ricecake @ ricecake @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

... Did you not read the litteral next phrase in the sentence?

since it distinctly lacks any form of executable content.

Your definition of open source specified reproducible binaries. From context it's clear that I took issue with your definition, not with the the notion of reproducing data.

Eh, it seems like it fits to me. We casually refer to all manner of data as "open source" even if we lack the ability to specifically recreate it. It might be technically more accurate to say "open data" but we usually don't, so I can't be too mad at these folks for also not.

There's huge deaths of USGS data that's shared as open data that I absolutely cannot ever replicate.

If we're specifically saying that open source means you can recreate the binaries, then data is fundamentally not able to be open source, since it distinctly lacks any form of executable content.

Copying a bunch of unsourced text at someone without context is a great way to get them to not bother reading it. Why don't you type the point you were hoping to make?

What do you think profit is? It seems like you're conflicting profit with income.

Heh, "revenue is not profit".

Non-profits are specifically not allowed to have revenue in excess of expenses. If they take in too much money, the excess has to be put back in for operational expenses in the future, an endowment or something like that.

I'm not sure that's entirely true.

Most of their money comes from retail, either the site, subscriptions, or the seller services they provide. AWS, while massive, isn't what's keeping them afloat.

You're entirely correct though that competition with Amazon is difficult because of those additional sources of revenue. Having additional stable sources of income gives them the ability to accept lower margins in retail with less risk.

The way they make money selling things with no profit or at a loss is to ensure that someone else is always paying the difference. "Free shipping" with a paid subscription means that rather than providing shipping for a loss, they just need to do it for less than the subscription. Turns out "guy with a van" can deliver a lot of packages for quite cheap. So many that he'll be out delivering from 3am to 9pm, and for $5 they'll drop your package off first and call it overnight.
In some cases they can get the seller to pay for shipping as a promotional incentive, since Amazons conditioned people to look for free shipping as a precondition to considering a product.

Only give away for free what you got someone else to pay for.

If you spend the same amount of money to get more things that you were going to buy, you've saved money.

If I need bread and cheese and one store sells bread for $10 and cheese for $5, and another sells $10 bread half off if I buy $5 cheese with it, I save money going to the second store, even if I only came into the store looking for bread.

Amazon is using dirty tricks to ensure you buy from them even if it's at a lower margin. A smaller profit is better than no sale. It also gets consumers more accustomed to just buying stuff on Amazon, and increases the sales producers see through the Amazon platform. Some producers entirely offload their commerce to Amazon since enough of their sales come from there it makes running their own less viable.

That's all fine and good, but that's not quite related to the "everything is a file" metaphor. The data is still stored in files and accessed using conventional io and the command itself is routinely piped to other commands.

Everything being a file is extremely pervasive in unix, and I couldn't think of what systemd was doing that went in opposition to the metaphor.

It wasn't the crypto key pair part I was referring to, it was the part where fido is geared towards interactive user auth, not non-interactive storage.
It wouldn't have surprised me if the ssh devs hadn't put implementing fido support for host keys high in the development list, or that it was tricky to find documentation for. Using something like a tpm is the more typical method.

There's no technical reason it can't work, and the op got it to work so clearly the implementation supports it, but that doesn't mean it's the most expected setup, which means it might have unexpected gaps in functionality or terrible documentation.

Pretty sure they meant the whole "do one thing, do it well, and prefer composition" part.

But I'm more interested in what parts of systemd don't follow the file metaphor, and what things you think shouldn't follow that metaphor? How would you interact with those things?

Unfortunately, I think you're going to run into trouble because fido authenticators are geared towards working as user authenticators rather than as device authenticators.
It certainly should be possible from a technical perspective, but implementation-wise, it's very likely that the code focuses on making fido devices work with client keys, and using tpms for host keys, since that's much more focused on headless server functionality.

Oval peg in a round hole.

The biggest issue is that the birth certificate is typically done at a very local level, usually the county, and not anyone can file one. It's often the case that a particular person at a hospital or a registered midwife needs to file the application. Parents can report a live birth outside of an institution but you need to physically go to a courthouse with the baby.
A different group of people is responsible for social security cards.

If one county clerk files a huge number of birth certificates and uses them to back social security card requests, it'll be noticed.

There's always a way around the paper trail, usually by just making sure no one bothers to look at it, but they all involve adding more people to the conspiracy, which adds more risk.
No one will notice that one doctor delivered 500 babies in one day if no one looks at the paperwork, but each person involved increases the likelihood of a mistake causing people to look, which almost certainly will cause those details to be noticed.

It's similar to how people do a huge amount of any fraud, and then once a thread of detail gets noticed the entire thing is unraveled.

Your best bet is to minimize the number of forged documents. I would predict that a single person could most easily get a non-citizen us national passport for someone to assume an American somoan identity. Since there's comparatively few non-citizen us nationals, a passport is the federally preferred method of identification. Since the territory is an edge case, there's more room for slipups, and since you're not posing as a citizen, you have an excuse not to have some records.

