Posts by cyberdemon

Amid drama at .NET Foundation, Microsoft's De Icaza reveals it was meant to be like GNOME Foundation

Says the director of the F# Foundation

F### this

Want a piece of GitLab? It's going to cost you: IPO price per share settles at $77

Not "budget" but at least it's not Microsoft

So at least you don't have Microsoft sniffing round your data and building AI codebots that automate the plagiarism of your IP..

And at least it's not tracking you across other platforms like LinkedIn, Teams, MS Office and MS Windows to find out which little dilberts do the most work for the least pay, and emailing with a nice summary of how much more work they could do every month..

Nine floors underground, Oracle's Israel data centre can 'withstand a rocket, a missile or even a car bomb'

Re: can withstand a rocket direct hit

Don't be silly, nobody needs to worry about a small thermal exhaust port..

LAN traffic can be wirelessly sniffed from cables with $30 setup, says researcher

Re: I thought LAN cables were shielded

If the cable happens to be running through the middle of a completely shielded RF anechoic chamber that also happens to house your SDR (i.e. in RF terms you are in the middle of nowhere - just you and the ethernet cable) then this might be plausible. I bet the software on the SDR didn't cost $30 to develop and I bet it can't cope with more noise than a statically-charged mosquito.

UK's VoIP Unlimited hit by DDoSes again, weeks after ransom-linked attacks KO'd it

Interesting. I wonder how many other VoIP providers are currently under attack, and if there is a special motive for it, perhaps an experiment by somebody to see how feasible it is to disrupt phone communications on command.

If it works, it could be a useful weapon when WWIII breaks out...

(fortunately it seems it's not particularly effective.. although it might be a bit more so when BT switches off its landline network in favour of VoIP)

Clearview CEO doubles down, claims biz has now scraped over ten billion social media selfies for surveillance

His muskiness tweets

Am I missing something here? Why is there a random snippet about Elon Musk's latest dodgy firmware update in the middle of this article? What does that have to do with Clearview?

Facebook, Instagram finally end days of uptime by returning to some downtime

FB is a plague on society, it affects people that don't even participate.

^ This.

TBH, since Facebook cause various psychological harms including inciting people to various hatred, often at the behest of foreign 'troll armies' etc. (never mind their laughable tax contribution), could we please take a leaf out of China's book and just ban the lot of it, permanently?

Spiritual Opium? - more like Spiritual Arsenic.

@Captain Veg

[Celeriac]

Frustrated dev drops three zero-day vulns affecting Apple iOS 15 after six-month wait

Re: People like shiny branded shit

More like the Giffen Goods.. As in, it's not actually any better (if anything it's worse), it's just got a higher price tag so the idiots want it more

Re: Have to agree coming at it from the other way.

The Pinephone is not so good, sadly. :(

But I have had great success with a Fairphone 3 running "/e/" OS. (de-googled AOSP that works)

Reluctant to patch

They've got customers using those features..

Microsoft's problem child, Windows 11, is here. Will you run it? Can you run it? Do you even WANT to run it?

Re: Want to run it?

I think snap is actually worse than systemd.

Every application is mounted by the Kernel in its own squashfs. If you run `df` on a bare Ubuntu install of their latest version, you'll find it comes with about 15 mounted 'filesystems', one for each of the stock Snap apps that Ubuntu comes with, each with their own copy of all the system libraries, and a bizarre interface to the rest of the system. In fact it is just like the app-sandboxing evils of Apple that you cite, but coming to a Linux desktop near you.

It's supposed to be for security, but the very idea that you are bypasing root priveleges and handing a potentially untrusted squashfs image to kernelspace is just.. bonkers imo

And at least systemd actually has a USE, for a desktop/laptop user. It does make certain things easier. (I agree on servers it's totally backwards and often downright dangerous)

Also, without organised religion there would be no civilisation. So religion had a use too. But now we have civilisation I agree religion is obsolete. Still not as bad as snap though ;)

Re: Want to run it?

I've been using Debian for 20 years (that makes me feel old, but i'm 36), and I somewhat agree, somewhat disagree.

Debian is *perfect* for a beginner provided they have someone experienced and patient enough to show them the ropes (as I did, and then did for other people)

But for a beginner who is on their own, or with nothing but internet forums, it can be a bit scary/frustrating.

