The Boston Diaries

I tried reading this with an open mind, but then I came across this: This is a very easy fix. If I paste the error back into the LLM it will correct it. Though in this case, as I’m reading the code, it’s quite clear to me that I can just delete the line myself, so I do. Via Lobsters, How I program with LLMs My initial reaction to this was...

Also, Linux is getting a landlock thing, which sounds maybe a bit like unveil. Are they likewise deluded, or maybe there's something useful about this class of security thingymabobber, especially with “defense in depth” in mind? Tradeoffs An aspect I think you are discounting is the effort required to implement the mitigations. While plege()...

My first question to you, as someone who is, shall we say, “sensitive” to security issues, why are you exposing a network based program to the Internet without an update in the past 14 years? Granted, measures such as ASLR and W^X can make life more difficult for an attacker, and you might notice w3m crashing as the attackers try to get the...

Sigh. Yet another email for Sean Conner arrived. From Consumer Support XXXXX­XXXXX> To sean.conner@gmail.com Subject XXXXX­XXXXX - Registration Inquiry Date Mon, 2 Dec 2024 08:42:38 -0800 (PST) 847-XXXXX­XXX Ref:XXXXX­XXXXX­X CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE This message and any included attachments are from XXXXX­X Corporation...

Two years ago I talked about a spherical chess variant. Now, I want to mention real time chess, where players can move their pieces at will, with the only limit being once a piece is moved, you can't move it for five seconds. And there's no check or checkmate—you win by capturing the opponent's king. The problem with real time chess is that you...

This video about washing clothes in the Victorian era popped up on my YouTubes feed. It definitely made me appreciate modern washing machines, taking a two-day chore into a few hours, most of which is just waiting for the washer and dryer to finish their jobs (and as Simon Whistler, notable YouTuber with a bazillion channels, always states, “the...

This book shelf might seem silly, as it's literally “a book” shelf (a shelf for one book), but I don't think so—he overkills it on the design (I can appreciate that, having written an over-the-top 6809 assembler) and has a unique conversation piece. In fact, I could use a two-book shelf myself, for the two-volume Oxford English Dictionary I have.

Years ago I asked how evil corporations hire people, but there's the other side: why work for an evil corporation? This After Hours video attempts to answer that question. And let me say, the whole After Hours show is, I think, well worth watching.

How Bunny and I came to be discussing pudding during lunch is lost to me, but we did. In particular, we were discussing what the British call “pudding,” which is entirely unlike what we Yanks call “pudding.” Over on the other side of the pond, the Brits have Yorkshire pudding, a baked bread product, blood pudding, which is in fact a sausage made...

From Kirk Israel comes this … less problematic version of of “Baby It's Cold Outside.” It's a fun take on the song.

So I check my Gmail account and guess what? No only is there yet another Sean Conner out there, but he lost the password to his account. How do I know this? Because my account was set as his backup account! Seriously! From Google To Seanconner@gmail.com Subject Sign in to your Google Account Date Sun, 15 Dec 2024 09:51:33...

Another day, another YouTube channel gets demonitizedJill Bearup's channel, in this obligatory “YouTube done demonitized me!” video-->. While it matters to the channel owner that the channel was demonitized, for this post, it doesn't matter which channel, because it probably happens many times per month. Maybe per day, given the sheer size of...

If you count the BASIC that came with every 80s home computer an “IDE,” then my first encounter with IDEs came in 1983. If you don't, then my first encounter with an IDE came a year later when I got EDTASM+, a 6809 assembler that was a cross between ed and DEBUG with an assembler stuck inside. I can't say it was a pleasant experience, but if I...

“You know, you could turn on a light instead of using your phone as a flash light.” “No, Then I would have to get up to turn on a light.” “I could turn one on for you.” “No, then I would just have to get up to turn it off.”

Bunny and I went out for dinner and at the restaurant there were TVs tuned to a sports channel. It was rather surprising to me to see that it was ESPN 8—the Ocho! And here I thought it was just a fake TV channel from the movie “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.” It's odd to think that a Cornhole tournament beat out baseball and the Tour de...

Last month, I added code to my assembler to output BASIC code instead of binary to make it easier to use assembly subroutines from BASIC. But I've been working on a rather large program that assembles to nearly 2K of object code, and it takes a bit of time to POKE all that data into memory. So I took a bit of time (maybe an hour total) to add a...

Of course Nostradamus has predictions for 2025! When hasn't he had predictions for any given year? Sigh. So far, checking a few of the articles, not many have bothered to print the quatrains in question, and the one article (of which I hesitate to link to) I found that displays a translation of the quatrain, never bothered to list which quatrain...

In w3m, to edit a form textarea, ... f = fopen(tmpf, "w"); if (f == NULL) { /* FIXME: gettextize? */ disp_err_message("Can't open temporary file", FALSE); return; } if (fi->value) form_fputs_decode(fi->value, f); fclose(f); if (exec_cmd(myEditor(Editor, tmpf, 1)->ptr)) goto...