Posts by The Velveteen Hangnail

Essential FOSS tools to make macOS suck less

Re: There's one feature I miss, and it was ruined by Apple

Literally every OS is like that. It's unavoidable. That's why MacOS is IMO superior. Why? Exactly because they _don't_ constantly screw around with stuff. They make changes over time, yes, but they don't endlessly throw out the baby with the bathwater the way Microsoft does.

Having to deal with idiosyncrasies is one thing. But having to relearn an entire new batch of idiosyncrasies every couple years because the vendor decided to make sweeping changes to their desktop is infinitely worse.

Re: But why tho?

There are many reasons to use it:

-If you are a computer novice, MacOS has been proven to be much easier to use than Windows. Linux, unless you stay within somebody's preconfigured walled garden, is not even remotely so.

-If you are an advanced computer user who has stuff to do, it is fantastic because it gives you almost all the power a linux box gives, without having to waste time doing side-quests to make something work so you can get on with your day.

-It is infinitely more stable than both linux and windows as a desktop experience. I don't have to worry about Microsoft or some AV vendor trashing the entire OS from one hour to the next.

I've noticed that the only people who really like windows are:

1. gamers (understandably)

2. People who know just enough to be dangerous

3. Like religion, people who started with windows and refuse to try anything else.

I used to revel in the details when I was younger and my plate of knowledge was empty. Now, I have real tasks to complete and the last thing I want is to hit a wall because the OS disrupts my workflow. I gave up on Windows because of Microsoft's capricious UI changes and unstable updates. I gave up on linux (as a desktop) because even as recently as a couple years ago, the UIs are both capricious AND don't give the level of system control that MacOS or Windows has.

My OS usage boils down to:

Windows - Only for games. Too unreliable for anything else

Linux - Servers, appliance-like systems, and when I need to have intimate control of whatever

MacOS - Everything else

MongoDB rebuts claims it's not ready for business critical workloads

Popular with people who don't know what they're doing

MongoDB is easy for developers to get up and running, and way too many developers don't think beyond that point. They don't consider data integrity, or relationships between data... and they certainly don't consider the other end of the line where you need to generate reports based on that data.

Next thing you know, the project is well into development and you discover that it's virtually impossible to pull critical metrics from your data without developing a custom reporting engine.

Rule of thumb... If you are unable to concretely explain _why_ you need to use a specific database type (and this goes equally for graphql and others, as it does nosql), you should stick to a standard RDBMS like Postgres.

And no, being "easy" is not a valid reason.

DEF CON badge disagreement gets physical as firmware dev removed from event stage

Peak Enshitification?

DEF CON totally flubs a project, AND tries to screw everyone. Apparently it's now run by American CEOs and CFOs.

Oracle's Java pricing brews bitter taste, subscribers spill over to OpenJDK

Re: Run Oracle Run! (time environment)

While Java definitely deserves some of the blame for the example you're describing, the issue is more a matter of bad developers, not the language. They don't code properly, they abandon their code base... there's lots of reasons. And very often the choice of using java in the first place isn't even theirs. It's management, or the client.

Java is far from the only language that suffers from this. Python is an easy example of the same issue. Heck, the issue is so bad, in fact, that we now have things like venv and pipx to deal with it. Any language that goes through major revisions, that deprecates previous functionality, is going to run into this issue. The issue is that much more pronounced when said language crams everything and the kitchen sink into it's distribution (ie: what java does).

EU antitrust cops probe Microsoft ties between Entra ID and 365 services

Bundles of bundles

Microsoft has bundled everything so completely that if you only need one or two key things, the price is exorbitant to the point where it doesn't make sense to buy them unless you go all-in /w Microsoft.

Another great example is Autopilot. Autopilot is unusable without Entra ID and Intune, and the minimum viable package is absurdly priced.

Contrast to Apple, who makes their equivalent of Autopilot completely free. It does nothing more than point to the MDM tool of your choice. The only annoyance is that it's not available to end-users, and getting your business registered is a little cumbersome.

Ellison-backed med tech startup Project Ronin closes doors

Who would buy it?

