Cryptobro makes a new coin to "help FOSS projects". Predictable scam rush ensues. (connortumbleson.com)
from db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com to buttcoin@awful.systems on 27 Feb 2024 12:33
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/15246655

cross-posted from: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/15238521

Yet another “brilliant” scheme from a cryptobro. Naturally this caused a gold-rush for scammers who outsourced random people via the gig economy to open PRs for this yml file (example)

#buttcoin

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froztbyte@awful.systems on 27 Feb 2024 14:07 next collapse

you know, I’m strongly in favour of attempts at novel ways to fund open-source development, because there’s still significant issues to be solved there. but

  1. ugh god really? this thing is some awfully halfwitted dogshit even by the standards of the coiners
  2. fucking rage

not that I mean to praise the attempt here, to be clear. it is, of course, utter and complete bullshit. that it latches on to this particular problem irks me even more.

it also leaves me wondering whether this type of problem/parasitism (at this tier of scale attempt, perhaps?) has a long lineage? previously there were things like dns alt roots, which occasionally got some under-informed/unlucky suckers, but this kind of low-effort attempt at intermediating themselves as tollmen isn’t something I know of past analogues to

dgerard@awful.systems on 27 Feb 2024 16:54 next collapse

this asshole pushed this dumb and bad scheme last year too.

it’s not the previous scam “gitcoin”, it’s a fresh reimplementation of the bad idea.

he was the Original Founder Of Homebrew!!! who left ages ago, and Homebrew are busy disclaiming him as often as is necessary

[deleted] on 27 Feb 2024 19:52 collapse

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self@awful.systems on 27 Feb 2024 20:13 collapse

which itself is a shitty implementation of ideas stolen directly from Nix (specifically it’s a much worse nix run or comma with bits and pieces yanked straight from direnv), but with the, ah, sensibilities that can only come from the experience gained implementing one of the worst package managers

I dug in and there’s also this related mash thing that appears to just be an unvetted index of scripts you can pull in and execute with no idea what they’ll actually do

We have not vetted any of the scripts mash can run and (currently) they can do anything they want to your computer.

We fully intend to add sandboxing and user reporting, but you have found mash super early in its life so you must practice caution in your usage.

fucking genius. your killer app is a vector for malware cause in your excitement to release this shit you designed in like 10 minutes, you decided to push all the hard (and/or impossible — fucking sandboxing?) parts off until later

dgerard@awful.systems on 27 Feb 2024 21:29 next collapse

a shitty implementation of ideas stolen directly from Nix

there’s probably a greenspun’s tenth law about this

i’ve already said that any sufficiently large program eventually reimplements half of apt, badly

[deleted] on 27 Feb 2024 23:32 collapse

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froztbyte@awful.systems on 27 Feb 2024 23:47 collapse

I have ranted this so often

From the late 00s to early 10s I worked somewhere where we maintained our own Debian distribution (not terribly far from mainline but some localised things for purpose). I learned a lot of packaging and package management and repo skills from that

And then soon thereafter I was in other roles which also included having to deal with software that did npm things (and, occasionally, colleagues that did fpm things) and…… god. Exhausted to my fucking core.

Year after year goes by, and that fucking disastrous pile of shit ecosystem learns almost nothing. Repeatedly.

And every time I have to touch it, it’s a shitshow. Every. Single. Time.

froztbyte@awful.systems on 27 Feb 2024 21:33 next collapse

unvetted index of scripts you can pull in and execute with no idea what they’ll actually do

the og homebrew experience

self@awful.systems on 27 Feb 2024 22:15 collapse

it’ll be fucking wild when my industry invents the ability to learn from its mistakes

self@awful.systems on 27 Feb 2024 23:00 next collapse

also, of course it’s a bunch of yaml package recipes with wacky! comments barely wrapping the shell scripts actually doing the work, all of which are dumped into a way too fucking big recipes directory and shat into git, cause no this fucker didn’t learn a damn thing from last time

also, this rant in the recipe file:

FIXME proper system for re-using pre-built binaries we must require the vendor to provide signatures against a published public key. If they don’t then really we should build ourselves or warn the user about the fact. The thing is, we trust the sources implicitly currently because signing is so rare. The only way wide spread signing will occur is via our protocol.

