is to write 100 words to summarise something you already know about, is it really more efficient, timewise, to use an AI or are you spending more time and effort on it - but having more fun playing with the LLM? So it feels (at the moment) like the easier way to do it.

After clash over Rust in Linux, now Asahi lead quits distro, slams Linus' kernel leadership

Re: Yet another "rewrite from scratch"

> In 40 years of software development I've lost count of the number of times a small group of engineers have said it would be better to rewrite from scratch and start again.

And doesn't it also seem that, if only they had asked someone if their analysis of the extant code was correct, they could have so often had their misunderstanding quietly & calmly pointed out and saved all the bother of rewiting?

> He would have financed it with individual donations and not big companies backing

Linux did not get big companies' backing until it was successful enough that those companies were making use of it, even becoming reliant upon it. It started small and then grew. If Hector started his own project, yes, it would begin with individual donations - but as soon as it gained traction with large companies (i.e. was demonstrated to be, you know, useful), it would attract their donations.

> He would have done with youngsters and not old AIX devs

Hmm, let me just see - ah, yes, "a 21-year old Mr Torvalds has released a new kernel project". Of course, since then, even Linus is now "an old dev" (not sure about the AIX bit).

> will one day retire just as Amiga OS, Solaris or Plan 9

Hmm, Plan 9 never was mainstream (athough parts of it are in widespread daily use, e.g. if you use KVM/QEmu), Oracle quietly extends Solaris 11.4 support until 2037 but, ok, AmigaOS is only in the hands of the rabid fans now. But if Linux takes as long to get to that state, it'll outlive me at least!

> So Hector ... move on another project ... Both projects, Linux and your own, can exist in the world.

For Hector, at least, that does sound like a good idea. Unfortunately, from what we can see at the moment, he seems to be bereft of anything to move on to at the moment.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd ...

Nothing in that says that Linux was ever a stopgap for HURD!

> "When the Linux kernel proved to be a viable solution"... "development of GNU Hurd slowed"

And if you read the article that Wikipedia uses as a source for the line you quoted, the article does NOT say that HURD development slowed BECAUSE of Linux. The pace of development of HURD has never exactly been speedy - for Heaven's Sake, HURD was "on its way" since the 1980s!

Oh, I forgot:

> C++ wasn't about OOP

> ...

> RAII - tying the lifetime of resources to the lexical scope of an owning handle

RAII is built upon the object model (your "owning handle" has to be an object with the actual handle/pointer/id of the resource as a member, so that the constructor and destructor of that object manage the resource. And it isn't anything specific to do with lexical scope - the resource is managed by the lifetime of the object, which *might* be lexical scope but need not be. That is, RAII is provided courtesy of the OOPness.

> C++ wasn't about OOP

Funny, could have sworn that the oldest version was called "C with classes".

> Shared container...

That came well after the first few releases,vwith templates - and then that chap at HP describing the template- metaprogramming library that became STL. Many years into the life of C++.

> It's a little dated now but excellent book...

If you actually want to learn what C++ "was meant to be", start with Stroustrup's Green Book about the history of the language (sorry, don't have a URL at the moment)

Well, use of "£inux" isn't helping. What is that supposed to be? Some weird reference to the old use of Micro$oft, indicating how expensive it is to buy a Linux licence?

Plus the weird idea that the GNU project would need or want to take over another kernel, let alone changing the licence from MIT to do so. As with Linux, if you want to use the GNU tools to flesh out a complete system around your kernel, just do it. GNU itself need not take over your kernel.

And the final nail, the weird idea that Linux was ever intended, by anyone, to be a stopgap until HURD was production ready, presumably with the idea that, at that point, Linux would just - stop.

> £inux as a kernel was of course only intended in the 1990s as a stopgap with the HURD being the ultimate aim.

Citation?

Linux and HURD are from entirely different people.

I don't recall Linus ever saying he intended to create a stopgap until the HURD was ready - in fact, his announcement was that Linux "is just a hobby" and "won't be big and professional like Gnu". It was just a response to the licensing around Minix.

Feds want devs to stop coding 'unforgivable' buffer overflow vulnerabilities

Re: Offence

Negligence in all of those areas is covered by regulations, guidelines and contracts that are applicable to the field and end use. That already includes the software components: if you are writing critical systems then you follow, eg, SIL and are held to it.

> So, why not start drafting that offence list?

It makes as much sense to create an offence of allowing a buffer overflow as it does to create an offence of a dry solder joint or an under-torqued bolt: the bolt was in my Meccano Eiffel Tower, the solder was for my light-up-beanie and the software was for my Moog emulator.

If you want to incarcerate the coder who let that overflow slip by then you have to use the same mechanism that would allow you to incarcerate the spanner jockey who failed to tighten the bolt - and so far I've failed to come up with a search result for a law that created the offence of under-torquing.