Considering it's driven by Larry Ellison, that alone is enough reason to not buy into it. Oracle has more than demonstrated just how badly Ellison will screw over any clients, so nobody with any else would buy in to anything he does.

VMware takes a swing at Nutanix, Red Hat with KVM conversion tool

Nokia phone case

For some reason this reminded me of the old Nokia protective phone cases. Great idea, but completely pointless in reality.

Nokia phones were so tough that the case would get ruined long before the phone ever did.

This tool will see almost no use because only a fool would migrate to VMWare at this point.

Kia crashes CES with modular electric vehicle concept

Re: Standardized

There will always be ways to differentiate. Compare against the PC market. Components can vary drastically, but everything is fine as long as they support the corresponding connector. Power, PCI-E, etc.

It's uncertain where personal technology is heading, but judging from CES, it smells

Very big indeed

8xm? Apparently it's so large they had to invent an entirely new metric prefix. I wonder how they got it into the building...

Microsoft pulls the plug on WordPad, the world's least favorite text editor

It's all crap

The first thing I do on a new windows install is removing _everything_ that can be uninstalled. There is so much garbage installed by default and new garbage added all the time.

Rocky Linux details the loopholes that will help its RHEL rebuild live on

RHEL remains an important product to a lot of big businesses,

> RHEL remains an important product to a lot of big businesses,

Not for much longer it won't. Or at least, it's going to obliterate it's mindshare and become the Oracle of the Linux world. They screwed the pooch with their handling of v8, and this is another very large nail added to the coffin.

Unless you have a very good reason, and deep pockets, to use RHEL, you won't touch it with a 10ft pole. I also expect Fedora will also start taking a nose-dive too (assuming it hasn't already). I know I won't be touching anything Redhat anymore without a very good reason.

It also raises concerns about everything _else_ Redhat makes, like Ansible and IPA. Are they going to go proprietary too?

Here's how the data we feed AI determines the results

Doesn't matter

While all of this is completely true, the core issue is that it doesn't matter if the answers aren't perfect. Hell, it's not even important whether the answers are even accurate.

As long as what ChatGPT provides is "good enough", and it will still take over people's jobs.

"Good enough" has always been the watch-phrase for almost everything that has come to market, from Microsoft Office to Facebook to cars to literally anything. It's the reason there are websites such as thedailywtf.com.

And of course, people who still _have_ jobs will be forced to use these kinds of tools to up their productivity and stay competitive. Hell, I've been using it to speed up my development work by having it write blocks of code for me when I know what I need, but it's faster to have chatgpt write it than to potentially spent hours sifting through documentation. I have to verify the code, of course, cause I don't trust ChatGPT whatsoever.... but it's a massive net productivity boost.

To this day, most people value quantity of work far more important than quality of work, and LLMs provide that in spades. For example, how many publications have _already_ admitted to using AIs to write their content for them? Buzzfeed is one of the most well known examples, but isn't remotely the only one.

And when it comes to generating total bullshit, like Political Op Ed pieces.... ChatGPT is basically a money printing machine.

OpenAI CEO warns that GPT-4 could be misused for nefarious purposes

Could?

Wow, is the AI reality distortion field finally starting to crack?

We read OpenAI's risk study. GPT-4 is not toxic ... if you add enough bleach

Complex problem

I've tried a few of the more... disturbing prompts described in the article and ChatGPT has shot me down each time, so it looks like they've been updating it based on this feedback. Then again I didn't try very hard so it's possible the correct prompt will still bypass the safeguards.

Also, the issue of whether OpenAI should share their training/model info is thorny, but when you consider all the factors, I think NOT sharing that data is the best option, as much as some people don't like it.

Look at what's happened so far... The moment these models have been made available to the public, the very first things people have done is use it negatively. Generating pornography without the consent of the people imaged. Phone scams. Falsified videos. Untruthful stories and scientific papers. DDOSing publishers with garbage.

