Posts by Jamie Jones

Big Tech silent on data privacy in post-Roe America

Re: Yes, I am ashamed of my country

So how do you feel about the Supreme Court striking down some of New York's gun laws?

Or does your "right to life" not include "right to live"?

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/jun/23/new-york-gun-ruling-supreme-court-reactions-democrats-republicans

Re: Yes, I am ashamed of my country

At least one MP and one "lord" in the UK have come out and applauded the result, and many more applaud the general hard-right side of American politics.

So, it's not so rosy here, either.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/list-tories-british-politicians-support-abortion-ban-roe-vs-wade-327500/

Re: Canada

"Republicans are pro-life, right from conception to mass-shooting"

Re: Canada

It's already happening.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/contraception-supreme-court-clarence-thomas-griswold/

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2022/05/19/some-states-already-are-targeting-birth-control

Not a GNOME fan, and like the look of Windows? Try KDE Plasma or Cinnamon

Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

When I'm over my mums, I often use her chromebook which has touch and a detachable keyboard.

With the keyboard attached, the UI is more "desktop" like, and as soon as you remove it, the UI reverts to that of a "tablet". It's ridiculous. Handy quck presses like "X" to close a window, and the ability to quickly windowise a full screen app, and move it around etc. disappear. All quick on screen icons also disappear.

In fact, it's far easier to use as pure touch with the keyboard still attached, but that makes it clunky if you want to use it somewhere where you'd use a tablet (lying in bed, for example)

Many "desktop" features actually work well with touch, so it's annoying that google turns a keyboardless chromebook into an android tablet.

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

Re: Aqua Mail

I just looked further - aquamail used to be owned by MobiSystems, but was spun off in March this year.

It looks like Mobisystems are still offering one off perpetual licenses, though still quite expensive (30 euro)

https://www.mobisystems.com/cart/, though I don't know if it will actually work.

Re: Aqua Mail

Heyrick, Terry, apologies for that - and I agree with you both.

I didn't know their pricing model had changed. When I got aquamail a few years ago, it was about 5quid I think, and that was a permanent licence, not a subscription.

£30 a year? No chance in hell!

Interestingly, I still get updates, so they haven't forked the subscription version into a new app.

Sorry for the out-of-date advice.

Re: /e/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kman.AquaMail

Aquamail works fine with gmail I prefer it to K9 too

Have you seen Aquamail? I always thought it was better than K9-Mail

Re: K-9 fail

You need to try Aquamail - I think it will do what you want,

Re: Lightweight?

Try Aquamail. Insanely customisable, and in my opinion, even better than K9 was even back in the day

Apple gets lawsuit over Meltdown and Spectre dismissed

Re: Money, money, money

But the judge made the decision based on "security", not spectre/meltdown.

"But on Wednesday, US District Judge Edward Davila, based in San Jose, California granted Apple's motion to dismiss the case, citing the plaintiff's failure to demonstrate that security is a central function of Apple's products, among other legal deficiencies."

Re: Why not start with a slam dunk case...

" I reckon a 10% loss of performance should mean a rebate for all of us and the lawyers."

Whilst I agree with you, I think you meant to write:

" I reckon a 10% loss of performance should mean a rebate for all of us and the lawyers."

Money, money, money

So, I preusme the judge won't complain if he has any dodgy photos on his phone, and they end up all over the internet?

Makers of ad blockers and browser privacy extensions fear the end is near

Re: Why is Firefox Dying?

TL; DR;

Re: Does anyone need more justification

I often use "w3m" still!

Facebook phishing campaign nets millions in IDs and cash

Re: The mystery of Facebook

To be fair, they see Facebook as a reputable brand, and they trust ads on there in the same way they'd trust TV ads on ITV or Channel 4.

The same thing happens with all the obvious scams shown on youtube (though these are selling things at inflated prices with questionable claims, rather than phishing)

Probably the most effective way to kill Facebook is to convince the users that as many ads on Facebook are dodgy, they shouldn't trust any of them.

