Posts by Graham Dawson

If Google is forced to give up Chrome, what happens next?

Re: https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium/tree/master

It's a title formed from a URL. Pedantry of this poor quality does not endear you to anyone and is not useful in any way

The 12 KB that Windows just can't seem to quit

Who the hell is this Redo chap? And where on the disc is Start?!

GNOME Foundation's new executive director is Canadian, a techie, and a GNOME user

Re: but probably for the wrong reasons

It was nothing to do with her beliefs or gender; she was singularly unqualified for the role. I'm not actually sure how she got it in the first place.

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

Re: Phonetic Alphabets

Dulci de leche est pro pastry amore

How to stay on Windows 10 instead of installing Linux

Re: Fantasy Linux

MX tends to pragmatism over the whole issue. It relies on shims unless you explicitly activate systemd, rather than devuan's decision to fork and modify the various daemons to excise the infection, so it tends to be more stable in most situations.

I'll happily recommend mx Linux for most purposes. It's solid.

MX Linux 23.6 brings Debian freshness, without the systemd funk

Re: SystemD

It takes a more pragmatic approach than devuan, by liberal use of shims rather than forking packages to remove systemd dependencies, and has the option to install systemd as an init, if you're that way inclined. I find it better than debian while easier to maintain, for my purposes at least, than devuan. Other experiences may differ.

Mozilla takes pity on Firefox extension developers

Honey sneaks around that by modifying a cookie value rather than the link.

Pirate Bay financier and far-right activist Carl Lundström dies in plane crash

Re: muh far right

The problem is, that paraphrase is deliberately intended to create the belief that fascism is a merger of the state and private business interests, when it's nothing of the sort. This idea directly contradicts Mussolini's own writings and actions, especially his dictum of everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.

The "corporatism" referred to here is nothing to do with commercial corporations (as the link goes on to explain) but is instead more akin to syndicalism, with an interest in reducing people down to corporate groups defined by common interests. Think tribes and clans, or old-style guilds (which, again, the link uses as an example), where people of a certain profession are grouped together into a body (i.e. the "corp" in corporate, from the latin corpus), and it is that syndicated body which participates in government as a collective. So you'd have a steel-workers guild, a farmers guild, a baker's guild and so on, each wielding corporate power and influence, and each participating as a sub-unit of the state.

Mussolini started out as a socialist and only moderated insofar as he abandoned the idea of the direct seizure of the means of production, which he replaced with the belief that commerce should be subservient to corporate groups, which were in turn subservient to the state. He's only called "far right" now because of a certain Austrian painter's bad fanfiction of his and Giovani Gentile's political manifestos. Had the small disagreement of 1939 to 1945 not happened, or had Italy joined the Allies rather than the Axis (which almost happened), Mussolini would probably have been characterised a radical syndicalist instead.

Re: muh far right

He never said that. You can place your argument in jeopardy by relying on unresearched falsehoods as evidence of your position.

https://politicalresearch.org/2005/01/12/mussolini-corporate-state

Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after promises to not sell their data go up in smoke

Re: Further info

Does Mr Clinton put in his two cents, or will we only get the blackberry repurrt?

France tops China’s tokamak record with 22-minute plasma containment run

It used to be 30. That's progress of a sort.

'Maybe the problem is you' ... Linus Torvalds wades into Linux kernel Rust driver drama

Linus did not "shoot the messenger"

Marcan barged into an issue that had already largely been resolved, or soon would have been, made unreasonable demands while grinding his axe about the lkml not adapting to his workflow, threatened to launch a social shaming campaign against everyone who didn't immediately kowtow to his position, and then flounced off when called out for his awful behaviour.

This is the sort of unstable, irrational person you absolutely do not want working on the kernel. His first reaction isn't discussion or compromise, but blackmail.

FuriPhone FLX1: A Debian-powered brick that puts GNOME in your back pocket

I wonder if Sailfish would be able to squeeze on there.

NATO's newest member comes out swinging following latest Baltic Sea cable attack

Re: Shame

I'm sure it had the minimum crew complement, however.

