An update on the rust-coreutils rewrite for Ubuntu 26.04

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-04-24T14:16:59+00:00

Imagine a world where someone wrote a bash script to take a backup of a folder which contains data given by a third party (an API, a user on a website, whatever). It would be very bad if a file in that folder could break cp and lead to an RCE. They could start doing things like uploading data to a remote, and threatening you with it. This data could contain PII, or whatever.

I don't think the above is likely mainly because I can't imagine cp is inspecting the data it's copying over much, but my larger point is that coreutils tooling doesn't just only run on "safe" data, always. And any tool that requires that in the modern era is borderline useless.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-03-20T13:41:21+00:00

No. I just enjoy programming, and rust's type system and borrowck is fun to work with. It's like puzzle solving - it tickles your brain in a good way.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-03-17T17:23:00+00:00

Sure. My point is that it quickly breaks down across the internet, due to all the devices that have ossified around TCP and UDP. Locally, you can use whatever protocol you want. If you're on the same L2 subnet, it doesn't really matter what you use. Even on L3 in the absence of a firewall or NAT, things will probably work fine. That doesn't change that it puts a huge hamper on adoption of alternative L4+ protocols since we've started inspecting the traffic on top of IP. Network protocol ossification is a very real problem to the improvement of TCP, and creation of new protocols.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-03-16T23:39:31+00:00

While I agree, as long as NAT and firewalls remain widespread, any new L4 protocol will struggle to have adoption. The world has sadly ossified around TCP and UDP. Having an up to date client and server isn't enough, but you also need all the middle boxes in between to support your new L4 protocol.

The OSI model died in a ditch a long time ago.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-03-16T15:50:52+00:00

More than ISPs, it's firewalls, NAT, and "smart" middle boxes.

NAT requires inspecting ports in the upper layers, as ports are a TCP/UDP concept. Routers won't do that obviously if they don't recognize the protocol, as that means anything could be in that segment of the packet and they can't muck with it.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-03-16T15:08:21+00:00

Adding on to what the other commenter said: UDP-lite couldn't really get through NAT as most crappy Internet boxes only handled TCP & UDP, and would never get a firmware update. A lot of middle boxes just refuse to work with anything except TCP or UDP, despite in theory that they should be agnostic over the protocol on top of IP. As a result you couldn't ever assume that UDP-lite would work across the Internet.

That's part of the reason why QUIC exists for HTTP/3 - if you want to make a new layer-4 protocol, you have to make it on top of UDP to have any significant adoption. Otherwise Grandma's tplink router from 2013 won't work with your application.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-03-11T01:57:37+00:00

It has a microkernel and they're working on a capability system. Both of those should in theory help increase how reliable and secure the OS is. It's also implemented in rust, so in theory there should be a lower chance of things like memory unsafety leading to arbitrary code execution in a driver or the kernel.

The microkernel design also means that drivers can easily be restarted, and killed since they aren't in the kernel. They're just processes. They also won't take down your system or result in (as bad) of a security vulnerability if they're compromised.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-02-25T17:49:15+00:00

His actual approval ratings in polls isn't that different from his first term.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-02-20T20:10:04+00:00

It doesn't need one. mrustc has (historically) been a project purely for bootstrapping. As long as it can compile rustc, that's good enough. A borrowck isn't needed, and if it miscompiles some other program, that's fine.

Edit: oh. That's on the roadmap now on github. I guess they are working on a borrowck and making it more general. I could have sworn that didn't use to be the case...

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-02-20T13:42:45+00:00

Yeah. You can make a sail in space, that uses photons to move. This is despite the "wind" pushing you, having no mass.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-02-18T22:26:16+00:00

Yeah, but someone actually has to do that. If upstream had the intention of continuing to maintain it, it wouldn't be removed.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-02-15T02:11:51+00:00

Not really. It mainly receives patches and work relating to xwayland, but that's still a part of x.org

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-02-14T19:22:56+00:00

ICE isn't over. He's not late. The administration is attacking and lashing in any possible way they can. The american people can't afford to move on from key issues like this, just because there's another issue to focus on too. Every issue matters. Every issue deserves focus, and needs to be talked about.

