Comment by ssivark
2 days ago
> created by monkeys
I don't particularly care for either Zig or Github, but...
they do precisely cite the technical issues. That snippet links to a Github discussion comment https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/3792#issuecomment-3...
(reproduced below)
"The bug in this "safe sleep" script is obvious from looking at it: if the process is not scheduled for the one-second interval in which the loop would return (due to $SECONDS having the correct value), then it simply spins forever. That can easily happen on a CI machine under extreme load. When this happens, it's pretty bad: it completely breaks a runner until manual intervention. On Zig's CI runner machines, we observed multiple of these processes which had been running for hundreds of hours, silently taking down two runner services for weeks."
"I don't understand how we got here. Even ignoring the pretty clear bug, what makes this Bash script "safer" than calling into the POSIX standard sleep utility? It doesn't seem to solve any problem; meanwhile, it's less portable and needlessly eats CPU time by busy-waiting."
"The sloppy coding which is evident here, as well as the inaction on core Actions bugs (in line with the decay in quality of almost every part of GitHub's product), is forcing the Zig project to strongly consider moving away from GitHub Actions entirely. With this bug, and many others (severe workflow scheduling issues resulting in dozens of timeouts; logs randomly becoming inaccessible; random job cancellations without details; perpetually "pending" jobs), we can no longer trust that Actions can be used to implement reliable CI infrastructure. I personally would seriously encourage other projects, particularly any using self-hosted runners, to look carefully at the stability of Actions and ask themselves whether it is a solution worth sticking with long-term when compared with alternatives."
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I agree that the writing in the blog post is more colorful than precise, but sanitizing every bit of expression dulls the internet. Humans invented language for a reason.
Then blast the product, not the people who built it.
They are blasting the product tbf. The people part is a small part of it. And apparently at least distracting the HN Community from their point.
Which is exactly why to cut it out. If you put salt in my cup of tea, I’m gonna notice and it’s gonna ruin the drink.
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You cannot divorce a product from the people who built it. The product reflects their priorities and internal group well-being. A different group of people would have built a different product.
If you've worked in a large company, you know that the product reflects the priorities of the company so much more than the people who work there. Leadership states the priority and the employees do what they're told.
There's no stupid product, only stupid people.
The product was made by people. Or by AI which was made and controlled by people.
The product isn't some result of a series of "oopsies". The worst aspects of bad and/or user-hostile software products are that way because the people working at these companies want them to be that way.
Unless you want to call them just that incompetent. I assume they'd complain about that label too.
In short: No it's not "the product", the people building it are the problem. Somehow everyone working in big tech wants all the praise all the time, individually, but never take even the slightest bit of responsibility fro the constant enshittification they drive forward..
If you only knew...
I must be missing something huge here, or maybe it's the wine -- how is the code in PR 3157 (referenced in a later comment) a proper fix?
https://github.com/actions/runner/pull/3157/files
Is : doing something unusual in GH actions?
The original loop is:
while (time() != timeout) {;}
The fixed loop is:
while (time() < timeout) {;}
I see. I did not realize SECONDS was a built in bash variable.
11 replies →
> I agree that the writing in the blog post is more colorful than precise, but sanitizing every bit of expression dulls the internet. Humans invented language for a reason.
Where do you draw the line, then? Is a racist screed acceptable to you as long as the following paragraph references technical issues correctly?
The language in the blog post is insulting. Imagine how you would feel if you were the person who wrote this code, and now you are being called a monkey in front of thousands of people on the internet. Certainly you've made mistakes in your code before...or are you saying you've always written flawless code without errors?
These codes of conduct always seemed a bit superfluous to me, but after reading comments like these I can totally see why they are necessary.
Would you perhaps have preferred if they referred to it as "unprofessional" or "sloppy" instead alluding of monkeys?
To me all those mean the same thing, except the latter is more flavorful and makes my eyes less likely to glaze over.
> Imagine how you would feel if you were the person who wrote this code, and now you are being called a monkey in front of thousands of people on the internet.
Er.. so? Why should anyone be allowed into a position of responsibility where their code impacts millions of people if they can't handle the tiniest bit of strong feedback? It was, after all, a pretty egregious bug.
> Certainly you've made mistakes in your code before...or are you saying you've always written flawless code without errors?
I've definitely made mistakes, and also accept that my output might have on occasion been "monkey-esque". I don't see what's insulting about that; we are all human/animal.
> To me all those mean the same thing, except the latter is more flavorful and makes my eyes less likely to glaze over.
And to many others, the difference is that one is informative, the other is likely to turn them off of the author and project forever.
I noticed that you never answered my question. If this is acceptable to you, where do you draw the line? If you can answer that question, maybe you'll be able to see the flaw in your argument.
17 replies →
Not everyone is build robust enough for being called a monkey or loser straight into the person's face.
2 replies →
Do you believe that Zig is following its own code of conduct, or not?
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> Is a racist screed acceptable to you as long as the following paragraph references technical issues correctly?
I'm not the morality police. Nobody should be. I'd still take the article on its technical merits. As a random example, if Satoshi's paper called people using the banking system cattle, I'd still continue reading it.
> Imagine how you would feel if you were the person who wrote this code, and now you are being called a monkey in front of thousands of people on the internet
It would be absolutely fine, nobody is named specifically. He wasn't like Josh Examplemann working on Actions is a piece of shit that botches any feature he touches. Nobody is going to remember a blog post and forever hold anyone that worked on Actions to an unhirable status. And personally, I think it would be good for people to feel some shame for having implemented a feature in such a terrible way. It's not like they were told by their managers to commit these the way that they did. Calling into the sleep binary wouldn't even be more work.
Whoever is behind the new React Start Menu in Windows
along with whoever is responsible for the Chrome Web Environment Integrity
along with whoever is behind the design of OSX Tahoe
along with anyone who is working on Windows Copilot that screenshots your screen
should be ashamed of themselves. The more articles that do that, the better. They are not doing good.