Shamar @Shamar@qoto.org

simplicity, correctness, performance

in that order

What shall I name this new RISC-V assembler project of mine? (My current assembler, the one written in Python 2, is named simply 'a'.)

It will target the RV32I and RV64I instruction sets. (A, M, etc. extensions can be added later if/when needed.) I intend on emitting hunk-formatted output files. See http://kestrelcomputer.github.io/kestrel/2018/01/29/on-elf and http://kestrelcomputer.github.io/kestrel/2018/02/01/on-elf-2 for the reasons why.

I am partial to asm myself. But, I'd love your thoughts on the matter.

#Kestrel3

@Shamar
original author: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~412/history/2004S/chaokul.html

found it here: https://9p.io/wiki/plan9/Contrib_index/index.html

divergefs-fix.tgz is the one that works

the way i actually found the sources was by grepping through /n/9pio/contrib

more progress towards #Plan9 packaging, because i'm tired of unsafe uninstall rules in mkfiles
https://git.sr.ht/~raingloom/package

there is power in a union

9th International Workshop on Plan 9
14 — 19th June 2020
http://iwp9.org/

#plan9

⚠️ New study by the Norwegian Consumer Council exposes how the advertising industry is systematically breaking the law

This is yet another example of how the #AdTech ecosystem is breaching your privacy and putting your #security at risk

https://www.forbrukerradet.no/side/new-study-the-advertising-industry-is-systematically-breaking-the-law/

This is neat: There's a microcontroller with RISC-V 16/32 instruction powered only by ambient radio power

https://www.onio.com/technology.html

There's no onboard battery to replace so the thing can potentially run for as long as there's a strong enough signal in any of the ISM bands or 800, 900 etc... GSM frequencies

It's got 1K of ROM and up to 32K flash and can access reads down to the milliwatt range in power

Collisions with the windows of buildings kill more birds than wind turbines do, by some orders of magnitude. And that's before we get to cats ...

(Current numbers for the US; ~250,000 per year killed by turbines, ~1,000,000,000 per year by windows. 2.4 billion/year by cats. Numbers via Dunning, B. "Wind Turbines and Birds." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, 7 Jan 2020. Web. 12 Jan 2020. https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4709 )

So switching to Linux might reduce the use of Windows ... but probably increases use of cat ...

Malwarebytes says low-end smartphones sold to Americans with low-income via a government-subsidized program contain unremovable malware at https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/us-government-funded-android-phones-come-preinstalled-with-unremovable-malware/ - discuss at https://freepo.st/freepost.cgi/post/luqh71ksfb #freepost

"The Cobra Effect"

The British government was concerned about the number of venomous cobra snakes in Delhi.

The government therefore offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially this was a successful strategy as large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward.

Eventually, however, enterprising people began to breed cobras for the income.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

@xj9
blogCOBOL-on-Wheelchair.png

https://sha-mbles.github.io/

> We have computed the very first chosen-prefix collision for SHA-1. In a nutshell, this means a complete and practical break of the SHA-1 hash function, with dangerous practical implications if you are still using this hash function. To put it in another way: all attacks that are practical on MD5 are now also practical on SHA-1.

#crypto #hash #paper #security

Webcomic Name
https://webcomicname.com/

@alexcleac not sure what the "there" is, and I am surely missing a bunch of context, but my answer (as a software developer, sysadmin, infosec person, and a user of technology in 2020) is: software engineering is still largely missing the "engineering" part.

By that I mean the ethos and the risk aversion, and the personal responsibility in case of catastrophic failure.

Because we are having way too many catastrophic failures in IT still. This needs to be fixed.