It kind of assumes you know what you are doing. But if you DO know what you are doing or have a friend who does, then it is the most powerful and useful distro out there by far.

Whereas other distros try to force you down a certain path, which experienced users might decide they don't want to go down.

(e.g. 'snap' is the most ghastly thing ever invented. seriously wtf)

Re: Want to run it?

You can configure SteamPlay (aka "Proton", a per-game customised version of Wine) to try to play ALL windows games. not just officially-supported ones.

For almost everything I've tried, it works flawlessly.

GTFO works. DOOM works. Even VR games like The Forest and Dead Effect work.

KDE

Don't know a lot about Mint/Cinnamon, but KDE has served me well as a desktop for many years, is available on most if not all distros, and is at its best yet IMO.

10 years ago KDE 4 was a bit of a "duff release" i'll grant, but its successor has really made up for that.

"KDE Connect" is awesome for integrating with my phone. Dolphin file manager does everything a file manager needs to. Settings are easy to find and very useful/powerful - it's as customisable as a desktop should be without being confusing for new users. My Bluetooth mouse "just works". Even my work VPN "just works", after setting it up via the networking widget.

It doesn't crash, it doesn't get in the way, it does everything I need, and I can trust it to work for me and not somebody else*.

Most things that I need for work are available natively for Linux e.g. Chrome, LibreOffice, Slack, Teams, VSCode - And of course, these days we can run even those Windows apps and games without a Linux version on Linux via Wine and Steam's Proton. Basically everything that I need as a computer user.

* Here I am referring to all of the evil 'provisioning' antifeatures in Windows, Android, iOS etc that are designed to give someone else (your employer, your software/hardware vendor and any advertisers who pay them, your state.. etc) surveillance and control over what you think and do.

Intel's €80bn European chip plant investment plan not bound for UK because Brexit

Re: rafts of EU bureaucracy and Brussels red-tape

Also, I suspect his version will be something like: All public sector procurement must go via the Official Journal of the United Kwaingdom (aka MY desk) and Boris, Sajid, Priti and I will give the work to the friends and benefactors of the Tory party when we have our meeting at the usual pub in Mayfair.

Re: rafts of EU bureaucracy and Brussels red-tape

AC > What utter nonsense.

So, for example the European Public Contracts Directive 2014 which forced all public sector procurements over a certain value to go via the Official Journal of the European Union.

This was almost entirely Britain's idea, so far as I know, having worked on several public procurements for a large EU-collaborative science project.

The idea was to stop the rampant corruption around public sector procurement in Italy, Spain, France etc.

Of course, it was a nightmare for public sector bodies like the one I worked for, (will it be above the OJEU threshold or won't it?? We won't know till the quotes come back so better lets assume it will..) and it made it a right pain to buy the stuff we actually needed, because we had to waste a lot of people's time and get various £100k's quotes from companies, only to have to write some document justifying why they are not fit for the job.

But even back then in 2017, Italy, Spain, France even Germany were known to be ignoring these rules, and our collaborators were telling us not to keep worrying about them.

Apparently only Britain stuck to this red tape - we always were stickers for rules and love to hide behind them so we can push pens around instead of getting a job done.

And I bet you your Brexit hat that old Kwasi Kwarteng will come up with a mirror image of OJEU that's even worse, and we will be wishing we could have the old red tape back with less knots in.

Re: rafts of EU bureaucracy and Brussels red-tape

Sadly, it was the UK who introduced most of the EU's 'red tape', and we will still be entangled by it post-brexit, but with our own uniquely-british knots tied in it, meaning that any corporate/legal strategy that works in the EU is no longer guaranteed to work in the UK. While multinationals can afford to navigate a pile of red tape for access to a market the size of Europe, they are not going to do that all over again just for our shitty little self-important island.

We're like a badly-behaved toddler smashing the toys and storming out of the playgroup and then whingeing that nobody wants to play with us.

We have some sad news about Facebook. It has returned to the internet after six-hour mega outage

Re: Facebook would NEVER do this.

"What do you mean they are celebrating and say they hope we never come back?? Get it back online NOW Maurice!"

"Boss, I can't open the door to the server room.."

