Posts by tekHedd

Intel’s CEO shouldn’t be surprised America can’t get CHIPS Act together

Aspen Ideas Festival

"throwing a fit" ...at a week-long festival in Aspen.

Yeah, these bigwigs have it rough.

A miserable work week spent toiling inside 'the metaverse'

Re: Usability, frustration, anxiety, visual fatigue, motion sickness

" frustration, anxiety, visual fatigue" and then they tried doing their jobs in VR and it was even worse. :)

Investors start betting against Bitcoin with short-trade products

Re: It can't go to zero

If it weren't for US currency, there would have been NO bank robberies in the old west. The US is entirely at fault for issuing currency.

Thunderbird is coming to Android – in K-9 Mail form

Etar

I use Etar with DAVx (caldav) and it works beautifully.

I now use google only for a few shared calendars (band etc). Fastmail will bridge to google calendars so that consolidates them nicely into one place.

Re: Aqua Mail

I made the same switch to AquaMail, right before AquaMail made the switch to "sketchy owners." Now I'm back to K9 and feel like I'm rapidly running out of options. I wasn't exactly impressed by "we promise we won't read your email no really."

I don't want *anyone* reading my mail (except the NSA, foreign governments, and major crime syndicates, which apparently we don't get a choice about).

Microsoft, Apple, Google accelerate push to eliminate passwords

Small devs

Am I being cynical when I suspect they'll come up with a nightmarish implementation that basically guarantees small devs will be pushed out?

I am being cynical. But I'm probably right.

Study: How Amazon uses Echo smart speaker conversations to target ads

Opt Out!

Well, amazon says you can opt out of ... advertising from Amazon. That's not saying that you can opt out of data collection or profiling or sharing with every other partner, just from Amazon.

Anyway, "opt out" is BS.

Oracle contracts and pricing a 'challenge', says Gartner

Everybody hates Oracle

To be fair, I've only sampled developers, IT managing the deployments, and customers.

Nobody ever got fired for migrating their systems away from Oracle.

CIA illegally harvested US citizens' data, senators assert

Agree with "duh".

Strong disagree with "more important things to worry about."

Don't worry, I won't be saying "told you so," because when we get to that point I will have long since been silenced. History shows that they come for you "nothing to hide" types later, just... not too much later.

Question: when the CIA takes several months to "redact" a document, who's to say they didn't simply make up a new document entirely from scratch? It's not like there's anybody checking who isn't also also, basically, CIA...

Use Zoom on a Mac? You might want to check your microphone usage

Always broadcasting

In an earlier version of Zoom, when trying to get it running in a browser I noticed that even though the meeting hadn't started and Zoom showed us as "waiting for host", the video and audio streams from the host were running, showing her setting up and stuff, unaware that the camera was on. You just had to know where the hidden, muted browser widget that displayed the stream was in the CSS stack. I suspect that they would keep the streams running so that "mute person" and "start meeting" are instantaneous in the client. It would not surprise me if it still did this.

Hello Slackware, our old friend: Veteran Linux distribution releases version 15.0 at last

my first distro

I remember downloading the sources over batch FTP and compiling my own kernel. It took most of the night because the build ran mostly in swap...ah good times.

Google sours on legacy G Suite freeloaders, demands fee or flee

vanity email domain?

And if email is your main use, there are many other options for fully managed email hosting that...by definition...are all more respectful of your privacy, and no less likely to suddenly discontinue service for no apparent reason.

(I like fastmail)

Google says open source software should be more secure

In the future...

"As of January 2024, Google will be shutting down their support for the Google Universal Code Verification platform, used by thousands of projects and companies to verify the security of their open source supply chain. If you use the system to verify a project, it will continue to work until March, at which point the servers will be taken offline.

"Google, in its statement, said that while GUCV had been successful, they are going to shift their focus to other products like Google Flavor Of The Month[TM]."

