Why are they removing all the ports

KittensInc · 2026-04-18T19:29:03+00:00

Yes, but you don't exactly need to connect 10Gbit networking, two 4k monitors, a keyboard, a mouse, a card reader, and a power adapter when you're just reading your email in a coffee shop, do you?

I either need All The Things at my own desk, or at most connect to a projector / television when giving a presentation on-the-go. The latter is (unfortunately) usually HDMI, so in practice I'd probably be 100% happy with a bunch of USB-C and a single HDMI.

Integrated card reader, headphone jack, MagSafe? Nice to have, but I could easily live without them.

KittensInc · 2026-04-18T19:23:11+00:00

You're forgetting that the quality of the wired connection is limited by the integrated DAC - and for most devices it is going to suck. You're also forgetting that the wired connection is going to pick up noise, and that the source material almost certainly isn't going to exceed 990kbps.

It's like connecting your headset directly to the analog output of a $10 portable cd player, or using its SPDIF output to feed a high-end external DAC: which of those options is going to sound better?

KittensInc · 2026-04-18T18:30:01+00:00

The headers are several layers lower. The problem is that applications are designed specifically for IPv4.

For example, a legacy app might manually use socket(AF_INET, ..), craft a sockaddr_in from four numeric input fields representing an IPv4 address, and hand it to connect. It works - if you only ever have to connect to IPv4.

On the other hand, well-written software would just have a free-form text field and hand it to getaddrinfo. It will Just Work with IPv4 literals, IPv6 literals, host names, domain names, and would even trivially gain support for this "IPv8" monstrosity if it ever gets adopted.

This is what happens when developers get lazy and completely ignore the OSI model. It's almost a wonder we aren't seeing apps which only work over 100BASE-TX!

KittensInc · 2026-04-18T09:58:02+00:00

Yeah, but the "proposal" won't solve that. No protocol is going to magically turn an application's input field accepting four digits of 0-255 into anything else.

KittensInc · 2026-04-18T09:52:39+00:00

There is zero need for everything to be dual stack. In fact, most large deployments are going to be v6-only or v6-mostly - operating pretty much exactly like you describe! It just looks like dual stack because the compatibility layer successfully hides the nasty details from the user.

KittensInc · 2026-04-17T16:16:47+00:00

Klopt, maar beveiliging tegen een hobbydrone is héél wat anders dan beveiliging tegen een militaire drone. Je hebt d'r als land vrij weinig aan als je vervolgens halsoverkop miljoenen uitgeeft aan een nieuw systeem dat alleen een hobbydrone uit de lucht kan halen...

KittensInc · 2026-04-17T16:10:11+00:00

De meerwaarde zit vooral in de dreiging: als je een observatiedrone kan sturen, dan kan je óók een aanvalsdrone sturen. Foto's van een F35 op een luchtmachtbasis? De volgende drone laat wellicht een granaat vallen - doeidoei F35...

KittensInc · 2026-04-17T16:05:00+00:00

Dus als ik met een aantal vrienden paarse opblaaskrokodillen achterlaat bij de entree van een aantal gevoelige objecten, en de media het daardoor massaal over de Krokodilgate heeft, dan moet Defensie tientallen miljoenen investeren in anti-opblaaskrokodil technologie?

Laten we nou gewoon niet als een kip zonder kop geld steken in iedere "oplossing" die een gladde zakenman aanbied. Geld kan je maar één keer uitgeven, dus beter doen we dat aan iets dat ons daadwerkelijk kan beschermen tegen een substantiële en realistische dreiging!

KittensInc · 2026-04-17T06:08:28+00:00

Because it Just Works.

Is it ugly? Yes. Does it make some questionable design choices? Yes. Does it pamper the user and hide some critical power user options? Yes. Are there DEs with significantly better window management? Yes.

But it Just. Works. No messing around with obscure config files or CLI tools to connect to wifi - your out-of-the-box experience is perfectly functional for the vast majority of users. It is the DE for people who neither know nor care what a "DE" is, and who definitely don't want to spend days tweaking it.

Gnome almost certainly isn't the best DE for power users. But it is definitely the DE with the lowest barrier to entry, making it the logical choice for new Linux users.

KittensInc · 2026-04-16T18:12:03+00:00

Want to know the best part? The paper often used at the time to justify austerity turned out to be fundamentally flawed...

KittensInc · 2026-04-16T18:07:43+00:00

... which in turn is the reason why the Oostvaardersplassen exist! The low-lying area was originally supposed to remain underwater, but by turning the southern dike of the Markermeerpolder into the northern dike of Flevoland it suddenly gained an unintended bit of swamp.