This technology MUST be kept confidential, and it MUST have gatekeepers. We are already seeing the levels of abuse possible with this technology, and it is an undebatable guarantee that it will get worse as the technology improves. Because people were idiots out of the gate, the horses have already left the barn and our only realistic option now is to keep further advances locked down so we can have a fighting chance of combating the menace that has already been unleashed.

Workers don't want these humanoid robots telling them to be happy

First thing I thought of

Anyone else have this scene spring to mind, from the movie Demolition Man?

https://youtu.be/tKXO02VGrQ0

Fewer bonuses for Apple staff in latest cost-cutting measure

Oh woe is me

Oh oh oh poor Apple... They weren't able to print QUITE as much money so now the rank and file have to pay the price.

It's disgusting. There is no reason nor excuse for this.

Catholic clergy surveillance org 'outs gay priests'

Makes sense

Gotta protect the pedophiles by redirecting attention to innocent scapegoats, right?

The nodes have it in the Great DB debate: Reg readers pick graph

Democracy

> "The best use-case for graph databases is scenarios where you don't understand the data "

I cannot even begin to describe how terrifying that statement is. If you don't understand the data, GTFO and bring someone in who does.

The biggest problem with Democracy is that it depends on an educated public. I bet a week of morning coffees that the overwhelming majority of "pro-graph" people don't have the foggiest idea how databases even work, relational or otherwise. All they care is that graph database are newer, and therefore automatically better.

I've seen this during the NoSQL says. Why did they choose MongoDB? Because it was "easier". SQL was "confusing". MongoDB was "Faster".

Not one single reason was because MongoDB was demonstrably the best choice for the job. Not one. Everything revolved around the perception that MongoDB was inexplicably better.

These same people then spent inordinate amounts of time writing a crapton of convoluted code in order to do the most basic manipulation of the data they had. Work that would have taken 5-10 minutes with a reasonably written query.

One time, I was administering a DB server for a team of app developers. They routinely ran into performance problems because not a single blessed one of them understood what a WHERE clause was. They even went so far as to accuse me of sabotaging their database server and making their code run poorly. It was such a common occurrence, the first thing I did when someone opened their mouth was "Did you make sure your SELECT query was bounded?".

My absolute favourite was, in the same above scenario, they had gotten a new "Team Lead" who thought he was god's gift to software development. They ran into yet another one of these performance issues. Before they had even completed the sentence of the problem they were having, I immediately said, "This issue has come up repeatedly. Check your SQL and make sure you limit your results so you aren't sending back several 10s of millions of rows of data". No no no no no it couldn't be that! They literally spent an ENTIRE MONTH debugging the issue. In the end they solved it.... it was an unbounded SELECT and they were literally returning a couple hundred megabytes of data from the database. For a web page load that needed exactly one record out of the table.

I got occasional sneak peaks of other code they had written. There's no polite word to describe it. The code was such guttural trash that it would give a decent developer PTSD. This was a consumer oriented project too... and I made sure to avoid it like the plague it was.

So the lesson is: If your developers cannot figure out how to query a relational database, it's not the technology. Your developers just suck so bad that they shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard. And if you don't understand your data well enough to be able to say "Graph is better", then it's virtually guaranteed that it isn't.

And where is NoSQL now? Zero people talk about it anymore.

Ex-Tweep mocked by Musk for asking if he'd actually been fired

I read a very insightful critique elsewhere about what motivates his defenders. Musk is an ignorant, narcissistic asshole. These supporters are also ignorant, narcissistic assholes, so they have a psychological need to support him because he validates and justifies their own terrible behaviour.

Basically the exact same dynamic as Trump and his own brainless supporters.

The Great Graph Database Debate: Relational can't do everything

Re: I don't understand the motion

IMO the entire pro-graph side is outright disingenuous. The venn diagram between RDBMSes and non-relational database are basically a big fat circle for RDBMS, with several small, slightly overlapping dots to represent other database types. The ranges of use-cases are NOT equal.

RDBMSes won the database wars because they provide the most flexibility in dealing with data. If you don't understand what you need from a database, you choose relational. Period. End of discussion. Unless you are doing something VERY specific, an RDBMS can tackle almost every use case you throw at it. These other database types may be able to handle these other specific use cases very well, but that comes at the cost that they absolutely suck at everything else.