US Senator Marco Rubio calls Intel cowards for scrubbing remarks about Xinjiang and apologizing to China

Risky statements

Sign of the times: saying "companies should move their supply chains to countries that do not use slave labor or commit genocide" actually puts you in dangerous political territory these days. :(

Tesla disables in-car gaming feature that allowed play while MuskMobiles were in motion

Can't be trusted

I particularly hate that drivers can't be trusted to be sensible. I know it's a "distraction" and it's to "save lives" but...I know better than to try to watch a movie while I'm driving. My car won't let you, for example, pair a phone while driving. I get it, the driver will be distracted, but that's why I the passenger, am trying to do it.

But, no, I'm not being realistic. I'm a freak, an outlier. I see people obviously playing phone games while driving. People can't be trusted with anything: put their foot on the brake while putting the car in gear, wear a seatbelt, look in their blind spots...they will screw it up and then sue the motor company for allowing them to do it. People are incompetent and irresponsible.

So, the real question is: if we're so incompetent and untrustworthy, why we are allowed to touch the steering wheel at all?

Developer creates ‘Quite OK Image Format’ – but it performs better than just OK

Osiris, what has happened to your nose?

The red patches on faces whenever there's a closeup, seems to be in every show ever, looks like somebody's breaking out! Around this house we call that the "Netflix Rash".

Fans of original gangster editors, look away now: It's Tilde, a text editor that doesn't work like it's 1976

"Intuitive"

And there's that assumption again: "Intuitive" == "DOS/Windows".

Now that we've SystemD'd the core and all Linux-as-a-desktop initiatives wholeheartedly copy either Mac or Windows, it's time to start making sure all command line tools are exactly like Windows as well. :(

I say to you :P

Google Chrome's upcoming crackdown on ad-blockers and other extensions still really sucks, EFF laments

Mozilla, so careful

Is it just me or does Mozilla sound scared? They should be. Their purpose is to appear as "competition" and participate in "public forums" and "discussion" in the same way that "interviewing 5 candidates" is often followed by "hiring the boss's nephew." Forgetting this could be very dangerous to various careers.

International Monetary Fund warns crypto-related risks could soon become systemic

Re: Really?

There is a lot of FUD and chaff in the official statements.

There is impressive artistry involved in this fluffing of "cryptocurrency is dangerous because we do not control it" into an entire document of semi-reasonable sounding rationalizations.

NixOS and the changing face of Linux operating systems

In the future when everything is machines talking to machines...

An OS made by machines, for machines. Sounds like a great thing ... for machines.

I, personally, lost interest at "no longer easily human-readable."

Warning: China planning to swipe a bunch of data soon so quantum computers can decrypt it later

Re: Decryption Chaff

With the right context a random burst of noise can become *any* message you like. This ultimately is the only thing you can use as protection against brute force...

GPU makers increasingly disengage from crypto miners

Re: Fiat money

Funny and true, but really it's more of a "Kleenex" generic term to describe money whose supply is controlled by politics rather than fixed rules than a slur. #shrug

Re: Also seem to be dropping AI

"Dropping" is NVidia's watchword. They dropped their stereo 3D platforms without looking back, they'll drop their VR support for a completely new and incompatible tech the second they feel like it. I'm not even sure it's linked to profit in any real way. The crypto miner market is fickle? Nothing like as fickle as NVidia's marketing pushes.

Re: miners

>> They have value because we agree that they have value, that's all.

> FIAT has value as a representation of human activity and how it can be exchanged: 4 hours of person X costs Y and Y can be then used to purchase something entirely different.

You just gave a concrete example, illustrating how the previous statement works in practice, and called it a counterargument.

Regulators on three continents probing Nvidia's $40bn purchase of Arm, CFO confirms

"Viewing with concern"

This is what they say every time, isn't it?

"We hear your concerns and are carefully considering...ah HERE is that rubber stamp it just rolled under the desk APPROVED!!!!"

As System76 starts work on its own Linux desktop world, GNOME guy opens blog, engages flame mode

Sour Grapes

"Davis then said that System76 fixes bugs in its own distro before fixing them upstream in Ubuntu (Pop!_OS is based on Ubuntu)..."

That just sounds like good business. I fix bugs first in my own branch of projects, instead of waiting to see whether my PRs are accepted and then waiting for a new release of the code and then integrating that into my release.

