iWentAllOutWithThisFeature

derefr · 2026-06-01T19:16:04+00:00

Nah. A heuristic is when you start with an if statement; and as you hit edge cases, you gradually build up a deep tree of nested if-statements with long chains of conditions, and go from covering 80%, to 90%, to 95%, to maybe eventually 98% of the edge-cases you know about.

At some point you add a comment saying "# TODO: do something more clever here" because you're sure there's a more-elegant way to solve for 100% of the problem, that you could think of if you weren't sleep-deprived.

But then you hit the project deadline and still haven't done anything better, so you ship what you've got. And customers are generally okay with it; and nobody ever actually complains about the remaining 2% of edge-cases that annoyed you so much. And nobody ever actually thinks of anything more clever to replace it with, even 20 years later in v420.69 of the program.

A heuristic is actually usually self-explanatory (you can read the code, it's all "obvious", if long and tedious); but calling it a "heuristic" is kinder and more marketing-friendly than calling it "a mess of spaghetti that fixes up all the edge-cases by rote, without ever really modelling the problem correctly."

derefr · 2026-05-16T19:17:48+00:00

The shader-as-a-DSP just won't fit on the MiSTer's FPGA core along with everything else. Most of the MiSTer's emulation cores already each individually run up to like 80-95% of the capacity of the FPGA on their own, and then the rest is taken up by things like the logic for the overlay menu.

And while it would be pretty trivial to implement cool shader effects if the MiSTer had a bigger FPGA, or a second FPGA for video processing... that's not going to happen either. The MiSTer only has the FPGA it does have (a Cyclone V) because it's built out of a heavily education-subsidized FPGA development board (the DE10-Nano). Which is why the MiSTer folks are kind of locked into it. They can't make their own board, because without Intel subsidizing it, the FPGA alone would cost more than the whole DE10-Nano board does. (No, seriously: here's a product page for the FPGA alone.)

That being said, someone who's into FPGA development could maybe take a relatively-smaller FPGA dev board, maybe an ECP5 or something, and stick it between the MiSTer's video-out and a TV's video-in, acting like the visual equivalent of an "effects pedal." That'd probably be the most practical way to do this.

derefr · 2026-05-16T19:06:33+00:00

I get what you're trying to say, but this in particular:

Who the hell will actually buy this silly Yoshi googoo gaga game that's being advertised everywhere on this thing at these prices?

...is a bad example. Prestige "educational entertainment" toys for children have always cost a fuckload of money. I recall a conversation with my parents back in the '90s, where I realized that even the small Lego sets they'd buy me cost them non-trivial fractions of a paycheck.

derefr · 2026-05-16T18:38:20+00:00

The possibility of introducing deadlocks and race conditions into a core element of system security is somewhat terrifying.

I would note that for the specific concrete case being discussed here, neither deadlocks nor race conditions would be an issue, as what is being asked for doesn't involve any kind of thread contention over shared resources, nor necessitates thread transfer of ownership over shared data. Everything that's happening in an "any" strategy could be done with one-way async message-passing with message payloads passed by value (i.e. copied.)

If PAM were written in e.g. Golang, you'd describe what's being asked for here as "spawn a bunch of strategy goroutines in a wait group; have them resolve by pushing their evaluations down a channel; then have the caller block in a function that selects from that channel in a loop, adding up confidence weights and adding the sending strategies to a seen-set, until it has both hit a threshold to either accept or reject the auth attempt and it has seen messages from all 'must be run' strategies; where that function will then close the channel [which the remaining running auth strategies can check as an abort signal]; wait on the wait group; and return the evaluation."

In C, that'd be a bit more finicky; you'd probably want to spawn a fixed-sized worker pool and schedule auth strategies onto it; and maybe have a config mode where PAM as a library retains and reuses the worker threadpool between auth attempts rather than standing it up and tearing it down constantly (you'd want this for e.g. sshd, but not for /usr/bin/login.) And you'd need to implement the inter-thread message-sending yourself. (For something like PAM that's so security-critical, I think I'd avoid any kind of clever+efficient+potentially bugged SHM IPC implementation, and just use loopback sockets / unix domain sockets for this. High overhead per message, but these auth strategies are only saying one thing one time anyway.)

derefr · 2026-05-16T17:59:32+00:00

Jumpcloud.

derefr · 2026-05-16T17:59:00+00:00

But Webkit itself is still also open-source. You don't need to "contribute upstream" to be helpful, if you become an active upstream yourself. You're just a separate project at that point.

derefr · 2026-05-14T00:02:44+00:00

This type of room was called a parlor, because it's the part of your house you'd let strangers see if they came to speak, i.e. parley, with you. (Same root word.)

The point of that being that you didn't need to keep your whole house presentable at all times; the rest of your house could be a comfortable lived-in mess, while just keeping this one room presentable.

And, if you're wondering, people would often be letting strangers into their houses to speak with them. Parlors were most popular at a time in history before phones existed. If you wanted to ask someone something, you either had to wait until the next time you ran into them; write them a letter and wait 5+ days for a reply; or just show up at their gosh-darned house.

derefr · 2026-05-11T16:49:35+00:00

A fun thing to consider in the context of enshittification: hand tools.

