1. Anyone can access deleted and private repository data on GitHub
Total comment counts : 46
Summary
The article discusses a vulnerability on GitHub, where deleted and private repository data can still be accessed by others. This is known as Cross Fork Object Reference (CFOR) vulnerability and occurs when one repository fork can access sensitive data from another fork, including private and deleted forks. The article provides examples of how this vulnerability can be exploited, such as accessing code from a deleted fork or accessing commits made after forking a repository. The author also highlights the issue of inadvertently exposing confidential data and secrets on public GitHub repositories. GitHub’s repository network design allows this data to be accessible even after certain actions, like deleting a repository, are taken. Overall, this vulnerability poses a significant risk to organizations using GitHub, and the article emphasizes the need for awareness and caution when handling sensitive data on the platform.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author reported an issue on GitHub’s HackerOne platform, stating that they discovered a vulnerability related to private forks. GitHub responded by acknowledging the finding as a known low-risk issue and stated that the functionality may be tightened in the future. However, GitHub did not consider the issue eligible for a reward under their Bug Bounty program. GitHub explained that in their “repository network,” objects from one member are readable by other members. Blobs and commits are stored together, while refs are stored separately for each fork. GitHub removes a repository from the network when its visibility changes to prevent private commits/blobs from being readable by another network member. The author concludes that instead of using private forks, it is better to clone the repository.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author criticizes GitHub for considering a feature called “private” as a deliberate choice rather than a bug, and views it as a lack of concern for security. They argue that privacy features should always have a strict and safe default. In the meantime, the author suggests referring to “private” repositories as “unlisted” instead.
2. “Doors” in Solaris: Lightweight RPC Using File Descriptors (1996)
Total comment counts : 10
Summary
The article is about door descriptors in UNIX systems. Doors are descriptors used to describe a procedure in a process and can hold additional state associated with the procedure. They were originally designed as object descriptors in C++, but can be used to pass capabilities and invoke services across different processes. During a door invocation, the client thread migrates to the server process and executes the procedure, then returns to the client with results. Data, including other doors, can be passed as arguments and returned as results. The doors interface allows for high-performance multithreaded programs by handling the creation and dispatching of threads based on load. Doors are implemented as file descriptors in order to easily adopt existing UNIX paradigms and provide a secure mechanism for encapsulation. The article also mentions the naming facility available with file descriptors and how doors can be named in a similar manner. The doors interface is exported from a user-level shared library and controls the creation of server threads. A new synchronization object called a shuttle is used to encapsulate the state associated with a door invocation. Server threads are created on-demand and use the Solaris thread library. Benchmark results show that doors perform faster than other existing UNIX IPC mechanisms.
Top 1 Comment Summary
This article addresses misconceptions about doors in the context of RPC (Remote Procedure Calls). Doors are not message passing-based RPC and do not have syscalls or mechanisms for threads to wait for requests in the callee. Instead, doors are a control transfer primitive that transfers the calling thread to the callee’s address space, where it continues execution until a door_return syscall transfers it back to the caller’s address space. Doors serve as a “door” into another address space and function similarly to CPU control transfer primitives like task gates or the system call instruction itself.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article describes a project from 1998 where the author and their colleague were tasked with building an efficient system for targeting advertisements to specific users on a website. They used Sun Enterprise machines running Solaris as their webservers and implemented a server process with an in-memory representation of active users. They utilized doors from a custom Apache module to query the user representation. Although the system was successful and fast, it was never used in production due to changing business priorities.
3. Scrapscript: A functional, content-addressable programming language
Total comment counts : 14
Summary
The article discusses a functional, content-addressable programming language called Scrapscript. It mentions that the developers take user feedback seriously and provide documentation with all available qualifiers. The syntax on the Scrapscript website will be updated in the future to align with the language’s repository. The article also mentions that Scrapscript supports Python 3.8+ and provides instructions on how to use it with Cosmopolitan or Docker.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses Scrapscript, a language that solves the software sharability problem by using JSON with types and functions and hashed references. The article also mentions the comparison between Scrapscript and Unison, highlighting the feature of content-addressability in Unison. It questions the need for creating a new language when Unison already exists, and asks if there are any other content-addressable languages besides these two. The article suggests mentioning Unison in related materials and speculates that Scrapscript has ambitious goals, indicating that it is not just a project undertaken for fun.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article contains a list of websites and links related to ScrapScript. It includes the main site and community links, as well as blog posts and development insights. There is also an update and sneak previews mentioned.