The article takes a journalistically neutral tone, something quite rare to see outside of El Reg nowadays, but wow from the quotes it sure does sound like one Gnome dev's hot take is being taken way too seriously. I suppose the Gnome devs must be quite defensive and fragile at this point, but you'd think they'd have grown thicker skins by now. FFS it's Gnome, nobody likes it; we just use it because it's the default.

Awkward. At Chrome summit, developer asks: Why should anyone trust Google?

Innovation

"You'll remember an era on the web where innovation slowed down and even stopped"

No. I don't. I /do/ remember an era when one vendor used every bit of power their monopoly position afforded to make sure nobody else could compete with them. That was a very bad time indeed.

There are several statements even in this short article that are "arguable" at best. I don't know what I actually expected, but I suppose I still have enough optimism to be disappointed. What's that quote from Fury Road? "Hope is a mistake; if you can't fix what's broken you'll go insane".

Devuan debuts version 4.0 – as usual without a hint of the hated systemd

unmaintainable shell scripts

"Linux is hard and I mock you for being good at it."

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

"Wouldn't rate Oracle better..."

Oracle's push to take control of Java and turn it into a corporate asset was just the inspiration Java developers needed to open it up. Working daily with both Java and ".NET" CLR projects, I would trade all my .NET assets for equivalent Java assets in a second, if I had the option.

Un-carrier? Definitely Unsecure: T-Mobile US admits 48m customers' details stolen after downplaying reports

Shouldn't I be hearing this first from T-Mobile?

I'm a T-Mo customer. Almost 20 years now... Why do am I learning about this from the news instead of the company that I supposedly have a longstanding business relationship with?

Disappointing but not surprising.

Woman sues McDonald's for $14 after cheeseburger ad did exactly what it's designed to

"Look it's better now!"

I seem to recall that Dominos ran about a year of advertising that more or less said "Yeah, it was bad. Try it now, we made it better." And, to be fair, they did make it a lot better. But, also to be fair, before the improvements it was more or less inedible.

Chinese state media describes gaming as 'spiritual opium' that stunts education and destroys families

Re: Gaming

You realize you lost your entire audience at "like a pig," right? This happened before they even knew what your message was. I'll always wonder what the rest of the paragraph says.

Authoritarianism is really hot right now

"If weren't for the fact that it was run by the Chinese government, I'd even welcome the idea of Internet detox camps."

Trust your government much? At this point, I'm wondering what, exactly you *wouldn't* approve of as long as it isn't "run by the Chinese government?" Drone strikes? Extradition to secret torture prisons? Bulk data slurping? Archiving all phone conversations in a searchable database? This sort of "it's OK because we're the ones doing it" attitude is the root of many of our current day problems in the western world.

"...but we know how the Chinese government operates."

We know how all governments operate, the second you turn your back.

I no longer have a burning hatred for Jewish people, says Googler now suddenly no longer at Google

Moral Compass

True, corporations are incomprehensible if you try to think of them as people, even though legally they sort of are. :( Another way to look at it is that, in the context of publicly-held corporations, *corporate law* is the only morality. Google isn't an evil corporation--it would be a truly evil human, but in fact it's a very good corporation. "Don't be evil" still applies, it's just that "good" has a different meaning here.

We've created extremely powerful creatures whose only morality is "maximize stockholder value," and "don't get caught when you break the law." Then, we act surprised when they ruin lives, dodge taxes, destroy the environment, treat their own customers badly, and in fact do anything they think they can get away with to maximize stockholder value.

Racism? Bigotry? Only has a moral import in the context of "public opinion," the tax advantages of "woman owned" or the regulatory requirement to do sensitivity training. Etc.

That time a startup tried to hire me just to push clients' products in job interviews

Emacs

Anybody remember the disassociated press program, available as a plugin in emacs? It wrote like this.

CentOS Stream: 'I was slow on the uptake, but I get what they are doing now,' says Rocky Linux founder

Boot consortium

Don't forget Google, archenemy of self-signed certs.

Once we can only boot approved OSs and launch approved apps from the official store, we can prevent "evil" software from viewing "bad" web content (signed certs only!). We and our children will finally be safe. Hooray.

