While I'll ignore the System D hyperbole, your point about Unix has merit.
I think the *BSD are also good, at least from an educational standpoint, with their relative simplicity and low system requirements. Since there is a lot of integration making a from scratch distro might take less material, but it could be supplemented with more in depth/sysadmin exploration.
From an education standpoint for those who really, really want to understand, the *BSD init and SysVinit systems require direct human administration. You break it, you fix it. Then, and only then, does learning systemd's ''then something happens behind the curtain'' type of automation make sense. If the student decides that one is more suitable than the other(s), they've done so from an enlightened vantage point.
I thought systemd was fairly straightforwards, even if it does too many different things for my tastes. What's an example of it doing a too much magic behind the curtain thing?
Bear in mind that the entire purpose of systemd is to replace a huge amount of previous system administration solutions in a fashion that is centralized and automated, and not in need of as much human intervention as previous init systems. For copious examples, look through these comments and the huge number of previous HN threads on this huge topic. That is my answer.
I can do gainsaying too: surely you didn't look through these comments and the huge number of previous HN threads on this huge topic. Do your own work.
When I was building the initial version of my distro starting from a Linux Mint computer, one time I accidentally double-mounted the virtual filesystems (/tmp, /run, /proc, etc), on the target volume as my script was too primitive and didn't check the mounts first.
Exactly 60 seconds later, the whole system crashed.
Later I accidentally did this again, except this time immediately caught the problem and undid it. No matter--systemd still crashed 60 seconds later anyhow.
Or like the bug that was revealed a while back where the firmware EEPROM was writable by default in /sys or wherever it was, resulting in somebody's firmware getting overwritten and the system bricked. lol
That's the systemd life for you, in a nutshell. That sort of thing times a thousand. Not all at once, mind you--it will just take a nibble out of you here and there on and off until the end of time. After a while it will straight up fuck you, guaranteed. Which is exactly what it was designed to do.
Same with anything "Linux Puttering" touches. The guy who is now officially a Microsoft employee, as people were saying he really was all along.
More and more Youtube search results are a playlist when you click the result.
This causes a fatalistic chain where the video has a captcha, and if you don't answer it in 5-15 seconds it goes to the next in the playlist and the process repeats. This turbo charges uncontrollably down the series of videos.
The solution is within seconds remove the &pp= (or go back a few pages and do so) this gives you as much time as you need to solve the captcha. Or remember to copy the search result link instead of clicking on it and clean it up.
I wrote to youtube about this bug where playlists don't wait for you to answer the captcha and never heard back from them, which is what I expected, but figured I'd try.
The verbs used in RDMA are Turing complete [0] [1] . They don't seem to be all be accessible from SMB3/SMB Direct, and the SMB opcodes themselves seem lacking, but with enough effort maybe you can get access or add what you need and this would form a path to finally have the ultimate Super Mario Brothers 3 Remote Direct Memory Access tech.
From the Quanta Books website [0] it seems it will be a while before anybody can read them, the article lists a couple dates but all the dates are on its website.
Everything Is Fields
By David Tong (Early 2027)
Six Math Essentials
By Terence Tao (November 2026)
The Proof in the Code
By Kevin Hartnett (June 2026, Preorder Available)
Plan 9 extensions would only require enough examples to justify and might not take years. Though your taking years assessment would be right if there's a dearth of kernel spots to add up where automatic pointer conversion for anonymous fields, or using the typedef name to access them, offer some improvement, not necessarily even a huge improvement.
Since with the Microsoft extension, it was just waiting until enough examples were woven into the discussion to overcome the back and forth that was preventing "biting the bullet".
I wonder if this would actually make vision worse, increasing nearsightedness or causing the condition. It seems that dark words on light backgrounds can cause your eyes to elongate over time[0] or other conditions to form, and it seems it is no coincidence that many readers require glasses.
Would the same occur with dark mode on a transparent background? While I am not saying that it would negatively effect the eyes, I am skeptical of this claim of letting the eyes relax, it seems like marketing.
[0] Wagner, S., Strasser, T. Impact of text contrast polarity on the retinal activity in myopes and emmetropes using modified pattern ERG. Sci Rep 13, 11101 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-38192-9
Poorly worded title, something like this would be clearer:
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Chinese Authorities Threaten Mainland Relatives to Shut Down Film Festival in New York
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Even the subheading from the article seemed better:
"Chinese Police Harass Filmmakers, Families to Undermine Free Expression Abroad"
Though I would of made it "Filmmaker's Families".
How can you be free if your family is held hostage. As soon as a person from China becomes free or achieves anything, this is what happens.
This is what they do just because of a movie they don't care for. Imagine how much further they go when they have a bigger ask for something they truly want.
The coercion is very strong, and why some end up in jail for spying or other criminal acts in the hosting country, even if they end up citizens, and love the place. Very messed up.
It is great that Mercedes-Benz now owns a highly performant electric engine. But is this just an impressive lab breakthrough, or can it work in the real world for their cars? Which means enduring from freezing to high temps, hours of sustained driving, and years of that (or equivalent endurance testing).
It's not a lab model (according to the article), but it's likely aimed at performance cars. For consumer cars, 150 KW / 200 HP is enough and efficiency is more important than weight.
Of course, when consumer car efficiency increases, they won't necessarily get higher ranges because the manufacturers will instead try to downsize the battery.
They've used their previous motors in production Ferraris and koensiggs and also in aircraft. They have the capability to make 100,000 motors a year so this is definitely not just lab stuff!
I've used Reddit since before subreddits, and I would never want this place to go down that route. But it seems like there is a desire for some of those features Reddit had in its early years.
For me, a touch more Markdown like for text links [text](url) would be nice, not asking for image support or anything like that, though. As cool as the [0] is, the <a href=> tag and its predecessors were invented early on for a reason.
Just occasionally I do really want to respond with an image because it explains a comment a lot better than text might. The same problem exists on Reddit and I think the potential for misuse is potentially too high but it feels to me to support the idea of high quality comments. At a certain point a high quality argument requires a graph or diagram to explain a more complex thing.
At the moment the only way this type of discussion really works is that people post on their own sites and we sometimes see that more detailed response. The risk of images descending into meme exchanges I think is quite low given the participants. Not sure to the extent more formatting would be good but I can definitely see its value and I use it on Reddit sometimes.
Linking to Imgur [0] when needed should be sufficient. HN allowing direct image inclusion would likely end up being quite a mess. HN being text-only (and emoji-free) is one of the things I appreciate about it.
[0] or whatever the recommended alternative is nowadays
On second thoughts given people are downvoting this as a low quality comment rather than responding on the ways they disagree this audience would descend into the exact same problems on Reddit. My position is thus reversed, it is not something that HN would use properly.
Yes, it is frustrating that rather than make an argument, people downvote thoughtful comments as if it was a low quality post. Perhaps the downvoting feature is actually part of the problem.
Frankly, my subjective observation was that downvoting without responding just for disagreeing with a comment increased significantly at the start of the first Trump term.
I think the *BSD are also good, at least from an educational standpoint, with their relative simplicity and low system requirements. Since there is a lot of integration making a from scratch distro might take less material, but it could be supplemented with more in depth/sysadmin exploration.
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