4. Taking my diabetes treatment into my own hands
Total comment counts : 41
Summary
The article discusses the challenges and frustrations of managing Type 1 diabetes and the desire for a more effective and personalized approach to treatment. The author shares their own experience with manually managing their blood glucose levels and the limitations of current methods. They express a desire for their healthcare provider to use models or simulations to optimize their treatment plan. The concept of an “artificial pancreas,” which combines insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors, is mentioned as a potential solution, albeit not widely available yet. The author highlights the inspiring efforts of individuals who are hacking their own devices to create their own solutions. While they don’t have access to a pump themselves, they express a desire to take a proactive approach in managing their diabetes.
Top 1 Comment Summary
This article highlights several things that cannot be taken for granted in the United States in 2024. These include: not assuming that medical professionals and insurance companies are acting in your best interest, doubting the knowledge of medical professionals, questioning the safety of substances that are legal to consume, being uncertain about the safety and measurement of pollutants in various environments, not being aware of potential health risks until they are litigated, potentially being unable to afford necessary treatment, and skepticism towards industries like healthcare, insurance, public health, and government in terms of protecting individuals. The author admits to being influenced by propaganda that painted a more positive image of the country in their youth. They express their lack of surprise at these issues and anticipate more of them in the future.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author is prediabetic with a family history of type 2 diabetes. Their primary care doctor does not seem concerned about their condition. To delay the onset of type 2 diabetes, the author uses a glucose monitor every 2 hours to track their blood sugar levels. They have gathered data on which foods spike their blood sugar and which ones have a neutral effect. Surprisingly, foods often recommended for diabetics, such as beans and brown rice, cause a significant increase in their blood sugar, while other foods like bananas and nuts are fine. The author has also realized that they are the only one responsible for their health, as their doctors only care about their inflammatory markers.
5. The Origin of Emacs in 1976
Total comment counts : 5
Summary
This article discusses the development of EMACS, a popular text editor. It mentions that EMACS was developed at the MIT AI Lab in 1976, and the specific details of its origin have been documented by various people. The article includes excerpts of emails from the first couple of months of Emacs in 1976, providing historical insight into its creation. Guy Steele’s records indicate that Richard M. Stallman (RMS) did the bulk of the development work, but had some implementation help from others and assistance with design and debugging. The article emphasizes that RMS deserves the majority of credit for turning a package of TECO macros into a powerful editor and for working with the early user community. Overall, the article aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the development of EMACS.
Top 1 Comment Summary
This article discusses the TECO version of EMACS and provides a link to the dired code. It suggests that humans do not require programming languages, assemblers, or compilers to program effectively.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the way email addresses were written in 1976 and questions whether they used the word “at” instead of the @ symbol. The author acknowledges that this was before the invention of DNS and is not surprised by the lack of TLD (Top-Level Domain).
6. Pnut: A C to POSIX shell compiler you can trust
Total comment counts : 25
Summary
Pnut is a tool that can transpile C programs into shell scripts, eliminating the need for shell scripting. This allows C programs to be highly portable and run on any system with a POSIX-compliant shell. Pnut allows developers to write scripts in plain C, without having to learn a new language. The output of Pnut is human-readable, making it easy to inspect, debug, and maintain code. It can run on any POSIX-compliant shell, including bash and zsh, on major operating systems like Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article talks about Pnut, a human-readable shell script that can be used as a reproducible build system. It mentions that Pnut is powerful enough to compile itself and TCC (Tiny C Compiler). Since TCC can bootstrap GCC, it is possible to build a fully featured build toolchain using only human-readable source files and a POSIX shell. Pnut also features a native code backend called pnut-exe, which supports a larger subset of C99. This compiler can be compiled using pnut.sh, enabling the compilation of pnut-exe.c and then TCC from a POSIX shell. The article does not provide a step-by-step demo of the process and it is unclear if the authors attempted to use NetBSD or OpenBSD, or another small C compiler like pcc. There is a mention that TCC had problems with NetBSD in the past, but it is unclear if those problems still persist based on its inclusion in NetBSD pkgsrc WIP.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the limitations of a specific software in handling C-only functions. It highlights runtime errors and invalid codes that occur when using certain functions. Additionally, it points out that the write() call does not handle errors and does not even return -1 on failures. The article questions the reliability of the software’s compiler.
