Replying to
@aka_pugs@mastodon.social Really was the beginning of the modern era of computing, starting with the normalisation of 8-bit bytes and character addressable architecture.
Well, that's all true so long as we don't mention EBCDIC 🙂
Remote
MarkD
@markd@hachyderm.io
mastodon 4.7.3Mostly a light-hearted joker. For fun and profit I code high-performance Internet thingies - mostly in go.
0 Followers
0 Following
35 Posts
Joined November 07, 2022
github:
UUCP:
...!sun!sunaus!markd
Slowly but inexorably, the proportion of #ipv6 traffic on our home network trends towards 50%. Nothing special to create this trend, merely a fully enabled ipv6 network with a competent ipv6 service provider.
So, for us at least, it looks like majority ipv6 will occur around 2030.
@giuseppebilotta This is one very strange cat. Fancy using the chair reserved for it instead of occupying chairs (or draws or desks or storage containers or flower pots or ...) that you don't want it to use!
If we placed such a sign on our cat's favourite resting spot, it would no doubt react in anarchic disgust and decamp to a more unconventional location.
I mean really, it's almost as weird as a cat playing with its designated toy.
Replying to
@thomholwerda@exquisite.social I dunno. I tell ya. Just once in my life, just once, it'd be nice to be the smartest person in the room. Is "once" asking too much?
(And I mean when there are other people present, not just my bag of hammers).
Tired: Laser
Wired: Broadband
Say what?
Some #marketing genius decided that "laser" is either tired or has a negative connotation so they scoured the universe for a replacement word to invigorate their product.
I give you "Broadband Light Therapy" to reverse signs of ageing and improve your complexion.
Yeah, nah. I have no idea who the target market is either, but do be sure to ask your ISP whether they offer similar benefits.
Replying to
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org @monkeyninja@10base2.dev About 12 years ago I wired up multiple network ports into the media nook as I could see that smart everything and network connected streamers were coming down the pike and I wanted to future-proof the place while I had the chance.
Fast forward to the present day and only one port is used (ATV) even tho the nook is replete with network capable devices. Same for the kitchen and lounge. Lots of unused network ports next to the taped-over NICs of our residential Trojan Horses.
Talk about dashed hopes and dreams for a network connected world.
Replying to
@molly0xfff Came for the news update. Stayed for the humor.
"I am now beginning to believe his condition may be genetic".
Replying to
@SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange @aka_pugs@mastodon.social If you were on the non-EBCDIC side of the fence you got the impression that IBM sales pushed EBCDIC pretty hard as a competitive advantage - even if their engineering covertly preferred ASCII.
The 32-bit word must have been a harder-sell for the blue suits since the competition were selling 60bit and 36bit amongst other oddballs.
Fortunately the emergence of commercial customers marked the declining relevance of scientific computing... Did IBM get lucky or were they prescient?
But yeah, the S/360 definitely marked the end of the beginning of computing in multiple ways.
Replying to
@corbet "Unwilling to defend" is a good test for the motivation of the submitter. And, unfortunately, motivation is a good test of the cost of accepting the submission.
If the motivation is self-aggrandisement (aka boosting your brand) then you know you are inheriting instant technical debt.
RE: @ScienceDesk@flipboard.social
Is anyone collecting and recording standard American units of measure?
I've recently seen "Football fields", "School Bus" and "Jeep", but "Blue Whale" is a first for me and not a unit I would think is self-evident to the average Joe.
While ostensibly about the risk (or lack thereof) of Internet traffic traversing the Red Sea during these troubled times, the article also offers a great insight into global IP traffic and why traffic often traverses the US even when there are vastly lower-latency regional routes available.
https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/nv/insights/the-geopolitical-optical-illusion
Replying to
@theintercept@journa.host The SPLC should start accepting the Trump memecoin. Put the government's tiny little minds in a right tizzy!
Replying to
Replying to
@nixCraft@mastodon.social I think we should remember Linus for his "it is NOT protable" line.
Me on the other hand have been trying very hard to make sure my code is "protable".
Replying to
@Garwboy@ohai.social Perhaps the more scary extension of that sort of rationale is that you may be an appropriate age but government decides your brain isn't at the same "peak" as those around you.
Perhaps because of your place of birth, your upbringing, the school you went to, who you married, your accent...
We then end up with an "us" and "them" society of those who reach "peak brain" and those who never do.
My history is vague, but I recall this concept might have played out previously.
Replying to
@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz FWIW. The Australian NMI publishes traceability and variability reports against GPS on a rolling 2-day average so we should see very soon whether there's any significant variance.
Replying to
@dangoodin "the Internet as we know it could collapse" might be a slight over-dramatisation.
-
#DNS roots are massively anycast so mostly only Cogent's customers and peers are affected.
-
root responses are cached for days so the internet is always out of sync - by design!
-
Update delays and caching implications are routinely monitored by dns operators which is why this was noticed.
-
Many significant domains (apple.com, au.) haven't changed in years, so unaffected.
Replying to
@tie @dangoodin Quite so.
The flip side of all the redundancy, roll-over strategies, local root instances and global DNS services such as 8.8.8.8 is that diagnosing inconsistencies is devilishly difficult and impossible from a single vantage point on the internet when anycast comes into play.
The temporal effect is also a huge complication. What we saw five minutes ago may be completely different to what we see now.
Not sure anyone has good answers to this beyond wide-spread monitoring.