Get into the facebook user the mindset that all facebook ads are dodgy and should be ignored, and you'll soon see them fix things when they legitimate ad revenue plummets.

Good news for GNOME fans as Adaptive Sync displays come to Mutter

HiDPi campers!

(sorry)

Fusion won't avert need for climate change 'sacrifice', says nuclear energy expert

Re: From the cheap seats: NO SACRIFICE IS NEEDED (and you KNOW China will not do it ANYWAY)

Yes, you're right, of course. It was tar sand.

My memory is going with old age!

Re: From the cheap seats: NO SACRIFICE IS NEEDED (and you KNOW China will not do it ANYWAY)

> True, except when the USA becomes a net EXPORTER of oil again, which we were doing a couple o' years ago, and EASILY can, again. Then we stop funding evil regimes through the blockage of U.S. (and indidrectly Canadian) oil drilling.

2 year ago.... And what changed 2 years, we wonder.... Except we don't. We know exactly what you are referring to.

The thing is Bob, you aren't stupid, but it's hard for anyone to take you seriously when you are so politically biased. Most of your opinions aren't based on fact, they are based on which political party enacted them, and whether you can shout "SOCIALISM!"

You know full well that there were very serious concerns about the impact on the drilling.

You also know that the Dakota and Keystone pipelines that were stopped were just to increase capacity, and one of them (I forget which) was solely intended on taking Canadian low quality fracked oil to ports to ship overseas.

Neither were benefits to the USA - they were both private companies, who would have made more profits for shareholders by seriously compromising the environment in your very own country.

So, you can NEVER use the argument that home sourced oil will help your country unless you are advocating for it to be state owned. A hell of a lot of USA used oil is sourced locally - it's still as expensive for you because the private American companies sell it based on the global price of oil.... More profit for them.

But state ownership is evil SOCIALISM!! And we know you think it's evil - you even say so on your own company website *rollseyes*

One question. Your Trump said wind turbines cause cancer. He also praised coal as being clean... "Beautiful clean coal". Now, do you agree that he was wrong?

Amazon accused of obstructing probe into deadly warehouse collapse

Re: Axe to grind..

You need to improve your news sources.

AOC was blocking the Amazon deal because it meant giving $3 billion to Amazon in subsidies to come to New York.

Please tell me why the US tax payer should give Bezos $3 billion?

After the deal collapsed (and AOC saved you $3 billion), Amazon blinked, and ended up creating a (admittedly smaller) operation in New York with no subsidies.

So, please tell me why:

1) AOC has an axe to grind saving New York citizens giving $3 billion to the one of the richest companies in the world.

2) AOC shouldn't be on any investigating committee?

3) If Amazon has done everything by the book, they are trying to avoid an investigation (which is a routine event if people are killed in such accidents)

P.S. Instead of whinging here, why not tell the world about your "big scoop" that they are investigating amazon and not the candle factory? Presumably because you are talking bollocks?

https://www.wtvr.com/news/national/osha-violations-at-candle-factory-hit-by-tornado-newsy-investigation-finds

Tim Hortons collected location data constantly, without consent, report finds

Re: This is what really annoys me about mobile devices

On android, "FORCE STOP", though if you ever use the app again, you have to re force-stop it after use.

There is also the app "greenify" (and others) which is meant to stop apps running in the background.

On my rooted device, I have a simple script that runs at startup that basically force-stops every installed app (excluding apps on a whitelist). It works alot better than any "greenify" app I've tried, but of course, requires root.

Again, if you have root, you can install one of the many "intent" blockers that trigger app starts for various reasons (boot completed, wifi activated, wifi deacrivated, app installed, day of week has 'd" in it etc.)

Another frequent android abuse is that without root, not only can you still not block apps that are configured to autostart on boot, you can't even tell which apps request it. Without an autostart blocker, all sorts of shite start on boot (random games etc.... they start backgrounded so don't even appear to have started by the user)

These would be SIMPLE to block - Googles omission is obviously intentional.

