Jons Mostovojs @jonn@social.doma.dev

I had a dream where I desperately needed to recall the password to my work account at my first computing job, in the 80s, so I could go back and fix some problem there. It was only when I woke that I recalled: that system was set up with NO PASSWORDS and it was never an issue.

bandcamp won their union! bandcamp won their union!!

i'm so fucking happy for them, and also for the possible knock-on effects of some of epic game's holdings unionizing

their full statement - https://blog.bandcamp.com/2023/05/19/bandcamp-and-bandcamp-united-release-joint-statement-on-union-vote/

log(😅) =💧log(😄)

I visited my grandparents a few days ago, and they have to use a nightmarish miasma of websites that have all been mergerered-and-acquisitioned half a dozen times to order their medications. Due to them having memory issues and generally just being frustrated with bullshit that shouldn't be this hard, one of their children had to go through a bunch of hoops to get added onto my grandpa's account so they can just order some of the meds he needs.

All because usernames and passwords were not saved anywhere on their devices.

It was a small thing in the grand scheme, but it sucked seeing him have to give up a piece of his agency and autonomy so that he could get the medication he needs.

KeePassXC is good, but there are others. Just do *something* while you and your elders are still able to learn and get into habits. I really think it will make things a little easier in the future.

good morning, #montreal! heading out to the old port for #northsec2023 — this is going to be my first, and i'm quite excited.

p.s. also, it's #ukrainian #vyshyvanka day, no way i'm missing it!

Architecture means understanding constraints and build something that fits.
If constraints change, the architecture has to change, too.
Architecture for getting something out quickly is different from one for cost saving.
https://adrianco.medium.com/so-many-bad-takes-what-is-there-to-learn-from-the-prime-video-microservices-to-monolith-story-4bd0970423d4

Welsh photographer Aled Lewis entered this in a UK landscape photography competition, a photo of Tryfan.

It is staggeringly good

Doom co-creator John Carmack is headlining a 'toxic and proud' sci-fi convention that rails against 'woke propaganda' https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-co-creator-john-carmack-is-headlining-a-toxic-and-proud-sci-fi-convention-that-rails-against-woke-propaganda/

YOU DON'T NEED TURING

Or rather, you do not need Turing-completeness to write programs. This may sound as a nonsensical misnomer that goes against everything you have learnt as a programmer in the span of your career, but you really do not.

First of all, what does it mean for a computer system -- or in our case, a programming language -- to be Turing-complete? Wikipedia states that a Turing-complete system is the one that can simulate a Turing machine. Which is probably the most circular definition you can come up with. Let's forget about this and discuss the qualities of Turing machines.

Arguably, the most important quality of this kind of systems is the dreaded halting problem, so I prefer to define Turing-completeness through it. A Turing-complete system is the one that, given it's current state (both code and available data, though this doesn't always apply), is impossible to predict whether it will halt or will continue executing forever.

But this isn't a requirement for the vast majority of algorithms. For the vast majority of programs, the failure to halt is undesirable either in general or in the major parts of their code. Generally speaking, in any given program, the only part that requires Turing-completeness is the implementation of the event loop. Everything else should be able to terminate eventually, given finite input, so there is no reason to enable the halting problem by default.

The downside to this approach is that Turing-incomplete systems are counterintuitively harder to design. Accidental Turing-completeness is so common, it has become a joke in and of itself. Here is a short and very incomplete list of accidentally Turing-complete systems, aka systems that can be used to perform arbitrary computations and never halt:
* Python (lol)
* Magic the Gathering
* Habbo Hotel (with pool both closed and open)
* Dwarf Fortress
* printf() format string
* x86 memory management unit
* Super Mario World (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0)
* Crabs (https://www.pcgamesn.com/doom/crabs)
* Many web services' APIs
* Your mom's ass (citation not needed)

The last two cases are also important, because exposing a Turing-complete set of commands to the outside world, which web APIs must do by definition and your mom's ass maybe only by accident, bears enormous security implications and might allow the attacker to gain control of a web service (and maybe of your mom's ass too).

Most programmers however either do not know about this problem or do not see this as a problem. In fact, lacking Turing-completeness is often seen as a flaw and it is even forcefully added even into things that DEFINITELY DO NOT need it, such as configuration files. How many times have you seen a programming language used for configuration, such as it is often the case with Lua or even JavaScript (looking at Loonix people here)? This mindset has to change. Otherwise, we will all continue to live in the world of abhorrent improperly designed software.