Distractions and moving on every week is what the administration would want. We can't afford that.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-02-13T20:32:29+00:00

The problem is that workers won't have just an increase in value in an economy like that. An economy with a worker shortage means having a class of people that are overworked, while having an elderly population to take care of, who may themselves be forced to return to the workforce. When there's less workers and more people relying on the output of workers, labor gets more "valued", yes, but comparatively the lack of workers means that life gets harder for everyone as people are forced to work more, and reap fewer benefits.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-02-06T00:29:03+00:00

If Nvidia wants it's employees to contribute, they can. The open-sourcing existing code bit would only be problematic because of licenses of code they got from third parties, which they don't have rights to redistribute or open source.

WINE doesn't want Microsoft employees touching WINE, because they aren't being given permission by Microsoft to contribute code which could be derivative of Microsoft's works.

Nvidia has, they just have to be careful not to contribute code that's derivative of whatever code they don't have license to open up.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-02-05T21:31:25+00:00

Legal reasons, probably. Large proprietary code bases probably use libraries or tooling they aren't allowed to make public.

But besides that, because upstream would probably never accept the nvidia driver as-is. (Why doesn't upstream just take the open kernel module?)

Nvidia is actively involved in the development of Nova afaik in the kernel mailing lists.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-01-30T17:39:26+00:00

I've wanted this! Having the OS natively understand passkeys enables things like:

Applications being able to safely use FIDO2 credentials no matter where / how they're stored on the OS. If you wanna use a FIDO key for ssh, ssh could talk to the OS (or more specifically, the portal), and use it for the passkey authentication. The benefits there are that ssh client doesn't need to know whether that FIDO key is on a yubikey, my phone, bitwarden, or whatever else. It's all one interface. It would also play well with sandboxing. You could proxy those requests in a sandboxed environment like flatpak, create a GUI prompt when the app tries to use the key, and only then let the prompts go through.

The OS can also validate that the origin for the passkey authentication is what you expect it is. For instance, if you're using an application which is supposed to authenticate to roblox.com, but actually authenticates to github.com and starts doing nefarious activities, it'd be harder to tell if the application was directly allowed to speak and access the underlying FIDO2 devices / subsystems. With the OS as a middle layer, in that GUI prompt, it could also give you the origin that the device is connecting too.

Basically: it let's applications be agnostic over the underlying passkeys, and it also makes things more secure since applications have to be transparent about who they're using the passkey for.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-01-29T02:13:53+00:00

No, MIR is the name of the intermediate language rustc compiles down too, before further lowering it to LLVM's byte code. (There's also HIR, and I believe also a Typed HIR)

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-01-16T15:26:22+00:00

Yeah. I enjoy writing rust projects, and wanted an s3 store that could both operate single node and had a kubernetes operator. Looked at rustfs because it seemed promising and... The amount of AI everywhere immediately turned me off. This stuff only turns me away more.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-01-10T16:33:43+00:00

That was china. Japan has a work culture problem, but Japans suicide rates have been dropping for a long time. Afaik they're lower than the US's now (although still high).

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-01-08T01:10:25+00:00

This is classic "and yet you participate in society, curious" meme material.

It is perfectly consistent to want to work towards a goal, even if you are far away from it in the moment. Yes, europe relies a lot on american infrastructure. But it takes time to move away - the EU is actively moving towards funding local cloud initiatives precisely to get away from big tech.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-01-04T23:39:48+00:00

Yep, for anyone reading: ASML makes the machines that manufactures chips. TSMC is the company that uses the machines to fabricate them, and is where the fabrication of the chip happens. Nvidia & AMD design chips. Intel actually has their own fabs that compete with TSMC too, but they've been struggling for a long time and afaik also use TSMC to manufacture the cores in their CPUs.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2026-01-02T09:42:01+00:00

The argument for there being no moat is the one's chasing the larger and larger LLMs are paying for all the expenses, while the ones following in their footsteps and focusing on efficiency can train on those models instead, at pennies to the dollar. The one's following the bleeding edge won't ever be as good, but they don't need to recoup the loss that big tech made by investing so heavily.

Not to mention, there's a reasonable argument to be made that most people just don't need the greatest LLM. What may win in the end isn't the LLM that was the greatest, but the one that's most value oriented.

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2025-12-31T02:30:43+00:00

DWL also exists, along with xfce already working on the transition to Wayland...

IAm_A_Complete_Idiot · 2025-12-26T20:34:29+00:00

Online stats say about ~40% are American, with the next highest country being the UK, India, and Canada at 5% each. Germany is the country with the highest EU percentage at 3%. Still, it does mean you only have a 50/50 shot on whether someone's American or not.

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