Microsoft's .NET Foundation under fire as resigning board member questions its role

Re: Sobering

> and unless you find another platform you will only be furthering their cause.

Oh and before you jump to Node.js, guess who bought NPM last year..

Re: Sobering

Sadly, Microsoft never did stop being Microsoft. They laughed when other big corporations pretended to "not be evil", they tried it for a while with the open source act, but now with other corps like facebook and amazon seemingly trying to out-evil them, they have thrown off that garb - They are the OG of 'evilcorp' - they have been Evil since before it was cool, and now they are proud of it.

Microsoft only pretended to "stop being Microsoft" about open source in the first and second E's of their tried and tested EEE strategy: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

MS embraced Java in the 90s, but realised it needed a Java of its own, so extended it to form .NET and has nearly succeeded in eradicating Java. They made it nice and open to get all of the wide-eyed young developers on board. But they extinguished the open source flame.. So now YOU have been embraced, your knowledge extended with what is now microsoft-proprietary information.. They have pulled the rug out from under you, and unless you find another platform you will only be furthering their cause.

It was the same deal with GitHub.. Microsoft: We love open source! That's why we bought GitHub! Now all you lovely open-sourcers are working for Microsoft, contributing code into our new OpenAI code-generator that we just bought and is now anything but open and (we hope) will one day make people like you redundant.. What do you mean you don't want to work for Microsoft for no money and you want a real job?? Well perhaps we should remind you that we own LinkedIn too. Bwahaha >:]

Want to check out Windows 11 but don't want to buy a new PC? Here's how to bypass the hardware requirements

Re: Even better....don't bother yet!

s/yet//

ftfy.

UK umbrella payroll firm Giant Pay confirms it was hit by 'sophisticated' cyber-attack

Re: It is always "sophisticated"

It has to be "sophisticated" otherwise it's an admission that "our cybersecurity was incompetent"

'Quad' group seeks to set security standards for global tech industry

Re: Finally something, even if it is sloow and maybe too late

Yes, exactly as George Orwell predicted. Surveillance, propaganda, thought police, and an eternal state of cold war. "It's the only stable system" :(

Where do you think the Telescreens were manufactured? (although surely not Eastasia, because we have always been at war with Eastasia..)

Priti Patel, Peter Dutton et al will be over the moon to buy a population surveillance and control solution from the chinese, even if they don't own it.

And it doesn't seem to apply to just to the Tories - Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Jacqui Smith would all jump at the chance if they were still in power. As Orwell said, it's the only stable system of government: Totalitarian oppression - and it offers a government the dream of staying in absolute power forever.

Fukushima studies show wildlife is doing nicely without humans, thank you very much

Re: So: in 100 years time ...

At the rate we're going, more like 5

Mine's the one with the Rad-Away in the pocket

Swift 5.5 unleashed with async keyword to fix 'pyramid of doom', plus other changes in 'massive release'

my eyes

wtf is this shit?

What's wrong with standard languages like ISO C, C++, Python, Javascript, even Rust is more standard than this apple-centric bollocks

Macmillan best-biscuit list unexpectedly promotes breakfast cereal to treat status

Re: Fig rolls are good

Yes they are nice, but they are NOT biscuits. They are cakes.

Even 'cookies' would be a more accurate description for fig rolls than 'biscuits'.

Biscuits are dry and crunchy: 'bis cuit` meaning 'twice cooked'; i.e. dry and crunchy

Raspberry Pi's trading arm snags £33m investment as flotation rumours sink

Re: With the 'Sale' of shares.......

Eben Uptono Good

Microsoft does and doesn't require VMs to meet hardware requirements for Windows 11

Re: Linux Linux users are like vegans

When people are so stuck-in-their-ways and resistant to change that even when they know they are suffering and there is a better alternative, they won't try the alternative - It's because of a fear of the unknown, fear of looking stupid, etc. They get very irate when someone tries to convince them about an alternative lifestyle, as if it's an assault on their identity.

I'm like you - I like my red meat, and i'm apparently happy to die at the 'normal' age from heart attack/cancer/stroke, and I fully understand the impact that meat production has on the world, and that farming is unsustainable etc.

