Ronald is indescribably more important than any tech billionaire could ever hope to be. So let's raise a glass and give out a hardy thank you to all the Ronalds of the world!
Written in hand-optimized assembly with individual implementation for every CPU on the planet, with integer division function in 10000 lines of code impelented with XOR and bit-shifting which is somehow 0.3% faster than CPU built-in division operation.
He had to de-optimize the init sequence because the little trick he added that caused the init sequence to return a little power to the grid instead of taking it was causing grid stability issues because the returned power from offices starting up was a bit higher than the extra power required for factory startup weekday mornings.
The mention of division has triggered a memory. I think I actually saw a library like that once. It was in C, not assembly, and was almost certainly for one specific architecture (probably Intel), but other than that, there was a lot of low-level stuff that claimed to make division faster for all CPU-native data types.
It was above my skill level to just pick up and use, let alone read and understand, but I can tell you that it at least looked legit, and the author seemed earnest in their description, so something like your hypothetical is very much out there.
There is a video where a real game dev was showing how bad a specific benchmark was. It was basically read arguments, get a random number, do a for loop 10,000 times, inside there do another for loop 10,000 times, do some equation with a modulo, put result in array, pick a number from array and print to screen.
The biggest time cost was the modulo as that's the hot path. He basically went through and typecast all the ints to double. He got 4x the speed. It went from almost 2 seconds to less than 0.5 second just on that change. This is mostly due to cpu and compiler now using simd instructions.
Yeah, I've actually written quick and dirty code that used both a division and a modulus, but then went back later to use the former to calculate the latter with a multiplication and a subtraction to get a speed improvement.
There have been other occasions where I've been able to replace something like average = sum / count; if average > y with if sum > count * y, when it's not entirely obvious that y could be multiplied by anything and remain meaningful.
But when a division can't be avoided, you still want that genius-written magical library to take some of the sting out of it.
Calling ffmpeg a failed project is exactly what the comic is talking about lol. It's a fantastic project and people don't know how much water it carries
Sounds about right. Those things that are worked on by people who for whatever reason have unlimited free time and can hence afford to reinvent the wheel. SerenityOS is another example
XZ Utils (maintained single-handedly by Lasse Collin) is widely regarded as the most critical infrastructure library run by one person. Its near-catastrophic compromise in 2024 revealed how global digital security hinges on solo, thanklessly managed open-source projects. Other major examples include cURL (Daniel Stenberg) and SQLite (D. Richard Hipp)
I mean, what's the alternative aside from spinning up a MariaDB for your small local app? I can still remember the swamp of .ini files some older programs used for this or the totally overblown Windows Registry. Not a good time.
Pretty sure lots of projects use json files, before that it was probably XML. Are those good or even decent alternatives? Probably depends on the amount of data ...
Also interesting is that it's one of the small number of unquestionably public domain pieces of software. Not open source, but public domain. It's not entirely clear if you can technically put your own work in the public domain, or if you're just freely licensing it to anyone.
Sqlite was initially developed for the US military though, which explicitly makes it public domain.
Most likely is. Many open source projects have a joke as a name, often containing some form of innuendo or a double meaning. Helps in maintaining the free nature of the tool (corporations don't want anything to do with it) as well as lower expectations on professionalism. Plus it's funny, especially if it's an in-joke of a niche language.
On the topic of "runk", it's also been loaned from Swedish to Finnish as runkata, or to runk = to jerk off. The actual act of it would be runkkaus or runkkaaminen. Can also be encountered in the form runkkari, aka a wanker (I'd assume Swedish had a matching equivalent). So the joke works in Finnish as well.
This is why when Steve Jobs died in 2011 another far more important figure died... Dennis Ritchie. The man who made the C programming language and Unix, without which nothing Apple produced would be possible.
Not to downplay dmr's importance here because he quite literally is the father of modern computing, but without him we'd just have something else and perhaps it would've been a bit later. A different systems programming language and a different operating system everything else is modeled after. High-level programming languages weren't a new concept when he wrote C. Before B they already had Fortran. Funny to call any of those High-level in 2026, but that's the whole importance of C, isn't it? It made writing complex systems easy compared to assembly languages or even fortran.
I'm not gonna bother doing a writeup about Jobs, we all here know he made precisely Jack shit.
Oh wow I didn't realize Pascal was even older than C, thought it showed up in like mid-70s or early 80s. To be fair I've ever only interacted with Delphi, not OG Pascal.
