TL;DR: A patent and trademark agent and NPM bullied an Open Source Dev, so the Dev deleted his code from NPM as is his right. The internet broke. NPM restored the code against the dev's wishes. Corpos win...as always.
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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I’d say the bigger issue was people live-linking to the files rather than downloading and using a version controlled copy they can control.
They don't teach about Configuration Management in web-dev bootcamp
They don’t teach about Configuration Management in web-dev bootcamp
Ha! Bullshit like configuration management, memory management, optimizing compilers, all obsolete technology! We don't need that anymore with modern web browsers now that every single computer ever is connected to the Internet, and now that we have AI to write code for us!!! JavaScript is the one true language!
(sarcasm)
I love how it broke React.
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(19 replies)
Original article not via pocket: https://qz.com/646467/how-one-programmer-broke-the-internet-by-deleting-a-tiny-piece-of-code
It's the left-pad npm incident, it was a big news back than, it has its own section on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm#Dependency_chain_issues
I always reel in horror when projects have tiny, 'negligible to implement yourself' functions like these as dependencies. See also: is-even 🙄
Edit: is-even has a dependency on is-odd which has a dependency on is-number. 🤦♂️
I think is-odd is intentionally a reference to / satire of leftpad
It was created in 2014, 2 years before the leftpad incident, when a user was learning JavaScript. They now have over 350k downloads per week.
However, https://github.com/slmjkdbtl/is-is-odd/issues/4 is a wonderful work of satire.
Used in is-ten. Genius
And the whole implementation of is-number which is at version 7.0.0:
module.exports = function(num) {
if (typeof num === 'number') {
return num - num === 0;
}
if (typeof num === 'string' && num.trim() !== '') {
return Number.isFinite ? Number.isFinite(+num) : isFinite(+num);
}
return false;
};
The node.js ecosystem has always been madness.
At this point it’s just a joke. Is there a npm for console log? I’ll have to check.
JavaScript is a dangerous shitshow for this exact reason. Dependencies are a security and stability nightmare.
Eh, I'd say any language that offers a package repository is just as susceptible. I'm neither pro- nor anti- dependency, but I do always try to keep them to an absolute minimum regardless of what environment I'm working in. Sometimes it makes sense to not reinvent the wheel.
Yes, but other languages have exponentially fewer packages that install when you add something, making the attack vector smaller and easier to monitor.
The best way to fix this is for library authors to avoid installing as many sub-dependencies as possible (is-odd, being an obvious example). But that’s a fundamental culture problem.
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(1 replies)
I can't even...
Yes you can, just don't odd
Created by the organization "i-voted-for-trump"
Lol, I saw that. If you go to their main page, it's explained that it's a joke.
The only part of the story that I'm pissed at is NPM corporation restoring content on their server that they didn't own and published it to millions for profit.
Koçulu removed left pad. It was his code.
Can you imagine the lawsuits if when Disney pulled the license for Avengers on Netflix, Netflix responded with:
"Millions of customers got errors that Marvel Avengers is missing. So we put Avengers back on our servers."
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(2 replies)
11 lines of code shouldn't be a package.
you should see the "is_odd" package...
it's like, return (num%2)? true:false
People using this deserve that their code breaks. Absolutely ridiculous.
Neither this, nor the leftpad thing, nor this is-even “package” are things I would even think about for a second before just writing it on my own. I wouldn’t even consider those features (let alone packages to depend my code on!) but basic programming.
Problem is when you accidentally pull it in as a transitive dependency...
Yeah :( This also is why such nonsense “breaks the Internet” …
i just don't see how npm is letting this happen...
im going to write an npm module called "true" that just returns true...
… and that has 4 dependencies on it’s own!
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(10 replies)
I remember it live as it was happening. It was fun.
Nice run on sentence in your title. Great job.
It's 11 lines of trash code too.
The way the function reallocates memory would bring your computer to a crawl on a large string.
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