Micropost

One of the most crucial pieces of any UNIX-like operating system is the init dæmon process. In Linux, this process is started by the kernel, and it’s the first userspace process to spawn and the last one to die during shutdown. During the history of UNIX and Linux, many init systems have gained popularity and then faded away. In this article, I focus on the history of the init system as it relates to Linux, and I talk about the role of init in a modern Linux system. I also relate some of the history of the System V Init (SysV) scheme, which was the de facto standard for many Linux distributions for a long time. Then I cover a couple more modern approaches to system initialization, such as Upstart and systemd. Finally, I pay some attention to how things work in systemd, as this seems to be the popular choice at the moment for several of the largest distributions. ...

In the modern era, software is commonly delivered as a service: called web apps, or software-as-a-service. The twelve-factor app is a methodology for building software-as-a-service apps that: Use declarative formats for setup automation, to minimize time and cost for new developers joining the project; Have a clean contract with the underlying operating system, offering maximum portability between execution environments; Are suitable for deployment on modern cloud platforms, obviating the need for servers and systems administration; Minimize divergence between development and production, enabling continuous deployment for maximum agility; And can scale up without significant changes to tooling, architecture, or development practices. The twelve-factor methodology can be applied to apps written in any programming language, and which use any combination of backing services (database, queue, memory cache, etc). ...

“La única forma de ganar es no jugar”. Tom Murphy, programador, creó en 2013 un programa que era capaz de aprender a jugar a Super Mario Bros de forma que en sucesivas partidas conseguía salvar los distintos obstáculos que se encontraba el personaje hasta ganar el juego. Cuando enfrentó su software al Tetris, sin embargo, Murphy se encontró con que no había victoria posible. » R. Pérez | elconfidencial.com

El cerebro es un órgano fascinante y relativamente desconocido para la ciencia (y para muchos que tienen uno y lo usan poco, pero eso es otra historia) y es capaz de cosas realmente increíbles, como por ejemplo ser consciente de si mismo, pero sin embargo también tiene un buen número de defectos que permite engañarlo de una manera relativamente fácil. Las desarrolladoras lo saben y muchas de ellas se aprovechan de ellas, pervirtiendo un modelo como el free-to-play que podría tener enormes virtudes y convirtiéndolo en una máquina sacacuartos del Lado Oscuro. ...

You don’t often see clever builds like this Technic Dot Matrix Display by AncientJames from New Zealand. As the reel starts rolling, the patterns on the cards inside correspond with the patterns on the display and can show anything that fits into a 5x5 square. The creator’s video is titled, “Everything is awesome”. Well, this build certainly is! » Gergo Vas | kotaku.com

The pursuit of lock-picking is as old as the lock, which is itself as old as civilization. But in the entire history of the world, there was only one brief moment, lasting about 70 years, where you could put something under lock and key—a chest, a safe, your home—and have complete, unwavering certainty that no intruder could get to it. This is a feeling that security experts call “perfect security.” Since we lost perfect security in the 1850s, it has remained elusive. Despite tremendous leaps forward in security technology, we have never been able to get perfect security back. ...

El 19 de abril de 1965, Gordon Earle Moore publicaba una editorial en la revista Electronics que cambió el cómo entendíamos la tecnología. En ella aseguraba que la complejidad de los circuitos integrados se duplicaría cada año (luego se modificó para fijar el periodo de dos años), a la vez que los precios y costes de fabricación se verían reducidos. Cincuenta años después conocemos esta afirmación como la Ley de Moore, un exponente de la tecnología que se ha ido cumpliendo generación tras generación, pero con muchas dudas al respecto. ...

A complete simulation of the 6502 processor (used in the Commodore 64, Apple ][ and the NES). » visual6502.org

Ten years ago this week, the Linux kernel community faced a daunting challenge: They could no longer use their revision control system BitKeeper and no other Software Configuration Management (SCMs) met their needs for a distributed system. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, took the challenge into his own hands and disappeared over the weekend to emerge the following week with Git. Today Git is used for thousands of projects and has ushered in a new level of social coding among programmers. ...

Pero nada, oye, les da igual. Da igual que las webs de descargas, con la ley en la mano, no sean ilegales. Da igual que ningún juez en España (ninguno, ¿eh? que se dice pronto) haya cerrado nunca una web de descargas. Da igual que las pocas que han cerrado lo hayan hecho motu proprio por miedo o por acorralamiento. Da igual que gran parte de las querellas contra webs de descargas ni siquiera hayan llegado a juicio, sino que los jueces hayan sobreseído los casos al ver evidente la ausencia de delito. Todo eso les da igual. ...