"I get what they mean, but macOS is even Unix certified."
What do they mean?
To me the blog author is primarily focused on the issue of _control_, i.e., being able to control the hardware that he purchased as opposed to letting a company control it, e.g., through pre-installed software, remotely installed "updates", default settings, etc.
He cannot control its default behaviour hence he wants to "slim MacOS down"
"UNIX" was a pun on the name of another OS that allegedly was accused of being too large and complex. That OS, Multics, was designed to run only on specific hardware from GE and later Honeywell
UNIX was a smaller, less complex alternative that, after its rewrite in C, could more easily run on a variety of hardware and be modified by the people using it
Apple does not allow people using MacOS to modify it
MacOS is proprietary; unlike AT&T's UNIX it has not been released into the research community resulting in non-commercial, open source "MacOS-like" OS projects (HackIntosh notwithstanding)
A user cannot write programs for MacOS without restriction by the company, e.g., prior approval, "developer" fees, etc.
MacOS cannot easily be used on a variety of hardware, only on Apple's proprietary hardware
Compared to non-commercial UNIX-like OS, MacOS is larger and more complex
> To me the blog author is primarily focused on the issue of _control_, i.e., being able to control the hardware that he purchased as opposed to letting a company control it, e.g., through pre-installed software, remotely installed "updates", default settings, etc.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the OS being an UNIX or not. It's a bit weird to see the allusion to UNIX to be fair: Howard Oakley is deep enough down the rabbit hole that I would expect him to know that History is full of proprietary and closed UNIXes.
Some of the drivers are. The core is open source, though. macOS' particular choice for its graphical user land is proprietary as well, but AT&T's UNIX had no such equivalent, aside from some experiments, so that doesn't make sense to use as a point of comparison. Not to mention similar systems in the UNIX-esq space, like SunView, NeWS, VUE, NeXTSTEP, etc. were proprietary too. That has always been par for the course in the world of "graphical UNIX". The so-called "Linux desktop" is the aberration.
You can, of course, run an open source graphical user land, like Gnome, instead on top of macOS' UNIX-y fashioned bits if you so wish.
"The latest revelations about Meta's malfeasance come from newly unsealed court documents. In 2020, the company discovered through its own experimental research - an initiative known as Project Mercury - that when users reduced the amount of time they spent on Facebook, their levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness decreased. Meta's lawyers buried the findings."
"And we start with what is perhaps the most succinct acknowledgment of the problem, from a chat between two UX Researchers: "oh my gosh yall IG is a drug... We're basically pushers... We are causing Reward Deficit Disorder bc people are binging on IG so much they can't feel reward anymore... like their reward tolerance is so high... I know Adam [Mosseri] doesn't want to hear it he freaked out when I talked about dopamine in my teen fundamentals leads review but its undeniable! Its biological and psychological... the top down directives drive it all towards making sure people keep coming back for more. That would be fine if its productive but most of the time it isn't... the majority is just mindless scrolling and ads." Ex. 74 at 2152-53."
"One Meta employee warned, "if the results are bad and we don't publish and they leak, is it going to look like tobacco companies doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves? I went... oh." Ex. 91 at 1943."
What happens when a so-called "tech" company that cannot be trusted wants to punch holes in the user's firewall without prior consent from the user
Purely hypothetical, of course
For example, WhatsApp tries to connect to at least two servers on UDP port 3478 without asking the user if this is what they want to do or explaining the purposes of these connections
Example server addresses are
57.144.221.54
31.13.70.48
3478 is the port used for "Simple Traversal of User Datagram Protocol (UDP)
Through Network Address Translators (NATs)", or "STUN" for short
"One such implementation that broke is the getaddrinfo function in glibc, which is commonly used on Linux for DNS resolution. When looking at its getanswer_r implementation, we can indeed see it expects to find the CNAME records before any answers:"
Wherever possible I compile with gethostbyname instead of getaddrinfo. I use musl instead of glibc
Nothing against IPv6 but I do not use it on the computers and networks I control
When compiling software written by others, sometimes there are compile-time options that allow not using getaddrinfo or IPv6
For example,
links (--without-getaddrinfo)
haproxy (USE_GETADDRINFO="")
tnftp (--disable-ipv6)
elinks (--disable-ipv6)
wolfssl (ipv6 disabled by default)
stunnel (--disable-ipv6)
socat (--disable-ipv6)
and many more
Together with localhost TLS forward proxy I also use lots of older software that only used gethostbyname, e.g., original netcat, ucspi-tcp, libwww, original links, etc.
Generally I avoid mobile OS (corporate OS for data collection, surveillance and ad services)
Mobile data is disabled. I almost never use cellular networks for internet
Mobile sucks for internet IMHO; I have zero expectation re: speed and I cannot control what ISPs choose to do
For me, non-corporate UNIX-like OS are smaller, faster, easier to control, more interesting
Your code runs slower on mobile devices, since (as a rule of thumb) mobile networks are ipv6-only and ipv4 traffic has to pass through a few layers of tunneling.
"When hostnames and headers are hard to edit: mitmproy add-ons"
"The mitmproxy tool also supports addons where you can transform HTTP requests between Claude Code and third-party web servers. For example, you could write an add-on that intercepts https://api.anthropic.com and updates the X-API-Key header with an actual Anthropic API Key."
"You can then pass this add-on via mitmproxy -s reroute_hosts.py."
If using HAproxy, then is no need to write "add-ons", just edit the configuration file and reload
"I believe that inference systems not using the Python stack (which I do not appreciate) are a way to free open models usage and make AI more accessible."
(a) Enlistment Oath.- Each person enlisting in an armed force shall take the following oath:
I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (So help me God)."
Note that the Officer's oath Does not mention the President:
> I ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God. (Title 5 U.S. Code 3331, an individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services)
The full text of Title 5 U.S. Code Section 3331 is as follows
5 U.S.C. S: 3331 - Oath of office
An individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services, shall take the following oath: "I, AB, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God." This section does not affect other oaths required by law.
Are you sure it's still that and hasn't been changed to "I swear by God this holy oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to the President of the United States and people, Donald Trump, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared to give my life for this oath"?
What do they mean?
To me the blog author is primarily focused on the issue of _control_, i.e., being able to control the hardware that he purchased as opposed to letting a company control it, e.g., through pre-installed software, remotely installed "updates", default settings, etc.
He cannot control its default behaviour hence he wants to "slim MacOS down"
"UNIX" was a pun on the name of another OS that allegedly was accused of being too large and complex. That OS, Multics, was designed to run only on specific hardware from GE and later Honeywell
UNIX was a smaller, less complex alternative that, after its rewrite in C, could more easily run on a variety of hardware and be modified by the people using it
Apple does not allow people using MacOS to modify it
MacOS is proprietary; unlike AT&T's UNIX it has not been released into the research community resulting in non-commercial, open source "MacOS-like" OS projects (HackIntosh notwithstanding)
A user cannot write programs for MacOS without restriction by the company, e.g., prior approval, "developer" fees, etc.
MacOS cannot easily be used on a variety of hardware, only on Apple's proprietary hardware
Compared to non-commercial UNIX-like OS, MacOS is larger and more complex
https://eclecticlight.co/2023/12/04/macos-sonoma-is-setting-...
reply