And yet, it irks me when some smug vegan comes along and tells me the Error of my Ways. I KNOW all of that, but apparently my brain is preconditioned to think that juicy steaks are tasty. And to agree with the vegan and change my ways is to agree that my pre-conditioned brain is stupid and a parasite on the world.

But, at least I run Linux, and have done so for 20 years (debian sid all the way), so at least i'm not feeding that monster that is microsoft any more.

And secretly I hope that someone could help me improve myself in various ways, without insulting my past self too much.

So there you go. If you did try Linux years ago and found that it wasn't for you: Try it again. Much has changed. KDE is really fucking good these days. Game support is awesome via steam & proton. Wine runs the vast majority of windows apps, those that don't there are workarounds for, especially if you are not afraid to ask.

The best thing about Linux is that the software works for YOU, not for someone else. It isn't spying on you, it isn't trying to monetise you by nudging you towards sponsored thoughts. It doesn't foist things on you that you haven't asked for. It does exactly what you command it to. And there is always a way around any problem.

But if you're a seasoned Active Directory admin, .NET developer or HR exec, then I'm sorry but there's no way to save you. You're going straight to Hell.

Royal Navy will be getting autonomous machines – for donkey work humans can't be bothered with

Re: small, disposable craft

> no squishy meat-bags (at least on our side) put at risk.

Unless the other side has millions more disposable flying hand-grenades, and better counter-autonomous-weapons than we do.

Re: "our platforms will be designed as uncrewed"

+1.

The sea is incredibly corrosive, and when seawater gets into stuff, it's not good news. You need someone to literally swab the decks and remove the salt from the autocannons.

Never mind when you're being shot at and some poor sod has got to plug a hole..

But my guess is these platforms will be small, disposable craft. Not much more than remote-controlled (hopefully by us) floating missile-launchers.

Autonomous weapons are the new arms race though.. I'm not so scared about the royal navy's pointless folly so much as how it encourages other countries to do the same..

US Air Force puts Godzilla in charge of autonomous warfare effort with Project Kaiju

Re: It's All Fun and Games...

It's all fun and games, until you get shot by a machinegun-armed drone because your face was scanned and did not match against a government-approved list of apocalypse survivors.

But then again, it's no worse than what America's enemies are churning out, so they have to keep up, right?

See: Ziyan Blowfish A3, etc etc.

Autonomous weapons are both real and fucking scary. Meanwhile humanity on this planet is growing unsustainably..

"We don't know who struck first - us or them - but we do know that it was us who scorched the sky.."

UK.gov is launching an anti-Facebook encryption push. Don't think of the children: Think of the nuances and edge cases instead

he-who-must-not-be-named

Lord Voldemort?

Emperor Palpatine?

Michael Howard?

Re: FB doesn't need encryption

While your post demonstrates a lack of understanding of what "end-to-end encryption" is supposed to mean, I can't help but agree with your skepticism/cynicism..

Facebook wouldn't be "throwing away" all that valuable data on what people are talking about.

If the data is encrypted as it passes through Facebook's messaging servers, that doesn't mean it can't be data-mined on-device (Apple style!) for trend analysis, social graph info, advertising impact analysis etc. Saves them a few compute clusters by outsourcing the electricity to your pocket if they do.

E2EE is kind of irrelevant when you completely control both "ends". Except it gives you a get-out-of-jail-free card (potentially) against government regulation.

With E2EE, Your data are safe (maybe) from the prying eyes of governments, but NOT from the (even more prying) eyes of Facebook itself.

Banned: The 1,170 words you can't use with GitHub Copilot

Re: 1170 blocked exit points, any blocked entry points ?

Yes, just make sure that your program has a 'man' page.

Microsoft previews free Visual Studio Code for the Web

Re: Why?

so that microsoft can collect EVEN MORE data, obviously.

BrakTooth vulnerabilities put Bluetooth users at risk – and some devices are going unpatched

Re: Naming?

https://asset-group.github.io/disclosures/braktooth/

> Why BrakTooth?

> The code name BrakTooth is the combination of two words: 1) Brak and 2) Tooth. While the word Tooth is clearly pointing towards Bluetooth targets, the word Brak is Norwegian and translates to crash in English. The BrakTooth family of vulnerabilities affect Bluetooth enabled devices by continuously crashing or deadlocking them, while some result in more serious consequences such as arbitrary code execution.

