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In C, const can also answer B, but only in non-pointer contexts.

The doc won't point it out explicitly and I apologize if my explanation offends anybody, but the intention is basically leftist, state-friendly bitcoin. The authors took a look at the anarchy of real cryptocurrencies and realized they don't actually like anarchy, so instead they want to make something "wholesome" that governments would be willing to go along with (since they can tax it).

They are funded by EU and banks in an attempt to claw back some market share from cryptocurrencies which are slowly getting banned.


> The doc won't point it out explicitly and I apologize if my explanation offends anybody, but the intention is basically leftist, state-friendly bitcoin. The authors took a look at the anarchy of real cryptocurrencies and realized they don't actually like anarchy, so instead they want to make something "wholesome" that governments would be willing to go along with (since they can tax it).

While this is correct, I want to add a point:

Many hackers are not per se opposed to taxation (how else should public services be financed), but deeply distrustful about the red tape involved (the taxation laws in Germany are insanely complicated). Basically, their attitude is: if the government wants to tax "my" cryptocurrency, it is the government's responsibility to make the taxation laws as elegant, privacy-conscious and hassle-free as humanly possible.

In other words: if the government does not create taxation laws that are as hassle-free and privacy-conscious as possible (in a very strong sense: if in terms of effort (including the time to understand and apply the laws), it is much easier to ignore the laws than to turn in your taxes, the government failed its job), the government failed its job, so it does not deserve a concession from the cryptocurrencies' developers side.


Unfortunately that's accurate. From the SNB whitepaper linked at https://www.taler-systems.com/en/digital-currency.html you get to https://www.snb.ch/de/publications/research/working-papers/2... and then to https://www.snb.ch/public/asset/de/www-snb-ch/publications/r... :

> In addition, charging an exchange fee would allow the central bank to implement negative interest rates, if deemed necessary. The central bank could also impose a conversion limit per customer for AML/CFT (“cash” limits) or financial stability reasons (to prevent hoarding or bank runs), if desired.

Well goody.

The idea of blind signatures is cool, as is the fact that the merchant doesn't need to identify the customer, as is the fact that you could deploy neat local currencies with something like this, but AFAIK you still can't give 20€ to your friend without the exchange knowing and approving, or it becoming a race to see who spends the tokens corresponding to the 20€. And that's not very privacy-preserving.


IIRC isn't part of the idea that there are multiple central banks, you can choose which one you want to use, and currencies are exchanged automatically when needed?

Good summary.

To others reading, it's just gimped Chaumian ecash, as the privacy is removed for the receiver. It actually seems like it could be useable now (was just terrible for a long time) but Cashu (bitcoin based ecash) is streets ahead.


The way caches are managed in CI is bonkers (at least in GitLab, but GitHub probably does the same). I guess it's built to conveniently work with the simplest of projects. I had to reimplement the mechanism by hand just to get basic things working, like not downloading the entire cache when only a few entries will be used for each build

and for programs that don't respect this convention ./--file

I'd say Java's virtual threads are also a parallelism construct (at least in the performance sense, not logical guarantees), since they're scheduled on a pool.


Just to nitpick, it's a 8MB-sized mapping, not 8MB of RAM.


Likewise, on Windows, it's 1 MB of reserved memory but only 4 KB of initially committed memory.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/stack-...


Write a subleq interpreter with a magnet and a steady hand? (Hopefully the magnet is not compromised)


I am trying to imagine how the magnet could be compromised. Could you theoretically embed an electromagnetic and a controller within a decoy magnet and somehow detect what was being recorded and subvert it? Probably not but... No, just probably not.


At that point maybe they'll just knock you out and torture you for whatever secrets instead


I can believe that... We've had logging macros break because line numbers no longer fit in an u16

I would love a TV show like "Hell's kitchen" except it's code bases and development processes.


W^X is typically per mapping, not per memory page and does not interfere with JIT compilation.


Sure, but it still means that the OS has to decide who is allowed to do it and to what extent. Sophisticated worms like Stuxnet would be much harder with strict W^X for example, since CVE-2010-2568 and the like would be much harder to execute.


> Sure, but it still means that the OS has to decide who is allowed to do it and to what extent

It has to do that anyway?


Only if it wants to allow Writable Memory to become Executable, or basically, allow JIT.


How do you propose preventing that without a check?


Signed binaries with the proper assigned OS capabilities.


Yes, but with JIT, you can't really verify what the application does upfront. That is the entire point.


Capabilities are a way to control that, and the point being that only responsible proven applications get the certificate, hence how it all goes on iOS.


You're making the assumption that "responsible" is something provable, but that is not the case, it is specially not easy to prove software is secure from tampering its behaviour.


For that there is bytecode verification as intermediate step, and if you want to go crazy with security, hardware memory tagging with capabilities.

Which at this point most companies would rather save money and forbid JIT altogether.

Note that mainframes and micros have JIT environments that aren't at the same safety level as regular desktop PCs.

For example,

https://medium.com/@dhemanthc/ibm-i-architecture-how-timi-an...


"per band" is also hilarious, as if you could get that kind of data rate in 2.4GHz


It's slightly better than the aggregate number :p


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