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Cake day: May 31st, 2023

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  • C is a little older than namespacing and object orientation. C++ wasn’t even a glimmer in Bjarne’s eye when these conventions were laid down.

    And yes, having to google it is part of the design. Originally C programmers would have had to read actual manuals about this stuff. Once you learn the names you don’t really forget so it works well enough even now for ubiquitous standard library functions.

    And yet, C was an ergonomic revelation to programmers of the time. Now it’s the arcane grandpa that most youngsters don’t put up with.










  • It is great tech, but there are serious downsides too.

    • storage and handling: Hydrogen is a tiny atom, so it leaks like nobody’s business. Even liquid hydrogen is terribly low-density which makes pretty much a hard limit on storage density, unlike battery tech which can at least hypothetically dramatically improve. Pressure vessels suck. They have to be crazy sturdy and roughly spherical which places major design limitations on vehicles that use them.
    • distribution: EVs can limp by on sparse fast charging stations and home charging while better infrastructure builds out. Electrical supply is already ubiquitous. Who’s going to want a hydrogen vehicle (which you can absolutely already buy, nobody’s stopping you in the US at least) with so few fueling options? The upfront investment to bootstrap a market with hydrogen stations to the point of even competing with crappy EV charging is enormous.
    • no onboard energy recovery: Regenerative braking is an incredible benefit on its own.
    • industry synergy: EV manufacture benefits from tons of other industries investing in battery tech. The tide lifts all boats.

    There are solutions as with any tech, but the transition picture with hydrogen is a lot lot worse than EVs. The least worst option tends to win.




  • There’s no mention of anything like zero-days in that article. They only mention that it can target all major OSes, with no mention of cutting edge versions also being vulnerable.

    Hilariously, the article directly supports my position as well:

    The good news for some, at least: it likely poses a minimal threat to most people, considering the multi-million-dollar price tag and other requirements for developing a surveillance campaign using Sherlock

    That’s a big part of my whole point. People who don’t do even a modicum of actual thought about a practical threat model for themselves love pretending that ad blocking isn’t primarily just about not wanting to see ads.

    If Israel or some other highly capable attacker is coming after you, then fine, you really do need ad blocking. In that case malware in ads is going to be the least of your concerns.

    Attacks that cast such a wide net as to be the concern of all web users are necessarily less dangerous because exploits need to be kept secret to avoid being patched.

    There’s nothing wrong with taking extra precautions; I’m certainly not saying blocking ads is a bad idea. It’s the apparent confusion that an informed, tech-savvy person might choose not to block ads that makes me laugh.