FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

I walked down a street where the houses were numbered 64K, 128K, 256K, 512K and 1MB. It was a trip down memory lane.

"Why are you working on C?"

I wrote this in an e-mail to people, but I figured I'd copy part of the response here since people keep asking.

…

     We have people writing critical software. They are not migrating to new software anytime soon (modulo regulation-based incentives). But they have serious problems. Everything from vulnerabilities that are used by nation-state actors to quell dissidents, to not being able to change a typedef like intmax_t because the functions tied to it are baked into specific named symbols in an invisible way (ABI), to constantly seeing people's names getting butchered by Airlines, Databases, and Governments because they're using software that relies on the C locale and mangles names.

     These are C problems. Not C++ problems. Not Java problems. Not Rust problems.

     C problems.

     My job is to solve C problems. That's the motivation. That's the coherent plan. When we stop having long-term, 20-to-40+ year problems, with 30+-year implemented existing practice that we never standardize despite it solving a wide variety of problems, that's when I'll stop writing C proposals.

"A security researcher uncovered a Twitter vulnerability in its link shortener. The vulnerability allowed an attacker to craft a malicious URL that, if a user clicked on it, would grant the attacker access to the user's account. The researcher reported the vulnerability to Twitter's bug bounty program, which closed the report as not worthy of a bug bounty. So the researcher published the vulnerability. Immediately Twitter takes its link shortener offline for hours while they fix it.But the press is only reporting on an hours-long X/Twitter link shortener outage, and has completely missed the security issues that led to it.Molly White's coverage of the vulnerability (sorry for the Xitter link but that's just the problem, literally no one else is covering this): https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1734965774517768471 "

Disclosure: https://x.com/shoucccc/status/1734802168723734764?s=20

(All quoting a friend on a private slack)

Nest

‪like are we all babies now who can't handle a few portals here and there. i know the autonomous policing cars can't cope with this but cities are for the pedestrian, and they don't find this confusing at all. it's actually very easy to leave, you just walk left or right for 10km‬

cities are held back by planning that doesn't understand the value of walkability. just this week i was told that my plan for a street with one thousand buildings in a convenient spiral with only two entrances was unworkable because the zoning bylaw bans non-euclidean geometry

‪they say that following this path leads to her heart‬

the sign every girl wants to see

@hikari i’ve sometimes thought about similar as “vibes aren’t net zero”- putting out positive energy doesn’t require inflicting negative energy on others, so why not default to joy?

after all, you’re blessed to make it to another day ✨

trying to be just that little bit more sparkly, as of late

cat that meows at you in Emaj7

pissed out of my mind every time someone's like "we need to invest in green infrastructure" and then completely fails to mention nuclear power plants. insane how effectively BP turned us against the safest, most efficient form of green energy ever conceived by man, in favor of toys that barely work

the EV push really is unbelievable. just throwing away money with astonishingly little oversight, yielding fawn-like to the outdated specter of car culture. we could have trains on electric rail powered by nuclear energy and instead our idea of a green future is "a four-seater sedan that weighs as much as a tank made of 90% smart phone that's certain to fall apart within five years in every home." the cost and emissions of increased road repairs alone will offset all the gains from the EV push

i Love to drink oral rehydration solution. oral rehydration solution, really quenches the thirst. oral rehydration solution, always have it handy. you'll never know when you need oral rehydration solution. it even comes in great flavours like unspecified citrus. ors, order today