Hacker News: breadbox

New comment by breadbox in "My Own Private Binary: An Idiosyncratic Introduction to Linux Kernel Modules"

breadbox — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 04:58:36 +0000

And kudos to you for following up with your own exploration. It's so often the case that the most interesting stuff is hidden in what other people are wrong about.

New comment by breadbox in "My Own Private Binary: An Idiosyncratic Introduction to Linux Kernel Modules"

breadbox — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 19:17:40 +0000

Not as much fun that way.

New comment by breadbox in "My Own Private Binary: An Idiosyncratic Introduction to Linux Kernel Modules"

breadbox — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 19:16:51 +0000

A valid point! Clearly the correct solution would be for the kernel module to check if the filename contains the substring "32", and if so it should load it as a 32-bit binary.

New comment by breadbox in "My Own Private Binary: An Idiosyncratic Introduction to Linux Kernel Modules"

breadbox — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 18:39:02 +0000

So I read the other article, and I saw that bit that disagreed with my essay. My first thought was, "Oh, of course that's how it works. How did I get that so wrong?" My only excuse was that this essay was originally a tech talk and I was under a deadline. (But I really should have caught it when I wrote it up as an essay.)

So I was going to go edit my essay, when I learned that my essay was also posted on Hacker News. And now I discover that someone has already called out my error before I could fix it. Sigh.

Anyway, I just thought I should acknowledge this before I go to fix it.

Very Wrong Math

breadbox — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 23:10:56 +0000

Article URL: https://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2025/01/Very-Wrong-Math.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42661432

Points: 192

# Comments: 105

New comment by breadbox in "INTERCAL: Practically impossible"

breadbox — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 20:09:56 +0000

I couldn't help myself. Despite my better judgement, I wrote an extension to my original essay specifically dissecting this response. (It's now linked at the bottom of the original page.)

Thanks for sharing this transcript with me.

New comment by breadbox in "INTERCAL: Practically impossible"

breadbox — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 18:00:57 +0000

And thank _you_ for your thoughtful response!

New comment by breadbox in "INTERCAL: Practically impossible"

breadbox — Sun, 25 Jun 2023 17:58:58 +0000

I don't think that's a fair characterization of the statement. It's the type of mistakes, not the bare fact of them, that suggests a lack of what we could call "understanding".

New comment by breadbox in "INTERCAL: Practically impossible"

breadbox — Sun, 25 Jun 2023 15:56:08 +0000

Hey, if we can distract Chat-GPT with becoming an expert INTERCAL programmer, then I say "Win-win!"

New comment by breadbox in "INTERCAL: Practically impossible"

breadbox — Sun, 25 Jun 2023 15:54:58 +0000

If I complain about an answer given to me by one librarian, I'm complaining about that answer and that librarian. If you can find a more knowledgeable librarian somewhere else, that doesn't affect my complaint.

But to be clear, there are no screenshots in the essay. I assimilated the HTML directly into the document.

New comment by breadbox in "INTERCAL: Practically impossible"

breadbox — Sun, 25 Jun 2023 15:50:35 +0000

Look, I understand your point. I really do. But I feel that (perhaps due to one or more of your acknowledged biases) you're applying the wrong context to the situation at hand.

Namely: this is INTERCAL. There is no freaking standard. The "standard" is a 60-page text file written in 1973. The current compiler was written 90% based on this joke-filled document, and 9% new ideas because ESR came up with something even more ridiculous. (The remaining 1% was Don Woods responding to emailed questions by consulting his memory. He still has paper copies of the SPITBOL source code, but the original compiler hasn't been run in over 50 years.) There is no standard because at any given time there are at most three people on the planet who care one iota about INTERCAL standardization, and are only willing to put in any effort if it would be funny. So, for example, the question of what sort of randomness the double-oh-seven operator is contractually required to use is simply not a contextually relevant question.

You seem to be suggesting that it might be possible, even thinly so, that Chat-GPT somehow misapplied a strict standard of randomness in the formation of its response, instead of simply papering over a hole in its knowledge with a bit of improvised plausible-sounding guesswork, a well-documented behavior of both Chat-GPT and thinking entities worldwide. If not, then I humbly apologize for misunderstanding your point. Otherwise, I must politely agree to disagree.

And I'm sorry that my essay rubbed you the wrong way. Perhaps one day you will find it better than you do now, but if not then I hope it passes from your memory quickly.

New comment by breadbox in "INTERCAL: Practically impossible"

breadbox — Sun, 25 Jun 2023 07:23:42 +0000

And again, a heady mix of accurate observations with complete bullshit. Separating out the misinformation is, as always, left as an exercise for the reader.

My Own Private Binary: An Idiosyncratic Introduction to Linux Kernel Modules

breadbox — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 19:20:14 +0000

Article URL: http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/mopb.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29281120

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

Does having prime neighbors make you more composite?

breadbox — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 03:36:20 +0000

Article URL: http://bit-player.org/2021/does-having-prime-neighbors-make-you-more-composite

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29115173

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by breadbox in "Tiny ELF Files: Revisited in 2021"

breadbox — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 22:51:31 +0000

Unless `write()` returns an error, in which case rax will contain a negative value. I've had to ditch that shortcut many times because of this.

New comment by breadbox in "Tiny ELF Files: Revisited in 2021"

breadbox — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 20:46:09 +0000

Nice to see another approach to this subject! Kudos to the author.

I have a couple of responses to specific points brought up in the article.

The author suggests that the original 45-byte executable no longer works on modern systems. If so, this is news to me. Admittedly my current machine is a bit behind the cutting edge (4.15), but what's there should still work. If people are finding the current version to fail for them, I'd appreciate some details on their setup.

* I respectfully disagree that 32-bit executables are "less relevant" today; I suspect they will continue to be supported for many, many years to come. Of course for a new explorer 64-bit executables are far more interesting, but when you're shaving bytes at a time, you can't beat a 32-bit executable.

* Many people are unaware that my original essay is only the first of a series that I wrote. (All of the essays are linked at the bottom of the original.) I note that my smallest 64-bit ELF executable without introducing invalid fields is also 120 bytes, so that's cool.

* However, by taking advantage of unvalidated fields, I was able to produce a working 64-bit ELF executable that is 84 bytes in size. The overlapping is a bit tricky, but I've verified that it continues to work on my box. See http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/return42.h... -- all variations of my return-42 executables are collected there.

* My smallest 64-bit ELF executable that prints "hello, world\n" (no punctuation: I always use the string from K&R) is 98 bytes. I don't have the assembly for that one posted on my site, but it uses the same layout as the 86-byte executable.