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Ariadne's Space
Personal blog · ariadne.spacesecuritysystems
Ariadne's Space is a personal blog at ariadne.space about security and systems. Since 2021, 54 different Hacker News readers have linked it 111 times, most often “Let’s build a new service manager for Alpine Linux”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Pulling at the threads of complexity...
Most-linked posts?
- 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
- The long-term consequences of maintainers’ actions4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-09-16
- How efficient can cat(1) be?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-07-17
- The whole freenode kerfluffle3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-05-20
- An inside look into the illicit ad industry3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-11-05
- Epoll's Handle-Centric Design vs. Kqueue's Filter-Centric Design (2021)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-28
- BSD kqueue is a mountain of technical debt (2021)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-06-06
- Glibc is still not Y2038 compliant by default3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-12-29
- 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