I haven't done much work with graph databases myself, but this whole riggamarole the GraphQL crowd is peddling smells like the EXACT same nonsense that the NoSQL crowd peddled a few years ago. Oh oh oh RDBMSes suck! Use this new shiny thing instead! MongoDB is webscale! NoSQL got it speed by sacrificing _everything_ that made databases manageable, extensible, and robust, forcing you to front load all that processing into custom applications instead. I saw it over and over again.

And when you finally dug through the weeds and investigated the REAL reason NoSQL was used? Because RDBMSes are "outdated" and "not cool". That SQL is "too hard". I would have laughed if I wasn't so shocked by the utter idiocy of it all. And now look. NOBODY is talking about NoSQL anymore. But now we're repeating the exact same nonsense again except with graph databases.

If you want to use a non-relational database, then go nuts. Just for the love of $DEITY analyze what you're going to do with it first and confirm that what you want aligns with the strengths of said database type. And when I say analyze, I mean look beyond the first 5 minutes where you're writing your hello world app.

If you can't be sure that your edgy hipster choice of database will support your needs 5 years from now, then don't do it. Or... do. There are plenty of consulting companies who are happy to take your money to remediate the shitshow your code base has become cause you were more worried about being cool than getting the job done.

'Brittle' Twitter suffers bad case of the Mondays: Links, pics, vids fail

Re: I'm just asking...

The single best explanation I have ever heard, was actually from a botanist in the TV show "The Expanse".

I can't remember the exact quote, but essentially what he said was that complex systems don't fail outright. They deteriorate over time, small things breaking here and there because they cannot be maintained. Eventually those small issues start adding up, and eventually they will cascade, causing other parts to fail, which cascade further, until finally the whole thing crashes and burns.

I couldn't find the exact clip I was looking for but it's Season 2 Episode 10 "Cascade".

And that's exactly what we're seeing now with Twitter. Twitter is already dead. They just don't know it yet.

The Great Graph Debate: Revolutionary concept in databases or niche curiosity?

Exceptionally specific use cases

The problem with Graph databases are the exact same problems as any other non-RDMS such as key-value/document stores.

They are useful for very specific use cases that are tailored to their specific strengths. But using those systems come at significant costs, the biggest one being that more generalized use of the data is damned near impossible.

With a conventional RBDMS, you have standardized ways of approach a problem, applying constraints, analyzing the data, etc. An RDBMS design can be trivially adjusted to emulate any of these other databases, and they are appropriate for use in 90-98% of use-cases.

With any other database system, you now have a custom query language(at best) or you have to write entire subroutines just to get the data out of the system in the way you want. They are able to solve one or two specific scenarios, but at the detriment of all others. The end result is your hello world database that targeted your original need quickly becomes mindbendingly complex to manage or extend when other needs inevitably arise. MongoDB is a low-hanging-fruit example where you literally can't do any kind of analytics without writing entire applications to parse the data.

RDBMS' won the database wars for very good reasons. They provided a very good compromise for all the different possible ways that data might need to be sliced and diced, nevermind the inevitable evolutionary requirements that any long-running database will experience.

Why ChatGPT should be considered a malevolent AI – and be destroyed

Gross misunderstanding of the tool

There seems to be a collective and very gross misunderstanding of how these tools function.

Repeat after me. ChatGPT IS NOT AI. ChatGPT IS NOT AI.

It is a language statistical model that strings sentences together in ways it has been trained to do. It doesn't understand context. It doesn't understand truth.

A computer will do exactly what you *tell* it to do, NOT what you *want* it to do. And ChatGPT is no different. You give it a prompt, it will provide some kind of response to that prompt.

Any bearing on reality is entirely coincidental, yet for some god-forsaken reason, people are acting as if this thing is some kind of bloody oracle or something. ChatGPT is an automated bullshit generator, nothing more, nothing less. If you ask a very specific, closed question, it will (usually) produce a reasonably accurate answer to that question. This makes it very useful is software development when you can save some time by having it whip up some boilerplate code. But absolutely _nothing_ it outputs can be trusted.