7. Solving the out-of-context chunk problem for RAG
Total comment counts : 10
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The author suggests that the best approach is to begin with a traditional full text search (FTS) and ensure it is effective for manual human searches. Then, they recommend incorporating a RAG-style solution (a type of AI model with probabilistic outcomes) once the FTS is functioning well. The author believes that adding the AI model without a functioning FTS would not provide any value.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article emphasizes the importance of adding contextual titles, summaries, keywords, and questions to the metadata of each chunk in RAG applications. This implementation is considered to require minimal effort while yielding high returns.
8. Large Enough – Mistral AI
Total comment counts : 42
Summary
The article announces the release of Mistral Large 2, a new generation of a flagship model. It offers improved capabilities in code generation, mathematics, reasoning, multilingual support, and advanced function calling. Mistral Large 2 has a 128k context window, supports multiple languages and coding languages, and is designed for single-node inference with long-context applications. It is released under the Mistral Research License for research and non-commercial usage, while commercial usage requires a Mistral Commercial License. The model delivers high performance and cost efficiency, outperforming previous models and comparable leading models. The article also highlights efforts to enhance the model’s reasoning capabilities and its ability to follow instructions, handle conversations, and generate concise responses. Mistral Large 2 excels in multilingual comprehension and is suitable for complex business applications. It is available for use on la Plateforme and can be tested on le Chat.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article provides links to chat with two recently released models: Large 2 and Llama 3.1 405b. The author tested these models and ranked them based on their performance on five prompts. They found Sonnet 3.5 to be the best, followed by Large 2 and Llama 405b, which had a similar performance. However, the author suggests sticking with the Claude model. They also list their wishlist for improvements to the Claude model, including smarter capabilities, a longer context window, native audio input with tone understanding, fewer refusals, faster response times, and more tokens in the output.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the competition among different models and versions. The author shares their personal experience with the Claude 3.5 Sonnet model, which they claim surpasses everything else. However, they express uncertainty about how to test or use the Mistral or Llama models in daily life.
9. Llama 3.1 in C
Total comment counts : 6
Summary
The article emphasizes the importance of feedback and assures readers that their input is taken seriously. It also suggests referring to their documentation for additional information on available qualifiers.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the output of Meta’s Llama 3.1 models, which can generate multilingual text. The author provides examples of output from an 8 bit quantized 8b model with 100 token output. The article also includes sample output in English, German, French, Thai, and Hindi, showcasing the capabilities of the models in generating text in different languages. However, the author notes that there are still some bugs in the system.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a new RoPE scaling method called Llama 3.1, which has not yet been added. It describes this method as a one-time scaling mechanism that enables 128K context. The model was trained on 15.6T tokens with 8K context and then extended to 128K context with 800B tokens. The author has opened a PR, and there are links provided for more information about the method and its implementation.
10. Apollo Lunar Surface Journal
Total comment counts : 6
Summary
The article is a collection of commentary and information about the Apollo missions, particularly Apollo 11, Apollo 12, Apollo 13, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17. It was edited by Eric M. Jones and Ken Glover, with pages designed by Gordon Roxburgh. The article is copyrighted and was last modified on November 17, 2017.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author expresses their admiration for the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and recommends a specific section on the website Apollo in Real Time. The website plays mission audio in real time, accompanied by video and transcripts of the communications, while highlighting active mission control channels. The author particularly recommends skipping to the moment when the lunar landing is authorized at around 102 hours, 27 minutes, and 57 seconds.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article suggests that if you enjoyed reading about the NASA Apollo Flight Journal, you might also enjoy listening to three Omega Tau Podcast episodes featuring David Woods, one of the contributors to the journal. The podcast episodes discuss topics such as how Apollo flew to the moon, how Apollo explored the moon, and the Gemini program. Here are the links to the podcast episodes: 1, 2, 3. You can find more information about the NASA Apollo Flight Journal here.