While I don't necessarily like C, I am happy for C-style syntax over Pascal-style, which I've also worked with. Give me braces over begin and end any day of the week.
Not necessarily against what you said, but I realized you can kinda say that about anything, with some abstraction. There’s always smart people (thankfully), and they’ll often arrive at the same solutions. Roll over, Gauss.
Well I think it's different for scientific discoveries where something is either found or not. Software and other products... There are niche things that may never exist without the author, and there are generic things that would be created in one form or another anyway. Once programming languages were a thing, general purpose high level languages were bound to happen IMO and there are infinite possible languages.
Sure, but what I’m saying is that at a high level of abstraction scientific discoveries are similarly inevitable as well. I don’t think niche creations are a major difference since as you yourself stated “without him we'd just have something else and perhaps it would've been a bit later.”. The majority build on previous findings, often many scientists are working towards the same goals, and truth is truth, whether it be found through physical experimentation or fleshing out applied logic.
There's lots of history you can look at to see how this works. The same thing does get invented more than once, but sometimes there's different technologies that could each become dominant, and then there's a real first mover advantage.
In Russia, they don't really have highways. Everything is built around rail lines. In the Inca empire, they had highways, but highways with stairs because there was no widespread wheel usage (which itself might be down to limited available wagon pullers and rough terrain).
It's basically the best virtualization platform. It can do full system emulation across a number of platforms, or hardware assisted virtualization (using KVM). It's incredibly useful for debug as well as doing real work.
The myth of Steve Jobs needed the actual genius of others to exist. Steve's gift to the world was recognizing and pointing out actual gifts tonthe world that would have otherwise gone unoticed or not brought to their full potential.
If Steve was still around, he would have taken Ronald's idea and had it rebuilt with a little polish and an exorbitant price tag.
For a long time all systems which deal with timezone data (like ability to convert utc to est for example) was reliant on 1 server in 1 random guy's basement which he paid for himself. I heard they were working to correct this situation but haven't been following it.
You sent me down the exact kind of weird rabbit hole I love. Genuinely thank you.
It's maintained by the IANA now (the same people who basically run the modern Internet, saying what domains are allowed and such for those who don't know). Though Arthur David Olson (the man you mentioned) still contributes his expertise and data.
Edit: I was a bit quick to post. The article I linked says Arthur David Olson (mentioned in sibling comment) started the TZ database, with Paul Eggert extending it and maintaining it later. The 2011 lawsuit is also mentioned in the Wikipedia page I just linked.
For the uninformed. It still somehow both boggles my mind and makes 100% sense that people didn't just write this function when they needed something to pad strings.
Something something Unix Philosophy. Write small programs that do one thing and do it well and then re-use that well tested code as often as you can rather than poorly re-implementing it over and over?
The amount of businesses with things you just can't touch for whatever reason is surprising.
The reliance on something made that is barely understood by the entire company makes me think that society will drag on generations after any kind of societal collapse.
Social collapse isn't an exciting day in your life, it's a broad trend historians will puzzle over centuries later. Look at the bronze age collapse for an example.
society will drag on generations after any kind of societal collapse.
Reminds me of the Imperium in Warhammer 40k how a lot of the tech they use is barely understood or some of it is not understood at all. Like the adeptus mechanicus believe in the Omnissiah (me too) and a lot of what they do is purely ritualistic.
But lots of those rituals are just stuff like turning something on in the right order. Or other mundane things that have become an arcane ritual after thousands of years that need doing for a thing to work right but nobody remembers why it needs to be done or how the thing works. Just that these are things you must do to please the machine spirits and make whatever random thing work right.
Honestly there is enough complexity in enough tech nowadays that I'm sure almost all of us are doing something similar in many areas of our life. Like I would struggle to explain how the Internet works or even how my television actually creates an image on itself. Maybe a better example would be cars, a lot of people use them but don't know anything about necessary maintenance or basic principles of how they work.
Or more things will happen like the Bhopal disaster where a chemical plant, over a decade or so, laid off or failed to replace everyone who knew what their carefully designed multi-layered safety systems did. When those systems aged and needed maintenance, the remaining production people took them out one by one. Then 500,000 people were gassed with cyanide. 2,200 immediate deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
Those were both exploitative business men more than engineers or developers. Jobs wasn't special and there're reasons why Microsoft boosted Gates to be the richest person in the world at one point.
