Lars Wirzenius @liw@toot.liw.fi
Admin
Radiating opinions into the aether. Mostly one-way. All opinions are mine. I don't represent my employer. I mostly don't follow back (I'm easily overwhelmed by a flood of information).
Joined May 2019
Pinned post
I’d like to help others make better free and open source software so I’m making this standing offer: I’ll review a project's README for free. If you're interested, follow the link below. If you know of someone who might be interested, send the link to them.
TIL Python's magic ___eq___ method doesn't increase the object's equity by buying shares in the application.
Protests and Suffragettes is a creative heritage project which recovers and celebrates the histories of Scottish women activists. They've just opened a web shop.
https://protests-suffragettes.company.site/
(I know someone involved, and have bought a poster from their campaign, but am otherwise not affiliated or involved. I just think it's a cool project.)
#Obnam planning meeting: https://obnam.org/blog/2021/08/01/planning/
Obnam is a backup program.
Subplot meeting minutes: https://subplot.liw.fi/blog/2021/07/30/meeting/
Subplot is a tool to capture and communicate acceptance criteria for software and systems, and how they are verified, in a way that’s understood by all project stakeholders, including end-users.
Lars Wirzenius
boosted
@liw After having used Rust for a few years, it has become increasingly clear to me that this type of abstraction is worth it simply for the reduced cognitive burden nevermind the improved safety! The problem that I see though is that in the C ecosystem there is not a standard API for this, and as a library author, I don't want to force my favorite abstraction on my users. So I continue to use C strings :/
When it comes to string handling in the C language, all variants of all str* functions are the wrong answer. The right answer is to use an abstraction the handles memory allocation and string length itself. Any API that requires the caller to keep track of the length of a string is just too likely to result in bugs.
Don't have heroes. Forgive the ones you have anyway.
Lars Wirzenius
boosted
Do you know anyone interested in getting paid to improve #diversity in a Free Software project? Boost appreciated!
@fedeproxy, a new Free Software project for #forge #federation published a request for proposal today. If you have some expertise on fostering diversity in Free Software communities, this is your chance to make a difference, at a very early stage. And maybe set a good example for the thousands of other Free Software projects in the same situation.
https://forum.fedeproxy.eu/t/request-for-proposals-diversity-audit-of-the-fedeproxy-project/293
I installed Debian on my X220 laptop today.
It didn't take long because I have a pitifully small set of personal projects written in Rust. I should rewrite everything I've ever written in Rust.
That didn't take very long. But oh how many new warnings.
It's time to upgrade my installation of the Rust toolchain and rebuild and re-test all my software.
We have boot-off!
Apparently, if you install an operating system on /dev/sda, and the computer is set to boot off /dev/sdb, it doesn't work.
It's not a good sign that this tiny USB stick the size of a USB-A connector gets too hot to touch when I write an installer image on it, is it?
Lars Wirzenius
boosted
The industry's current approach to cybersecurity is to ban running non-preapproved EXE files from non-preapproved locations.
This is completely giving up on the idea of a computer as a thing that runs software created by the user. It is also an admission of complete defeat of the idea of an Operating System as a trusted guardian of security (because otherwise it would be safe to run EXEs).
It is likely that this won't be the last of user rights to go. Once gone, they will be hard to get back.
Lars Wirzenius
boosted
Dogs are allowed in the bed.
(Please boost, I want to see if my perception is correct or not)
It's quite frustrating when automated tests fail in CI but not locally.
You don't know you have backups until you've successfully restored from them.
Admin
Radiating opinions into the aether. Mostly one-way. All opinions are mine. I don't represent my employer. I mostly don't follow back (I'm easily overwhelmed by a flood of information).
Joined May 2019
