#trilema | 2017-03-06

05:43

SLAC Students discover "crowd control" https://archive.is/nRwmD

05:45

~ 30 minutes ~

06:15

mircea_popescu: i see what you mean, but you can't really call it 'static' by any metric. in point of fact i'm surprised you're not grossed out over the fact that the whole thing is a large stinking pile of dynamic php. i guess the counterargument is that it *gets the job done*, very well, over many years. :) so there's that. but i'd like to ditch the 'wp' from 'mp-wp' one day. but maybe baby steps.

~ 1 hours 8 minutes ~

07:23

05:43	BingoBoingo	SLAC Students discover "crowd control" https://archive.is/nRwmD
05:45	BingoBoingo	related to http://qntra.net/2017/03/another-guest-lecturer-attacked-on-us-campus/
		~ 30 minutes ~
06:15	Framedragger	mircea_popescu: i see what you mean, but you can't really call it 'static' by any metric. in point of fact i'm surprised you're not grossed out over the fact that the whole thing is a large stinking pile of dynamic php. i guess the counterargument is that it gets the job done, very well, over many years. :) so there's that. but i'd like to ditch the 'wp' from 'mp-wp' one day. but maybe baby steps.
		~ 1 hours 8 minutes ~
07:23	mircea_popescu	what are you going to write it in ? c ?
07:24	mircea_popescu	what is this clean great language that doesn't gross one out, i must have missed some classes / log days.
07:25	mircea_popescu	php is a hypertext preprocessor. that's what it does, websites. just like the rubber dome in your bathroom unclogs the toilet. does it disgust you ? it's a tool, you're not expected to keep it on the diner table.
07:28	mircea_popescu	anyway, re static : in context "static" denotes "how much comes from the disk as opposed as through cpuization", there's no other measure. a page stored as files with the extension .html is ~slightly~ more static than a page which is stored as files with the extension .txt in a directory structure that is their de-facto index and are then mixed together into a thing whenever a page is called.
07:29	mircea_popescu	turn it any way you want, a flat, disk-bound website IS in point of fact a "dynamic" website loaded into a de facto disk-bound database. the only difference is that you chose to stupidify the index, which is now "exposed" to the user as a band-aid measure over the fact that you failed to do anything with it.
07:30	mircea_popescu	that you go fd.com/article/comments/5/reply/ or somesuch and i go mp.com/article/ is not so much a difference as it appears.
07:42	Framedragger	mircea_popescu: that's not the only difference. a 'php' site launches and runs additional process(es) to serve user requests. now i guess you could say that "it's just a detail", on the grand picture it's the same (nginx requires additional resources to serve static files), but that would be stretching it.
07:43	Framedragger	as regards language choice, yeah, i see your point, "just use the right tool". thing is, with an actual static site, you would not expose the language to the web, at all. the only attack surface would be that of the webserver. cf. a wordpress site which as folks say is a "web shell with blog functionality on the side" :)
07:43	Framedragger	(though i'm sure mp-wp is on the whole ~decent in terms of holes/security.)
07:48	mircea_popescu	apache does that with your flatsite too.
07:48	mircea_popescu	what webserver is there that works like bitcoin, single thread ?
07:49	mircea_popescu	and the notion that you won't expose the language to the web is not equivalent to the actuality that you opt to use such a banal language nothing can be done which to your mind is equivalent to "not exposing". the man who doesn't lock his door because his chamber contains no maid is not the same thing as the man who doesn't lock his door because his maid is more danger to the youths about than they to her.
07:50	mircea_popescu	pile-of-.html-files exposes your directory structure to the world ; badly set permissions have the same effect as i dunno, mysql with an open hole.
07:51	mircea_popescu	the whole thing is kind-of spurious, not like trilema wasn't "attacked". there's even articles celebrating the puzzled wtf of the would be attacker, "wut do you mean my magic has no power here"
07:52	Framedragger	right, well-managed permissions ensure that any 'break-in' would only result in one being able to read some files. but i think your abstraction breaks quickly: i'm sure your php user is able to write files (file upload), even if to a single dir, and to write to db. so it's still not the same.
07:52	mircea_popescu	try it i guess ?
07:52	Framedragger	:)
07:52	mircea_popescu	otherwise what you're proposing is "but hey, i'd still have root, and ssh or no ssh... it's still the same"
07:52	Framedragger	anyway, i see your point.
07:52	mircea_popescu	well everything can end up the same to the man determined it be so.
07:53	mircea_popescu	just consider this point : trilema has ugh.
07:54	Framedragger	i can't see how i can be convinced that launching script-specific php processes is ~same as a webserver allocating a standardised additional unit of its resources (memory / thread etc.)
07:54	mircea_popescu	trilema has 71877 articles.
07:54	Framedragger	right!
07:54	mircea_popescu	in your flat scheme, the words "Trilema - a blog by mircea_popescu " would appear... 72k times!
07:54	mircea_popescu	that's MEGABYTES!
07:55	Framedragger	ohno!!1
07:55	mircea_popescu	seems hardly to justify the foregoing of an index.
07:55	mircea_popescu	some kind of index. otherwise you end up repeating shit to high heavens for no reason, and your computer looks more like an abacus.
07:55	Framedragger	well, the compression-decompression process is so to speak serialised / offloaded to an fs. not a bad thing!
07:55	mircea_popescu	lawd have mercy, you'll run it off squashfs ?
07:55	Framedragger	that being said, my point would work better if trilema had been having performance issues... which it ain't.
07:56	Framedragger	so myeah.
07:56	mircea_popescu	what is the cogent difference between these symbols, "script-specific php processes" and "a standardised additional unit of its resources" ?
07:57	Framedragger	no need to compress, what i meant by compression is that an index is sorta-doing that. storing flat files on fs is basically 'flattening' the process over space and time.