Its almost like his name was Dennis Richie and its a shame a blow hard like Jobs died around the same time as him and overshadowed his passing and his legendary legacy.
I like to think of myself as the kind of person that, given enough time and documentation, can maintain anything; I think it’d still take three of me to do Ronald’s job. (Well, “job.” I think he technically works for Red Hat or something?)
149 Comments
FedX@quokk.au · 312 pts · 32d
Ronald is indescribably more important than any tech billionaire could ever hope to be. So let's raise a glass and give out a hardy thank you to all the Ronalds of the world!
Kirp123@lemmy.world · 142 pts · 32d
Too bad all the tech billionaires profit from Ronald's work while he does it for free.
some_designer_dude@lemmy.world · 50 pts · 31d
“Ronald” is all of us.
Aneb@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 30d
I am Ronald
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 3 pts · 30d
Ronald should have used a copyleft licence.
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social · 2 pts · 27d
If I had a dollar for every copyleft project whose maintainer became Ronald, I could found a tech company.
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 173 pts · 32d
Bless Ronald
AnxiousMiisha@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 77 pts · 32d
Our math depends on him 🙏
pelya@lemmy.world · 94 pts · 32d
Written in hand-optimized assembly with individual implementation for every CPU on the planet, with integer division function in 10000 lines of code impelented with XOR and bit-shifting which is somehow 0.3% faster than CPU built-in division operation.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 61 pts · 31d
He had to de-optimize the init sequence because the little trick he added that caused the init sequence to return a little power to the grid instead of taking it was causing grid stability issues because the returned power from offices starting up was a bit higher than the extra power required for factory startup weekday mornings.
ToiletFlushShowerScream@piefed.world · 17 pts · 31d
I love that this is an actual possibility.
palordrolap@fedia.io · 18 pts · 31d
The mention of division has triggered a memory. I think I actually saw a library like that once. It was in C, not assembly, and was almost certainly for one specific architecture (probably Intel), but other than that, there was a lot of low-level stuff that claimed to make division faster for all CPU-native data types.
It was above my skill level to just pick up and use, let alone read and understand, but I can tell you that it at least looked legit, and the author seemed earnest in their description, so something like your hypothetical is very much out there.
vrek@programming.dev · 16 pts · 31d
There is a video where a real game dev was showing how bad a specific benchmark was. It was basically read arguments, get a random number, do a for loop 10,000 times, inside there do another for loop 10,000 times, do some equation with a modulo, put result in array, pick a number from array and print to screen.
The biggest time cost was the modulo as that's the hot path. He basically went through and typecast all the ints to double. He got 4x the speed. It went from almost 2 seconds to less than 0.5 second just on that change. This is mostly due to cpu and compiler now using simd instructions.
Small changes can have big impacts.
palordrolap@fedia.io · 8 pts · 31d
Yeah, I've actually written quick and dirty code that used both a division and a modulus, but then went back later to use the former to calculate the latter with a multiplication and a subtraction to get a speed improvement.
There have been other occasions where I've been able to replace something like
average = sum / count; if average > ywithif sum > count * y, when it's not entirely obvious that y could be multiplied by anything and remain meaningful.But when a division can't be avoided, you still want that genius-written magical library to take some of the sting out of it.
vrek@programming.dev · 3 pts · 31d
He didn't do any of that. Just typecast the numbers to be doubles.
The whole benchmark was a mess but that part specifically surprised me.
lividweasel@lemmy.world · 163 pts · 32d
XKCD #2347: Dependency
An interactive version of the famous comic
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 74 pts · 31d
Also extremely stable.
bilb@lemmy.ml · 10 pts · 31d
What do we think the blocks on the right represent? Projects like TempleOS?
tutter@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 15 pts · 31d
ffmpeg is a good candidate im p sure
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 31d
Nah that's used by a ton of projects and websites
lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 29d
Calling ffmpeg a failed project is exactly what the comic is talking about lol. It's a fantastic project and people don't know how much water it carries
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 31d
Sounds about right. Those things that are worked on by people who for whatever reason have unlimited free time and can hence afford to reinvent the wheel. SerenityOS is another example
Tattorack@lemmy.world · 56 pts · 31d
By gods, the interactive one is great!
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 30d
All I get is “Browser wants to open another app” which I have never allowed… D:
agit68@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 30d
If you have Wikipedia set to open browser links that's most likely what happened.