They could have called it BorkTooth but that would have sounded Swedish. And the Norwegians and Swedes have a 'complicated' scandinavian relationship. ;)

30 years of Linux: OS was successful because of how it was licensed, says Red Hat

Re: 25+ years and counting for me... I came to Linux one night in 2016.

It doesn't really add up at all, since Win98 was released 23 years ago. .

Maybe he meant to type 15+ years and counting and also meant to type 2006?

+1 anyway because Win98 really does belong in a VM only. At least there it has some kind of memory segmentation..

Re: Linux on the desktop

+1

Been using Debian GNU/Linux (+ KDE) as my main desktop since 2002, so almost 20 years.

KDE 3.5: Brilliant. KDE 4: Too much 'alpha' for most people - too unstable for basic users and too many features missing from 3.5 for the power users - and it did KDE a lot of damage - I held out with KDE 3.5 for ages, even tried trinity for a while.

These days KDE 5 is where 3.5 used to be: It's stable, configurable, and awesome. Windows-beating in every way IMO, and it isn't sending buckets of 'telemetry' to microsoft.

Japan's bullet trains replace smoking rooms with Zooming rooms

Fast WiFi, Zoom Booth, 300km/h train Tokaido to Sanyo

... and I bet it's cheaper than chugging along from Reading to Oxford.

Epic lawsuit's latest claims: Google slipped tons of cash to game devs, Android makers to cement Play store dominance

Re: As I said before..

Trust me. Microsoft would go that low (and lower) if they thought they could get away with it without an outright revolt.

Google can get away with this because many people still have this image of a nice cuddly company that lets people sit on beanbags and used to say "don't be evil".. Google could NEVER do evil things.

So why did they drop "Don't be Evil" from their corporate charter?

Re: Did MS buy Nokia phone business because it was a threat to its WinCE dominance

> " Maemo wouldn't have saved it"

I totally and utterly disagree. Maemo would have made a real alternative to that most evil of duopolies that you cite. I think it absolutely WAS a competitor to Windows Mobile, because Wince/WM was both shit AND evil, whereas iOS/Android were just evil. Even if maemo was "shit" in your opinion, it certainly wasn't evil. They actively encouraged open source app development, and there were Maemo ports of desktop communications software like Mumble, along with a desktop-style browser that actually supported Text Reflow, something that the evil duo have banned on mobile for some unfathomable reason. And it ran X11! I could SSH from my phone to my university's Linux cluster and bring up full-fat Matlab, with plots, on my phone. It was an incredibly powerful mobile OS, one that was focused on serving the user, not the corporations who want to 'own' the user. So therefore IMO Microsoft WAS trying to kill off the competition, and so IS relevant to the Epic/Google situation.

> " It's far more harder today to use a phone that doesn't run iOS or Android."

Yes, because Microsoft assassinated Symbian and Maemo, while trying to foist their own shitty OS that nobody on the planet wanted. That duopoly is Microsoft's fault, imo.

> "You may find it strange, but employer use many ways to analyze the productivity of their employees and rightly so. Which may be not how many characters you type but the quality of your document. Think I have to file appraisals of my team members every year.... their bonuses depends on that."

Rightly so? Says who? My performance should be measured by a manager who actually does his job, not by some pointy-haired boss (you?) who just reads and obeys the output of some creepy machine tracking my every keystroke/email/search term.. If you want to analyse the quality of a document that I wrote, how about READING it??

I noticed recently that I CANNOT turn off the new "connected experiences" in Microsoft Office, such as uploading and automatically tagging every image I insert into word, and logging my searches in Outlook, and analysing my 'productivity' into a nice little report - (even if I disable it in 'privacy center' it seems to be overridden by Group Policy - so again, they work for the corporations, not the users).

My workaround: Use LibreOffice. Fuck them. If my employer asks why is MS Office is telling them I am being unproductive by not producing enough data for them to mine, then I will tell them why. If they want to force me onto Teams-for-Desktop and MS Office, then I will find a new employer.