True! I tend to power off if I use the software button, and suspend if I close the lid. I think it's the difference between "packing up" and pausing for a minute.

Typically, yes. I have a tendency to use sleep when I'm coming back in some set period of time, and power off when I'm "going".
If I'm walking to a different room I'll close the lid and stick in under my arm which makes it sleep, or going to the bathroom or cooking dinner or something. If I'm leaving and sticking it in my bag, I tend to power it off.

It's a combination of not wanting the battery to die in sleep mode, and not wanting to put a heat generating device in my bag even if it's greatly reduced.

Thinking about it, powering down also drops the drive encryption keys from memory so it's arguably more secure. Not in the least why I do it that way, but it's an advantage now that I think about it.

Since I'm more likely to use the laptop like a super-phone, I appreciate it when it becomes usable fast regardless of what state I left it in.

That's brutal. Is it clustered data storage of some sort? All the most offensive startup and shutdown sequence I've seen are giant storage systems.

For a server? Absolutely doesn't matter as long as it's not preposterous. Turning a server on can be done entirely linearly for almost every server and the slowdown is irrelevant.

For a desktop? Almost irrelevant, but it should be fast enough so you don't get bored enough to actually start doing something else.

Laptop? I actually like those to boot fast. I'm much more likely to pull one out to do something real quick, and so my laptop booting in a few seconds makes standing with my laptop on my arm to send a file real quick as I'm going somewhere feasible.

Oh shit man, I didn't know you were infallible! My bad; fuck that genie believing motherfucker.

There are a lot of appearances of them in stories dating back to pre-islamic middle eastern times, so there are a lot of stories.
In one, a man finds a lamp in the sand and rubs it to wipe the dust off. This wakes the genie who is pissed to be woken up, and decided to kill the man and his entire family. The man freaks out, on account of getting himself and family killed, and in a moment of desperation asks the genie how someone as great and powerful as they are could fit in such a small lamp. Genie scoffs at the mans ignorance, says he can turn into smoke, like this, and just zip in, like ^so. The man stuffs a cork in the lamp, trapping the genie. The genie demands to be let out, and the man agrees on the condition that the genie swears to spare him and his family. Genie agrees, and the man lets him out.
In another, a man sitting under a tree throws a fruit pit over his shoulder, and then a genie appears saying he's gonna kill him because the fruit hit his invisible son and instantly killed him. The man is rightfully 'wtf' about this, but the genie is very serious, throws the man to the ground and pulls out his sword. As he's about to be killed, the man exclaims that he has a family, children, people he's responsible for, and that if the genie lets him go and arrange his affairs so that they're taken care of and don't suffer he swears he'll come back and let the genie do as he wills. The genie says that's fair, and tells the man to return on the first day of the new year.
Man goes home, settles his affairs, spends time with his family and generally does what one would do knowing you're gonna die in a specific day. Day comes around, everything is prepared and ready, the man loads his burial clothes in his backpack and heads out. Gets to the tree and is sitting there crying when a scholar comes along leading a gazelle on a leash, and he asks the man's story. Hearing it, the scholar swears to stay with him until the end. Another scholar comes past as they wait, this one with two majestic dogs. He too swears to wait with the man. A third shows up with a mule, same story.
Finally, as the man is almost crazed with fear and grief, the genie shows up and demands the man stand to be killed. He does, and as the genie prepares to strike, one of the scholars asks the genie if he'll give him 1/3 of the man's life debt if, upon hearing the story of him and the gazelle, he's amazed and delighted. Story told, it's amazing, and the genie continues to collect his 2/3 life debt when the same happens with the scholar with the majestic dogs, and then again with the scholar with the mule until the man's life debt has been satisfied. Genie leaves, man profusely thanks the scholars who explain that it's all in a days work for three old scholars wandering around with an eclectic collection of animals.
In large part, it's intended to serve as a framing story for the scholars.

They serve a lot of purposes that are also often filled by fairy, leprechauns, or demons, so twisted wishes are just another iteration of careful wording being required when talking to strange powerful beings who offer you something being fun to think about. Over time, it twisted from needing to think through what you wish for and you'll be fine, to Amelia Bedilia style hyper literal interpretation, and then to downright malicious compliance bb b

I think they meant "fairy tale" as opposed to "religious" or "mythological" accounts. More contemporary or western stories involving them being less canon than traditional stories.

It can be, but it's not typical. I've actually used the barter system more often than I've even heard of people actually using crypto for routine business transactions. And I live in an area where barter is not a standard arrangement.

It's not just the cost of the transaction, which can vary depending on demand (lack of predicability is another issue), it's also how long the transactions can take. For any retail establishment, taking an hour to process a transaction is entirely unfit for purpose. A minute is too long.

In your use case, you're using Bitcoin more like a payment processor than as a currency. Something like PayPal would work just as well if your bank played ball, and would work faster and have more predictable costs.