I’m guessing protocol here refers to the tea bullshit that’s being hoisted on our global open source ecosystem. the part I’m missing is: fucking what? why? there aren’t any hashes at all in the recipe file which is how Nix and most other package managers worth a damn verify sources. Nix doesn’t even differentiate between source code and pre-built binaries for this — Nix just knows the expected hash for the file and if it pulls an archive of binaries, you just tell it to skip the build step as part of the package definition. pkgx doesn’t even have the immutable bits that make using pre-built stuff mildly harder on a Nix system

[deleted] on 27 Feb 2024 23:43 next collapse

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V0ldek@awful.systems on 28 Feb 2024 19:05 collapse

The only way wide spread signing will occur is via our protocol.

Sure, it’s not like there’s a whole protocol standard that you can use for signed provenance of binaries which you could incorporate and help promote to make the OSS ecosystem better and more secure.

Nah, look, I solved package management using only my grit and impressively large IQ.

I hate the energy of That Guy that barges into the room and shouts “I solved X!” without researching for 5 minutes what all the people that were actually hard at work solving X came up with, what hurdles they identified, and which paths were already explored.

And it’s always fucking tech guys.

self@awful.systems on 28 Feb 2024 20:53 next collapse

I hate the energy of That Guy that barges into the room and shouts “I solved X!” without researching for 5 minutes what all the people that were actually hard at work solving X came up with, what hurdles they identified, and which paths were already explored.

And it’s always fucking tech guys.

“my only achievement is that I made the most mediocre version of something that already existed and somehow it got corporate adoption” is a whole-ass type of person in my industry, and they’ve always got the biggest gap between self-perceived genius and actual skill level. they always seem to gravitate towards systems software too, somehow

[deleted] on 28 Feb 2024 23:03 collapse

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froztbyte@awful.systems on 29 Feb 2024 05:45 collapse

The deficiencies in the goog interfaces, across multiple products, are legion. I recall someone talking about it recently compared to Palm Pilot, and how the latter could do detail obscuring when just wanting to share a single piece of information on a screen (think the examples used were calendar and contact)

The other “fun” thing is how they kill off features/things to force people into how they want a thing to be used. And I believe IMAP with normal credential auth is one of those on the list for later this year… 😡

jonhendry@awful.systems on 28 Feb 2024 22:46 collapse

I hate the energy of That Guy that barges into the room and shouts “I solved X!” without researching for 5 minutes what all the people that were actually hard at work solving X came up with, what hurdles they identified, and which paths were already explored.

Reminds me of the time I was at Barnes & Noble and this lady comes in with her little boy (4-6 maybe?) and they head for the children’s section. At the entry to the children’s section she tells him to go find a book, and they separate. He walks a step to the first display in the center of the entry area, grabs something, and shouts “Momma I found a BOOK.”

[deleted] on 27 Feb 2024 23:33 next collapse

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froztbyte@awful.systems on 27 Feb 2024 23:49 collapse

Come now, you know that ability was one of the things broken in moving fast~ :sarcmark:

froztbyte@awful.systems on 27 Feb 2024 21:36 collapse

you designed in like 10 minutes

I would be surprised

I would, in fact, be somewhat willing to bet that this pile of dogshit was the result of at least a day (a saturday?) of discussion, possibly more

remember, you need to bikeshed (all your terrible halfwit dipshit fucking turdbag ideas) langoriously, can’t rush “perfection”

corbin@awful.systems on 27 Feb 2024 17:52 collapse

He’s lucky that implementing a cryptocurrency doesn’t require inverting a tree.

db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 27 Feb 2024 18:02 collapse

I understand that reference!