That is if you have the Wikipedia app installed.
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 30d
Nah, I don’t have like any apps, and don’t like things trying to install them :I
agit68@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 30d
Wasn't sure whether you were using mobile or not.
I have Wikipedia set to ask to open links to Wikipedia on my phone. I thought it may have been something like that.
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 30d
Aha! Nah, I’m seeing that on an iPhone with Firefox Focus.
Tattorack@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 30d
Wat.
Just loads in for me.
W3dd1e@lemmy.zip · 16 pts · 31d
I didn’t know how much I needed the interactive version until now.
Obeca@pawb.social · 4 pts · 31d
I just touched the white void to the right of the structure, and slowly saw all modern infrastructure collapse.
SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works · 132 pts · 31d
They are real people
XZ Utils (maintained single-handedly by Lasse Collin) is widely regarded as the most critical infrastructure library run by one person. Its near-catastrophic compromise in 2024 revealed how global digital security hinges on solo, thanklessly managed open-source projects. Other major examples include cURL (Daniel Stenberg) and SQLite (D. Richard Hipp)
nik9000@programming.dev · 76 pts · 31d
When I last talked to Richard he had company to work on SQLite. It was like four people.
SQLite is still deployed on everything, everywhere. You browser. Your phone. Macs. Half of Linux machine. Your airplane. It's super impressive.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 13 pts · 31d
It's lite architecture makes it the only valid option to not having to deploy a full on postgre
Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de · 10 pts · 31d
I mean, what's the alternative aside from spinning up a MariaDB for your small local app? I can still remember the swamp of .ini files some older programs used for this or the totally overblown Windows Registry. Not a good time.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 30d
CSV or a spreadsheet (xlsx/ods)?
You didnt specify it had to be a good optio ;)
username123@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 30d
db.txt
lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 29d
Now you're just trying to hand-roll your own DBMS. Have fun with that. It won't work out
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 1 pts · 30d
Pretty sure lots of projects use json files, before that it was probably XML. Are those good or even decent alternatives? Probably depends on the amount of data ...
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 30d
Also interesting is that it's one of the small number of unquestionably public domain pieces of software. Not open source, but public domain. It's not entirely clear if you can technically put your own work in the public domain, or if you're just freely licensing it to anyone.
Sqlite was initially developed for the US military though, which explicitly makes it public domain.
It doesn't matter, but it's interesting.
DacoTaco@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 31d
Fatfs is also a big one iirc
0x0@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 31d
While those are the main developers neither is alone in maintaining their respective software.
TheLegendaryAssholeOfJushinLiger@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 31d
Probably gonna get really bad once AI actors start combing the internet for exploits on a larger scale.
lime_red@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 31d
Start??
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 2 pts · 30d
Also gonna get really bad once these lonely maintainers get into AI. Been browsing https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/open-slopware, things looks pretty bleak.
dracc@discuss.tchncs.de · 132 pts · 32d
Not sure if it's part of the joke but that word means "jerk" (as in "jerk off") in Swedish.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml · 125 pts · 32d
So a perfect open source name then.
HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works · 79 pts · 32d
Runk that hog, swedish boy.
wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 18 pts · 31d
pojke/kille/grabb/gosse = boy/dude/guy/kiddo, so have fun with that. 😂
GraniteM@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 31d
Arööö!
k0e3@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 30d
Is that how they climax over there?
brbposting@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 30d
thisisbutaname@discuss.tchncs.de · 27 pts · 31d
antimidas@sopuli.xyz · 11 pts · 31d
Most likely is. Many open source projects have a joke as a name, often containing some form of innuendo or a double meaning. Helps in maintaining the free nature of the tool (corporations don't want anything to do with it) as well as lower expectations on professionalism. Plus it's funny, especially if it's an in-joke of a niche language.