Re: If C had a string type managed by the compiler...

> a lot of other languages ... there is a more full-featured option as default

Absolutely. And more power to them.

However, the question was about C (and C++), which - we all admit - has only the absolute bare minimum work done by the compiler to deal with the necessary evil of allowing (static) constant strings to be defined in your source code.

> Only some types of programs can use the model you describe

True.

Then again, that is trivially true for every single model you could ever describe. The interesting bit is whether the "some type" is a large number of programs (or even a large subset of programs).

> All the strings going back and forth to that will either be C strings...

When you look at it, all those inter-library strings tend to be passed as a buffer+length pair (preferably also null-terminated, if not hope for a better library) or even buffer+bufsize+strlen. In really well-behaved cases you can get a lock token included as well. Yes, often using a struct to keep that info together, but that doesn't imply that struct actually is "their own internal format", just a simple way to pass the data between libraries. The "pointer to a null terminated buffer" also happens to be a C string, useful for a quick printout.

All of which sounds terribly nasty to deal with, but: you get exactly the same effect with other forms of data, once you get beyond simple numerics; anything that can be a non-trivial size. Strings are not unique in that respect[1]. So image handling libraries all have their own formats (some choose to be compatible with a.n.other popular library, which is fine - until that library changes it's format or just gets overshadowed by the next big thing). Again, when you need to pass images from one library to another, you tend to end up being handed a buffer plus some metadata and you do the impedance matching as necessary.

[1] although you can argue that more people use strings than any other type, but I'd suggest looking at how many actually manipulate strings[2] versus just spitting out fixed text: hello_world.c doesn't do any string processing, the M4 macro processor does.

[2] I'd also look at how many (try to) write code to manipulate strings when they really don't need to. A lot of code will (sensibly) pass image handling over to a subprocess using, say, ImageMagick via it's executable, rather than linking it in as a library. Ditto ffmpeg or cURL. If you are really doing a lot of work to manipulate strings and your main program is in C, you can do a lot worse than invoking a specialised string footling program rather than a library.

Re: As much as one would wish to disagree

> Arrays not being a first class type in C was always a flaw and not being able to determine a vector's capacity at runtime probably a cause for more forgivable overflows.

As much as I enjoy(ed) using C, I have to agree - you can (should - MUST) use libraries to manage such structures safely. Because the language (for perfectly sensible reasons, at the time it was created) uses array-notation[1] as a shortcut.

It is a "flaw" when you get into the modern situation where we *do* have the CPU/memory resources (compile- and run- time) to make using a pro-actively safer language feasible - and once feasible, preferable.

It is just a damn shame that we are all caught in the trap that creating (and getting into wide use) new languages is such a costly exercise. Which leads directly into bad side-effects such as making the jump from one language to the next too large to allow for simple changeover - and the emotional outbursts that inevitably come from that, which then creates polarisations etc etc.

Personally, I would be quite happy to have a new language[3] that is almost-C (or almost-C++) but which simply disallowed the array-notation syntactic sugar, then provided a meta-syntax to define safe usage for that syntax (i.e. called into appropriate routines for the type it was applied to). With a supplied set of basic implementations for char, int etc. If I pull out my old text books (I see Dragons!) I'm confident I could mangle, say, TCC to make the change, but that isn't likely to gain any traction outside of my LAN (for good reasons!)!

[1] perhaps it would help if everyone understood, deep in their bones, that C was never *created* with arrays, just syntactic sugar[2] to pretty up code that derefs - something that used to be demonstrable by using foo[bar] as a synonym for bar[foo] - but then the whole problem of buffer overflows everywhere comes from the fact that we want code to be written by people who don't have the right sort of bones.

[2] ditto for-loops, of course, another area - which also "helps" with causing buffer issues - where errors occur and people get into a huff about what you can, or can not, put into the sugar wrapping.

[3] no, it would NOT "still be C", it would be a different language, different filename extension etc etc

Re: Offence

> using singed where unsinged should be used

Always use a poaching pan, that way you can cook your numbers without any risk of singing.

Re: If C had a string type managed by the compiler...

C libraries, lots of libraries, which are integral to *using* the language (not part of the language proper, although you can *generally*, not always, get an initial set of "get you started with 'Hello World'" standardised libraries with the compiler).

One subset of those My First C Libraries are a few routines that let you do basic manipulation on strings represented in the way that the compiler presents constant strings that you put into the source code. After all, the compiler needs *some* way of presenting those to you and there is no point in doing anything complicated. Because...

Anyone who wants to do anything more exciting with strings in a C program can simply use a library that provides a representation that best fits their needs.

I am quite fond of using structs for the (buffer, buffer len, how full now) representation. But also like a one-codepoint-per-cons-cell approach when digging in and doing macro expansions: less space efficient but constant-time insertions and deletions.

