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Cake day: December 29th, 2023

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  • yeah you can’t have a ballot that someone else can force you to keep to prove how you’ve voted… anonymous, individual, untraceable ballots are essential

    though perhaps that’s could be mitigated if you could print as many ballots/receipts as you like so you can submit your real one and keep a fake one… then anyone with no care can keep their real one, and anyone being coerced can keep a fake one

    i totally agree this is the way to do it: the machines can even keep tallys for early results reporting, but the paper ballots are the only thing that actually matters. that would make subverting the electronic systems useless. it’d also be a good sanity check on the count




  • Math.min isn’t the minimum integer; it’s the minimum of a list (and max visa versa)… the min/max of an undefined list is the same… IDK what it is, but this probably the most reasonable of the “WTFs” they could have put there i think… other languages would throw an exception or not compile (which JS definitely SHOULD do instead of this, buuuuut lots of JS has aversions to errors)

    *edit: okay the curiosity was killing me: Math.min() is Infinity and Math.max() is -Infinity





  • Pup Biru@aussie.zonetopics@lemmy.worldClear skies in LA during COVID lockdown
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    2 months ago

    as an aussie, who lived in melbourne, so was inside for 80% of 3 years enforced by police including curfews enforced by police helicopters… all of which the general public by a very large majority agreed with in order to save lives

    what yall in the US went through was absolute hell. what was forced on you was in many ways worse than what we went through… the constant fear must have been horrible

    but the US response was pathetic and needs to be remembered for exactly what it was: a complete shit show, that SPECIFICALLY DID NOT INCLUDE LOCKDOWNS… australia and countries that did lock down… a real lockdown had significantly lower death rate… your lack of lockdown led to over 1 million deaths

    by using language like that, it leads to things like holocaust denial: people forget, and then people say it didn’t happen

    never forget that trump and his administration, along with that of many republican governors, were directly responsible for a huge number of those millions of deaths. never let them spin the narrative

    … also, yknow, saying what you went through was a lockdown completely trivialises our hellish experiences… you didn’t lock down; we put in the fucking work and saved lives… it’s a comment on the US and how toxic individual liberty at all costs can be, and something that we are very proud of how we handled: for years we traded individual freedoms to save the lives of those around us




  • Pup Biru@aussie.zonetoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldWhat is Docker?
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    2 months ago

    a chroot is different, but it’s an easy way to get an idea of what docker is:

    it also contains all the libraries and binaries that reference each other, such that if you call commands they use the structure of the chroot

    this is far more relevant to a basic understanding of what docker does than explaining kernel namespaces. once you have the knowledge of “shipping around applications including dependencies”, then you can delve into isolation and other kinds of virtualisation


  • it requires a very large investment to run a node, but the fact that it’s possible means it’s open by necessity, which means we can bridge to mastodon etc

    this means that it will be a lot easier for people to migrate, since they don’t have to give up their entire social network

    imo it’s a good jumping off point: people clearly have problems with the mastodon “on ramp” and are having no issues with bsky, so imo it’s a step in the right direction and we can’t let perfect be the enemy of better





  • Pup Biru@aussie.zonetoProgrammer Humor@programming.devYes, But...
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    3 months ago

    Resource not found Data not found (client error). Data not found (server error)

    they are all the same thing; there is no useful, practical distinction between them

    if we request a list of objects and nothing was found, because we asked for a date when there was no data, its not an error. But i suppose many still just throw around exceptions still instead of handle them properly

    it’s an empty array: not found when requesting something specific is an error… that’s different to here is the complete set of 0 objects… like like if you have an array and request an index that doesn’t exist you get an exception, but that doesn’t mean an empty array is exceptional: it is in fact very valid

    using an error code for a non-error

    well, it is an error though. you have requested a URI for an object that doesn’t exist: it doesn’t matter whether it’s a resource or an individual thing

    remember that HTTP youre asking the server for some object matching a URI: please give me the object matching /users/bananoidandroid and /userssssss/bananoidandroid may both not be found for the exact same reason: the object referenced by that string does not exist

    here’s the spec definition for 404

    The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.