On the topic of "runk", it's also been loaned from Swedish to Finnish as runkata, or to runk = to jerk off. The actual act of it would be runkkaus or runkkaaminen. Can also be encountered in the form runkkari, aka a wanker (I'd assume Swedish had a matching equivalent). So the joke works in Finnish as well.
mastertigurius@lemmy.world · 82 pts · 32d
Everyone who understands Norwegian love the name Ronald chose for his invaluable tool.
lena@gregtech.eu · 49 pts · 32d
For the uninitiated: well, let's just say. jorkin it.
lime@feddit.nu · 36 pts · 32d
and by "it".. hehe, well lets just say... my digits
lena@gregtech.eu · 10 pts · 31d
f314@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 32d
Came here to say this (no pun intended)
mastertigurius@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 32d
But pun gladly taken nonetheless
ChristerMLB@piefed.social · 3 pts · 31d
Yeah, I was just going to be mysterious and write sremoveds in Norwegian, but I guess there's no point in that now :c
Lumidaub@feddit.org · 9 pts · 32d
I don't know a word of Norwegian but I know the internet.
kungen@feddit.nu · 4 pts · 31d
Now you do. So if you see any Norwegian or Swede, remember to tell them "I know runk".
mastertigurius@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 31d
Whenever Norwegian Football fans are cheering their team on, just join in.
bomp-bomp RUNK!!
bomp-bomp RUNK!!
Tattorack@lemmy.world · 70 pts · 31d
Ah. He must be a KDE contributor as well.
spazzman6156@sh.itjust.works · 57 pts · 31d
Kontributor
Tattorack@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 31d
You know, I was VERY tempted to write it that way, but decided against it at the last moment.
ulterno@programming.dev · 19 pts · 31d
Klearly you are not a KDE Kontributor.
Aneb@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 30d
Khx klreno kor kour kontribution!
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 31d
Seems you're too reserved to ever become a konqueror.
Trampampoline@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 31d
Qrunk
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online · 68 pts · 31d
This is why when Steve Jobs died in 2011 another far more important figure died... Dennis Ritchie. The man who made the C programming language and Unix, without which nothing Apple produced would be possible.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 34 pts · 31d
Not to downplay dmr's importance here because he quite literally is the father of modern computing, but without him we'd just have something else and perhaps it would've been a bit later. A different systems programming language and a different operating system everything else is modeled after. High-level programming languages weren't a new concept when he wrote C. Before B they already had Fortran. Funny to call any of those High-level in 2026, but that's the whole importance of C, isn't it? It made writing complex systems easy compared to assembly languages or even fortran.
I'm not gonna bother doing a writeup about Jobs, we all here know he made precisely Jack shit.
The_Decryptor@aussie.zone · 9 pts · 31d
Apple used Pascal up until the System 7 era anyway, C was just one of many choices of the time.
If we didn't have C, we'd probably have eliminated things like buffer overflows and out of bounds memory accesses decades ago.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 31d
Oh wow I didn't realize Pascal was even older than C, thought it showed up in like mid-70s or early 80s. To be fair I've ever only interacted with Delphi, not OG Pascal.
While I don't necessarily like C, I am happy for C-style syntax over Pascal-style, which I've also worked with. Give me braces over begin and end any day of the week.
username123@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 30d
Not necessarily against what you said, but I realized you can kinda say that about anything, with some abstraction. There’s always smart people (thankfully), and they’ll often arrive at the same solutions. Roll over, Gauss.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 30d
Well I think it's different for scientific discoveries where something is either found or not. Software and other products... There are niche things that may never exist without the author, and there are generic things that would be created in one form or another anyway. Once programming languages were a thing, general purpose high level languages were bound to happen IMO and there are infinite possible languages.
username123@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 30d
Sure, but what I’m saying is that at a high level of abstraction scientific discoveries are similarly inevitable as well. I don’t think niche creations are a major difference since as you yourself stated “without him we'd just have something else and perhaps it would've been a bit later.”. The majority build on previous findings, often many scientists are working towards the same goals, and truth is truth, whether it be found through physical experimentation or fleshing out applied logic.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 28d
There's lots of history you can look at to see how this works. The same thing does get invented more than once, but sometimes there's different technologies that could each become dominant, and then there's a real first mover advantage.
In Russia, they don't really have highways. Everything is built around rail lines. In the Inca empire, they had highways, but highways with stairs because there was no widespread wheel usage (which itself might be down to limited available wagon pullers and rough terrain).
Ricaz@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 31d
Yeah, Apple would just steal literally every single idea and piece of software from someone else
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 30d
He made money, and enemies who couldn't actually do anything about it.
alpine_jim@piefed.social · 51 pts · 31d
Fabrice Bellard is ten Ronalds.
AnxiousMiisha@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 56 pts · 31d
FFmpeg and QEMU? Holy shit!
