this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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Friend who is not a software person sent me this tweet, which amused me as it did them. They asked if "runk" was real, which I assume not.

But what are some good examples of real ones like this? xz became famous for the hack of course, so i then read a bit about how important this compression algorithm is/was.

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[–] [email protected] 310 points 4 months ago (3 children)

There is a guy named Arthur David Olson who maintains a small database of all the time zones in the world, including things like leap seconds and such. It's used by everybody and it is updated several times a year. See here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database

[–] [email protected] 82 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If we could all just stop making changes to time zones, that would make my job very slightly easier.

[–] MisterFrog 13 points 4 months ago

Perhaps we'll move to UTC+10¼, and then move forward 45 minutes in the summer.

If the day number is a prime, then we'll go back π hours.

Hope that will help!

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I bet he's paid nothing to do it. Then one day, when a timing attack happens that can be traced to the DB, some knobhead CTOs and tech influencers will start talking about "securing the supply chain". They'll want other such bullshit and responsibilities to be shoved unto volunteers.

Two quotes come to mind "Fuck you, pay me" and "Open source maintainers owe you nothing".

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] MisterFrog 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It would make sooo much more sense for the ISO to set something up, and make governments each responsible for keeping it updated, since they're the ones doing the changing.

Require all participants to amend their law/regulations, so there's a note to prompt whoever is in power and changes it next.

I'm sure some places would still neglect to do it... Haha

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It has organizational support from ICANN, so it's not done in total isolation.

[–] MisterFrog 2 points 4 months ago

Oh neato, then all good!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Wasn't there also very recently a whole thing about the single guy who maintains the NTP spec threatened to retire so he could get a "real" job, which caused a gigantic internet-wide panic as pretty much everything we do relies on computer's clocks being perfectly synced?