BREAKING: C++26 will add destructive copy

Security Firm Discovers Remote Worker Is Really a North Korean Hacker —
"The incident occurred at KnowBe4, which develops security awareness programs to teach employees about phishing attacks and cyber threats. The company recently hired a remote software engineer who cleared the interview and background check process. But last week, KnowBe4 uncovered something odd after sending the employee a company-issued Mac." https://www.pcmag.com/news/security-firm-discovers-remote-worker-is-really-a-north-korean-hacker
#Oops

Climate Change Actions Are Far More Popular Than People in U.S. Realize
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-actions-are-far-more-popular-than-people-in-u-s-realize/
“False social reality” obscures widespread U.S. support for climate protection measures

Not just the US, this is a global problem #DontLookUp

Great, #Bitwig 5.2 has a stock #compressor, which I don't proactively hate ;-) I think the previous ones were quite horrible but this does the job (also glues nicely).

Found a #Parallax #Propeller 1 #CPU while cleaning up my place ("breadboard" version).

I wonder what I need to do to make that tick and how do you get a VGA adapter for it.

#holiday activities (last week ongoing).

I learned how to compile DOS COM executables with the latest GCC. It can be done with a trivial LD script, i.e. dump to 0x100. It has a memory topology of single 16-bit code and data segment.

I also learned that event with ELF toolchain “-nostdlib” is still required because crt0.o is not compatible with MS-DOS.

I also implemented couple of features for this “not for profit MS-DOS framework”:

1. At launch visit in the protected mode and load GDT with code segment according to real-mode, limit for data segment set to 4GB, and return back to the real mode. CPU will just use the latest cached descriptors. This means that BIOS calls continue to work but data can be accessed with the full 32-bit address space, because x86 has opcode prefixes in real mode for 32-bit registers.
2. Setup 320x240 256 color planar mode based on tweaking various VGA registers (invented by Michael Abrash originally). It has square pixels and can address multiple, and can page flip by setting the new address to CRT index port.

Not sure what I’m going to do with this next but no rush with MZ EXE (I have idea how approach that w/o sacrificing modern tools) because 64 kB is enough for some time, and I have no data limit ;-)

#x86 #dos #assembly #intel #86box #gcc

note to myself: when #zsh completions are not working as expected in any OS, 9/10 times it is missing -u flag for compinit ;-) Had forgotten this.

From zshcompsys man page:

To avoid these tests and make all files found be used without asking, use the option -u, and to make compinit silently ignore all insecure files and directories use the option -i. This security check is skipped entirely when the -C option is given.

This would be great for #audio #plugins, as they don't need an enormous subset of Win32 API.

This could be realized in practical manner for instance in a future version of #CLAP, which could have up-calls whose API signatures would be along the lines with stuff commonly used for from Win32 API. I.e. basic graphics context stuff, file picker etc. Most of the plugins neither sample nor produce audio. They are just plain data processors with a fancy GUI.

A plugin using only those API's would be universal to all operating systems.

And since PE/COFF is widely know format and used across the operating systems for EFI support, DLL would be perfect format for the binary. That way one could have plugin binary that is cross-operating system compatible. I.e. host would implement the API and provide PE/COFF loader to initialize the plugin.

In addition to PE/COFF there should probably be target for wasm, which would enable plugin ecosystem for web daw's.a

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5v0CK249rI

#MusicProduction

Great I get in my “hello bpf” truncated stacks delivered through a ringbuf:

❯ sudo build/hello-ebpf
[0]: 0xffffa5c74e6e9498
[1]: 0x0000000000000000
[2]: 0x0000000000000000
[3]: 0x0000000000000000
[4]: 0x0000000000000000
[5]: 0x0000000000000000
[6]: 0x0000000000000000
[7]: 0x0000000000000000

It looks like this because I temporarily hooked kprobe to a syscall. Next I change the hook to tpm_transmit.

I do all post-processing from this at the host.

#linux #kernel #bpf #profiler

#iLok comes much more nicer to use once you discover by accident that there is a command-line tool installed to /usr/local/bin

iloktool - 5.9.0 (b5097,  edaa5278, Release, 64 bit, built Oct 25 2023)
Copyright 2023, PACE Anti-Piracy, Inc., All rights reserved. CONFIDENTIAL.

Usage: iloktool <operation> <options>

<operation> is one of the following:
help            Prints this help message.
auths           Show all of the authorizations (licenses) available to your computer.
cloud --open    Open an iLok cloud session. Requires --account & --password for the iLok account.
cloud --close   Close all iLok cloud sessions or with --account & --password close a single session.
cloud --status  Returns the cloud status: "Open" or "Closed".
list            List iLok devices attached to this machine.

<options>:
  -h [ --help ]         Show these usage instructions.
  -a [ --account ] arg  This is the account login ID in the "cloud" operation.
  -c [ --close ]        This is used with the "cloud" operation to close all or
                        a single open cloud session.
  -o [ --open ]         This is used with the "cloud" operation to open a cloud
                        session.
  -p [ --password ] arg This is the account password for the "cloud" operation.
  -s [ --status ]       This is used with the "cloud" operation to get the
                        cloud status (Open or Closed).
  -t [ --type ] arg     If specified, this filters the "list" operation by the
                        specified iLok type.
  -V [ --version ]      Show the version number.
  -v [ --verbose ]      Indicate verbose output.

