Top all-time · #1275
Ariadne's Space
Personal blog · ariadne.spacesystemsprogramming
Ariadne's Space is a personal blog at ariadne.space about systems and programming. Since 2021, 54 different Hacker News readers have linked it 111 times, most often “The long-term consequences of maintainers’ actions”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (18) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ariadne's Space for deep dives into systems programming: libc and time_t, thread stack sizes, musl DNS, the Freenode IRC shutdown, and portable assembly.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 18 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Pulling at the threads of complexity...
Most-linked posts?
- The long-term consequences of maintainers’ actions4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-09-16
- Let’s build a new service manager for Alpine Linux4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-04-26
- Understanding thread stack sizes and how Alpine is different4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-06-26
- An inside look into the illicit ad industry3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-11-05
- Glibc is still not Y2038 compliant by default3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-12-29
- The vulnerability remediation lifecycle of Alpine containers3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-06-08
- BSD kqueue is a mountain of technical debt (2021)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-06-06
- Epoll's Handle-Centric Design vs. Kqueue's Filter-Centric Design (2021)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-28
- The whole freenode kerfluffle3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-05-20
- Vm.overcommit_memory=2 is the right setting for servers3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-12-17
What Hacker News says?
https://ariadne.space/about - she's pretty cool
Comment linking /about
on “Leaving Freenode for a new network”Submitted Glibc is still not Y2038 compliant by default as a story · 325 points
HN discussionAnd one big one just happened this year: https://ariadne.space/2021/06/14/the-end-of-freenode/
Comment linking /2021/06/14/the-end-of-freenode/
on “Please don't use Discord for FOSS projects”Submitted There is no such thing as a “glibc based alpine image” as a story · 290 points
HN discussionThere is some speculation about the motivations here: https://ariadne.space/2021/05/20/the-whole-freenode-kerfluff...
Comment linking /2021/05/20/the-whole-freenode-kerfluffle/
on “Goodbye Freenode”Submitted GNU nano is my editor of choice as a story · 240 points
HN discussionhttps://ariadne.space/2021/07/14/oracle-cloud-sucks/ this person had their account terminated for the crime of running an IRC server.
Comment linking /2021/07/14/oracle-cloud-sucks/
on “AWS free tier data transfer expansion”Submitted An inside look into the illicit ad industry as a story · 211 points
HN discussion> The initial/main thread stack size is dynamic That seems doubtful, AFAIK all OS have a static allocation for the main thread, just one that is commonly (though not necessarily) much larger than what they give off-threads, as https://ariadne.space/2021/06/25/understanding-thread-stack-... quotes Windows gives 1MB to all threads, while macOS or OpenBSD 4.6+ give 8MB to the main thread and 512k to off-threads. The fo…
Comment linking /2021/06/25/understanding-thread-stack-sizes-and-how-alpine-is-different/
on “Stack size invisibility in C and the effects on "portability"”Submitted The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users as a story · 170 points
HN discussionBased on my reading of [1] and [2] it sounds a bit more nuanced than "just incorporate s6 into alpine". [1]: https://ariadne.space/2021/03/25/lets-build-a-new-service-ma... [2]: https://skarnet.com/projects/service-manager.html
Comment linking /2021/03/25/lets-build-a-new-service-manager-for-alpine/
on “Alpine Linux is reducing dependencies on Busybox”Submitted The whole freenode kerfluffle as a story · 152 points
HN discussion> “Nginx is an incredible software and platform, but I was wondering if it wouldn't be time to just bite the bullet and create a more modern solution based on Rust.” I actually don't understand why I am seeing arguments like this all the time. Rewrite takes time and effort. It may be OK for new projects. But for a mature project that has a quarter million lines of code and load-tested for cross-platform compatibilit…