Devs sent into security panic by 'feature that was helpful … until it wasn't'

Re: Suspicious translations

That would make anyone's nipples tingle with delight.

Jimmy Carter set the solar, space, and environmental pace

Re: This is a present from a small distant world

Biden is not complicit in anything. You have to be capable of making decisions and giving consent to be complicit in things.

Axiom Space shuffles space station assembly sequence – to get it standalone sooner

Re: Relook at

Such "butchery" is at the very root of the English language, it being germanic in origin, and therefore often choosing wordsticking to add to its wordhoard, much as it pretends a francophone persuasion.

The sweet Raspberry taste of success masks a missed opportunity

Re: Not even the A500 was "switch on and go"

And never the twain shall meet.

Raspberry Pi 500 and monitor arrive in time for Christmas

Re: Keyboard layout

The # sign was originally the abbreviation of libre pondo, lb, (which for some reason had the p upside down) and was often written as the ligature ℔, often with an extra flourish across the top. It was later simplified into the # we now know and pound repeatedly while trying to get through automated phone helpline menus.

Apple's backwards design mistake and the reversed capacitor

Re: Reverse the polarity of the Coulomb flow...

It means "turn the USB plug over again".

NASA's X-59 plane is aiming for a sonic thump, not a boom

Re: I must admit, beyond basic research I do not fully get the point of the X-59 program

The last thing anyone wants to hear right now is a Boeing boom.

Both KDE and GNOME to offer official distros

It'll be a moonshot.

SpaceX hits 400 launches of Falcon 9 rocket

Re: Man of Culture

Someone needs to dare him to name one after The Grey Area.

UK sleep experts say it's time to kill daylight saving for good

Re: Seems a bit specious

This idea that it was for the farmers is a myth, possibly spread as a post-hoc justification. Farmers generally start their work so early and end it so late that moving midday an hour one way or the other is neutral at best, and at worst causes then significant disruption. The cows still want milking at the same time of day; they can't read a clock.

The real reason for it was the erroneous belief that it would save electricity.

The Astronaut wore Prada – and a blast from Michael Bloomberg

Re: Bloomberg

The thing is, they will get there eventually. SpaceX is making steady and visible progress towards their stated goals; it's just not on a timescale compatible with anyone's political ambitions.

Richard Branson to take balloon ride to edge of space

Re: How much helium will we need

A worrying number of people can only define their identity in terms of hate, of either individuals or groups, and will engage in it even to their own detriment. It's an unhealthy lifestyle. In extreme cases it can lead to invading Poland.

Linus Torvalds declares war on the passive voice

Re: As I get older…

Never got that far. Woody Allen burst out of a TV screen and shot him.

Majority of Redis users considering alternatives after less permissive licensing move

Re: Failure to understand: Open Source

If you want the code, you abide by the terms of the license. If you don't want to abide by the terms of the license, you can't have the code. This is not a complicated proposition, it's only portrayed as complicated by people who want to ensure that the benefits of copyright protection only ever move in one direction.

Telcos scolded for unwanted erection of utility poles in race to wire up Britain

Re: Like any other superhighway

Yes. It reminds me of the 80s, when it was all publicly owned. British Rail was always crap and Blackpool beach was always covered in sewage, except for a brief period in the 90s. The key problem in both then and now is a lack of accountability for the people responsible for the mess.

Re: I remember when it was all fields around here...

House rule six... commenters are forbidden from attempting to re-enact the Monty Python's Whicker Island without a signed release? I'm uncertain how this applies to the situation.

SpaceX blasts being stuck in bureaucratic orbit as Starship approval slips

Re: November

He means the election.

Raspberry Pi 4 bugs throw wrench in the works for Fedora 41

Re: WTF ?

It's a sad day when nobody recognises a line from Dr Strangelove. You're all going to answer to the Coca Cola Company.

Re: WTF ?

