We really are bouncing back and forth between flat UIs and beveled UIs. I mean, this is what old X11 programs looked like:
Good luck figuring out which of these UI elements are click-able – unless you examine every pixel on the screen.
@prologic@twtxt.net I’m trying to call some libc functions (because the Rust stdlib does not have an equivalent for getpeername(), for example, so I don’t have a choice), so I have to do some FFI stuff and deal with raw pointers and all that, which is very gnarly in Rust – because you’re not supposed to do this. Things like that are trivial in C or even Assembler, but I have not yet understood what Rust does under the hood. How and when does it allocate or free memory … is the pointer that I get even still valid by the time I do the libc call? Stuff like that.
I hope that I eventually learn this over time … but I get slapped in the face at every step. It’s very frustrating and I’m always this 🤏 close to giving up (only to try again a year later).
Oh, yeah, yeah, I guess I could “just” use some 3rd party library for this. socket2 gets mentioned a lot in this context. But I don’t want to. I literally need one getpeername() call during the lifetime of my program, I don’t even do the socket(), bind(), listen(), accept() dance, I already have a fully functional file descriptor. Using a library for that is total overkill and I’d rather do it myself. (And look at the version number: 0.5.10. The library is 6 years old but they’re still saying: “Nah, we’re not 1.0 yet, we reserve the right to make breaking changes with every new release.” So many Rust libs are still unstable …)
… and I could go on and on and on … 🤣
OpenBSD has the wonderful pledge() and unveil() syscalls:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXO6nelFt-E
Not only are they super useful (the program itself can drop privileges – like, it can initialize itself, read some files, whatever, and then tell the kernel that it will never do anything like that again; if it does, e.g. by being exploited through a bug, it gets killed by the kernel), but they are also extremely easy to use.
Imagine a server program with a connected socket in file descriptor 0. Before reading any data from the client, the program can do this:
unveil("/var/www/whatever", "r");
unveil(NULL, NULL);
pledge("stdio rpath", NULL);
Done. It’s now limited to reading files from that directory, communicating with the existing socket, stuff like that. But it cannot ever read any other files or exec() into something else.
I can’t wait for the day when we have something like this on Linux. There have been some attempts, but it’s not that easy. And it’s certainly not mainstream, yet.
I need to have a closer look at Linux’s Landlock soon (“soon”), but this is considerably more complicated than pledge()/unveil():
On my blog: Developer Diary, Day of the African Child https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/06/16/african-child.html #programming #project #devjournal
So I was using this function in Rust:
https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/path/struct.Path.html#method.display
Note the little 1.0.0 in the top right corner, which means that this function has been “stable since Rust version 1.0.0”. We’re at 1.87 now, so we’re good.
Then I compiled my program on OpenBSD with Rust 1.86, i.e. just one version behind, but well ahead of 1.0.0.
The compiler said that I was using an unstable library feature.
Turns out, that function internally uses this:
https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/ffi/struct.OsStr.html#method.display
And that is only available since Rust 1.87.
How was I supposed to know this? 🤨
CNCF Kubestronaut Program Momentum Highlights Asia’s Role in Growing Cloud Native Talent
Upcoming Kubestronaut celebrations in China and Japan to honor global program growth Hong Kong, China– 10 June, 2025 – The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, today announced continued… ⌘ Read more
Having some fun with SIRDS this morning.

What you should see: 
And the tutorial I used for my C program: https://www.ime.usp.br/~otuyama/stereogram/basic/index.html
How can one write blazing fast yet useful compilers (for lazy pure functional languages)?
I’ve decided enough is enough and I want to write my own compiler (seems I caught a bug and lobste.rs is definitely not discouraging it). The language I have in mind is a basic (lazy?) statically-typed pure functional programming language with do notation and records (i.e. mostly Haskell-lite).
I have other ideas I’d like to explore as well, but mainly, I want the compiler to be so fast (w/ optimisations) that … ⌘ Read more
$7,500 Bug: Exposing Any HackerOne User’s Email via Private Program Invite
How One GraphQL Query Turned Private Invites into Public Data Leaks
[Continue reading on InfoSec Write-ups »](https://infosecwrite … ⌘ Read more
On my blog: Developer Diary, International Sex Workers’ Day https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/06/02/sex-workers.html #programming #project #devjournal
First ever vintage at new Tasmanian winery
Tasmania’s newest winemaking operation has passed its first test, processing its first ever vintage. ⌘ Read more
Senior Canadian diplomat compares Trump’s Golden Dome missile program to a ‘protection racket’ ⌘ Read more
Part 3: How to Become a Pentester in 2025: Programming & Scripting Foundations for pentester ⌘ Read more
plwm: X11 window manager written in Prolog
plwm is a highly customizable X11 dynamic tiling window manager written in Prolog. Main goals of the project are: high code & documentation quality; powerful yet easy customization; covering most common needs of tiling WM users; and to stay small, easy to use and hack on. ↫ plwm GitHub page Tiling window managers are a dime-a-dozen, but the ones using a unique or uncommon programming language do tend to stand out. ⌘ Read more
On my blog: Developer Diary, Memorial Day https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/26/memorial.html #programming #project #devjournal
For context, this is a funny
Interaction between an engineer and copilot on Microsoft’s core programming Language 🤣🤯
Jubilejných 280 rokov príchodu Slovákov do Petrovca
Báčsky Petrovec sa v dňoch 22. až 25. mája 2025 niesol v slávnostnej atmosfére pri príležitosti Dní Petrovca a významného jubilea – 280. výročia príchodu Slovákov do tejto vojvodinskej slovenskej osady. Program bol tradične bohatý a počas troch dní rušno bolo nielen v Miestnom spoločenstve, ale aj v Turistickej organizácii Obce Báčsky Petrovec, v Múzeu vojvodinských Slovákov, v Spolku Petrovských žien, na Námestí … ⌘ Read more