Comment linking /2023/12/07/most-breaches-actually-begin-in-corp/
on “Freenginx: Core Nginx Developer Announces Fork of Popular Web Server”Submitted So you have decided to start a free software consultancy as a story · 126 points
HN discussionThe author thinks that musl, Alpine, and Linux are right and everything else is wrong. * https://ariadne.space/2022/03/27/the-tragedy-of-gethostbynam... - musl's DNS resolver doesn't support TCP lookups, but it's your fault for expecting the standard DNS lookup functions to work. You should change your program to use a third-party library for DNS lookups. This post is a couple years old; musl now supports TCP lookup…
Comment linking /2021/06/25/understanding-thread-stack-sizes-and-how-alpine-is-different/
on “BSD kqueue is a mountain of technical debt (2021)”Submitted BSD kqueue is a mountain of technical debt (2021) as a story · 121 points
HN discussionI think you mean glibc 2.34: https://sourceware.org/pipermail/libc-alpha/2021-August/1297... You opt-in by building with -D_TIME_BITS=64: https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Feature-T... An approach not without its problems: https://ariadne.space/2021/12/29/glibc-is-still-not-y2038-co... - but then again software that relies on time_t being 32 bits has been broken on 64-bit architectures for a very lo…
Comment linking /2021/12/29/glibc-is-still-not-y2038-compliant-by-default/
on “Try Turris Omnia, the open source router”Submitted Using QEMU-user emulation to reverse engineer binaries as a story · 120 points
HN discussionI'm not an IRC person, so I have no idea myself about any of these things, but I notice that this blog post links to an earlier post where the author speculates about what's driving these changes: https://ariadne.space/2021/05/20/the-whole-freenode-kerfluff...
Comment linking /2021/05/20/the-whole-freenode-kerfluffle/
on “The End of Freenode”Submitted To secure the supply chain, you must properly fund it as a story · 117 points
HN discussionHere's a piece on writing portable ARM64 assembly: https://ariadne.space/2023/04/12/writing-portable-arm-assemb...
Comment linking /2023/04/12/writing-portable-arm-assembly.html
on “Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning”Submitted Trustworthy Computing in 2021 as a story · 112 points
HN discussionGood for Debian! Related links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/30/linux_5_6_2038/ https://opensource.com/article/19/1/year2038-problem-linux-k... https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/Avoidin... https://ariadne.space/2021/12/29/glibc-is-still-not-y2038-co... Are manufacturers of IOT devices using Linux whose devices have a lifespan of 15 years think…
Comment linking /2021/12/29/glibc-is-still-not-y2038-compliant-by-default/
on “Debian 64-Bit time_t Transition Underway for Addressing Y2038 Problem”Submitted Vm.overcommit_memory=2 is the right setting for servers as a story · 108 points
HN discussionThere's also the broken DNS resolution ( https://christoph.luppri.ch/fixing-dns-resolution-for-ruby-o... ) and 128k stack size ( https://ariadne.space/2021/06/25/understanding-thread-stack-... most other OSes have at least a 512k stack.
Comment linking /2021/06/25/understanding-thread-stack-sizes-and-how-alpine-is-different/);
on “How Turborepo is porting from Go to Rust”Submitted Understanding thread stack sizes and how Alpine is different as a story · 104 points
HN discussionI am using that expression to separate them from the broader Open Source movement. I do think there is a major difference between general open-source and GNU/FSF "free as in freedom" ideology. I see the broader open source movement as "hey I made this thing to get stuff done, oh btw it's open source under a permissive license so feel free to take it/improve it". GNU/FSF is more like "here's a list of reasons why the…
Comment linking /2022/01/22/the-fsfs-relationship-with-firmware-is-harmful-to-free-software-users/
on “Debian GNU/Hurd 2023 released”Submitted I wound up causing a major outage of my services and destroying my home dir as a story · 100 points
HN discussionUrl seems to have an extra query parameter “s” that shows an error page. Correct url should be https://ariadne.space/2022/01/18/delegation-of-authority-fro...
Comment linking /2022/01/18/delegation-of-authority-from-the-systems-programming-perspective/
on “Delegation of Authority from the Systems Programming Perspective”Submitted Capsudo: Rethinking sudo with object capabilities as a story · 92 points
HN discussion
