/dev/chat

Faheem Mitha

06:38

@MichaelHomer I'm not sure what is meant by "strongly-defined category". Can you elaborate? Thanks.

Michael Homer

06:56

Like most programming paradigms, the definition mostly comes down to the Potter Stewart test

Faheem Mitha

I know it when I see it?

Michael Homer

And you could define first-class functions as a necessary component and render that trivial, but it's not either universally agreed nor clear that you should

yes

Faheem Mitha

I think of first class functions as objects in their own right, which you can pass around like one does with a "normal" variable. Though that's hardly a precise definition.

Michael Homer

For example, are concatenative languages functional? Can they be? I would say yes

On first-class functions, the line between "a function" and "a code quotation" is not as crisp as it first appears

Faheem Mitha

@MichaelHomer I'm not familiar with concatenative languages, though according to Wikipedia, Postscript is one of them.

Jeff Schaller

10:37

Oh no, people can start parsing ls? What's next, will dd now have --options? Will tar's man page fit on one page? Will ed become the standard text editor? /o\

Faheem Mitha

@JeffSchaller That's a really old question. Mikeserv hasn't been around in chat for a while, and possibly not on the site, though he did post an answer on 17th Jan.

Jeff Schaller

I saw it on the front/active page and was curious what had changed; muru posted a bounty with the changes in ls

Faheem Mitha

11:04

@JeffSchaller I wonder why he chose that question for a bounty.

terdon

11:32

This is intriguing and reproducible. Obviously, I don't understand inodes well.

2

Q: My inode count is drastically larger than file and folder count in a mounted partition

I've been dealing with an issue whereby df is reporting a much larger usage of an exfat partition mounted onto my system from a USB drive. df -h gives: Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sdb3 4.6T 4.2T 396G 92% /media/smb Whereas du -ch reports: 3.7T . 3.7T tota...

Stephen Kitt

@terdon I’m not sure whether this applies to ExFAT, but on FAT, inodes are fictitious, so the behaviour seen here might be a consequence of that

terdon

11:50

@StephenKitt I was thinking it might be something like that since it seems like it's an external drive, but I can reproduce it on my system with an encryptfs mounted volume (dir):

$ df -i .
Filesystem               Inodes   IUsed    IFree IUse% Mounted on
/home/terdon/.saphetor 21250048 1171150 20078898    6% /home/terdon/saphetor

$ du -cs  --inodes
15576	.
15576	total

Andras Deak

@JeffSchaller finally! I've been waiting so long for this. I mean to be able to counter-wiseass people telling me not to parse ls! :'D

Stephen Kitt

@AndrasDeak once the new ls has propagated to distributions people are actually using ;-)

Andras Deak

a gnu dawn shall break

terdon

@AndrasDeak Show yourself out. :P

Andras Deak

it's surprisingly hard to find info about coreutils releases

OK, 9.0 was uploaded to the ftp server two weeks ago, I assume that's the release date

> W: GPG error: deb.debian.org/debian jessie Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available:

What did I break now?

> Jessie also benefits from Long Term Support (LTS) until the end of June 2020.

that's probably it

Crap, I needed that for libssl1.0.0 for Icewind Dale... which I still haven't played

Stephen Kitt

12:05

@AndrasDeak I added various old libssl (and other) libraries to my (private, local) repository for safe-keeping ;-)

Andras Deak

I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get around to playing the game in a few years :)

Faheem Mitha

12:18

@AndrasDeak It sounds like you might still be running Jessie. If so, why? Though maybe I misunderstood.

Andras Deak

I'm running debian testing, but I added jessie's repo to have access to ancient libssl which is needed by an old game

Stephen Kitt

@AndrasDeak release dates are recorded in NEWS

Andras Deak

@StephenKitt noted, thanks

Faheem Mitha

15:42

@AndrasDeak Is that possible? Wouldn't it conflict with the default libssl?

