LocalSend. It’s exactly like Apple Airdrop

This may be super-nitpicky (and I lose LocalSend and use it a lot), but there is one difference between LocalSend and Airdrop. LocalSend requires network connectivity (and requires the devices to be on the same network), whereas Airdrop can work without any network connection (using Bluetooth).

To be honest I’m more concerned by language-humor. Like not even saying what kind of humour, just any type of humour at all. Jokes are for adults only!

Heads up for anyone (like me) who isn’t already familiar with SimpleX, unfortunately its name makes it impossible to search for unless you already know what it is. I was only able to track it down after a couple frustrating minutes after I added “linux” into the search on a lark.

Anyway it’s a chat protocol

Reminds me a little of the old Jonathan Shapiro research OSes (Coyotos, EROS, CapROS), though toned down a little bit. The EROS family was about eliminating the filesystem entirely at the OS level since you can simulate files with capabilities anyway. Serenum seems to be toning that down a little and effectively having file- or directory-level capabilities, which I think is sensible if you’re going to have a capability-based OS, since they end up being a bit more user-visible as an OS.

He’s got the same problem every research OS has: zero software. He’s probably smart to ditch the idea of hardware entirely and just fix on one hardware platform.

I wish him luck selling his computer systems, but I doubt he’s going to do very well. What would a customer do with one of these? Edit files? And then…edit them again? I guess you can show off how inconvenient it is to edit things due to its security.

I just mean it’s a bit optimistic to try and fund this by selling it. I understand he doesn’t have a research grant, but it’s clearly just a research OS.

You just don’t appreciate how prestigious it is to get a degree from Example U.

It is, but it probably shouldn’t be any more. WebP has good support everywhere now and is slightly better than JPEG and PNG combined. (Better lossy compression than JPEG, plus transparency support, and better lossless compression than PNG). But even WebP is considered lame these days compared to the new crop.

E.g., JXL (JPEG XL) is much better WebP and is supported by everyone except Google (which is ironic since Google helped create it). Google seems to want AVIF to be the winner for the new image format, but not many others do.

Anyway, until the Google JXL AVIF hissy fit is dealt with, at least we’ve still got WebP. It’s not super great, but it’s at least better than JPEG and PNG. A lot of web developers are stuck in their old JPEG PNG mindset and are being slow to adapt, so JPEG is still hanging around.

Linux is the only platform to get native WebGL, too!

It’s in Proverbs 11:20

The C++ developers are an abomination to the Lord,
But the Rustaceans in their Rust-based OSes are His delight.

I mean…yeah. Just because something is provably the best possible thing, doesn’t mean it’s good. Sorting should be avoided if at all possible. (And in many cases, such as with numbers, you can do better than comparison-based sorts)

Thank you!!

Subscribed! My daughter is super into beavers. Though I don’t want to get into a conversation about what “fucking” means yet, so maybe I’ll be selective which posts I show her.

And not all GNU is Linux! Beyond the world famous GNU Hurd, there’s also Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, and Nexenta (GNU/Illumos, which is the OpenSolaris kernel).

I think the most esoteric of them, though, is GNU Darwin (GNU/XNU). Darwin is the open source parts of OS X, including its kernel, XNU. There used to be an OpenDarwin project to try to turn Darwin into an actual independent operating system, but they failed, and were superseded by PureDarwin, which took a harder line against anything OS X getting into the system. GNU Darwin took it one step further and removed just about all of Darwin (except XNU) and replaced it with GNU instead.

I actually did write up my own tiny little IMAP client (kind of like an email program, except not very interactive) that automated the process of moving them every day. I’ve found that I don’t (personally) really need it, though.

I haven’t thought about making a Monday, Tuesday, etc., folder. I feel like I’d get the days mixed up, but maybe it would work well for some people.

You’re not wrong, but there’s a kind of irony in it when you talk about ending humanity because of it. There’s a lot to hate about humanity if you have humanity and have human values. There’s nothing objectively wrong about being cruel or destructive or dishonest or greedy or abusive or murderous and I imagine most hypothetical alien species would look at those things and say “what’s wrong with any of that?”

But because humans evolved as social creatures and our survival depended upon trusting one another, we’re constantly trying to judge ourselves against values that can’t actually be met. So we look at ourselves and say we’re a really horrible species, but that statement only makes sense because ironically we’re a really glorious species that’s fabricated these completely irrational things like love and compassion and empathy and honesty and sacrifice that no other species has (though many other social species do have bits and pieces of them).

And we’ll forever hate ourselves for not being able to live up to our own values.

Yes, which is literally what OP is asking about. They mention system calls, and are asking, if a userland program can do dangerous thing using system calls, why is there a divide between user and kernel. “Because the kernel can then check permissions of the system call” is a great answer, but “hopefully you can’t harm your computer with userland programs” is completely wrong and misguided.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda is a userland program, which I would say causes harm.

It doesn’t change the larger point that GNU is way bigger than Linux, though. There are a tonne of things that are larger than Linux, and GNU is one of them.

It is the ticket. Tickets don’t really exist. Even before the Internet and digital technology, what we called a “ticket” (a slip of paper that you showed to get in) was in reality just a receipt/proof of purchase. “Ticket” and “receipt” are 100% synonymous.

Maybe that’s why the new one got renamed to Aptos, ha.

Yeah thanks for the COVID-19 there, buddy.