Computer speak is disturbingly similar to text message speak

Bugs are bioengineering masterpieces.

The most recent Zefrank video is a great example of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spuO7OpS6zw

TLDR: While Linux is less susceptible to malware in some ways, it mostly boils down to Linux having a more technically minded userbase whereas Windows is a “mainstream” operating system.

Most Windows malware nowadays come from social engineering scams (complete this “captcha” by pressing Windows+R and pasting in this powershell script we conveniently put in your clipboard) or untrusted third party installers because Windows doesn’t natively have a package manager. Like others have said, the old school self-propagating worms and drive by downloads that activate just by clicking on a link aren’t really possible anymore (outside of state actors with unlimited budgets to buy zero days) unless your system or browser is horrifically outdated.

In terms of social engineering, Linux is not necessarily better at preventing it than Windows. In fact, sudo in Linux will unquestioningly delete the kernel and system software or make unlimited changes to them. Windows, for better or for worse (tbh more worse than better), uses TrustedInstaller to limit access to system files. Windows 11 won’t easily let you delete or modify System32 for example, even if you’re an admin. So it’s in theory easier to do more damage to your system on Linux if you don’t know what you’re doing. But if someone is using Linux full time, they’re most likely technical enough to not be fooled into running random untrusted bash commands.

The biggest thing is to be careful with those Linux terminal tutorial sites that have a “add to clipboard” button, they can put literally anything into your clipboard, including an enter key to run the script as soon as you put it in your terminal (though this may or may not be possible depending on your terminal app). Actually, they don’t even need you to use their copy button. They can just set an event listener for control-C anywhere on their site and automatically replace the clipboard content. Just double check everything you copy before running it, especially since there’s a lot of times where Linux users have to rely on obsecue tutorials hosted on untrusted websites.

You also don’t really need to run untrusted installers on Linux because almost everything you need is in a properly moderated software repository, be it your native package manager, Flatpak, or Snap. Everything is signed by the authors and has a ton of eyes from the open source community on it. The only things to look out for is compiling something from GitHub, random AppImages, Elf binaries, scripts, and last but not least third party repositories that can be added as an installation source to your package manager/Flatpak/Snap. Basically, Linux gets most of its “doesn’t get malware” reputation from the same place Mac does: you rarely have to manually download and run an executable from a random website, which is the norm on Windows. Add to the fact that even when that’s needed, the Linux userbase is more technical and is more able to discern which sources are reputable and which are suspicious.

Another major source of malware is pirated versions of Windows or untrusted “license activators” from the internet. This just isn’t a problem on Linux because there’s no license to activate and it’s free to begin with so there’s nothing to pirate. And again, if someone is running Linux, they’re probably technical enough to know not to run random pirated versions of paid software to begin with, helped by the fact that the vast majority of paid software is Windows only.

void*

Can’t say I’ve ever experienced this kind of confusion in Java but that’s probably because they intentionally restricted the syntax so there’s no ambiguity.

Better than an integer at least.

Race condition that only happens on the much faster production hardware: Allow me to introduce myself

Al Blue: When Al Capone becomes a cop.

Damn.

I suppose the obvious question of why Amazon doesn’t have an intuitive way of rate limiting those can be answered by the huge bills people rack up.

Never used AWS but would it help to bake a daemon into your default OS image that shuts it down after 24 hours? That way you need to manually disable it for the ones you want to keep.

vim & sleep 30 && killall -TERM vim

If it’s a work computer, tell your IT department it’s getting in the way of your job.

“Write a program that does this.”

“Fix this part”

“And this part”

“And this part”

“Wait you fucked up the first part again, change it back to when you first fixed it.”

“Ok now fix this last part.”

“Damnit why do you keep changing the first part I already told you it was fine!”

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Embrace <-- You are here

Extend

Extinguish

Fuck Apple

What use is testing in a development environment if you can’t be sure production will behave the same way?

Imagine how ridiculous it would be if space agencies rehearsed their missions on land, like in a pool or something, before trying it in space.

As someone with a Thinkpad, that weird thing Lenovo does where they switch the control and function keys gets me every time I switch between Thinkpad and non-Thinkpad laptops. Usually when I use a non-Thinkpad, it’s someone else’s laptop and I look like an idiot in front of them wondering why their copy and paste is broken.

I get that the function key isn’t technically a standard key on the keyboard (I’ve only seen them on laptops) and Thinkpads always had that layout dating back the IBM days, but it’s still annoying.

Damn typesetting sounds like such a cool term. Makes me think you’re picking up each letter and putting them… actually wait is that literally what it used to mean? Putting letters in a printing press?

When AI developers are priced like AI lawyers lol