I had no idea
Arghblarg@lemmy.ca · 25 pts · 31d
and tcc, which while maybe not as 'important', is extremely cool.
comrademiao@piefed.social · 8 pts · 31d
Is QEMU simply a VM?
themoken@startrek.website · 21 pts · 31d
It's basically the best virtualization platform. It can do full system emulation across a number of platforms, or hardware assisted virtualization (using KVM). It's incredibly useful for debug as well as doing real work.
AnxiousMiisha@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 10 pts · 31d
I would say so? It's an emulator and I personally use it to manage KVM on Linux. Makes my life easier.
Not really sure about the precise details, sorry
JoMiran@lemmy.ml · 50 pts · 32d
The myth of Steve Jobs needed the actual genius of others to exist. Steve's gift to the world was recognizing and pointing out actual gifts tonthe world that would have otherwise gone unoticed or not brought to their full potential.
If Steve was still around, he would have taken Ronald's idea and had it rebuilt with a little polish and an exorbitant price tag.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 31d
There is no Jobs without Wozniak.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml · 15 pts · 31d
One hundred percent, but don't forget Jony Ive. The mythology of Steve Jobs is built on the genius of Woz and the designs of Ive.
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social · 1 pts · 27d
And scrubbed it of any mention of Ronald's name before pulling it out onstage. Don't forget that.
raman_klogius@ani.social · 47 pts · 31d
My go to real example is curl
derpgon@programming.dev · 32 pts · 31d
Christopher's Universal Request Library
smeenz@lemmy.nz · 20 pts · 31d
In case anyone thinks you're serious, that's not what it stands for.
RamenJunkie@midwest.social · 16 pts · 30d
Yeah, its just Chris, dude HATES when people call him Christopher.
username123@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 30d
Crazy Ubiquitous, Raw, and Ludicrous
vrek@programming.dev · 42 pts · 32d
For a long time all systems which deal with timezone data (like ability to convert utc to est for example) was reliant on 1 server in 1 random guy's basement which he paid for himself. I heard they were working to correct this situation but haven't been following it.
mushroommunk@lemmy.today · 41 pts · 32d
You sent me down the exact kind of weird rabbit hole I love. Genuinely thank you.
It's maintained by the IANA now (the same people who basically run the modern Internet, saying what domains are allowed and such for those who don't know). Though Arthur David Olson (the man you mentioned) still contributes his expertise and data.
folekaule@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 32d
You're probably thinking of Paul Eggert.
Edit: I was a bit quick to post. The article I linked says Arthur David Olson (mentioned in sibling comment) started the TZ database, with Paul Eggert extending it and maintaining it later. The 2011 lawsuit is also mentioned in the Wikipedia page I just linked.
rothaine@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 31d
I remember when he got sued for copyright infringement or something ridiculous and it was big news
ouRKaoS@lemmy.today · 38 pts · 31d
engagewithzorp@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 30d
Is this a real example? Or are we just talking about linux here
davetortoise@reddthat.com · 11 pts · 30d
A huge proportion (most?) of server infrastructure runs on linux.
engagewithzorp@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 30d
That's what I meant. I phrased it badly, i meant to ask if it was about Linux or something else
nomecks@lemmy.wtf · 3 pts · 30d
It was leftpad. A stupid little function that was used by like 90% of the internet, and it crashed everything during a name dispute.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm_left-pad_incident
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 11 pts · 30d
Nebraska and 2003 have got to be fictional details, but there's several small programs or libraries that have some kind of similar story.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 30d
You weren't there for the Leftpad fiasco, I take it?
Hobo@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 30d
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm_left-pad_incident
For the uninformed. It still somehow both boggles my mind and makes 100% sense that people didn't just write this function when they needed something to pad strings.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 30d
Probably got put into a popular example and then everyone uses it because "that's how."
Hobo@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 30d
Huh... You know what that makes more sense than anything else I've come up with. I always just assumed it was lazy devs.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 29d
Something something Unix Philosophy. Write small programs that do one thing and do it well and then re-use that well tested code as often as you can rather than poorly re-implementing it over and over?
engagewithzorp@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 29d
Nope, I was still a little too young
SalamiDommie@lemmus.org · 36 pts · 31d
The amount of businesses with things you just can't touch for whatever reason is surprising.
The reliance on something made that is barely understood by the entire company makes me think that society will drag on generations after any kind of societal collapse.
yakko@feddit.uk · 31 pts · 31d
Social collapse isn't an exciting day in your life, it's a broad trend historians will puzzle over centuries later. Look at the bronze age collapse for an example.