Examples (omit the -v at the end if you don't want verbose):

If you specify no operation, you get a non-verbose list of all local and
remote iLoks:
    iloktool

List all, just iLok1, just iLok2 and just iLok3 type devices respectively:
    iloktool list -v
    iloktool list --type 1 -v
    iloktool list --type 2 -v
    iloktool list --type 3 -v

Display all auths (licenses) available to your computer:
    iloktool auths -v

Open a cloud session, close a cloud session, close all cloud sessions or get
cloud status respectively:
    iloktool cloud --open --account your_account --password your_password -v
    iloktool cloud --close --account your_account --password your_password -v
    iloktool cloud --close -v
    iloktool cloud --status -v

Once you successfully use your account and password to open or close a cloud
session, your password will be saved in the computer's key chain, and you can
omit the password in subsequent open and close operations:
    iloktool cloud --open --account your_account -v
    iloktool cloud --close --account your_account -v

I used to hate iLok but these days I think that it would best if all #audio #plugin companies would use the only solution that has matured somewhat usable instead of inventing their own factors worse licensing schemes.

#MusicProduction #licensing

Anyone who works with #embedded toolchains knows that #build2 fixed #toolchain approach neither works for C nor C++. It has benefits, yes, but it is simply unusable in wide range of applications.

#C #cplusplus

Life hack for github-cli gh repo clone $(printf 'squidowl/halloy%.0s ' {1..2}), i.e. clone into owner/repo directory, not just repo. #github

EDIT:

I wrote a small #bash (obviously works also for #zsh) function to make cloning easier in my environment:

gh-repo-work() {
  local url=$1
  # Strip path from URL:
  local url_path=${url#*\.*/}
  # Clone to the Github tree:
  gh repo clone $url_path "$HOME/work/github/$url_path"
}

“Demo”:

~ main*
❯ gh-repo-work m4b/goblin
Cloning into '/Users/jarkko/work/github/m4b/goblin'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 7261, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (1215/1215), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (326/326), done.
remote: Total 7261 (delta 977), reused 922 (delta 889), pack-reused 6046
Receiving objects: 100% (7261/7261), 3.22 MiB | 4.69 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (5565/5565), done.

~ main*
❯ ls -1 work/github/m4b/goblin
CHANGELOG.md
Cargo.toml
LICENSE
Makefile
README.md
assets
etc
examples
fuzz
fuzz-afl
src
tests

~ main*
❯ rm -rf work/github/m4b/goblin

~ main*
❯ gh-repo-work https://github.com/m4b/goblin
Cloning into '/Users/jarkko/work/github/m4b/goblin'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 7261, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (1227/1227), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (337/337), done.
remote: Total 7261 (delta 988), reused 923 (delta 890), pack-reused 6034
Receiving objects: 100% (7261/7261), 3.23 MiB | 6.68 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (5564/5564), done.

~ main*
❯ ls -1 work/github/m4b/goblin
CHANGELOG.md
Cargo.toml
LICENSE
Makefile
README.md
assets
etc
examples
fuzz
fuzz-afl
src
tests

The list of papers accepted at the 2nd #eBPF workshop has been published by ACM: https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3672197#tableOfContent.

Since I use #IRC "professionally" I spent 50 something euros to for annual #IRCCloud subscription.

The main reason is the bouncer they have in it that "just works" without even trying: https://blog.irccloud.com/bouncer/

If I ever build a company I will get IRCCloud Teams instead of Slack ;-)

#Finnish #italo #disco #banger from 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2GTRKgB6RM ;-) #aksuli #electroclash

Would be cool if there was TUI client for Google Sheets. I use it for tax reports etc. thanks to GoogleFinance() macro. Can't live without it. ****ings to #Google for this horrible vendor lock-in.

At #Intel I even developed a tax reporting template that became a minor internal hit among Intel #Finland employees :-) I hate myself for loving web app but it is soo convenient for moneyz.

Trump to the press: I will crush you like the bugs you are.

Journalists: Haha there goes Trump again.

Biden: I'm incredibly disappointed in your coverage:

Journalists: How dare you? Resign immediately, you ungrateful pathetic SOB.

Flow planned for my cheapo #BPF flame graph for a single driver:

1. tpm_transmit()
2. Chop the backtrace into two pieces.
3. Keep the top N rows, forget the the bottom.
4. Publish N rows with 256 bytes per row room for a call entry, i.e. 0x100*N bytes to the BPF ring buffer.

The host side then consumes the fixed-size packets and puts matching stacks to the same bucket. A second thread can periodically then compose flame graph of the data corrected so far.

Somehow got into learning this eBPF stuff during the holidays :-) Super interesting and addicting.

#eBPF

#ladybird is compatible with #lwn ;-)

https://github.com/m4b/goblin/issues/415