Notices by Dan McDonald (danmcd@hostux.social)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield/116059547013986933

Work vs. author: Computer Science edition.

Gelernter was one of the co-authors of LINDA, and its name-origin gets grosser with modern context.

I cited LINDA as an undergraduate for a paper in a grad-level Parallel Algorithms class (Fall 1990). I took this class because I wanted to understand parallelism concepts for my neck of the woods (OS & Networking).

I also learned about threads (via Mach) reading up for this paper. I had no idea that lower-cost SMP was coming very soon to the masses.

Because of my allergy to country and folk, I only learned about Todd Snider (I literally never heard of him before) this morning. Yet another GenX musical genius who died too soon. A friend posted this video of a song he wrote during Bush-the-younger's first term.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5hlil50vi4

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @pluralistic

You're doing non-Java software folks from Sun dirty with that thinking. We though Oracle's marketing muscle was going to help us all, but no, we were bought for parts, like Trump & MAGA is doing with the US.

When Sun's "Niagara" servers (sun4v) came out (3-5 years before Oracle) they had only one or two sockets, but enough cores/threads to circumvent Oracle's per-socket licensing and get nice performance.

That really pissed off Larry, and then it's per-core.

@lanodan

The original @triton_dc folks when they were open-sourcing things went MPL 2.0, so that's not unrealistic IMHO.

I wonder... now that we've seen Red Hat under IBM's auspices for a few years, how would have IBM buying Sun (instead of Oracle) back in the day panned out?

#opensolaris #solaris #illumos

Like you don't already have enough reasons to avoid Meta (esp. folks here):

https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/14/facebook-suspends-popular-ice-sightings-group-at-trump-administrations-request

@mwl

Unrelated: Are you walking more in Europe? Everything here in the US is so sprawled you have to drive everywhere unless you live in a big city.

@briankrebs

(1/2)

In #Solaris development (I arrived at Sun during 2.6) there was a phase, "performance is a lifestyle." It meant you had to think about it all the time, and integrate it into your work. Your classification of "security community" has a similar phrase, one that would also get quoted inside Sun, "security is a lifestyle." You have to think about it all the time, and integrate it into your work, or at least document why you can't at this time, i.e. state the trade-offs.

@briankrebs

(2/2)

The "security industry" as you call them doesn't view security as a lifestyle, it views it as a commodity. X-as-commodity thinking is how one can justify classifying art and literature as "content" 🤮, and that dovetails nicely into AI-focus, and honestly, MAGA thinking as well.

A senior TCP/IP engineer characterized the conflict to me and others as "Seatbelts are not optional," confirming N yrs in why joining him at Sun was a great idea almost 30 years ago.

</old-man-rant>

Thread worth reading:

https://federate.social/@mattblaze/115012422616869993

Holy shit, Live Aid was 40 years ago this weekend!!!

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/09/arts/live-aid-1985-anniversary/?p1=HP_Feed_ContentQuery

@tante

Mandatory dogfooding ONLY works if the development/QA/product teams listen, FIX THINGS, and also dogfood themselves.

I say this having seen the jumps betwen Solaris (outsider-only)2.0, 2.3, 2.4, (joined-Solaris-team-here) 2.6.

But at least even as an outsider I could answer, "What problem is $NEW_THING trying to solve?"

I do NOT see *any* hard-core GenAI proponents answering that question honestly. There *are* honest answers, but none that justify the hype some want to generate.

@tante

Solaris 2.x => OpenSolaris => Oracle Solaris (closed) and #illumos (Open) development learned about the Quality Death Spiral and wrote about it:

https://illumos.org/docs/contributing/qds/

@lilithsaintcrow

You are 100% correct to do so. I always point people at this well-written article from someone who grew up around it:

https://www.politicalorphans.com/the-article-removed-from-forbes-why-white-evangelicalism-is-so-cruel/

Per earlier...

https://hostux.social/@danmcd/114683512407012850

@matthew @stratacast @subnetspider

#OpenIndiana is desktop focussed.

#OmniOS is single-server-or-VM-guest focussed.

#SmartOS is hypervisor-focussed.

All are #illumos distributions. I know SmartOS has paid-support options (though usually we support #Triton Data Center deployments).

Also #illumos distros include dedicated appliance/device user like @oxidecomputer 's Helios or RackTop's BrickStore.

That help?

@mekkaokereke

<sigh>

Only way it isn't a complete atrocity is if it was stolen then painted . 🙃

@karlauerbach

Trump's been saying what he wants for a long time, nobody listened. Thanks hostux or whomever for the text-from-picture code, which is now in the picture's alt-text.

@susankayequinn @pascaline @Remittancegirl

Wikipedia is keeping a list; let's hope there's more getting recovered out there:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-DEI_deletions_by_the_U.S._Department_of_Defense

@pascaline @susankayequinn @Remittancegirl

There was an acronym from my days at Sun from some project: LOCKSS:

Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe