Friend who is not a software person sent me this tweet, which amused me as it did them. They asked if “runk” was real, which I assume not.
But what are some good examples of real ones like this? xz became famous for the hack of course, so i then read a bit about how important this compression algorithm is/was.
A few libraries come to mind immediately: fftw (I think the most widely used fft library) or GMP (I think the most used multi precision library).
Seconded. https://www.fftw.org/
Is-even and is-odd on npm.
For a while, openssl was maintained by 1 or 2 people.
Is-even and is-odd are the stupidest packages ever written. Except for all the others that guy wrote.
The popularity of these two packages shows that something is very wrong with JavaScript.
No, it shows people are lazy.
Well, that as well, but it’s an also bit tricky to safely check if a number is even because JavaScript uses floats for numbers.
It’s not tricky. Modulus operator works fine.
deleted
left-pad
I would love this even more if one depended on the other and just did a “not even” for example.
Well good news! Time to let yourself love again!
I thought that was the case tbh, has it changed?
Edit: is-even depends on is-odd.
It would be even better if each one depended on the other.
Like half of the npm is maintained by a single, arguably awful, person who writes his microprojects into large pieces of software to maximize how often his code gets installed.
Sounds like a fork is in order
Sindre Sorhus?
That’s them, yup!
Just looked them up… holy hell. How does one have so many repos! And all the apps he’s made.
What’s the story on them?Edit: just looked it up myself. Seems to be a well liked person in the open source community. Idk. Regardless, props to them for the work they put in.
Jon Schlinkert, I believe. Sindre has a lot of stuff as well, but has a better reputation afaik
Curl comes to mind. Libcurl is at the foundation of almost all networking.
curl is most definitely not developed solely by one person though, it has thousands of contributors. in fact, there is so much red tape around curl that you can’t even discuss making a change to it without first writing an RFC and having it approved by a committee.
Libcurl is at the foundation of almost all networking.
That’s not remotely true, but it is nevertheless outstanding work and very much deserving of recognition and support.
And they still get emails from randos when some program that uses curl doesn’t work (the Readme is top notch).
I cannot for the life of me find what you’re referencing. I only remember the
sqlite/etilqsfiasco with McAfee.https://github.com/mackyle/sqlite/blob/a009acaca1fe25d909d8b5180c0120af1abc2b82/src/os.h#L56-L79
https://bagder.github.io/emails/ has the email collection.
Thanks for sharing these gems. I can almost feel the exasperation in some of the emails and their replies.
Here’s an example from NASA
I feel a bit split about this. Seems it is an actual law, and it kind of makes sense. You probably don’t want random components from unknown people and places in your multi million dollar space equipment. But it feels rather arrogant to just demand such things.
Is NASA actually a customer? Did they pay for a license to use curl (genuine question - I’m not familiar enough with it to know if enterprises and organisations require a paid license)? Are they planning on becoming a paying customer? Do they make donations to the project? If not, it feels kind of rude to send a demand letter to the lead developer of a free piece of software straight up demanding a formal letter stating where the free software is being developed and maintained (for free), or if outside the USA, that the free software has been tested in the USA. Oh, and a bonus demand that such information be returned within 5 business days (naturally with an implied “or else”, just to really make sure those pesky people maintaining open source software for free really get the memo)
In any case, why don’t all their scary 3 letter spy agencies go and figure it out on behalf of NASA themselves? It’s open source, they could just like, read the source, test the source, and audit the source themselves. Or fork it and make any modifications they’d like to ensure its safety
I don’t blame the person sending the emails, obviously, they’re just following orders, but the whole email reads as very entitled and arrogant, assuming NASA don’t provide any compensation to the project and projects maintainers for their use of curl
There is a guy named Arthur David Olson who maintains a small database of all the time zones in the world, including things like leap seconds and such. It’s used by everybody and it is updated several times a year. See here:
Wasn’t there also very recently a whole thing about the single guy who maintains the NTP spec threatened to retire so he could get a “real” job, which caused a gigantic internet-wide panic as pretty much everything we do relies on computer’s clocks being perfectly synced?