Re: Did MS buy Nokia phone business because it was a threat to its WinCE dominance

Worse than that. Before the buyout, they installed a stooge CEO (Stephen Elop - ex VP Microsoft, and a major MSFT shareholder) at Nokia to kill off both Symbian OS and Nokia's new Debian GNU/Linux-based mobile OS Maemo, which was used on N770,N800,N900 (best phone ever), and the then-upcoming N950 which Elop cancelled. Elop declared that from now on, all Nokia phones would run Windows Mobile.

The Nokia developers had a revolt, many walked out, the share price crashed, and then having made themselves a cheap deal, Microsoft moved in for a buyout.

It was horrific, I have no idea how the hell they got away with it.

See: https://www.theregister.com/2018/02/15/elop_and_the_fall_of_nokia_revisited/

And no, I disagree. Satan is pretty cozy with apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook these days, but Microsoft is still his number one. Everyone seems to be jumping on the Evilcorp bandwagon these days, but MS were evil before it was cool.

Just consider: Microsoft owns both LinkedIn and GitHub. Its cloud analytics and data platforms are used by everyone who is not Google, Amazon or Facebook, and 90% of computer users run its increasingly spyware-laden OS. Microsoft have a vast share of the Surveillance Capital.

Almost every 'white-collar worker' on the planet are forced by their employer to use Microsoft Teams, Office 365, etc which analyzes their productivity for their employer, and for Microsoft.

WTF

"a senior Google executive proposed that Google 'consider approaching Tencent,' a company that owns a minority stake in Epic, 'to either (a) buy Epic shares from Tencent to get more control over Epic,' or '(b) join up with Tencent to buy 100 per cent of Epic.'"

^ If that's true, it is monopolistic practice right there.. (although M$ somehow managed to get away with it when they pulled this trick and worse against Nokia, but then again they are sponsored by satan himself ever since win95, so they can get away with anything)

Tesla promises to build robot you could beat up – or beat in a race

Re: "Semi sentient"

But will it be "Three-Laws Safe"?

Or will it get an update from the Cloud and hunt down Will Smith?

Xiaomi builds a robot dog out of smartphone cameras and an Nvidia edge AI board

Open Source

Source??

Despite much trumpeting by Xiaomi of this mutt being Open Source, I can't find the open source designs anywhere.

I highly doubt they'd have the important bits like the neural network weights.

Re: JFC

Just before the Combine come to get you..

Apple responds to critics of CSAM scan plan with FAQs, says it'd block governments subverting its system

Re: I still think this is all wrong

and the Road to Hell is paved good intentions.

Even if Apple's intentions are good (Ha!) this has a MASSIVE potential for future misuse by dictatorships, Copyright/IP trolls, etc. It is the epitome of the "thin end of the wedge".

But to anyone with an ounce of Insight into how the real world works*, Apple is using this as an impossible-to-argue-against (for you must be a paedoterrorist!) excuse to make their product more acceptable in places like China: Look: We can let you crack down on whatever you like.

And to appease copyright trolls. "Here is a list of people with non-DRM copies of the album you just bought the rights to. Would you like their names and addresses so you can sue them all?"

* aka Cynicism. Something which Positive Thinkers mistake for paranoia.

Re: And it allows foreign intelligence agencies to easily frame *anybody* they want

This.

And what most people seem to be missing, is that this system could 'unexpectedly' throw up hundreds of millions of "violators/infringers" among the billions of IDevice lusers. Especially children/teenagers, who may have taken pictures of themselves in the mirror and not sent them to *anyone*.

And especially anyone who has insulted The Powers That Be in their local jurisdiction, be it the FBI/CIA/RIAA/MPAA in 'murica and the west, or the CCP, or Mossad, the Belarusian regime or the Revolutionary Guard.

There could be very few people who are not personally or by family/friend extension, affected by this.

Obviously Apple could not possibly take action against every single one of these people - it would hurt their bottom line.

So who decides who gets priority consignment to the Gulag? Apple?

What's the price to put someone on the suspect list?

Easy to arrange for an app to dump dodgy material on the local storage too. Even if they don't have many apps, just send them a whatsapp message with something nasty embedded in an unviewable portion of an innocuous cat video, perhaps.

Never Knowingly Underborked: Double trouble at Southampton's John Lewis

Re: Had a semi-apocalyptic day..

I wonder what poor linux box was on fire in some abandoned server room...

Maybe someone casually ignored the

lp0 on fire

message, when the printer actually was on fire.