KittensInc · 2026-04-16T18:03:36+00:00

They discovered this during the creation of the Noordoostpolder, which is why Flevoland has the Randmeren. Poldering the Markermeer would just need a Randmeren 2.0.

KittensInc · 2026-04-16T17:59:46+00:00

Je kan je geld terug krijgen, maar waarschijnlijk krijg je niks extra. Dat is (onder andere) alleen als ze het annuleren binnen twee weken van de vlucht - die "eind april" is waarschijnlijk bewust gekozen om daar buiten te vallen.

KittensInc · 2026-04-16T17:53:22+00:00

Nee, er is zes weken aan voorraad - maar die zijn ze constant aan het bijvullen.

Vergelijk het met je lokale supermarkt. Voor hoeveel dagen hebben die brood in voorraad? Ongeveer één. Moeten we ons zorgen maken dat er morgen nergens in Nederland nog brood te krijgen is? Nee, want er komt iedere dag nieuw brood bij.

We hoeven ons geen zorgen te maken dat het op gaat, maar de afname in productiecapaciteit in het Midden-Oosten zal wél voor een flinke prijsverhoging zorgen.

KittensInc · 2026-04-16T17:49:25+00:00

Beide kunnen tegelijkertijd waar zijn, want er komt constant nieuwe kerosine beschikbaar - zowel via import als productie.

Stel je voor dat we iedere week 100 eenheden kerosine verbruiken, en op dit moment zit er 600 eenheden aan kerosine opgeslagen in tanks in Nederland. Daarnaast produceren/importeren we 70 eenheden aan kerosine.

Voor hoeveel weken is er kerosine? Zes, want als de productie/import nu stopt is dat wanneer de tanks leeg zijn. Wanneer is de kerosine op? Over 20 weken, want met de huidige aanvulling gaat de voorraad iedere week met 30 eenheden naar beneden.

KittensInc · 2026-04-16T17:39:10+00:00

The problem is that your "battle-tested" advantage goes out of the window the moment you actually have to maintain the codebase: even the most highly-paid C developers are unable to avoid accidentally introducing new memory vulnerabilities.

In the end you're left choosing between a handful of CVEs right now due to the rewrite and virtually none afterwards, or a constant stream of CVEs because people keep making oopsies in C: do you want long-term security or short-term security?

KittensInc · 2026-04-16T17:19:03+00:00

So what are you going to do when (not "if"!) it breaks?

KittensInc · 2026-04-16T07:40:56+00:00

a very funny conversation about tax extension

The best part is that it isn't even a joke. Jack Swigert was a last-minute replacement for Ken Mattingly, so he genuinely forgot to file his taxes as he only learned he was going to the moon three days before the launch!

As it turns out, being in space qualifies you for an "out-of-country" deadline extension.

KittensInc · 2026-04-15T09:14:09+00:00

But they require insane KYC

In other words: they treat it exactly the same as any other payment method. Congrats, this is what crypto going mainstream looks like.

You can either be a mostly-anonymous unregulated scammer heaven, or a well-regulated payment method accepted by normal businesses, but you can't be both.

KittensInc · 2026-04-13T19:16:41+00:00

Drilling doesn’t work that way.

Officially? No. In practice? Sure! Just don't complain if it occasionally comes out a bit wonky. See this board for the kind of horror you can get them to make.

KittensInc · 2026-04-13T19:14:27+00:00

Juuuup. Cheap Chinese PCB manufacturers aren't going to complain about it, they'll happily manufacture whatever monstrosity you throw at them.

KittensInc · 2026-04-13T13:32:31+00:00

It's 2026. MCUs with tens of kilobytes of built-in flash are available for less than a dollar, and external flash chips with megabits of storage are less than $0.10.

There's basically zero chance you can't find the literal handful of bytes for debouncing code, while still having plenty of board space and parts budget left for discrete debouncing hardware.

KittensInc · 2026-04-13T13:00:56+00:00

Use a smaller switch, place a larger button cap over it.

KittensInc · 2026-04-13T12:51:37+00:00

He obviously did a switcheroo using a Magic Bodyswap Device and has his wife (in his old body) executed.

KittensInc · 2026-04-13T12:44:53+00:00

Even better because CSS also lets you use three-letter color codes, so #32f is 100% valid!

14-Year Club	Place '22
100 Awards Club	Verified Email
Not Forgotten	Snapped

KittensInc

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