Hacker News: machinestops

New comment by machinestops in "iPhone users can now set WhatsApp as their default calling and texting app"

machinestops — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 13:14:12 +0000

GrapheneOS has the functionality "Contact Scopes" in the same vein as "Storage Scopes" that only provides access to the specific contacts and files you allow.

New comment by machinestops in "Landrun: Sandbox any Linux process using Landlock, no root or containers"

machinestops — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 23:16:30 +0000

Seems pretty cool, but I would probably object to `--best-effort` being enabled by default. This is a sandbox and a security boundary, and degrading security should probably be opt-in rather than opt-out.

New comment by machinestops in "Snowdrop OS – a homebrew operating system from scratch, in assembly language"

machinestops — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:16:46 +0000

Plan 9's cool ideas largely still haven't been surpassed or reimplemented.

https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/3rd_edition/rio/rio_slides.pdf

New comment by machinestops in "The Siren Song of Little Languages"

machinestops — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 09:26:04 +0000

I struggle to take such an article seriously when it cites Brainfuck as an example. A common use of Brainfuck isn't to write programs, but rather to prove that it is possible to write programs. This isn't exactly comparable with small Lisps or Forth.

New comment by machinestops in "Déjà vu: Ghostly CVEs in my terminal title"

machinestops — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 16:42:39 +0000

I appreciate the commitment it has to backwards compatibility - the TUI apps are better by virtue of running on top of Arcan's layer, with no changes.

New comment by machinestops in "Déjà vu: Ghostly CVEs in my terminal title"

machinestops — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 20:02:51 +0000

Have you heard of Arcan? https://arcan-fe.com

New comment by machinestops in "I was wrong about the ethics crisis"

machinestops — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:30:41 +0000

This is very funny. Let's take a different approach.

You are in a situation where you have a particular benefit. You may choose to share part of this benefit with another individual, who can be said to be deprived without it. This individual lacks the capacity to gain the benefit by their own means. Said individual shall be a permanent stranger: you will never again meet, your choice here being without future consequence as a result. Sharing your benefit diminishes it, but does not lose it.

What decision do you make?

New comment by machinestops in "I was wrong about the ethics crisis"

machinestops — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 19:06:11 +0000

Precisely. As of such, those with increased capacity for access will deprive access to others. No balance of care forms. Your recommended ethic is what Kant wished to address with his categorical imperative.

Of course this is a unifaceted way of posing a problem: it's a model, given we're dealing with philosophical ideas. I should hope that I needn't provide examples for the model, given the state of the world at present won't let you swing a cat without hitting one.

New comment by machinestops in "I Was Wrong about the Ethics Crisis (Moshe Vardi, CACM)"

machinestops — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 17:56:12 +0000

No, it isn't, which is why I added "definitionally". Let's say we have a limited resource, X, that is beneficial to hold, and it is more beneficial to hold more of it. As it is limited, acquiring necessarily means depriving another of it. Assuming one has the means to acquire more without impacting oneself negatively, in which situation (taking optimising for oneself as a maxim) you not seek to acquire more?

New comment by machinestops in "I was wrong about the ethics crisis"

machinestops — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 17:13:21 +0000

The problem with optimising exclusively for oneself is that you definitionally optimise at the expense of others. Gaps are easily widened, and your balancing idea falls apart when the scales are tipped from the start.

New comment by machinestops in "Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15"

machinestops — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 10:45:40 +0000

I've used Lineage. I'd say it's worth a look, yes. I got a Pixel for Graphene, though.

New comment by machinestops in "Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15"

machinestops — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 09:36:58 +0000

Graphene mitigates the locked bootloader issue by only supporting one line of phones (Pixel), which have unlocked bootloaders.

A large amount of work has been put into making Graphene specifically work with banking apps. Mine does, for instance.

New comment by machinestops in "Framework Mystery Boxes"

machinestops — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:56:10 +0000

Makes sense.

New comment by machinestops in "Framework Mystery Boxes"

machinestops — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:18:22 +0000

Link 404s.

Universal Iota Combinator

machinestops — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 18:58:01 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iota_and_Jot

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42434074

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by machinestops in "SVC16: Simplest Virtual Computer"

machinestops — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 18:15:27 +0000

For what? The simplest possible ISA? Something like an OISC or a ZISC, probably. Simplest "virtual computer"? Maybe the SK(I) combinator system? Specific improvements to this architecture? My personal preference would be to ditch the three arguments that aren't always used, have two 8bit instructions per 16bit word, use a stack (to eliminate the operands). But that's just one mode of thought for a very simple computer, not the only one. This line of thought is particularly inspired by the F18 Forth chips. They're quite minimal, simple, tight CPU designs: https://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/DB001-22...

New comment by machinestops in "Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre operating system"

machinestops — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:44:50 +0000

The path of least resistance is to jam flags where they don't belong, sed patches, etc. Works well enough, so that's what ends up happening.

New comment by machinestops in "Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre operating system"

machinestops — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:32:09 +0000

See https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis for a proof of concept.

No dynamic linking locks you out of Clang+LLVM (mostly: static clang isn't an officially supported configuration, but it can probably be forced to exist. I haven't properly looked into it yet.), Firefox, Chromium, QtWebEngine, (so no alt browsers, either), and probably a lot more. Statically linking every single package out there requires a lot of patches to build systems to get them to properly do it. Many build systems don't respect LDFLAGS and CFLAGS, or respect one or the other, or only partially respect them, causing a great deal of annoyance if you have a nonstandard desired result, such as fully static builds.

New comment by machinestops in "SVC16: Simplest Virtual Computer"

machinestops — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 22:34:08 +0000

The ISA leaves something to be desired for "simplest". Simple, sure, but parameters (and unused ones, at that!)? Memory copy instructions? Multiply and no shifts? Addition _and_ subtraction?

Others have mentioned Subleq (Subtract And Branch If Less Than Or Equal To), but there's more useful designs that meet all the design constraints. They state that "It is also not intended to be as simple and elegant as it could possibly be.", but it's called "The Simplest Virtual Computer" - that kind of name is a challenge.

New comment by machinestops in "Converting untrusted PDFs into trusted ones: The Qubes Way (2013)"

machinestops — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 22:57:14 +0000

PDFs support JavaScript. Here's Adobe's guide on how to add JS to your PDFs: https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/acrobat/using/applying-actions-sc...