Plan 9 was intended to be Unix, done better. It preemptively replaced a lot of what we now bodge together with virtual machines, containers, and even microkernels, and it did it more simply and cleanly. But it wasn’t compatible enough to replace its ancestor. With off-the-shelf existing 21st century tech, we can fix that.

source: fosdem2024

Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the, universally reviled, unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc.)—and particularly its financial avatars—but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value.

source: dhh

Did Ken, Dennis, and Brian choose wrong with NUL-terminated text strings?

source: communications of the acm

Monolith vs microservices ... small server vs big server...

We have all gotten so familiar with virtualization and abstractions between our software and the servers that run it. These days, “serverless” computing is all the rage, and even “bare metal” is a class of virtual machine. However, every piece of software runs on a server. Since we now live in a world of virtualization, most of these servers are a lot bigger and a lot cheaper than we actually think.

source: https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2023/how_big_should_a_programming_language_be.html

Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (/ˈlɪklaɪdər/; March 11, 1915 – June 26, 1990), known simply as J. C. R. or “Lick”, was an American psychologist[2] and computer scientist .... He is particularly remembered for being one of the first to foresee modern-style interactive computing and its application to all manner of activities; and also as an Internet pioneer with an early vision of a worldwide computer network long before it was built

source: book; where wizards stay up late

A curated list of openbsd’s innovations

It’s hard to believe, looking at the modern computing world, but there is still more to life than Windows or Unix… and today, most of the alternatives run on vanilla x86 hardware and are free.

* Décongestion de réseaux
* Débuggage de logiciels
* Protection contre les virus
* Protection contre les tentatives d’intrusions
* Restructuration de services
* Partage de connexion Internet sans connexion
* Suppression aléatoire de compte utilisateur
* Protection anti-spoofing basée sur les adresses MAC
* Définition de politique de gestion et de sécurité aléatoire
* Elimination systématique des fichiers de log (journaux)
* Protection contre les DoS et DDoS grâce au système exclusif InUranus®
* Support de IPoT
* Rend vos données importantes accessibles à tout moment et à tout endroit
* Débloque les claviers qui se bl

source: CaptainPatate

There is something special in simple code. Here I’m not referring to simplicity to fight complexity or over engineering, but to simplicity per se, auto referential, without goals if not beauty, understandability and elegance.

Make something. Participate in something. Engage with someone. All of it might feel as unnatural as strapping on those running shoes after too long of a break, but once you’re back to creating, the energy comes by itself.

What happens inside the cpu? how things get delayed...

There are hackers—believe it or not—who just love the art of building software. They do it for the challenge, for the fun of it. They aren’t trying to make a million dollars.

Architecture is hard sometimes--people keep offering up some new idea that quickly becomes the mainstream “way to do it” without any context or nuance, and the industry, desperate to find ways to improve their architecture, snaps it up without hesitation. Microservices was the latest in the trend, and it’s time we dissected the idea and got to the real root of what’s going on.

The really, really short answer is that you should not. The somewhat longer answer is that just because you are capable of building a bikeshed does not mean you should stop others from building one just because you do not like the color they plan to paint it. This is a metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature just because you know enough to do so. Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change.

Think about all the things they’ve told you that you 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑. HTML is NOT the answer!

source: https://hackers.town/@lmorchard/109444911452419131

Long ago, as the design of the Unix file system was being worked out, the entries . and .. appeared, to make navigation easier....

This is an attempt to stop a war. I hope it is not too late and that somehow, magically perhaps, peace will prevail again.

The latecomers into the arena believe that the issue is: “What is the proper byte order in messages?”.