The same goes for C++ by the way: the compiler uses the simplest possible form for constants, you get to choose which library to use for your code (many people use the STL).

Any language that promotes use of libraries can do the same, although more recent languages do promote a more complicated compiler/interpreter representation for constants - even though there is nor, and can never be, One True Representation Of Strings that is Optimal In All Circumstances. The same goes for numbers as well, of course.

Undergrad and colleagues accidentally shred 40-year hash table gospel

Re: Reminds me of how best to fill a cabin

My supplier is promising that "Desiccated Dragon Doses" will *finally* be available in the Spring[1] - he has found a new hiding place that the Sunshine Sanctuary don't know about.

[1] the problem has been making springs that are strong enough to hold the dragon when it gets thirsty.

SpaceX Crew Dragons swapped so ISS crew can go home early

Re: Bloody typical.

You should be asking that over on Threads.

DARPA skips the lab, will head to orbit to test space manufacturing tech

How large it could go without space becoming an issue

Ignite one end? Which makes it sound as though they are using oxygen from the atmosphere inside the airlock (although the illustration seems to show it sitting exposed to vacuum, so - probably not).

Otherwise, if the all the reactants needed are contained within the materials of the unignited tube, one could imagine unrolling/extruding the flat tube outside the ISS (by robot, of course), in which case space would not be an issue. Although there may be issues where Space is a problem (e.g. outgassing from the reaction - aka a rocket engine).

Maybe this will lead to a proper SF space manufactory, where the tubes are extruded from a reactor, cut to length, pointed in the right direction and the blue touch paper lit. By the time it has powered itself to the required point in the building site (to be snagged by the Caltech Arm's descendant), it will be fully cooked and ready for use.

Trump’s cyber chief pick has little experience in The Cyber

Specializes in political and regulatory litigation

So he will be able to say how far things can be taken whilst still *just* remaining winnable in court against accusations of opening the barn doors wide.

Oxford researchers pull off quantum first with distributed gate teleportation

Grover's Algorithm

Come for the entanglement, stay for the Sesame Street jokes.

(Sorry, that was the closest I came to understanding the details in this story)

Ignorance really is bliss when you’re drowning in information

Re: How to beat FOMO

Now, I know this causes other issues - we have to get the young 'uns running around the playing fields to keep them fit.

So I'd like to introduce my new line of Rugger clothes: tartan slippers with cleats and a nice comfy cardigan with a reinforced seam to survive a *proper* scrum.

How to beat FOMO

Become an old git.

Looking at the TV ads that are trying to engender FOMO, all the people running through streets or piling up in front of a display window: "gawd, that just looks so exhausting".

I must buy a new shiny "device"? But I barely managed to convince this one to accept the certificates for my NextCloud. Not going through all that again!

And so on. Pah.

Re: Big problem requiring serveral partial solutions

> I think one piece of the solution is to teach lying, deception and fraud in schools.

I've been taking the (wildly optimistic?) view that the OP meant to say teaching how to SPOT and unravel lies, deception and fraud. And call out the perpetrators.

Rather than how to better commit those acts themselves.[1]

[1] Ok, there is the argument that teaching how to spot the holes in frauds etc makes it easier for them to spot the holes they leave and fix them. OTOH if they see just how much real, hard, work it is to make a fraud compete against reality then fingers crossed they'll take the lazy route and stick to honesty ("oh what a tangled web we weave...")

Thumbs Up for the printed word.

Although my tastes no longer match my physical abilities and holding the hardback can be a strain (damn you, Peter F. Hamilton!). Which is frustrating, as a book is so much more pleasurable to use than an e-reader, let alone using a big glowing tablet when the colour images are important.

Hang on, got to change my specs to just check - yeah, I see you now, off my lawn!

Microsoft wants to quit building Army VR goggles, hand contract to Anduril

Luckey Payer One

Luckey's NerveThingie wearer-killing-headset just needs to be used the right way to make it battlefield ready: give it lots of RGB LEDs and a transparent casing to show off its liquid cooling loop with the fluorescent ink in the water and UV lighting. Then leave it lying around no-man's land in ROG packaging, like it just slipped off the back of a lorry.

The only war-fighters able to cope with the all the AR gear they'll be using by then will be hard-core Gamers, who won't be able to resist picking up the flashy and use it instead of their everyone-looks-the-same Army-issue goggles at the next LAN Party (aka Brigade briefing). Finally, tweak the trigger from too much red to too many PowerPoint slides and Johnny Foreigner is AFK forever.

Still more humane than being told to spend all day getting nauseous from using Microsoft products - you can't treat the military as if they are IT boys, that has to against the Geneva Convention.

Google confirms Gulf of Mexico renamed to appease Trump – but only in the US

Re: Gulf of Cuba

'the The' and 'swinning pool'? In a single sentence?!

At least if I'd had it as 'swining' pool I could claim to be remembering the Bay of Pigs incident.

Gulf of Cuba

or the The Hotel Nacional's swinning pool.

Meta's plan to erase 5% of workforce starts today

Re: "Meta confirmed it was expunging fact checking in the USA"

Definite upvote for including El Reg forums as social media.

NASA’s radiation tolerant computer lives up to its name after surviving Van Allen belts

Re: Lighter than air computer?

You just have to look at the reflection of the bloke's head in the shiny film behind the box and ask yourself: is that someone looking down or craning their neck to look up?

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

Only 4 percent of jobs rely heavily on AI, with peak use in mid-wage roles

Speech recognition is most definitely something that was classified as an AI topic and worked on by AI researchers.

But, now that it is a (sort of) working system, it is no longer "AI". 'Twas ever thus.

Re: What a surprise

> if they bothered to open the company website and locating the "Questions" sub-page

Or if the companies would put useful information front and centre on their home pages, instead of glossy photos and mindless videos.

LLMs: making it easier to justify aggravating web design.

(I may, possibly, be frustrated after yet another week spent trying to dig for actual specs to get my random assortment of boxes to talk to each other but being continually told Acme Inc has The Solution For You - fine for you, but what about me? Mutter, swear)

The biggest microcode attack in our history is underway

Every x86 ADD opcode - every x86 opcode, fullstop - is implemented as microcode.

That is the the whole point of microcode.

Aside from anything else, the microcode is what allows all the different addressing modes to be wrapped around ADD - and to allow those modes to be parallelised, loading both operands into the ALU asap[1].

Sending every ADD to microcode really improves efficiency.

[1] Not to mention all the weird-ass register scheduling that allows opcodevre-ordering or even hyperthreading to occur (these two sequential ADDs don't have any common sources or destination and we have two ALUs available right now, let 'em both run in parallel - or nope, that first ADD has to wait on BL to be available, but the one after it can start now).

Judge says US Treasury ‘more vulnerable to hacking’ since Trump let the DOGE out

Re: What constitution

> if for example the actual president stepped down.

Mind yer step, luv, we just polished those stairs, that nice Mr Musk gave us a big bucket of wax.

Re: Comment fields must always be used

All of which is trivial compared to the other things he is doing, but shows that even the smallest demands are ill-considered.

Comment fields must always be used

Hmm.

Financial transactions - those will be the ones with identifiers that link back to the relevant department, contract number, recipient ame/title/shoe size etc. To let you dig up all the *standard* information when you want to audit it. The sort of database stuffed full of boring repetitive transactions that just went through without any drama.

But every now and again, Something Happened that isn't completely covered by the usual tick boxes ("The dog chewed up his paycheck, issued duplicate"). So you can add a comment to explain what is going on.

And one of your department's self-assessment runs is "count how many times we had to use the comment field" - because too much use of that indicates that the other fields are not adequate at capturing Real Life, so you ought to look into tweaking something.

So, Musky has just spotted something he can claim is some kind of inefficiency/corruption ("See, they are deliberately leaving this blank! What are they not recording? What are they hiding?") and then initiate "an improvement" that'll just mean wasted time typing "Same as last month" on every janitorial paycheck, makes self-assessments less useful/efficient...

But it means he can squeeze out another self-congratulatory Xit, which is the important thing.

Does this thing run on a 220 V power supply? Oh. That puff of smoke suggests not

Re: "built to survive minor accidents"

> Who let the magic smoke out

Oh, I thought it was the Sisterhood of Karn who did that.

Tesla sales crash in Europe, UK. We can only wonder why

Re: Its a mystery

Oh grief, those Range Rovers, not a drop of mud in sight (although that does work to keep them out of our village, that'd be far too close to, you know, actual farms and countryside).

And talking of "close", don't they realise that if they don't back off from our rear window, we can't see and marvel at their vanity number plates?

Federal judge tightens DOGE leash over critical Treasury payment system access

Re: One of them hasn't even lasted a day

> Testing, Peer review, Change Control?? Sound like Gross Misconduct if not.

Only if his contract told him he had to do any of that.

After all, how can you move fast (and break things) if you are slowed down waiting for your peers to review?

Eggheads crack the code for the perfect soft boil

> put in a hole in the ground for several month covered by earth... and then served once unearthed

Thank you for the image of a pescatarian squirrel.

Re: Before boiling

Just needs a cool box, not all the way down to 4 degrees in the fridge.

When the English Summer sticks its head out, we put the eggs into the cool, windowless, store room. Yes, for both days.

We tried one of those - but quit because it smelt revolting when it got hot! Sulphurous - which is really not a good smell when anywhere near an egg.

Re: "a total duration of 32 minutes"

Visions of the Caracticus (sp?) Potts Breakfast Machine from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.