Microsoft, GitHub, OpenAI urge judge to bin Copilot code rip-off case

Re: I don't see the problem

> as long as I didn't simply copy-paste the code

That's exactly what the AI is doing. This has already been demonstrated.

Eat their own dog food

If copilot is so innoculous, why hasn't Microsoft pointed it at their internal codebase for all their commercial products and scan those.

Not just public

I read complaints elsewhere that they were able to get copilot to generate their code despite it being from private repositories. But of course Microsoft will just say, "Ooops that was an accident" and keep going their merry way.

This whole scenario is absolutely screaming "thin edge of the wedge".

Twitter stiffed us on $2m bill, claim consultants in lawsuit

All for naught?

There are so many lawsuits and whatnot suing Twitter. Elon apparently put most of his debts for purchasing Twitter, onto Twitter's tab.

Even if every maligned vendor wins their suit, how are they going to collect when Musk simply bankrupts Twitter?

Unless all these suits can name Elon specifically, and demand damages from him directly, where is the punishment? Where is the incentive to keep Elon and future Elons from repeating the exact same behavour?

This is all 100% Elon's fault. NONE of the things that have happened in the last few months, would have happened if it wasn't for Elon. All the news involving Twitters woes are just one yawn after another until someone holds Elon directly responsible for the damage he's caused.

C: Everyone's favourite programming language isn't a programming language

Re: Annnnd...you completely missed the point of the article

> How will all of the investment made in creating these libs carry over to Swift/Rust? Even with shims or wrappers, the underlying libs were still written in C. With all of the vulnerabilities that the new languages seek to eradicate.

Almost any C library can be pulled into Rust unless it's doing something particularly weird, so that's generally not an issue.

WRT the potential vulnerabilities of imported C libraries, yes that is also true. What's your point? That we just give up and not bother? That's absurd to the point of nonsensical.

The obvious approach is to steadily migrate to languages like Rust where safe programming principals are baked into the language, rather than the haphazard mess that C is. And it's already paying dividends. eg: https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/02/android_google_rust/

Re: Nothing new, kinda pathetic really

> You're telling me that Rust and Swift can't interface to a 50 year old API? That says more about these languages than anything else.

Not at all. I won't speak for Swift since I haven't used it but Rust for certain is fully capable of bidirectional interaction /w C's FFI. That's why it's slowly getting incorporated in a lot of projects that were primarily C. The most notable example is the Linux kernel.

Re: Nothing new...

> The problems Rust and Swift 'solve' are all solvable in C and C++ build environments and software methods.

I disagree. Not because you're wrong per se, but because you're ignoring certain realities of the situation. Yes, C and C++ has structures that alleviate a lot of common issues. The problem is that they are bolted on. You need to know that they are available, how to use them, and then actually use them. And in todays world where more and more people are "self-taught", there is a MASSIVE Dunning-Kruger problem.

This is why I'm a very strong proponent of Rust as full replacement and successor of C. As a language, it's an absolute PITA to learn specifically because it doesn't allow you to just do whatever the hell you want. It bakes proper coding practices directly into the language. You have to go out of your way to not only write crappy code. Does it stop all developer mistakes? Of course not. That's impossible. But it does do a VERY good job at stopping people from making the most common mistakes that we see today.

This is the opposite of almost every other language out there where you need to go out of your way to write safe code. And heaven forbid you're using a language that is shockingly insecure by design, like Javascript or PHP. Yes, there have been improvements, but it's not possible to fix the fundamental design failures of these languages. The best you can do is wrap enough security layers around them that you are relatively protected.

IT recruiter settles claims it snubbed American workers

Why "without guilt"

I don't understand why these companies keep getting slaps on the wrist. I'm especially frustrated how they never have to admit guilt. They have literally zero incentive to change their ways.

Microsoft reportedly mulls a does-everything 'super app' to expand mobile search

Re: does-everything 'super app'

The only limit is yourself!

