Notices by Daniil Baturin (dmbaturin@functional.cafe)

I started wondering about the possibility of reproducible builds for distro live CDs. Suppose you have a set of packages where every binary is already reproducible — how much work is left to do?

So far the main finding is that mksquashfs with default options produced a file with a different hash sum literally every single time I tried.

I wonder if there's either SquashFS can be produced deterministically or there are alternative compressed read-only filesystems with that property.

#Linux #ReproducibleBuilds #FOSS

@Cattz @niamhgarvey @actuallyautistic @actuallyadhd I lived most of my life in houses with cats.
Last few years I've been away from cats, but cat-induced habits remain.
Never leave food in the open, out of sight. Never leave the screen unlocked (that one is from the school computer lab era, but reinforced by keyboard cats for a long time after). Always check coaches and the like before flopping on them.

@fribbledom Reaching inbox zero through integer overflow.

@june @CadeTheCat My main question is what skill one needs to learn to get away with all those things and not be called out as having poor social skills and empathy.
There must be that one weird trick. There must be. ;)

@CloudyMrs
If Zimbabwe, Kazakhstan, the USA, Germany, Poland, France, Ukraine, Ireland, Spain, Czechia, Slovakia, Australia, New Zealand, and a whole bunch of other countries have laws that don't allow pedestrians to always cross wherever they want, maybe they are onto something after all.

@CloudyMrs

The original claim was that jaywalking is only an offence in America. I'm sure if I prove that statistically more countries have road crossing laws than not, you will tell me that it's not illegal on most planets of the galaxy. ;)
But I want to make a different point towards the spirit of this discussion rather than its letter.

Here's a thing from my personal experience living in Türkie: the police doesn't fine pedestrians crossing roads in random places, but they also don't fine people who ride **motorbikes** on pedestrian crossings and sidewalks.
I'm not kidding you: it's common to see people (often food delivery couriers) turn to a pedestrian crossing on a motorbike to save time — often to take a shortcut, but sometimes even just to avoid waiting for the road traffic light to turn green.
Reportedly, the situation in Thailand and many other places is similar — their loose regulation or enforcement make them _more_ of a pedestrian nightmare, not less.

@CloudyMrs

Your claim is that "jaywalking is only a crime in America". I assume we are not arguing about the definition of "crime": in many states of the USA it's a petty offence rather than a misdemeanor (much less a felony) as well.
If you allow me, let's stick with "laws that prohibit jaywalking only exist in America".

Now let's check the article: it's full of examples of countries where it's prohibited by laws.

>In Zimbabwe, jaywalking is illegal ... Disregarding designated crossing points or passing through red traffic lights carry a punishment of up to six months in jail or a US$20 fine
>In recent years, jaywalking has become more strictly controlled in China as car traffic increased. Police have tested facial recognition to identify jaywalkers
>In Hong Kong, it is an offence to cross roads within the zigzag area around zebra crossings, or within 15 m of other crossing points
>In Kazakhstan, jaywalking is illegal and punishable by a fine.
>France: Pedestrians are required to use sidewalks (if any), and zebra crossings for crossing a street if one is within 50 m
>Ireland maintains a jaywalking law, which requires a pedestrian to use a pedestrian crossing if they are within 15 metres (49 ft) of one.

Could you clarify where we have a misunderstanding?

@CloudyMrs

It's an offence is lots of countries. Scotland is a rare exception.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalking#Legal_view_by_jurisdiction

@CloudyMrs Oh, people are jaywalking even in places with very short wait times, oddly. That I just don't understand.
In those places with 5+ min wait times, I kinda understand why people would do that (although I still will never do it myself), but I still think they shouldn't.

@CloudyMrs I think reconfiguring the traffic lights to limit the pedestrian wait time to, say, no more than five minutes would solve the problem nicely.
Let's leave private cars aside (I'm all for greatly limiting car ownership, but that's another story)
Should buses be limited to 20km/h or similar speed? To me that would ruin any appeal of public transport.

@CloudyMrs @mudge
>Why would pedestrians be hurling themselves in front of cars?

I honestly don't know.

>Why would you not be able to stop to let them cross if they did?

I usually can — the braking distance of a bike is certainly a lot shorter than that of a car... but the braking distance of the car or, worse, a bus or a truck that is behind me can be much longer.
In any case, I shouldn't have to — traffic lights and pedestrian crossings were invented for a reason. I never jaywalk when I'm a pedestrian: there are crossings with absurdly long wait times, but the rules of the road are there to follow them.

>Is everyone in your town on drugs? Sounds terrifying.

People I know are on drugs are often much more sensible. ;)
Thankfully, people going the wrong way on bike lanes aren't _too_ common, but I see at least one almost every day.

@CloudyMrs @mudge Those people I'm talking about don't wait for anyone to let them cross — they start crossing and assume that everyone will see them.
I want to say they assume everyone can brake safely at any distance, but in reality I suppose they just don't care. People should be arrested for that. Bonus points if they do it like 10 meters away from a crossing with a traffic light.
My "favorite" offense from fellow cyclists is riding on bike lanes against the traffic. Come on, bike lanes have arrows painted on them here even if someone forgot whether people drive on the left here or not. ;)
None of those is a reason to hate any group as a whole, but I do believe that bad actors in every group should be fined equally for disregarding other people's safety.

@mudge @CloudyMrs There are cyclists that make me want to shout at them "you are the reason why drivers hate us!".
Where I live now, cyclists who completely disregard all rules of the road are disturbingly common. But so are jaywalkers who think it's absolutely fine to endanger both themselves and cyclists.
Bad actors, sadly, exist among all groups of road users...

@hj @dosnostalgic Spawns... the optimal number of them is always a few less than there are.

If anyone works for Eir, could you please communicate to someone sufficiently pointy-haired there that the customer portal that only works in Google Chrome (and fails to work in other standards-compliant browsers like Firefox) and tech support suggesting that people try Internet Explorer in 2023 aren't normal things?
#MastoDaoine

@loke @teajaygrey @zens @mcc Am I the only one who thinks that MS-DOS logo is kinda cool — not even "for its day" but still cool?