MaxBarraclough

5 ms·

1.
by MaxBarraclough 4d ago
From Nov 2013, but still related: LG Smart TVs logging USB filenames and viewing info to LG servers https://doctorbeet.blogspot.com/2013/11/lg-smart-tvs-logging... HackerNews discussion (178 comments): https:&#
2.
Principles of Memory Management in Java – JavaOne 2026 [video](youtube.com)
1 points by MaxBarraclough 4d ago|0 comments
3.
by MaxBarraclough 4d ago
> I did not claim nobody's medical care was affected. You said the flight doesn't contribute to preventing harm to anyone . Interfering with medical care is a clear form of harm, that's why I focused on it. > it's
4.
by MaxBarraclough 6d ago
No, it's as I said. There was a famous case in 2017 where a surgeon was violently removed from an overbooked United Express airliner. He had refused to leave voluntarily, as doing so would have meant not seeing his patients the next da
5.
by MaxBarraclough 8d ago
It's not uncommon to travel for medical care, or for medics to travel for work.
6.
by MaxBarraclough 15d ago
Of course Bernstein isn't about to file lawsuits against his users, given his motives, but (prior to the public domain dedication) he might have stood a chance in court if people were downloading and using his copyrighted software with
7.
by MaxBarraclough 16d ago
> entrenching a preference for one style of licensing over another. Sure, that's true. The intent of the law is to give a special carve-out for, in essence, Free and Open Source software. It seems clear that it was deliberately writ
8.
by MaxBarraclough 17d ago
Sure, but of minimal practical impact. The Free and Open Source community has long discouraged releasing software into the public domain, as it has clear drawbacks compared to just using a permissive licence. The legal intricacies of the pu
9.
by MaxBarraclough 20d ago
If it's possible for program execution with some particular input to lead to a divide-by-zero, that's a bug, especially if the program is expected to be able to handle malformed inputs, or perhaps even deliberately malicious ones.
10.
by MaxBarraclough 21d ago
For a project like Postgres could it make sense to use a JIT with no use of SSA form?
11.
by MaxBarraclough 24d ago
Always good to have proper researchers in the thread. > Not sure where the idea comes from that Cranelift is much faster than LLVM -O0 Cranelift describes itself as a fast, secure, relatively simple and innovative compiler backend . [0]
12.
by MaxBarraclough 24d ago
> JITs are an attack surface in that process There's plenty of scope for harm just within the process, even ignoring the possibility of escaping the process. In the case of a database server, essentially everything of value takes pl
13.
by MaxBarraclough 24d ago
There's more to it than that though. Defects in JIT logic can lead to nasty low-level bugs. Plain old interpreters, especially if written in a safe language, are unlikely to have similar issues. This is important when the input code is
14.
by MaxBarraclough 24d ago
Interesting, thanks for the link. LLVM isn't the only game in town though, nobody using it (or libgccjit) for JIT should be surprised to see relatively long compile times. I wonder if the postgres project will try a different backend.
15.
by MaxBarraclough 24d ago
Thanks, sljit looks somewhat similar to GNU lightning. On reflection I wonder if I overstated the widespread use of JIT and of JIT compiler frameworks. All the 'major' well-resourced high-profile JIT-based interpreters I can think
16.
by MaxBarraclough 24d ago
Reminds me of the 2024 blog post Look ma, I wrote a new JIT compiler for PostgreSQL [0]. Both articles lament that Postgres's LLVM-based JIT [1] takes a while to generate code. > The rarity of JIT compilers makes me believe that
17.
by MaxBarraclough 1mo ago
> The people up thread who replied to my original message give some other references for why this is the case I'm afraid I'm not seeing it. Which comments specifically? Please link directly, rather than describing them. > Fr
18.
by MaxBarraclough 1mo ago
Thanks for the link but: > The tldr is you really can't copyright raw surveillance video, but you can apparently lightly edit to turn it into a creative work that is copyrightable. The article doesn't say that, it doesn't
19.
by MaxBarraclough 1mo ago
Do you have a source for raw surveillance footage not being subject to copyright? I'd not heard of this, and a web search didn't turn up anything.
20.
by MaxBarraclough 1mo ago
For what it's worth Ada currently has RFCs for constructors in destructors closer to the C++ way. They're currently supported in the GNAT (GCC Ada) compiler. https://github.com/AdaCore/ada-spark-rfcs/blob
21.
by MaxBarraclough 2mo ago
I was wondering the same thing. Also, could profile-guided optimisation help here?
22.
by MaxBarraclough 2mo ago
Agreed. The quality of a software package doesn't change when its last user stops using it. We don't say that the Apollo Guidance Computer software is of low quality these days given that nobody's using it. Software quality i
23.
by MaxBarraclough 2mo ago
I'm not sure about that definition. If your software solves a problem that many users face, that makes it useful and, presumably, valuable, but it doesn't mean it's of higher quality than niche software of relatively little u
24.
by MaxBarraclough 2mo ago
> I think a "resilience to hardships" would be a better definition of quality Does this refer only to program behaviour? I figure readability should count toward quality, but it doesn't directly affect program behaviour.
25.
by MaxBarraclough 2mo ago
I recommend his recent appearance on the Inside Java podcast, where these topics are explored well. The episode is number 59, titled Java *is* Memory Efficient . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_HCG1JPMQE (or any podcas
26.
by MaxBarraclough 2mo ago
> There is no possible way even in theory for a GC to outperform schedule-aware allocation from a fixed pool. You mean in the absence of any reference-counting overhead? That doesn't sound like a fair comparison. > In most cases
27.
by MaxBarraclough 2mo ago
> Am I the only one who thinks "pebkac" is a self-own? There's no such thing as a programming language that guarantees excellent performance regardless of programming competence. > why does it take so much extra effort
28.
by MaxBarraclough 3mo ago
This concern doesn't apply if a hybrid approach is used. From https://www.openssh.org/pq.html : > all the post-quantum algorithms implemented by OpenSSH are "hybrids" that combine a post-quantum algorithm
29.
by MaxBarraclough 4mo ago
> DbC is the Policy (i.e. what/why) and Asserts are the Mechanism The ideal way to do runtime-checked DbC is not with simple asserts, it's with proper first-class preconditions and postconditions at the language level. It would
30.
by MaxBarraclough 4mo ago
There's more to design-by-contract than asserts, and DbC isn't the only way to use asserts. Most languages lack proper support for design-by-contract. (For what it's worth I didn't downvote you.)

More ›