That's a bit misleading. WhatsApp uses Signal's end-to-end encryption scheme, but not Signal's networking protocol. It's still proprietary. Otherwise, we could have cross-messaging between Signal and Whatsapp.

> Footer indexed

So, like ZIP?

> Uses XXH3 for integrity checks

I don’t think XXH3 is suitable for that purpose. It’s not cryptographically secure and designed mostly for stuff like hash tables (e.g. relatively small data).

Why would it need to be cryptographically secure for this use case?

If the data is big enough, collisions. Right?

Then you just need a bigger hash.

> It’s not cryptographically secure

Neither is CRC32. I'm pretty sure xxhash is a straight upgrade compared to CRC32.

> I'm pretty sure xxhash is a straight upgrade compared to CRC32.

Unclear; performance should be pretty similar to CRC32 (depending on implementation), and since integrity checking can basically be done at RAM read speeds this should not matter either way.

The opposite is true in countries where there are data retention laws. Soft-delete is mandatory in those cases.

In practice when I discuss retention requirements in my country (EU), the issue is the _maximum_ retention limit - after which data must be deleted. A minimum retention limit (e.g. business records for tax purposes) is almost never an issue. Systems that need soft-delete, bi-temporal state, etc. typically already have it, whereas actually deleting stuff is an afterthought.

I guess I'm saying the former is usually a functional requirement in the first place, and the latter is a non-functional (compliance) requirement.

That's pretty much the Linux equivalent of Device Simulation Framework we had for Windows back in 2000's.

In the presentation below, only the USB capabilities of it is discussed, but it was able to simulate PCI devices too.

https://download.microsoft.com/download/5/b/9/5b97017b-e28a-...

It's the MyASUS app logo. Possibly designed to look like letters M & A mashed together.

Yes, you are right, it is a (bad) representation of what the My Asus app puts up on the Windows taskbar - I hadn't noticed that. But even then, I can't see it as M & A. But this is all OT, and I'm not expecting any explanations here. Thanks.

Think of an italic M and an upright A.

Fantastic work, an area I’ve always wanted to explore.

INTERCAL was also a satire of the programming languages of its era, AFAIK.

CF was the first thing I thought of when I read the title too.

I remember using Lynx as a daily driver 30 years ago. It was fast, and barely had any compatibility issues because HTML that time was simpler. I remember using it as a daily driver. A GUI browser would be handy with image-heavy web sites, but those would take ages to load anyway.

It seems like Lynx failed to guide new standards, and that hindered the development of web in a text-compatible way. So, we ended up with this where Lynx is probably not usable at all today.

It would have been a net win for accessibility too if we always had Lynx et al in our sights.

It’s astonishing to me that Microsoft is letting go of all these users because someone drew something on whiteboard that looked like “force Microsoft Account on all users -> ??? -> Profit”, and has repeatedly done the same with Teams, Ads, Bing, OneDrive, use of WebView in essential components etc.

I’m not only saying that as a former Windows engineer, but as someone who actively uses Windows, OneDrive, Office, etc. Microsoft is hurting their userbase and that’s not a winning strategy in the long term.

But I’m sure some exec will eventually justify Windows’ decline caused by these thousand cuts as “inevitable outcome of macro-level changes in technological trends” or whatever.

> someone drew something on whiteboard that looked like “force Microsoft Account on all users -> ??? -> Profit”

The problem is not what people have drawn on the whiteboard.

The problem is all the long-term decisions and actual values that aren't there anymore.