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How is it possible for a TCP bug that leads to stuck connections to go unnoticed for 24 years?

It's because the fools responsible never rewrite their code, use a broken language, and don't even try to prove half of the broken garbage they write. Then, when it turns out to have been broken for decades, they chuckle and shove another finger into another crack, never understanding how they misuse computers.


This is not an unsafe language failure! The same logic, ported to Python, would exhibit the same error.


This is a bad language failure, however. The same logic, ported to Brainfuck, would exhibit the same stupidity.

The C language makes it unreasonably difficult to write anything, even before proving it to be correct.


Not all CEOs of tech startups have the time to write code. Fortunately while Textualize is still in its development phase I have plenty of opportunity to get my hands dirty.

Oh, so this is something unimpressive being used to disguise an advertisement.

I've designed such interfaces, and drawing boxen is superfluous to the point I realized it's not worthwhile. Regardless, this solution seems obvious for anyone who actually had this issue, and I'm doubtful there were many.


I go further than handwritten HTML and CSS. I also have a Gopher hole. The only advantage a browser such as Emacs' eww has over an Emacs Gopher client is that eww is included by default. It also leads to good practices such as avoiding superfluous images and styling. Another advantage is the relatively small set of people using Gopher, meaning people who use it are more likely to reach out or similar things, like the older Internet.


How could that be, if we be all the same?


White people who don't want to date black people and lesbians who don't want to have sex with transsexuals already suffer this.


I like how expecting real torrent clients to bend over for the WWW is in any way considered to be a reasonable stance.


The simple fact is most programmers would be too incompetent to exist in such a world.


Sounds like a problem with how programmers get trained?


[flagged]


Sounds like a problem with how people get trained, then.


Almost all software is broken, in fact. A real field of engineering would prohibit most of the stupid shit idiots claiming to be programmers do before even reaching for the other issues.


Notably, the ACM has been compiling a list of hundreds of instances of failures in software that have negatively impacted the public.


In most engineering disciplines, some degree of fault is permissible and is accounted for


That is my understanding as well, but some degree of fault is also impermissible and people must be held to account for those kinds of fault.


You can't punish people into being better programmers. Things don't work that way. I know that it's popular to believe that companies improve productivity by beating their employees, but that doesn't work in practice.


As a thought exercise, replace “programmers/employees/companies” with “criminals/inmates/prisons” in your argument and you will see parallels with modern law enforcement.

Law enforcement embraces rehabilitation, prevention, and other mechanisms as well as simple punishment.

Seems rather disingenuous to make a claim that negative reinforcement doesn’t work, vis-a-vis not having to be in jail.


Jails shouldn't be for punishment. They should be for protecting society from people who can't live by the rules. Punitive prison sentences are uncivilized.

Besides, pickpockets used to be hanged. Didn't stop them.


[flagged]


Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and flamewar comments? You've been doing an absolute ton of this and it's super not ok. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

We have to ban accounts that break HN's rules like that. I don't want to ban you, because you've also posted good things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33145319 recently. Ok, you've posted one good thing (that one) recently. Still, it was pretty good and I'd rather persuade you to use the site as intended, if that's remotely possible, than to ban you.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, I'd personally appreciate it.


I'm tired, dang. I wanted to delete this account, but I'm not allowed to do so. I didn't use it for years until I tried to contact someone here. Now, when I even try to submit something here into which I've poured effort, it doesn't appear in the new section until after it can no longer qualify for the front page, as an underhanded method of trying to make me believe no one cares about it.

Why is Hacker News filled with political nonsense that gets hundreds of comments, while the programming topics get few or go ignored? It is so frustrating to try to have a conversation here, where people rather downvote and flag than write rebuttals. I tried to contribute to this forum, but my novel work goes ignored; my submission here with highest score merely hit hipster bingo.

What am I supposed to do?


I don't understand what you mean by trying to contact someone, but if you mean contacting us, the way to do that is to email hn@ycombinator.com.

Your account's submissions aren't specifically being penalized, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33052487 was killed by our software because your submission history is getting classified as "primarily promotional", which is against the site guidelines ("Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). The way to prevent that from is to post a diverse mix of interesting/unrelated articles and include your own stuff as part of the mix.

Nearly everyone's "novel work goes ignored" - that's the unfortunate consequence of frontpage space being the scarcest resource (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). It's nothing personal—it's hard for everyone.

Re the question of politics on HN, some political overlap is inevitable on a site whose mandate is intellectual curiosity. Lots of past explanations can be found here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....

What you're supposed to do is follow the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. I know HN can be frustrating, but vandalizing it with aggressive attacks and flamewar helps nothing.


His self-interest makes his position understandable. Why, programming is just as real as other engineering, except for those nasty consequences for gross negligence, such as using the C/C++ languages or garbage similar to them.


UNIX sucks. Of course, enough time has passed that people expect a mathematics degree to come with diarrhea from the 1970s for stupid reasons.


What would you prefer?


Lisp and Smalltalk existed before the C language, and don't have its damning flaws. Ada's also much nicer. As for the operating system, there are currently no good such systems that aren't very old. I use Emacs to largely avoid the UNIX sh. Ideally, a university would have its own operating system, but I suppose that would be too hard, in comparison to accreting another layer of shit over UNIX. Something such as Alan Kay's VPRI would be best: http://vpri.org

I didn't go to a university to learn anything about computers, fortunately.


> Ideally, a university would have its own operating system, but I suppose that would be too hard

Actually that’s exactly what Nicklaus Wirt did with Oberon.


Today one of the best "Not really Unix, but close" it's called Guix(SD) and it's bound to Scheme. And without C, forget about having a kernel and a Scheme compiler.

The best env to complete SICP it's, paradoxically, a Unix like system written in C with an Scheme DSL to set up the system declarativelly.


I was waiting for my comment to be flagged. Here it is again:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33124973

> Give a single example of how the Encyclopedia Britannica be worse than random idiots, foreign agents, and shills on Wikipedia.

I received no answer, which is what I expected. It was easier to flag the comment, because this forum is pathetic.


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