    when you’re dealing with specs, deciding not to follow them because you feel like they’re wrong is not appropriate… this leads to bugs and issues in compliant tools because they make assumptions about what things mean

    200 means the thing that you asked completed successfully

    here’s the definition of 200:

    The request has succeeded. The information returned with the response is dependent on the method used in the request, for example:

    GET an entity corresponding to the requested resource is sent in the response;

    HEAD the entity-header fields corresponding to the requested resource are sent in the response without any message-body;

    POST an entity describing or containing the result of the action;

    TRACE an entity containing the request message as received by the end server.

    *edit: when talking about compliant, standard tools the classic example is transparent cache: a GET should not transform the resource and thus a GET with response of 200 can be cached… an API that uses a GET to modify a resource may cause transparent proxies (or CDNs) to significantly mishandle the user request… same goes for 200 vs 4xx and 5xx: proxies know that 200 means what it means and may cache based on that, where 5xx should never be cached and 4xx is probably dependant on which specific 4xx


  • Pup Biru@aussie.zonetoProgrammer Humor@programming.devYes, But...
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    3 months ago

    error codes aren’t about who’s at fault… you don’t send a 404 because it’s the users or the servers fault. it’s information… a 404 says something doesn’t exist… it’s nobody’s fault; it just is

    a 4xx says the request, if tried again without changes or external intervention, is unlikely to succeed

    a 5xx says the request might have been fine but some other problem that you can’t control occurred so may be retried without changes at a later time

    these are all standard things that are treated in standard ways by generic HTTP libraries… look at, eg axios: a javascript HTTP library that’s often thinly wrapped to build API clients… a 200 is just passed through as success, where 4xx and 5xx will throw an error: exactly what you’d want if you try to retrieve a non-existent object or submit a malformed payload…

    this is standard behaviour for a lot of HTTP libraries, and helps people accidentally write better code - an explosion is better than silence for unhandled exceptions


  • I’m sure Fedora is full of binary blobs and not-so-free software

    fedora is staunchly opposed to non-free software in their default distro … that spat a few weeks ago with OBS was related to that AFAIK

    unsure about like signed blobs for “security” services but i imagine they’d be very limited, and optional

    rather than sticking a white label on Fedora and call it something else

    but for what benefit? no matter what’s trying to be achieved, starting with a very full-featured, robust OS that’s widely used is going to serve you very well… not just technically (less work for the same outcome), but for human reasons

    there are loads of guides out there for how to fix fedora issues, few for guix… loads of RPMs that are compatible with fedora, and i can only imagine fewer packages for guix

    and then if you’re talking about server OSes - and actually workstations too - managing them with tools like ansible etc… fedora is going to have off the shelf solutions

    just Fedora with different theme

    well, the actual software and configuration i’d argue aren’t the important part - owning the infrastructure is the important part… package mirrors, distribution methods (eg a website), being able to veto or replace certain packages, and the branding (or regulation) that draws people to it… being able to roll out a security patch to every installation without a 3rd party okaying it, for example


  • i’d say if it happens it should start with focusing on:

    • government and workstation (this is important first to have control and independence over so that government isn’t beholden to the whims of foreign companies)
    • then server (maybe - idk really if that’s worth it though; it’s a whole can of compatibility worms and adoption expense)
    • then user desktop

    though there is the argument that workstation and user desktop are close enough to each other that user desktop should be above server, but i’d imagine it’d be more of a “home user” than gamer situation. i could imagine some regulations around refurbishing old tech with this kind of OS too, and this would be more about low spec machines (that’d help workstations too)


  • alternative POV: it’s entirely FOSS so there’s little control that can be exerted from its use. it’s also entirely free, so use is extracting value without providing anything in return. by its use, you’re taking resources to maintain, host, etc and providing nothing in return

    similar reason to why i don’t use ecosia with an ad blocker: by blocking ads you’re using their resources without giving back and thus you’re taking resources away from the charity