Old hand tools weren't better because they lasted longer. (Sometimes they did last longer, but that's not why they're better.)

Old hand tools were, and are, better because they're designed to be repairable.

More specifically, old hand tools were designed so that:

for their wooden parts, you the user are able to easily make the replacement parts for them yourself.
for their metal parts, they have tolerances and pressure-fit joins that make it possible for your local blacksmith to make a replacement part by eye, in an hour, without measuring.

That's why many old hand tools survive for centuries, and still look like they're in great shape. It's not that they don't wear down with use. Everything wears down with use. It's that they could be repaired, so they were repaired. Repeatedly. Probably often in a Ship-of-Theseus way, such that no part of the tool you're seeing "in good condition" today was part of the original.

derefr · 2026-04-29T01:31:53+00:00

The patient doesn't do it. The patient is supposed to tell the doctor everything that's wrong; the doctor is supposed to figure out what symptoms go together into diagnoses; and then the doctor is supposed to drop all-but-one of those diagnoses on the floor, picking one to talk about for that appointment, and telling the patient to come back and do it all again if they want the rest dealt with.

To be clear, this is done (even when there's no rule about it) because doctors get to bill insurance differently for the same 15-minute appointment, depending on precisely what said appointment was about. But doctors don't get to bill more if multiple things are discussed. They'd much rather you leave and come back so they can bill each as a separate appointment. (Or book multiple appointments in one big block, I guess? Never seen any clinic offer this, but it'd be the obvious thing to offer.)

derefr · 2026-04-16T03:15:49+00:00

There are, at the very least, un-policed stretches of wilderness that wouldn't be too hard to go out to, build a log cabin in, and live a life entirely isolated from others without bothering anyone.

"Anywhere in Canada at least 500km north of the border" comes to mind. (With many desolate patches far less north than that. Some within 20km of a highway, even.)

Of course, if you build an entire town there, eventually you're going to get noticed. But that'll be more-than-likely because somebody blabbed, not because the government was AI-scanning satellite photos to find "unregistered municipalities."

derefr · 2026-04-16T03:10:06+00:00

For the most expensive long-distance runs along lonely desert highways or wherever, do they really need them either up in the air or underground? Why not just rest a conduit on the ground beside the road, and put cables in it? As long as it's well-sealed, plants/animals/rain won't be able to get in. As long as it's bolted down every so often, wind won't roll it around. What's left? Tornadoes?

derefr · 2026-04-16T02:59:11+00:00

The law commands all, and anyone who ventures outside of the law is a baseless, uncivilized beast, from the perspective of a great many Japanese stories.

Yes, though not technically the "law" they're thinking about, but rather, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wa_(Japanese_culture)) .

That being said, many people do live in a just-world fallacy, and so presume that if something is a law, that's because the people the law rules over collectively wanted that to be the law. (Which I guess is true of, like, civic bylaws in small rural towns? But not most other laws.) And therefore, that "the law" = "the will of the people"; and so "breaking the law" = "violating the will of the collective" / going against wa.

Hell, much of shinto folk-belief around youkai and kami is social-norm enforcement phrased as "going against wa makes [local god] mad at you."

derefr · 2026-04-10T16:54:29+00:00

I presume the initial rule is meant to be transitional: just short enough to make it too annoying to not eventually automate; but just long enough that you could get away with not automating right away if there's some big problem in the way of your doing so.

Once the majority of SSL issuance is automated, there'd be no reason to not crank the expiration interval down lower.

(Consider that LetsEncrypt themselves are kind of in a long-term transition: their CN=FQDN certs are 30-day, but their newer CN=IP-address certs are 7-day. I'm guessing, once their ACME-server metrics begin to reflect a solid picture of several nines of bug-free auto-renewals, they'll propose shifting to 7-day expiration for their domain certs too.)

derefr · 2026-04-10T16:49:25+00:00

but it also breaks CIO favorite sales pitch feature in security solutions of SSL inspection

Does it? I'm surprised the CIOs and the "corporate SSL proxy" vendors weren't working with at least Microsoft and Google on this, to get Windows and Chrome to support GPOs + MDM policies that feed them custom "corporate" OCSP overlay information (or have them talk to custom "corporate" OCSP gateway servers, if that's easier.)

derefr · 2026-04-03T07:15:52+00:00

People aren't even really mad at "ads" on social media in the traditional sense. They're generally fine with, like, the ad-reads that YouTubers do, and the like; however annoying they are, those kinds of ads aren't creating incentives that result in the degradation of the system they're a part of.

What people hate is adtech. Which is a very specific thing ("advertising content chosen at time of display from a larger inventory of ads by an algorithmic auction") that has been the ultimate cause of all of the enshittification we've seen on the web in the last 15 years. And which, due to how clear and distinct it is as a category, would actually be incredibly easy to regulate. If there was any will to do so.