Pentagon scraps $10bn JEDI winner-takes-all cloud contract

Sideburns

What I hate about the Star Trek stock image is that the sideburns are wrong. Season 1/2 sideburns should be concave towards the ear, not convex. They made them flat in season 3 out of laziness, and only became convex in TNG.

Sideburns are important.

Android devs prepare to hand over app-signing keys to Google from August

" half a dozen hoops"

Spoken like someone who's never used F-Droid. Android apps are (were) just APKs and run exactly the same no matter where you get them from, except for the signing and google's highly intrusive, battery draining telemetry.

Re: End of privacy

And it's not great for people like me who don't have Play Store or any Google apps at all on their phones. At this time I can still transfer some apps over from my "google store" phone. They must hate that. Of course now that the apps will be "compiled for specific hardware" this won't work any more.

They hate that people can use Android without Google. They hate it so bad.

UK artists seek 'luvvie levy' on new gadgets to make up for all the media that consumers access online

"Distribute it to the creatives"...

The cynical editor in my head is hard at work with this one, replacing "writers and performers" with "Sony" etc.

I love how, when I perform an original piece of music in a public place with my band, Taylor Swift gets a little bit of the money the bar made that night. :P Love you Tay but that's MY 0.04 cents, thanks.

Firefox 89: Can this redesign stem browser's decline?

Telemetry!

Telemetry shows that:

- all the features I use daily are unloved

- all of the annoyances I have disabled are popular

- the next version will force the annoyances on me while removing the features I love

- people like icons that are indistinguishable monochrome squares

- I need a beer

Basecamp CEO issues apology after 'no political discussions at work' edict blows up in his face

Re: In the age of Online Lynch Mobs..

"Everything is political" is the new "turn in your parents." It turns any attempt to defuse a situation into a Kafkaesque catch-22, where the person attempting to turn a discussion back to "anything constructive" becomes the villain.

OK so what's going with these millions of Pentagon-owned IPv4 addresses lighting up all of a sudden?

Re: No...

"The US don't need masses of IP space to be able to retaliate against cyber attacks."

Especially when it's masses of already-well-known address ranges that can be easily matched and blocked. I'm at a loss to see what use that is...

JavaScript developers left in the dark after DroidScript software shut down by Google over ad fraud allegations

You wouldn't shake a baby...

Not stupidity: negligence. Negligence might as well be malice. If you neglect your baby and it comes to harm, don't expect special treatment just because "it wasn't malice."

In terms of power imbalance the situation is very similar. We are helpless.

Traffic lights, who needs 'em? Lucky Kentucky residents up in arms over first roundabout

They're very trendy because... um...

When roundabouts started appearing everywhere in CO, I researched them. What I learned:

1. The only documented benefit they offer is that they slow down traffic

2. Incredibly dangerous for bicyclists

#1 I assume is the great appeal. I won't disagree that most other drivers slow down considerably when entering a roundabout. ("Wheeee!" *squeal*)

However, here in "bike friendly" Fort Collins I don't understand why this trumps the problems of #2...

Far-right internet haven Parler to be allowed back onto Apple's App Store with added content moderation

"We recommend you only run Apps from the play store"

Those of us who run a Google-less Android don't have the Play Store TM, and it's actually quite nice to see an official download of the APK available. I mean, yes, if you're running the play store, you'll want to get apps there because hackers!

I mean, for this app it's largely a moot point but still.

Debian devs decide best response to Richard Stallman controversy is … nothing

Re: Not very accurate

"incredibly insensitive remarks" I think we know where El Reg stands on the issue. Or maybe they're (sensibly) afraid of being denounced for not being _strongly enough_ opposed to Stallman?

Unity devs warned of breaking changes ahead in video game engine as team gets to grips with mutating face of .NET

LOLOL "stewardship"

ROFL LOL etc etc.

Sorry, long-time user of mono here. Now planning our exit/port to Java or what have you.

LOL "stewardship".

Free Software Foundation urged to free itself of Richard Stallman by hundreds of developers and techies

"TERF"

I believe the modern term is "jingoism"

Huge if true: If you show people articles saying that Firefox is faster than Chrome, they'll believe it

"...OHSG loved to repeat himself"

Sometimes, and sometimes in the negative. When all is said and done he has plausible deniability in spades because he's said everything, and nothing.