Stephen Kitt

@FaheemMitha that’s the magic of sonames

Faheem Mitha

16:33

@StephenKitt Well, as long as it works.

ilkkachu

17:32

@JeffSchaller eägh, muru's idea about looking for a answer about the new development on that is a nice idea... just too bad that the problematic idea there is in the question itself, and all the king's votes and all the king's bounties will not make the question move any lower on the page...

Faheem Mitha

Though I would have thought the libssl would need to be rebuilt for a newer platform, because it would be linking to older libraries, but perhaps that's not necessary either. Seeing as it is all about exporting symbols, which the newer libraries would already know about.

αғsнιη

17:52

Is virtualbox.org really down?

fra-san

18:08

@ilkkachu Glad to see this point being brought up. I've never felt I could consider that Q/A the canonical one on parsing ls. There, the things I would point less experienced users to are either buried or framed in a way that makes them harder than necessary to get. If we (the community) ever decided to replace it (as the canonical Q) with a more accessible one, I would happily try to be of help.

cutrightjm

18:58

curious, why so many downvotes on the post that mentions AWS is sponsoring unix.SE, any ideas?

Faheem Mitha

@cutrightjm Link?

@JeffSchaller Just happened to look at your answer on the "getting to know you thread". You say you had a Epson Laserjet 1500 that lasted 20 years? Is that common?

From the phrasing, I suppose you no longer have it.

fra-san

6

Q: AWS will soon be sponsoring Unix & Linux

We're excited to announce that AWS will be sponsoring Unix & Linux beginning September 27 through December 31. We wanted to give you a heads up and walk you through what it will look like. How and where will the sponsorship be displayed? The sponsorship will be shown in the top right header of th...

discussion featured

@cutrightjm The community likes AWS less than IBM, maybe?

Faheem Mitha

@fra-san Thank you. I looked at Meta briefly, but did not see it.

@cutrightjm Just speculation, but Amazon has a reputation for treating their workers terribly, which not everyone is OK with.

And there were blog posts I read from someone who was relatively senior, like a senior developer or something (forget his name), that Amazon has a reputation for being a terrible place to work. I think he meant in terms of atmosphere. In contrast, Google is (or was) great, at least according to him.

Also, it's possible Amazon is destroying retail in the places where it is, which again may not be welcome everywhere.

Disclaimer: I know little about any of this. I just read some articles. But I do buy things on Amazon.

I do notice that the Amazon delivery people who arrive here seem very harried.

cutrightjm

19:17

Was just curious, I personally think it's good that these larger companies are sponsoring unix.SE. All the downvotes yet no one explained the AWS one. At least the IBM post has some reasoning

Faheem Mitha

@cutrightjm Well, at least Amazon shareholders like Amazon. For the rest of the planet, I suppose it's a mixed bag. Mostly people don't love giant corporations, because once they get big enough they think they can just do anything.

That post doesn't specify what sponsorship involves.

@JeffSchaller You wrote:

> I started off grading exams, but that quickly turned into C programming on the VAX there; the program would generate randomized tests -- all with the same structure but with different coefficients or numerical values, to prevent cheating.

I don't understand how that is C programming. It sounds like a job for TeX.

fra-san

19:34

@cutrightjm The issue with the tracking ad likely applies to AWS too (I didn't check, but my ad blocker prevents the AWS logo from loading). IMO a weak argument (when it comes to downvoting), though, since tracking is part of how things work here, as clearly stated in SE's Privacy Policy.

Andras Deak

20:14

@cutrightjm why do you think it's good that these larger companies are sponsoring unix.SE? What benefit does it provide for the community?

Jeff Schaller

22:35

@FaheemMitha sample size of 1, so the scientist in me won't let me extrapolate much. And I'm not a member of any Epson Laserjet usergroups so I don't even have much anecdata to share. I think I heard of one other person using a laserjet for quite a while (over 10 years), so ... plausible?