It’s also worth pointing out that this was sued in a copyright lawsuit some time ago. The wikipedia article mentions it, but here’s the slashdot discussion if you want to feel like stepping into a time machine: https://m.slashdot.org/story/158778
It caused a momentary panic when everyone realized that this thing runs the system clocks for everything everywhere, and if it got taken down by a copyright suit it would be disastrous for, well, everybody.
I bet he’s paid nothing to do it. Then one day, when a timing attack happens that can be traced to the DB, some knobhead CTOs and tech influencers will start talking about “securing the supply chain”. They’ll want other such bullshit and responsibilities to be shoved unto volunteers.
Two quotes come to mind “Fuck you, pay me” and “Open source maintainers owe you nothing”.
It would make sooo much more sense for the ISO to set something up, and make governments each responsible for keeping it updated, since they’re the ones doing the changing.
Require all participants to amend their law/regulations, so there’s a note to prompt whoever is in power and changes it next.
I’m sure some places would still neglect to do it… Haha
It has organizational support from ICANN, so it’s not done in total isolation.
Oh neato, then all good!
If we could all just stop making changes to time zones, that would make my job very slightly easier.
Perhaps we’ll move to UTC+10¼, and then move forward 45 minutes in the summer.
If the day number is a prime, then we’ll go back π hours.
Hope that will help!
curl
Pretty much every basic terminal command for linux. Grep is the one that comes to mind.
The modern man uses
ripgrep👍What does that offer offer grep/egrep
-
much faster
-
proper unicode (and other encodings) support
-
automatic recursion (no extra flags needed)
-
can search inside compressed files/archives like gz/xz/zip (also see ripgrep-all) for even more archive support)
-
honors
.gitignoreand ignores binary/hidden files
probably a lot more things too
-
Speed and memory efficiency, mostly. If you ever have to grep for something in a large number of files ripgrep will be done while regular grep will only be reaching the 25% mark.
But it’s three more letters. No deal.
Its going installed binary is
rg.I shall begrudgingly consider it then, with much begrudgement.
You joke but this is facts
Alias. To
gr, even!
NTP is the one that comes to mind for me.
Basically every device uses it and until fairly recently was maintained by a single person
So they have a donation/support page?
Though OpenNTPD, Chrony or timesyncd if you’re on Systemd, are usually better suited.
Network Time Protocol? Cool, didn’t know that!
left-pad was the first thing that came to mind for me
Yeah that debacle still pisses me off. Especially the fact that someone could possibly trademark and enforce a trademark a name that’s already in use. It’s made even worse that the package that now uses the stolen name is defunct.
I hope all of the bad actors burn in Hell.
What pisses me off is that NPM thought it would be okay to remove something from their repository.
What did NPM remove? My understanding is that NPM restored the deleted package. If you’re referring to giving the author the ability to delete their packages, I’m on the fence about that. On the one hand, if it’s open source, it’s a part of the community. On the other hand, it’s also still the author’s code, and if they are the only author, then it’s their sole decision if they want to host their code under their account.
Azer did nothing wrong.
Laurie Voss made a bad call and should feel bad.
The principals of free software was, is, and always will be more important than every single dollar in silicon valley combined.
No arguments there, if you’re gonna depend on a piece of code, you better own it or have a rock solid plan b.
I think he overreacted a bit, not to having his package name forcibly taken from him, but to being asked to give it up in the first place. Kik explained to him that they have to fight this or lose their tradmark because thats how trademark law works. His response was basically “haha fuck you”. He probably could’ve asked for a couple thousand and just changed the name of his project and everything would’ve been fine.
being asked to give it up in the first place. Kik explained to him that they have to fight this or lose their tradmark because thats how trademark law works.
I’m not a lawyer but from what I know that’s a load of shit. There’s nothing stopping a trademark holder from granting licensing rights to third parties, without charge, to use their trademark in specific ways.
They chose not to because its easier, and most people won’t know better, so they roll over.
His response was basically “haha fuck you”. He probably could’ve asked for a couple thousand and just changed the name of his project and everything would’ve been fine.
This is the correct response, even if Kik would’ve given him money. It’s his package, he got the name first. Corpos can eat shit, just because its not the easy choice, or the choice you would’ve made doesn’t mean it was wrong. That package should’ve stayed down on principal.
Sqlite isn’t quite one person, but it is a very small team and is extremely widely used. https://www.sqlite.org/mostdeployed.html
And their website is quirky
As is their code of ethics.
