The company standard for servers is RedHat 10. RedHat 10 does not support 32 bit applications.

The legacy app is running happily on RedHat 9.

...laura

I support a legacy app that was written back in the 1990s. It originally ran under VxWorks with custom hardware, variously 68k and PowerPC.

The first port I did was to Solaris. No byte-order issues and I kept the 32 bit ABI. It worked well.

When the Powers That Be decided to ditch Sun hardware and Solaris in favour of x86 and Linux I ported it to Linux. Parts of the code weren't byte-order clean, but I worked through them. The code is heavily 32 bit dependent and I never did create a viable 64 bit version (I tried, believe me...), so it runs on our last 32 bit server in the data center. The service it supports is slowly dying so there's no business case to spend any more time or money on it. If the business case existed I'd apply what I've learned in the meantime and rewrite it from scratch anyway.

The Linux port was initially unstable. It would run for a random time, hours to weeks, then two threads would deadlock. After a couple of years of letting it run and watching it crash I traced the deadlock to an "optimization" that didn't actually do anything, with an if statement that had about a one in a trillion chance of going the wrong way. I removed the optimization and the application has been running fine ever since.

...laura

The issue is not that the climate has changed - it has, and it will continue to do so - but what we're going to do about it. No matter what the crisis, the solution always seems to be greater government control. Usually at the cost of our way of life.

What part of NO do you not understand?

...laura

My employers recently signed up for a ChatGPT account and I've been seeing how it can help me.

I remain responsible for the big picture, for actually making apps that work on iOS and Android. I've found ChatGPT helpful for refining details. It saves sifting through years worth of Stack Overflow postings. It's a handy tool, but it won't replace me any time soon.

If you say "Chat GPT" in French it sounds like "chat j'ai pété" ("cat I farted"). I guess I need to get out more...

...laura

It's not that long ago that I found myself with a box of 8" floppy discs from a legacy product and no way to read them. Yes, the software on them was long obsolete. But I would have liked to be able to preserve a bit of company heritage.

The product in question (Glenayre GL-3000) had been updated in the interim to use 3.5" floppies, though with a bespoke format. I figured out how to use Linux and creative parameters to dd to write disc images. We packaged this as a bootable CD for customers to write their own disc images. After a sharp drop in floppy quality around 2005 I discussed other storage options with my boss (e.g. USB) but the business case just wasn't there.

...laura

The 757 got a new lease on life when it was certified for ETOPS. But they're old and, by modern standards, inefficient.

I'm sure the Boeing folks have considered a 757neo (sorry for the Airbus terminology there) or a 757Max, but they appear to have opted for a clean-sheet 797 instead.

...laura

I'm doing SwiftUI app development and upgraded one of my test devices to iOS 26 beta 4 this morning.

I don't see anything different, but I assume something different is happening under the hood.

...laura

Where I live (Kamloops, BC, Canada) the all-time high temperature record for a long time was 42C, set in July 1941. Most of southern B.C. set records that month. No air conditioning. Ugh! We demolished that record when it hit 47C in June 2021. I've never been so hot in my life...

The hottest we've been so far this summer was 36C. I expect to hit the Big Four Oh at least once, but the long-term forecast isn't promising.

...laura

A hybrid is the answer for many people. They work well. Electric continues to improve but is still too much of a niche product.

I recently bought a new car. If I could lay my hands on something like a RAV4 Hybrid I'd be all over it. Good luck. I bought a VW Taos instead.

...laura

A few years ago I ported some legacy device firmware from its ancient Sun-based development environment to gcc (68k cross-compiler) and Linux. Most of the code compiled reasonably as-is. Some of it required a bit of hand-holding, like telling gcc that I really did need to store four characters one at a time rather than a single long when talking to a dual-port RAM interface.

Some of the low-level OS code did in fact require assembly. So be it.

...laura

I accept that no matter what I do at airport security it will be wrong. This is, according to some sources, by design. Keeps the bad guys on their toes. Something like that.

As a Canadian the only biometric ID I have is my passport. Despite the pressure to do so, I do not use it for domestic flights. International flights only. For U.S. domestic flights I use my drivers license. For Canadian domestic flights, my pilots license.

...laura

Have any of these people ever been to England?

...laura

The gym where I work out has Sirius XM as their background music, variously Hits 1 or The Pulse. If you told me it was all pre-recorded loops and/or AI I wouldn't doubt it.

The gym's soundtrack has nevertheless introduced me to some neat new music, duly added to my workout playlist. In that sense it's served its purpose. It's also exposed me to some truly dire excuses for music. People buy this garbage?!

The radio-friendly versions of songs are sometimes inadvertently amusing. "My give a craps are on vacation" "I'm a real tough kid I can hannnndle it"

...laura

Hubble has provided a spectacular return on its investment, both in science results and in PR (i.e. pretty pictures).

Is it worth additional refurbishing? Is it worth bringing back to Earth? Both decisions are way above my paygrade. In many ways JWST is "better", but will it capture the public's imagination the way Hubble did? I doubt it.

...laura

Nobody has any issue with legal immigrants. Nobody ever did.

It's the other kind that people have issues with. Not to mention efforts to erase the distinction in the first place.

...laura