Notices by argv minus one (argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org), page 2

@wolf480pl

I should point out that knowing C gives you a huge head start on learning Rust. It's different, but you can see an underlying C-ness to it.

Most notably, references are really just pointers except the compiler can check whether they're still valid at any given point in the program. If you're a C programmer, you were already doing that pointer validity checking in your head, so this'll be far more familiar to you than to a JavaScript/Python/etc programmer.

@hunger @pancake

@hunger

I'm in my 40s and I don't do C any more either.

C has a metric crapton of cases of undefined behavior, and although you could get away with a lot of shenanigans when I was young and compilers were dumb, they *will* blow up in your face if you try them with a modern optimizing compiler.

Fun fact: signed integer overflow is UB in C, and yes, modern compilers *will* optimize based on the assumption that signed integer arithmetic will never overflow. If it does, 💣.

@wolf480pl @pancake

@wolf480pl

Yep. As far as I know, no language other than C and C++ has this many ridiculously obscure ways to cause UB.

Most languages, including but by no means limited to Rust, try pretty hard to not give you any way to cause UB without some sort of incantation. Java made a big deal of “no UB” back in the '90s.

Rust's innovation, rather, was “no UB” while still using pointers and still letting you control memory management (stack, heap, reference counting, etc).

@hunger @pancake

@Melissabeartrix @Waxingtonknee

I like static site generators, personally. Nice and efficient, no security risk, you get complete control over the HTML they generate, and you can keep the site in version control (Git, etc).

I'm only familiar with the one I wrote myself in the 2000s, but Eleventy and Hugo seem to be what folks use these days.

Downside: this usually involves doing stuff on the command line. Not sure if there are any nice front ends with point-and-click deployment.

@whitequark @mcc

#Intel : goes through hell to design an entirely new instruction set architecture and calls it #Itanium

Everyone: “We'll just take the #C++ #ABI, thanks. We're going with #AMD for everything else. Toodles.”

@prettygood

Ahh, there it is. Thank you!

@SuperDicq@minidisc.tokyo

Hey #XMPP / #Conversations / #Gajim people, I need some help.

Conversations tells me “you are using unverified devices”, namely Gajim on my desktop. It wants to scan a QR code, but I don't see any way to get a QR code from Gajim for Conversations to scan.

What do I do to fix this?

@selea

Also, if you use a public CA for your internal stuff, then your internal stuff is polluting a bunch of public databases, which seems impolite.

I use a private CA and/or self-signed certificates for stuff like that.

@tomcapuder

As far as the person who had the NDE is concerned, the existence of their god is already affirmatively proven.

You want such people to believe that what they saw was something other than their god, yes? How would you prove that to them?

TIL a crazy couple built their own #laptop with a 43-inch screen. It weighs 100 pounds. IT'S HUGE. But it can be used on your lap…provided your lap can withstand 100 pounds of weight on it.

https://youtu.be/uUVfHaW6nWs?si=yNld41NKmVZtnpxI

@tomcapuder

I haven't had one to interpret. 🤷♂️ But people who do have one tend to interpret it as a meeting with their god, and I'm reluctant to dismiss that interpretation because I have no proof to the contrary.

Although async #Rust can be confusing, I must say it has some nice features that I miss when using other languages.

For example, if I want to do a compound async operation (like fetching a web page over HTTP) but cancel it if it's taking too long, in Rust this is trivial—just race it against a timer, and drop it if the timer wins. When a future is dropped, any async operations it owns are cancelled.

In the other languages I've seen, this is difficult if not impossible.

#programming

Btrfs is copy-on-write, so keeping an image of the original NTFS does *not* involve duplicating every file on it. The blocks of the NTFS image are shared with the files on the new btrfs.

Which, again, is wild. One file's contents can be *part of* another, much larger file's contents, without duplication (until one of them is written to).

So, somebody wrote a program that converts, in-place, an #NTFS volume into #btrfs.

It even keeps an image of the original NTFS volume as a file in the resulting btrfs volume. This can be used to undo the conversion or deleted to free up space and make the conversion permanent.

That is absolutely wild.

https://github.com/maharmstone/ntfs2btrfs

#Linux

@br00t4c

#Billionaires: “If you need more money, stop drinking lattes!”

Also billionaires: “Why isn't anyone buying my lattes?!”

@Tharpa @otownKim

If Trump dies now, then that thinly-disguised reptile Vance smooth-talks its way into the White House and starts a eugenics program that makes Trump's proposals seem mild. Vance's associates have proposed rounding up all the non-rich people, killing them, and using their corpses as vehicle fuel, for goodness' sake. They're inhuman. And there's not enough time for Harris to inform the public of their intentions.

So you'd better hope Trump doesn't expire before election day.

@ryanc

Ugh. The syslog protocol is so, so bad. Somebody at UC Berkeley must've been on some heavy narcotics.

If #Trump loses the election, and the USA survives this attempt to destroy it, then it will have been by the sheer luck and/or grace of God that those trying to overthrow the United States and institute a #fascist #dictatorship chose a senile, incoherent old man as their figurehead.

Even if our #democracy survives this assault, we will have come far too close to losing it forever. I don't like surviving by the skin of my teeth. Our defenses must be shored up somehow.

#USpol

@susankayequinn

It's coming!

I see offerings on Amazon for small solar+battery systems for only like $300. Little things, just enough wattage to run a small appliance or something, but still, that is shockingly cheap.

Unless there's some kind of economic or political catastrophe (like Trump winning the upcoming election), it seems to me that household solar is now inevitable and the oil-and-gas industry is basically screwed. Just gotta keep up the inertia.

@susankayequinn

Planes have the problem of low surface area. To capture lots of sunlight, it has to be big…but being big makes it need more sunlight! Decarbonizing them is probably going to need either better energy storage or fusion power.

Ships are another story, though. Humanity invented a zero-carbon way to propel them millennia ago: sails! The OG wind power. I've heard that research is now happening to develop newer, better sails to at least supplement the motor. Seemed pretty cool.