RIP xtranormal

What reputable VPNs these days offer port forwarding? That’s a big part of what keeps me on a seedbox.

C is a little older than namespacing and object orientation. C++ wasn’t even a glimmer in Bjarne’s eye when these conventions were laid down.

And yes, having to google it is part of the design. Originally C programmers would have had to read actual manuals about this stuff. Once you learn the names you don’t really forget so it works well enough even now for ubiquitous standard library functions.

And yet, C was an ergonomic revelation to programmers of the time. Now it’s the arcane grandpa that most youngsters don’t put up with.

Plus having any rendering engine have a monopoly is terrible for the web long term.

Gentoo or Manjaro are to Arch? What do you mean? Those two are very different from each other especially in their relationships to Arch.

Turns out massively parallel computation has applications beyond video rendering.

And the whole human body, brain and all, can run on ~100 watts. Truly astounding.

There’s no mention of anything like zero-days in that article. They only mention that it can target all major OSes, with no mention of cutting edge versions also being vulnerable.

Hilariously, the article directly supports my position as well:

The good news for some, at least: it likely poses a minimal threat to most people, considering the multi-million-dollar price tag and other requirements for developing a surveillance campaign using Sherlock

That’s a big part of my whole point. People who don’t do even a modicum of actual thought about a practical threat model for themselves love pretending that ad blocking isn’t primarily just about not wanting to see ads.

If Israel or some other highly capable attacker is coming after you, then fine, you really do need ad blocking. In that case malware in ads is going to be the least of your concerns.

Attacks that cast such a wide net as to be the concern of all web users are necessarily less dangerous because exploits need to be kept secret to avoid being patched.

There’s nothing wrong with taking extra precautions; I’m certainly not saying blocking ads is a bad idea. It’s the apparent confusion that an informed, tech-savvy person might choose not to block ads that makes me laugh.

Huh? The point of this discussion is that I don’t need to block them to keep myself safe in sketchy corners of the web.

You say with such confidence. Is it so hard to imagine people can defend themselves with means other than ad blocking?

Drive-by malware tends not to be zero-days though. I’ve stayed safe for decades just by keeping my software up to date.

Of course; I’m just a lot more worried about the systemic problems of mass surveillance than any practical risk to me individially.

The way people talk about people who don’t block ads is so funny.

I understand and respect the reasons people choose to use blockers, but ads honestly just aren’t that problematic for me in practice and are easy to avoid and ignore.

Nope and yep. It’s an incredible tool, but it’s got a vim-sized learning curve to really leverage it plus other significant drawbacks. Still my beloved one-and-only when I can get away with it, but its a bit of a masochistic acquired taste for sure.

Template tweaking, as I imagine academia heavily relies on, is really the closest to practical it gets. You do still get beautiful results, it’s just hard to express yourself arbitrarily without really committing to the bit.

Who’s barring cannabis users? Red Cross at least only has a problem if your decision-making appears impaired. They don’t even ask you to wait between smoking and donating as long as you’re thinking clearly enough.

Holy shit I think I have the same problem, mesh network and all. I assumed it was a driver issue; thanks for the pointer!

Don’t give Java the credit of inventing bytecode, it’s a much cooler concept than that

Bad code, yes, calling it ‘shit’, no.

Stuff like this is a big part of why software circles are seen as so hostile and unwelcoming to outsiders.

You can be completely clear and frank without resorting to insult, mild though it may be. Just because you and people most like you understand that calling their work ‘shit’ doesn’t reflect on them personally, doesn’t mean it’s not significantly exclusionary.

Now, obviously you can get to know your reports well enough to understand whom would take ‘shit’ well, but that doesn’t mean it’s not generally important to temper criticism with kindness. Kindness never has to mean holding back criticism, just avoiding stooping to insult.

“You’re dumb” is disrespectful, but “your code is shit” isn’t? How does the latter not reasonably imply the former?

Being respectful is taking the time to moderate “your code is shit” to something like “your code is not acceptable”. You might even go a modicum further into kindness with “there are aspects of your code I need you to improve”.

All express the same idea, some will leave the listener more open to internalizing the criticism.

Yep, 2020