Replying to
@hallam@infosec.exchange @alice@infosec.exchange
Point being that a person has at least one "Forever Domain" which in turn supports "Forever URLs" as discussed by Frankston here: https://circleid.com/posts/20230325-we-can-have-forever-urls and all the rendering services such as social media, blogs, etc merely link to your content on your "Forever Domain".
Replying to
@hallam@infosec.exchange @alice@infosec.exchange
Here is one of my Forever Domains: MB2GK.6DUF5.YGYYL.JNY5E.RWS.HZ.m3--
Replying to
@hallam@infosec.exchange For me, I'm happy to post here as @markd@hachyderm.io and couldn't care less whether anyone believes my "callsign" or not. And most readers don't care anyway.
But in another forum @hallam might need to present serious credentials as proved by https://callsigns so you go to the trouble of supplying credentials and getting validated. But that's a 1% activity.
What the callsigns website does is provide the "reverse DNS" confirmation that your claim to @hallam in their namespace is valid.
Replying to
@awb You will well know that there are many "tricks" to using shells, but I think the biggest challenge for many is trying to set parent variables in subshells and wondering why the parent shell doesn't see the change.
This brings up the subtle difference between a () compound command and a {} compound command/function.
This treatment of variables can also be used to advantage if you're on the command line and want to mess with a bunch of env variables to test something then reset them back to their original values. How? Invoke a new shell for the duration of the test sequence:
$ PS1='sub> ' sh
sub> Mess with env variables
sub> run test
sub> exit
$ # original shell vars untouched
The other technique that is useful but perhaps not well know is using "exec" to rearrange stdin/stdout/stderr. For example, contrast this broken fragment:
lno=0
while read line &1
do stuff
to ensure all future stderr is redirected to stdout without needing to explicitly state it in subsequent commands.
@alexpsmith@beige.party Heh. Our farmer friend claims that geese of all persuasions are fantastic guard animals. Much more vigilant and diligent than guard dogs by a long stretch.
As the scars on the back of our legs attest - those sneaky bastards attack from behind when you least expect it.
And...that we were working guests on the farm at the time had no bearing on their hostility whatsoever. The ingrates made me wish for Geese à l'orange.
Replying to
@crooksandliars@crooklyn.social In what world is a decline in the fossil fuel industry "scary"?
Replying to
@SteveBellovin@infosec.exchange @stuartmarks@mastodon.social @aka_pugs@mastodon.social @JohnMashey@mstdn.social All of which (punch card focus, overloading high order pointer bits, packed decimal, 6bit bytes, scientific vs commercial, memory parity, two-speed memory) signalled the beginning of the end of an era where programmers and engineers counted every bit, every machine cycle and every memory reference. An era where programmers optimised hardware rather than round the other way.
While the need to deal with feeble compute power created interesting and novel architectures (Singer System Ten anyone? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singer_System_Ten) the lock-in was a nightmare for customers embarking on their (oftentimes first) tech refresh.
So sure, one can readily admire the S/360 design, nonetheless, its biggest contribution may have been as an extinction event for all those oddball architectures due to market dominance.
Replying to
@hallam@infosec.exchange @alice@infosec.exchange
On day one fediverse sites render https://$meshname.m3--/alias
meshname namespace is unlimited & valueless so no yachts. It's cheap to serve by mesh and hard to stop.
URLs never rot. No "Change Of Address" service or callsign server needed.
To move ISPs: rsync web-site; update not-for-profit registrar; done.
To change alias, update https://$meshname.m3--/alias and possibly update verification callsign DNS RR in new domain.
Replying to
@hallam@infosec.exchange @alice@infosec.exchange To recapitulate:
The main point is a super-cheap, non-yachtable "Forever Domain".
You login to social tools with your Forever Domain and give them permission to post to create Forever URLs which they render.
Everything posted is stored on your domain which can be hosted anywhere.
There are conventions like https::/foreverdomain/PrettyName which social tools render.
A non-profit registers/delegates your Forever Domain for $0.10.
More details in previous posts.
Replying to
@hallam@infosec.exchange
The question is, who types in alice.m3-- that makes a global pretty name compelling?
Most pretty names have context.
I see you as @hallam@infosec.exchange but that's merely your pretty name for this platform which knows you as RWSHZ...
You might be @phillip on a certain bird web site, but under the covers that site knows you as RWSHZ...
Keeping pretty names out of primary name space eliminates many problems including land-grab, cost, litigation & attacks.
Replying to
@hallam@infosec.exchange
The question is whether callsigns are an intrinsic part of the system or optional.
Maybe callsigns are needed in credible or authenticated namespace but are optional for the vast number of us who aren't special.
https://callsigns/hallam might convey special powers or capabilities, but 99% of us mere mortals don't have such capabilities. So why burden everyone with callsigns?
Thus your reverse DNS idea. RWSHZ... claims callsigns/hallam, but callsigns confirms or denies.
Replying to
@hallam@infosec.exchange You are going further than I was thinking.
My goal is that you own your data forever. When you establish a relationship with a social media/fediverse/blog site you give them your forever domain and credentials so that they store your content in some designated spot on your forever domain.
With a few APIs conventions anyone can implement a forever domain server which social media/blog sites interact with and render from.
MASHZ... is a trigger pattern to recognize a forever domain.
Replying to
@hallam@infosec.exchange I don't think anything in bind9 rate-limits below 1 qps as most of the RRL internals are stored as integer rates per second.
If you want to go down as low as 0.05 qps, that might require something custom as my suspicion is that most name servers which implement RRL most likely mimic bind.
Obviously you've thought about the false positive risks, so if you do something at these rates it'll be interesting to hear how it works out.