Windows 11 still not winning the OS popularity contest

I'll wait for Windows 12

It's clear that Microsoft considers Windows 11 a skunkworks project where they keep throwing whatever crap they want into it. Advertising. Force feeding new "Features" like unremovable Teams integration.

Maybe when they start working on Windows 12, I'll give 11 a try cause it means they aren't screwing with it anymore.

Epson zaps lasers into oblivion, in the name of the environment

Horseshit

This has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with profit.

You can take my laser printer from my cold dead hands. I print very rarely, which means when I had an inkjet my cost per page was approximately $100 because by the time I needed to print again, all my cartridges had dried up. Meanwhile my laser's starter cartridges lasted 2 years, and would have lasted even longer if I didn't need to emergency print a large number of flyers for a community thing.

Laser just isn't as profitable for them. Framing it as an environmental thing is a flat out disgusting lie.

You know what helps the environment? Not redesigning your printers and ink cartridges every week.

Microsoft's attempts to harden Kerberos authentication broke it on Windows Servers

Re: Another brilliant demonstration of Borkzilla testing procedures

I would be more sympathetic if this situation wasn't entirely of Microsoft's own making.

They overcomplicate everything, introduce all new protocols, languages and tech stacks as often as Google introduces new messaging systems, and needlessly over-integrate systems that should never have been integrated, so they can drive more lock-in.

And us morons keep handing them ever more cash so they can keep doing what they're doing cause we prefer the devil we know.

Worse than failure

This isn't the first time they screwed up critical infrastructure software, and it won't be the last.

This reinforces update hesitancy because people cannot risk losing access, and forces them to risk compromise.

If this only happened occasionally, I could accept it was an honest mistake. But Microsoft does this routinely, which means these mistakes are entirely intentional and Microsoft is specifically trying to undermine computer security around the world.

If you think 5G is overhyped, wait till you meet 5.5G

5th generation lies

And I'm willing to bet that those that says 5G has improved their performance, are the kinds of people that purchase gold-plated HDMI cables to improve visual and audio quality.

I've been saying since the beginning that 5G is complete meaningless drivel. It was never designed to help end users. It was a way for providers to service more people with less hardware and reduce maintenance costs. Oh, and soak the starry-eyed new tech chasers for additional money.

Artist formerly known as Kanye reveals Parler trick: Buying the far-right haven

Re: ::yawns::

The fact that you think the "left" has been taken over by extremists, shows just how badly US politics is skewed.

For example, the right literally think basic health care is "alt-left". Something that literally every single developed country in the _world_ enjoys.

The "left" of the US is considered "center-right" in any country that isn't run by a totalitarian despot.

Making ridiculous false equivalent statements, as if the US left is even remotely similar to the US right is a flat out lie. The right literally ticks all the checkboxes for outright fascism.

Don't even pretend that you're "Center" with statements like that. You are parroting the alt-rights talking points WAY too closely.

Re: Perceived ant-semitic posts?

Apparently you aren't aware of this, but when you lie about and try to overthrowing democratically held elections, commit terrorist attacks against your nations capital, AND try to murder your very own exiting Vice President, (plus a laundry list of other things,) you WILL be tagged as "anti-constitution".

I know this comes as a shock to you, but there it is.

Musk reportedly wants to gut Twitter workforce by up to 75%

Re: Should be an easy task...

Kanye is that you?

Re: Ugh

Did you learn NOTHING from Trump?

You _have_ to pay attention to these crap nozzles because they cause so much damage when you ignore them. At a minimum, you need to know which way to dodge when they start having their cultists throw punches.

Microsoft's Lennart Poettering proposes tightening up Linux boot process

He's with Microsoft?

This is the first time I heard he works for Microsoft. And yet somehow this doesn't surprise me in the least.

He's against everything that the "unix way" stands for so naturally he works for the king of monopolistic monolithic software kingpins.

And naturally his "recommendation" is to inextricably tie the core of linux into Microsoft. What a douche.

Oracle opens up internal dev tools so customers can build their own apps

It's a trap!

Insert admiral_akbar.gif here.

_Nothing_ that comes from Oracle can be trusted.