What this means here is, of course, equally spongy, but it is interesting as there might be an argument here that she did not intend for it to be viewed by anyone as, regardless of what the T&C say, most people do not expect their "private" chat logs between them and a machine to be seen by anyone at all.

Some programs like to, for example, map allocations at random VAs for security reasons. If you're only using a single page, this makes your worst case cost 1 page for actual data + 2-3 pages of tables (depending on your CPU architecture and address space size). If you do this very often, this can get very expensive in a hurry.

I think there's also a component of people (HN's audience in particular) trying to approach the law as if it were a program. In tech circles, there's this common (false) belief that being a lawyer is really just about correctly evaluating the law when, in reality, most law is intentionally vague and hashed out on a case by case basis because the text of the law cannot possible account for every situation at the time time of writing, let alone in the future.

Though, yes, convention does play a role. On ARMv8 you get both SVC and BRK . SVC and BRK raise different exception codes (which satisfies the "easy to distinguish requirement) but in principle you could just use BRK with a well-known immediate and eliminate the need for SVC since BRK's immediate is reported in the exception status register. And, anyways, if you have an SVC instruction and a BRK instruction, you may as well use the SVC instruction for syscalls since it's right there.

I remember learning to use OCaml in a properly functional way after so long writing code in C and it was really miserably painful trying to change how I thought about algorithms. I eventually got over the hill and it changed how I write code in C (for the better?), but I do wonder if it would have been easier to have learned OCaml as a first language instead.

For example, can you use FEAT_CSSC to improve code size and performance? Well, if the target is Targeting armv8a is the moral equivalent of targeting RV64GC insofar as it will run on any application class core. Targeting that, however, leaves a fair bit of useful ISA enhancements on the table, and so you tend not to want to do that if you can get away with it.

> Courts have generally found that compelling individuals to provide their numeric or alphanumeric passcode is potentially testimonial under the Fifth Amendment, as it forces the defendant to reveal “the contents of his own mind.” In Re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum 670 F.3d at 1345; see also U.S. v. Apple MacPro Computer, 851 F.3d 238 (3d Cir. 2017). It is analogous to compelling production of the combination to a wall safe, which is testimonial, as opposed to surrendering the key to a strongbox, which is not. See Doe v. U.S., 487 U.S. 201, 220 (1988). However, even if a court finds that providing the passcode is “testimonial,” it may still fall under the “foregone conclusion” exception

https://www.nacdl.org/Content/Compelled-Decryption-Primer

In short, you can't be compelled to give up the code in a dragnet attempt to find evidence against you (e.g. a boarder guard can't riffle through your text messages to see if you might have done something illegal), but if it's already certain that particular evidence exists on the device as a result of other evidence, they may be able to compel you to give up your passcode.

Note though that the cases where this has come up are very few and far between, and there isn't a super clear overriding precedent to follow.

In general though, the best choice here is to say nothing at all and work with a lawyer to figure out how to proceed.

See: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-402

It comes up fairly often here since the HN audience tends to be mostly programmers/computer people, but it's really important to remember that the law is not a series of rules a computer can directly evaluate to determine whether something is or is not legal; judges frequently use their judgement to balance the assumed intent of laws and the competing interests of various parties. I don't say this to you specifically but really just the HN audience as a whole :)

Making it illegal even without having a realistic means of enforcing it still chills behavior, and so just because it isn't practically enforceable in the general case doesn't mean it isn't without consequences.

> setting your computer on fire for (sparkle) self care (sparkle)

This is essentially what Google has done, and it's a shame the US is so weak on enforcing antitrust laws.

If the benchmarks are non-predictive, well, you can't use them for much of anything, which is of course a recurring problem with every benchmark ever.