For my HA-and-media stuff use kubernetes*, an ancient nuc, and a small cluster of pis for peripheral thingies, but I can respect the effort that went into your setup. The great thing about solutions is that there are so many of them.

*k4s specifically. I wanted a project to familiarise myself with it for work-related reasons, and the requirements of my home setup were just bizarre enough to touch nearly every part of the docs. I'm probably replacing it with portainer soon. It's simpler. Relatively.

Re: WTF ?

You some kinda prevert?

NASA's billion-dollar launcher is behind schedule and burning cash

I can't help but think money is a terrible way to fuel a rocket. Have they tried hydrogen?

Blue Origin sets October 13 for first New Glenn EscaPADE to Mars

Re: About time too ...

Given the circumstances you describe, wouldn't the outer giants be a better place to investigate such noisome ructions?

Japan mandates app to ensure national ID cards aren't forged

Re: the sign of hubris

Ultimately, the problem with ID cards is that the only thing they reliably demonstrate is that the person holding the ID is the person the ID describes.

NASA gives Falcon 9 thumbs-up to launch Crew-9

Re: Just give up on Starliner already.

Someone needs to contact Boeing and tell them that Starliner is about to blow the whistle on more manufacturing defects. It'll be dead before you can say "conspiracy".

SpaceX hit by inflight Falcon 9 failure

Re: Data

Actually no. It failed an engine relight as well, which means it wasn't possible to deorbit the ship as planned.

Founder of Indian ride-share biz Ola calls for 70-hour work week

Re: If these idiots really are the Techno Robber Barons of today

I'm sure he's looking intuit.

Privacy features lose their way in latest Firefox update

Re: Damning with faint praise

The entire sync and accounts stack is open source. It's not recommended for the faint of heart, but it's doable.

Re: Damning with faint praise

While I understand your stance, I must disagree with it in practice. Of all the browsers on the market, Firefox is currently the only one that allows me to self-host a browser sync and unified account service. That alone is a huge boon.

systemd 256.1: Now slightly less likely to delete /home

Having the component that manages temporary files expand until it's managing the user's home directory is emblematic of systemd's dysfunctional development culture. Mission creep, feature spread, taking over arbitrary new things at random, and then acting like that's what you're supposed to expect from poorly-named tools. It's only a matter of time before systemd absorbs /etc and any other system config into a "unified binary format" and "common configuration interface". This new systemd-config-register will then presumably expand its role to store user email.

Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix philosophy'

As of right now it doesn't, it's true, but it had a hard dependency on systemd for long enough that the problem stuck in peoples' minds.

Replace SELinux with ALSA and this is how we ended up with the horrendous abortion that is pulseaudio.

Space health shocker: Astronauts return mostly fine

Re: So spaceflight is good for you

Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the heavens.

A tale of two missions: Starliner and Starship both achieve milestones

Re: "before toppling over into the ocean"

I can think of a few bell-ends it might be preferable to land it on...

Forget feet and inches, latest UK units of measurement are thinking bigger

Re: What the hell is a meter?

They're both from the same greek root of metron or metreon, but reached us by different paths, so they now serve different purposes in British and Commonwealth English.

A meter is a measuring device, while metre is a unit of measurement, whether that be a unit of length or the frequency of a regularly recurring pattern, such as in poetry or music. You could use a one metre pendulum to time your music, giving you a metre metre meter, or a metre metronome. By extension, this means you can, by regularly tapping one metre long stick on the ground for every one metre pace you take in time to a song, have a metre metre meter metre meter.

Malicious xz backdoor reveals fragility of open source

Re: Some OSS development introspection needed

The difference is in who does the linking, and why. Libraries linked by the sshd developers are audited by them to ensure they're compliant with requirements. libsystemd was linked by people who wanted to tie sshd into a gigantic, sprawling mess of an "init" for the convenience of notifications.

It's all good and well saying that the attack could have come at any point, but the fact is that this vulnerability was introduced by the long arm of systemd reaching into sshd's internals, where it had absolutely no place being. THAT is the problem. THAT is the thing that people have been warning about.