Sabata11792@ani.social · 21 pts · 31d
Some dude in the year 2345 will be shitposting about how we didn't see it coming because we are dumb.
yakko@feddit.uk · 27 pts · 31d
We did see it coming, but we are dumb
Aneb@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 30d
Dumb and selfish, but thats not solely human traits
SalamiDommie@lemmus.org · 4 pts · 31d
Yeah, and things can putter on for hundreds of years before they really "collapse"
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 31d
That sounds like a 'crunch' category risk
LePoisson@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 31d
Reminds me of the Imperium in Warhammer 40k how a lot of the tech they use is barely understood or some of it is not understood at all. Like the adeptus mechanicus believe in the Omnissiah (me too) and a lot of what they do is purely ritualistic.
But lots of those rituals are just stuff like turning something on in the right order. Or other mundane things that have become an arcane ritual after thousands of years that need doing for a thing to work right but nobody remembers why it needs to be done or how the thing works. Just that these are things you must do to please the machine spirits and make whatever random thing work right.
Honestly there is enough complexity in enough tech nowadays that I'm sure almost all of us are doing something similar in many areas of our life. Like I would struggle to explain how the Internet works or even how my television actually creates an image on itself. Maybe a better example would be cars, a lot of people use them but don't know anything about necessary maintenance or basic principles of how they work.
bluemellophone@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 31d
You just explained the experience of anybody having to properly configure Apache for the first time.
mcv@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 31d
Configure the right incantations and the machine god will serve your web pages, brother.
Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 31d
Or more things will happen like the Bhopal disaster where a chemical plant, over a decade or so, laid off or failed to replace everyone who knew what their carefully designed multi-layered safety systems did. When those systems aged and needed maintenance, the remaining production people took them out one by one. Then 500,000 people were gassed with cyanide. 2,200 immediate deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 31d
Phoenix3875@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 31d
That's just gmp. The go-to unlimited precision arithmetic library.
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de · 25 pts · 32d
I think it’s worth noting there’s few people like Jobs and more like Gates but they’re all psychopaths.
unmagical@lemmy.ml · 27 pts · 32d
Those were both exploitative business men more than engineers or developers. Jobs wasn't special and there're reasons why Microsoft boosted Gates to be the richest person in the world at one point.
sqw@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 31d
my impression is that gates was doing some pretty impressive computer programming for a good stint in his early days...
Alberat@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 31d
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works · 45 pts · 31d
Stitch0815@feddit.org · 13 pts · 31d
This is peak comedy
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml · 12 pts · 31d
How nice of them to provide a Python wrapper for the C library
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz · 17 pts · 31d
The first examples are consequential in the same way Voldemort was.
agentTeiko@piefed.social · 16 pts · 31d
Its almost like his name was Dennis Richie and its a shame a blow hard like Jobs died around the same time as him and overshadowed his passing and his legendary legacy.
bisby@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 31d
thanks Daniel Stenberg!
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 12 pts · 30d
On top of it all, Steve Jobs wasn't even in tech. He was in sales.
potatoguy@mbin.potato-guy.space · 10 pts · 31d
Reminded me of this, that basically every language just have a wrapper around.
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 31d
Awesome usage of the word "consequential."
Corbin@programming.dev · 9 pts · 31d
Discussed previously (here, there).
sirico@feddit.uk · 4 pts · 31d
Marketing>the reason for it
Digit@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 29d
Here's to all the Ronalds and Daniels out there.
Thanks.
:)
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online · 2 pts · 31d
Oh yeah, I love Ronald Burkiworkowskini
derfunkatron@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 31d
It’s pronounced Brutananadilewski!
wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 31d
It's more often not the "face" that's the crux, it's the geek. Make nice with the actual casters. 🖖🏼
gerald_eliasweb@reddthat.com · 2 pts · 1d
All tec innovations come from Ronald. Steve Jobs just finds ways to explain it to non-tec people and then they charge them to access it.
Drekaridill@lemmy.wtf · 1 pts · 25d
Runk is Icelandic for jerking off
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 30d
What is the other half of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, if they are only half guys?
BlonksClown@lemmy.world · -13 pts · 31d
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 31d
Billionaires? Yes.
Ronald is just some unpaid Polish immigrant in US, very often.
cosmos8188@leminal.space · 4 pts · 31d
Not every person is a cunt in this world you know.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 31d
Ronald and runk, not Donald
DuckTrump.