I’m a computer and open source enthusiast from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • If it is indeed a boneheaded mistake, then it’s probably because of over reliance on RPC-type calls from the front-end that displays the data, to the back-end that actually handles the data. User deletes photo, and the front-end, instead of actually deleting it, tells the backend to do it… and then hides the photo from view, maybe updates its index of photos marking them as “deleted” regardless of whether the backend actually deleted the photo.

    Then an OS update comes along, and rescans the filesystem, and report a bunch of new photos to the front-end, that then happily add them to the GUI to the user’s surprise.

    Modern APIs and software architectures are a bloated, unnecessarily complex mess, and this is the result.
















  • Actually grub 0.x series had much more useful rescue shell tab completion than the latest release. You could easily list all boot devices, partitions, and even filesystems and their contents. All from the rescue shell. Consequently, you could boot into Linux and reinstall grub in the MBR to fix it. All that without using a boot CD/USB! Good luck doing that with the latest version of grub and UEFI.

    Also getting into the BIOS on legacy firmware was also very simple. On most machines it’s the three finger salute followed by either F1, Delete or rarely F11 or F12.

    The boot process was simple, and the BIOS had just one simple task: load and execute the first 512 bytes of the disk that was designated as the boot device. That’s it.