Have something to share?
- Be a stranger to the world’s ways.
one out of 72 isn’t bad
Jesus Christ
I see you like the first rule.
Lmao yo wtf
“be not drowsy”
SQLite devs are trolls to their suppliers that’s great 😂
They said they’re quite serious about it, actually. While it’s quirky, I don’t see anything wrong with it. It’s… weirdly charming? I’d never use anything like it, but it’s fun to see something different amidst a world of copy-pasted contributor covenants.
I mean, to make such a point that the only point of the page was simply to satisfy a requirement of someone else’s volition and yet creating that page and apparently saying what you’re saying—seems like there’s something misaligning here :P
Also I no doubt that they hate people who talk too much and hate making jokes — there’s some seriously unserious stuff inside of the rules they posted. They are serious folks who have zero tolerance for laughter apparently :D
My headcanon is they’re a bunch of people who have a super religious supplier with strict checkbox rules and they are fucking with them.
It looks pretty decent to me, at least on mobile. Definitely better than 95% of websites.
Damn, I wanted to metion sql lite.
It’s not too late. Mention it!
Huh… My dad is a software engineer and his name is Ronald. He also secured several software patents when he worked for a big chip wafer manufacturer. He might actually be the Ronald in this meme… 🤔
The
core-jsstory always makes me sad. Sure, he’s developing an open source project and no one HAS to pay him. But the meager amount of donations and the tons of hate he receives isn’t justifiable either.I had seen the hate before and foolishly just assumed he was deserving of it. Its a horrible situation he’s in and he is being cast in a bad light because he reached out for help.
It’s especially sadder when a substantial amount of the donations vanished when Open Collective and others stopped operating to Russians.
Oh dear, that post from the core-js guy made my blood boil. He’s been taken advantage of by the whole world.
I saw a post earlier about Empress returning to game cracking. For modern video games that use Denuvo DRM, she’s the only person who can really crack it, as far as I know. Singlehandedly holding up the AAA game piracy scene.
She is kind of a shithead tbf and fwiw it’s more like she’s the only person who is willing to do it. granted cracking denuvo is something that is extremely difficult and only a small subset of people can do but it’s not like she’s literally the only person on the planet who can. There was that guy who would just release the yearly update of football manager, for one.
It’s far more likely the people who have that skill set just don’t really want to bother with cracking videogames and the potential legal issues that come with distributing them online.
True, but being the only person willing to do something is kind of laudable in it’s own right. Like all of the open source projects relied upon by millions that are sometimes developed primarily by one person in their free time.
I ain’t gotta laud that transphobic fascist for shit
but my (not really my) conspiracy theory for this is the opposite of open source: when someone is good at cracking games companies like denuvo track them down and offer them jobs to harden their product and take another cracker out of the scene. like I bet denuvo is just filled with nerds that spent their teenage years in sketchy irc rooms with handles like -DooMSlAyEr- and used to actually be members of razor1911 before they realized they could get game companies to pay them 200k a year
It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s exactly what Malus did and why it’s harder to root iPhones nowadays (but the EU is seeing to that by forcing them to start opening up their walled garden).
Can’t remember where I read it, but I think it’s the dude who started AsahiLinux that shared part of his story in the scene. And a few dudes were tracked down and had the choice between a lawsuit and employment. Makes the decision pretty easy.
Doesn’t help that they did their thing on Github and other public platforms instead of I2P or something.
In other words, the Scene is Dead
It was somewhat weird waiting for the HP release on her TG channel.
Like I’ve seen my fair share of terf transphobes, but she’s honestly best described as a hater.
There were so many rants.
But like with Harry Potter, I like to separate the artist from the art.
I can’t help but laugh at how batshit crazy she is. Didn’t she write a rap at some point??
I’ll never not be convinced that she’s on a fair amount of meth and/or crack.
Writing poetry => meth + crack???
Not for most people no, but Empress? I will believe it straight away.
You should read the rap lol.
The guy that runs Rufus.
I nominate Paul Eggert, and Arthur Olson before him, for the tz database, which we all depend upon whenever the time at which something happens (or did happen or will happen) matters.
Edit: Tom Scott touches on the subject here.
When the US came close to going on permanent daylight savings time there were interesting discussions there.
holy shit that was nuts