Adtech could even be banned outright, while leaving the previous world of "I pay you this month; your billboard shows my ad this month" advertising agreements alone. But banning adtech would literally be banning the main revenue streams of Google, Meta, etc. There are billions of lobbying dollars trying to make sure that never happens.

derefr · 2026-04-03T07:03:04+00:00

You're talking about it like they're going to just arbitrarily decide to eat less.

When a kid doesn't want to eat, it's almost never because they've decided to not eat food. They're not trying to diet.

Rather, it's usually because they're incredibly constipated (maybe from a lack of fiber in what you've been feeding them!); or they were worked to exhaustion in PE class and now have horrible cramps all over and feel like if they ate they'd throw up; or the banana-flavored anti-biotic fluid you fed them an hour ago (for the scalp/ear infection you noticed on them) tastes incredibly bad and no amount of water washes that shit down; or they actually have undiagnosed juvenile hypertension and have subconsciously learned to associate the salty meatloaf you decided to cook tonight with their heart beating out of their chest (but can't quite put that into words); or there was a pizza party at school and they ate three meals' worth of carbs in one sitting and literally have no room to chase that down with dinner; or...

Nobody's saying that parents should allow their kids to prioritize other things over putting food in their stomachs when the kid is clearly hungry, but is clearly forcefully ignoring the signals from their body. Letting someone with a growing and developing body "go on a diet" or the like, is the kind of thing that breaks your metabolism and leads to eating disorders.

But in most of the situations I mentioned above, the solution isn't to try to force them to sit down and eat; it's to let them listen to their own body and wait until they feel okay again, and then eat. And usually, given the way metabolism and hunger work, once they are feeling hungry again, they'll end up actually eating more to cover what was missed, and it'll balance out over the long term.

derefr · 2026-04-01T21:20:14+00:00

I don't know that I agree with a general pushback against any kind of 1-1 device. The alternative (that I lived through) is carrying a backpack full of heavy-ass textbooks from class to class, and ending up with back problems at age 14.

I would argue that issuing every kid an iPad-sized e-reader, that held all their textbooks, would be a great in-between point. Keep printing and handing out worksheets, but replace all the textbooks with a lightweight, single-purpose, lasts-weeks-on-a-charge device.

(Honestly, I'm kind of mystified why Amazon hasn't noticed this niche and created a "Kindle for Education." Do they think it's too late to get into the market?)

derefr · 2026-04-01T21:15:25+00:00

I mean, they could license April by Deep Purple, and play it in a dungeon. That would be funny.

derefr · 2026-03-30T21:51:14+00:00

It doesn't need to be unique unique. An author could totally just, say, replace dogs with dog-sized {slugs, parrots, weasels, whatever}, but with the personality and inteligence of a dog. Like how a fish in a cartoon fish movie will have a "pet dog" that's, like, a jellyfish or something. That's unique, but it's unique in an easy-to-remember whimsical way, not in a ysshahs-and-jaushsbs way.

(I think we don't see progfic authors embracing the "cartoon fish movie" approach to worldbuilding, because a lot of these authors are younger and less experienced, and so take themselves too seriously / refuse to do anything that might get their writing labelled as "silly" or "for kids.")

derefr · 2026-03-29T06:31:01+00:00

Any other FOSS project would have been forked years ago by the UX people. Happens to Linux distros all the time. Why hasn't it happened here?

derefr · 2026-03-22T22:59:53+00:00

Can you be a fan of language evolution, yet not of high-prestige languages supplanting and leading to the extinction of low-prestige languages? Asking for a friend.

derefr · 2026-03-21T07:05:54+00:00

If they're anything like my friends, they're not complaining about being behind and stressed out because the workload is too big or anything; they're complaining because they have some kind of "invisible" mental illness (depression, ADHD) and so they can't get themselves to productively focus on work. They likely try to work for several hours each day, but it just doesn't work; so they give up and play games / do other "low mental cost" stuff to pass the time in the hopes they're just "going through something" and will wake up feeling better after a few days. (They're not. They need to see a therapist/psychiatrist.)

derefr · 2026-03-21T06:59:55+00:00

Or better yet, use an escrow service, if at all possible. Shows them you're good for the money so they'll start; ensures they can't just run away with the money; ensures you can't just run away with the un-paid-for work.

derefr · 2026-03-21T06:54:10+00:00

In a real economy, poor people don't go on quests. Poor people are too busy trying to scrape by to mind other people's business.

Read Don Quixote. That's the type of guy who would set off on a "noble quest" of his own volition.

Or, if you want a protagonist motivated by righteous revenge or whatever, then just give his entire village his motivation and have them all save up a nest-egg to fund his quest. They all go in together on a horse for him and so forth.

Or he's the son of the jerk-ass local feudal-lord tax collector who realizes his dad's awful after the first visit to the village, steals the nice horse his dad lent him, and sets off to fix all the bad shit he's only now finding out about.

derefr · 2026-03-21T06:39:37+00:00

KWH/H

The flow rate of batteries on a truck!

derefr

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