One of the nicest things about Go is the language itself, comparing Go to other popular languages in terms of the complexity to learn to be proficient in:
- Go:
25keywords (Stack Overflow); CSP-style concurrency (goroutines & channels)
- Python 2:
30keywords (TutorialsPoint); GIL-bound threads & multiprocessing (Wikipedia)
- Python 3:
35keywords (Initial Commit); GIL-bound threads,asyncio& multiprocessing (Wikipedia, DEV Community)
- Java:
50keywords (Stack Overflow); threads +java.util.concurrent(Wikipedia)
- C++:
82keywords (Stack Overflow);std::thread, atomics & futures (en.cppreference.com)
- JavaScript:
38keywords (Stack Overflow); single-threaded event loop &async/await, Web Workers (Wikipedia)
- Ruby:
42keywords (Stack Overflow); GIL-bound threads (MRI), fibers & processes (Wikipedia)
Google’s “AI” is convinced Solaris uses systemd
Who doesn’t love a bug bounty program? Fix some bugs, get some money – you scratch my back, I pay you for it. The CycloneDX Rust (Cargo) Plugin decided to run one, funded by the Bug Resilience Program run by the Sovereign Tech Fund. That is, until “AI” killed it. We received almost entirely AI slop reports that are irrelevant to our tool. It’s a library and most reporters didn’t even bother to read the rules or even look at what the intend … ⌘ Read more
Literate Programming with a little bit of spatiality: https://merveilles.town/@akkartik/114547652849162554
On my blog: Firefox’s Tabs https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/21/firefox-tabs.html #programming #techtips
On my blog: Developer Diary, Malcolm X Day https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/19/malcolm-x.html #programming #project #devjournal
10 Most Devastating Computer Viruses
Long before computers made their way into workplaces and homes everywhere, people theorized about a destructive kind of program that could replicate itself and spread between networked machines. In the 1980s and early 1990s, those programs became popularly known as “computer viruses.” You’ve probably had one at some point. All it takes is one wrong […]
The post [10 Most Devastating Computer Viruses](https://listverse.com/2025/05/19/10-most-devastating-comput … ⌘ Read more
What were the MS-DOS programs that the moricons.dll icons were intended for?
Last time, we looked at the legacy icons in progman.exe. But what about moricons.dll? Here’s a table of the icons that were present in the original Windows 3.1 moricons.dll file (in file order) and the programs that Windows used the icons for. As with the icons in progman.exe, these icons are mapped from executables according to the information in the APPS.INF file. ↫ Raymond Chen … ⌘ Read more
New Life Hack: Using LLMs to Generate Constraint Solver Programs for Personal Logistics Tasks
Comments ⌘ Read more
What Problems are Truly Technical, not Social?
Most “tech” problems (and solutions) seem social, with e.g. most newer startups relying on internal connections to gain real world adoption, otherwise blocked due to institutional apathy and bad regulations (sms 2fa, hospital faxes…)
A recent (unlocated) poll asked a similar question: “what percent of workers in the software industry are employed writing programs that should not exist?” While we do have NP-hard problems, politically hard problems like avoi … ⌘ Read more
Rust celebrates ten year anniversary with Rust 1.87.0 release
I generally don’t pay attention to the releases of programming languages unless they’re notable for some reason or another, and I think this one qualifies. Rust is celebrating its ten year anniversary with a brand new release, Rust 1.87.0. This release adds anonymous pipes to the standard library, inline assembly can now jump to labeled blocks in Rust code, and support for the i586 Windows target has been rem … ⌘ Read more
Using AI to build a tactical shooter
This video demonstrates a nice mental model of how to structure AI assisted programming for building prototypes (planning stage and implementation stage), how to increase speed by varying the input (audio vs. text), along with different smaller tactics to improve the process.
On my blog: Firefox’s Local Storage https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/14/firefox-local-storage.html #programming #techtips
600 per cent fruit fly rise feared as pest program runs out of cash
Kids at a small country school in Victoria’s fruit bowl watch their iconic fruit fly warning sign come down — just as government funding to fight the pest runs out. ⌘ Read more
I have zero mental energy for programming at the moment. 🫤
I’ll try to implement the new hashing stuff in jenny before the “deadline”. But I don’t think you’ll see any texudus development from me in the near future. ☹️
End of an era: Tropiculture Australia closes down
One of the Northern Territory’s biggest and most loved commercial nurseries has closed down. ⌘ Read more
A programming env for computer/phone, now with tutorials, learning programming, examples, reference docs: https://akkartik.itch.io/carousel
tar and find were written by the devil to make sysadmins even more miserable
@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz @prologic@twtxt.net Given that all these programs are super old (tar is from the late 1970ies), while trying to retain backwards-compatibilty, I’m not surprised that the UI isn’t too great. 🤔
find has quite a few pitfalls, that is very true. At work, we don’t even use it anymore in more complex scenarios but write Python scripts instead. find can be fast and efficient, but fewer and fewer people lack the knowledge to use it … The same goes for Shell scripting in general, actually.
On my blog: Developer Diary, International Nurses Day https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/12/nurses.html #programming #project #devjournal
Hidden HackerOne & Bugcrowd Programs: How to Get Private Invites
“Private programs are where the real gold lies… but no one tells you how to get there. Let me break it down for you — with secrets most…
[Continue reading on In … ⌘ Read more
Fifty years of poppy growing in Tasmania
The push for pharmaceuticals to combat diabetes and weight loss is leading to a revival of the poppy industry in Tasmania. ⌘ Read more