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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)JI
Posts
6
Comments
185
Joined
10 mo. ago

  • It was the last remaining exam before my deletion from university. I wish I could attend the lectures, but, due to work, it was impossible. Also, my degree is not fully related to my work field. I work as a software developer, and my degree is about electronics engineering. I just need a degree to get promoted.

  • What models have you tried? I used local Llama 3.1 to help me with university math.

    It seemed capable of solving differential equations and doing LaPlace transform. It did some mistakes during the calculations, like a math professor in a hurry.

    What I found best, was getting a solution from Llama, and validating each step using WolframAlpha.

  • Sure, in many cases the dev's computer is powerful enough to handle that.

    However:

    • The more the dependencies, the more likely it is to pull-off a supply chain attack. Any of those thousands modules can be compromised and infect either the user or the developer.
    • Not all computers are optimized for working with so many tiny files. Have you ever worked in a company that uses McAfee Antivirus? Even Defender can be a massive performance hit in some cases.
  • I had read about it on another thread, which was about using old smartphones as servers (they used Termux).

    Those old lithium batteries, although sometimes seemingly healthy, can catch fire any time. Having them connected to the charger 24/7 is only making matters worse.

    I wouldn't trust the battery of old devices. I would probably buy a used UPS (without battery) and slap a new battery to it. This would cost more, but it would allow me to also connect other important devices to it - like the router and some lights.

  • I feel the importance of user privileges distinction, as I see it from a server perspective and organization managed devices. Some would argue the insignificance of this in the personal desktops.

    However, I believe that the community structure of Linux is benefiting everyone. It is a general purpose kernel, that gets improvements from various different sectors. In the current space, where most servers run Linux and most desktops run Windows, desktops are not benefiting from filesystem or scheduling optimizations implemented for servers.

  • It's the first time I see the concept of bootstrappability in the context of security.

    Is it really worth the effort?

    There are multiple ways to run a supply chain attack. With bootstrappability, one can be sure that the compiler is trusted, but what about the code that the compiler compiles? There was this recent attack to XZ utils, which shows that more attention is needed on the code being merged and compiled.

    I think that this just creates a false sense of security.

    Contrary to that, I had read about a BSD team (I think FreeBSD) that reviews all the code before each release. This way they have achieved ~5 RCE exploits throughout their entire history.

  • I don't have any experience with guix, so I will not express any opinions towards that.

    However, regarding NixOS:

    • Yes, as a person with experience in the Nix language, I can confirm it's awful
    • The documentation of NixOS is a known issue, and there are currently efforts to improve it
    • Talking about the trustability of binaries, by doing a quick search, I read that Guix builds are reproducible. This is true for NixOS as well. All upstreamed packages must have their version and the hash of the code (or artifact), to allow verification
    • The community of NixOS is opting to maintaining flakes, because:
      • Some applications can simply not be built following the Nix guidelines. Examples are some electron apps (like Falkor) and apps that have weird toolchains (like bubblejail)
      • The reviewing process takes way too long, and PRs for upstreaming are often ignored. This forces a lot of people to just PR a flake.nix to the application, or maintain their own overlays (overlays are like overriding the available packages, while flakes are more like distributing Nix code in general)
  • I was literally reading your guide about bonfire moments ago.

    For those who don't have a problem with systemd, there is NixOS, which offers the same capabilities as guix, while having a larger community and way more available packages available in its repos.

  • I quickly went through the article, and I have a question: Why not Docker (or Podman) on NixOS?

    NixOS has much larger community (although a bit toxic) and provides native tooling for managing OCI containers through Docker and Podman.

  • What would happen if all users start using adblockers, or the value of ads starts to fall?

    I do not support the current, ad-driven, model of the internet. However, since the costs of subscriptions are increasing, while salaries are going downhill, it is apparent that ads is (seemingly) the only viable choice for now.

    In the economy we currently live in, all of world's wealth is slowly moving to ad networks.

    Even donation driven models are currently straggling. Just look at the fediverse. The people donating to their instances are not enough to sustain them.

    Capitalism has absolutely destroyed everything. The greed of stakeholders has milked most people. At some point people will stop buying the useless things or services promoted via advertisements, just because they will not be able to afford them. Then, no subscriptions, no point of advertising, no donators, no people hosting fediverse instances, just world hunger.