I do not have the printer any more, and miss it. Printers these days! /o\

@FaheemMitha I'm sure TeX-produced exams would have looked amazing -- much better than the ASCII-based ones we produced, but it I was just the low-skilled low-paid laborer who knew enough to get logged in, mangle C code to produce new tests, get them printed, pick them up, then (later) help grade them. I thought it was pretty nifty for the time. Since the exams were low-level / required classes, I suspect the urge to cheat was high, and this technique made (direct) cheating impossible.

Andras Deak

@JeffSchaller what about printers these days? I've been using an HP laserjet at home for 7 years now, and it's pretty good, and good as new. But I don't have crazy needs.

> Total Pages Printed: 11908
Total Input Jams: 2
Total Output Jams: 0
Total Cartridge Jams: 0
Narrow Media Page Count: 54
Pages per Job: 2.65

Jeff Schaller

@AndrasDeak I also don't have crazy needs -- we needed one when the kids were doing remote school and I got to print homework papers left & right. It's just a consumer-level inkjet. But this one has a fax machine, a scanner, and something else I don't need. Plus its network cards falls off the wifi network regularly despite several efforts on my part to keep it alive from the outside. This printer replaced a previous inkjet which had some sort of ignominous death.

Andras Deak

Inkjets are meh

Jeff Schaller

you can say that again

(goes off to see if laser printers still exist and what they cost)

Andras Deak

This was a dirt cheap P1606dn

Third-party toners aren't too expensive either

(Unlike colour laserjets :'( )

Jeff Schaller

22:51

(insert eyeroll at Amazon's filter of "Climate Pledge Friendly") -- do qualified printers use ... less dead trees??!

Andras Deak

We also have a scanner-and-inkjet HP, with "ink advantage", allegedly using less ink. But that might not be a climate thing...

Jeff Schaller

("control method: voice" ?!? -- "Computer! print Bob's Math homework, pages two through five")

Michael Homer

If you turn the tree into paper there's not a substantial carbon impact

Andras Deak

Hard to take climate buzzwords seriously when it's cheaper to buy a new printer than a set of ink cartridges...

Michael Homer

@AndrasDeak The cartridges the printer comes with are only fractionally full, so you go through a lot of printers that way

Jeff Schaller

22:54

@MichaelHomer right! just the chainsaw/cutting machine and transportation. But I guess we won't be going back to cave walls or animals skins

Andras Deak

The it crowd - Denholm Hello Computer

►

Jeff Schaller

@AndrasDeak that's me, talking to this printer's wifi card

Andras Deak

To be fair my laserjet only has ethernet. But I don't have to shout at it.

Jeff Schaller

hmm, $300 to $500 for a name brand laserjet today, versus ~$80 for an inkjet. Let's see, $400 might cover cartridges and pain & suffering.

@AndrasDeak ethernet would be smart, now that I've rubber ducked it -- it's only 2 feet from the router.

Andras Deak

@JeffSchaller how is it so expensive?? Let me check our market...

Jeff Schaller

23:01

@AndrasDeak that's apparently my fault; I only searched amazon; local office supply stores seem to have slightly lower prices -- in the $300-400 range

... which is not substantially lower. I'm way too jet-lagged to be participating in intelligent conversation :)

Andras Deak

Ours start from about $130

Nice poor Eastern European market

No duplex though

OK, so when I said "dirt cheap" I remembered the price of the inkjet! The laserjet had a similar price as these.

Around 200 bucks 7 years ago

Jeff Schaller

Whew! They were nearly giving away inkjet printers when I bought this one. I want to say it was in the $50-$80 range. They stopped hiding the fact that they made money on the cartridges.

I'll see how mad I am at this one's ethernet abilities and start saving up for a real printer.

Andras Deak

Yeah, similar thing here.

Jeff Schaller

(stepping away a for a bit -- and it's not for the printer)

Andras Deak

and I'm stepping into bed; good luck fighting the ink demons

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