Tweaks to IPv4 could free up 'hundreds of millions of addresses'

Re: I still have a single C class

ICL stopped using their "class B" when I was still there, over 20 years ago.

It's still sitting there unused now. (assigned to Fujitsu who swallowed up ICL)

https://myip.ms/info/whois/145.227.0.0

I have been using IPv6 on all my servers, and from home for well over 10 years, however, when my mum switched to SKY a few years ago, their IPv6 service was so flaky that to make things more reliable for her, I ended up disabling Ipv6 entirely.

I hope things are better now

I have used 127.127,127,127 in the past.

In its place, I now use 127.0.127.127 instead, though I doubt changing localhost allocation from 127.0.0.0/8 to 127.0.0/16 will ever happen.

In fact, whilst I have no objection to these proposals,I don't think in the real world, any of them will happen - there are still netblocks suffering from access issues and their only crime where that for a long while they were unallocated bogons - getting addresses that were actually invalid in the standard back in to use will never work.

Arrggh, yes. One big annoyance is that some time ago, someone wrote a tutorial on securing dns servers, and it included blocks for all BOGONS at the time.

One such unused block was 2.0.0.0/8 - it wasn't even ever invalid - it was just not used at the time.

Even today, there are nameservers around the world that will refuse to resolve any requests from a 2.0.0.0/8 address.

I know that about a year ago, the NHS nameservers were one. I did contact both NHS networking and nominet who were listed as responsible, but they never replied, and nothing was done.

I no longer use a 2.0.0.0/8 address, so can't test it currently, but it's probably still the same.

Re: Yeah, there's a matter of philospophy there

Yeah, only one defined loopback address for IPv6 is annoying.

Sure, we can assign unrouteable addresses and even block them from lan access, or better, assign 'private' address to the loopback interface itself, but it's aesthetically more pleasing to me to have all services that require an IP address that never needs to leave the machine under the 127.X.X.X scheme.

France levels up local video game slang with list of French terms to replace foreign words

Re: not that bad

Alot of new Welsh words are like that - the Welsh spelling of an English word.

It prompts comments like "Not only could they not think of their own word, they can't even spell it correctly"

Re: E-sports professionals?

"Bit I find odd is that people want to watch other people play video games."

I agree. I wonder if it's an age thing, related to the initial scarcity of games?

Cheer people on? We actively wanted them to fail - I remember as a kid, hanging around the local arcades hoping for the player to use his lives so I could have my turn!

Re: Now that is a fine example of administrative busybodies

"The modernisers of the language had the choice of either directly importing modern words from other languages for stuff that Hebrew didn't cover or to make up new Hebrew words to cover things.

They ended up doing it roughly 50/50.

Likewise modern Celtic languages."

Yep! Though if you looked at my Welsh essays in school, you'd think it was way over 50/50 - I tended to "Welshify" English words if I didn't know the actual Welsh word!

Re: Now that is a fine example of administrative busybodies

English has the claim to fame of taking the same French word *twice* : "Petite"

1) Petite -> petty (which morphed from simply "small" to "small minded")

2) Petite -> petite (small in stature)

Version 251 of systemd coming soon to a Linux distro near you

Re: Poettering is a dick

Not mentioned, because not relevant.

FreeBSD uses the API. Nothing about FreeBSD OSS was related to the proprietary version. There was nothing stopping Linux doing the same, or even importing FreeBSDs enhancements.

Quote:

"FreeBSD contains an independently developed implementation of the OSS API, which includes, among other things, in-kernel resampling, mixing (vchans), equalizer, surround sound, and independent volume control for each application. It also supports bit-perfect mode."

Re: Poettering is a dick

Linux audio has always been screwed. Back when FreeBSD had multiple channels (supporting hardware multiplexing and software multiplexing), and separate mixer controls per channel, under OSS. Linux OSS was stuck with a single channel, causing the proliferation of horrible hacky sound daemons.

Instead of fixing their OSS implementation (Not Invented Here), they came out with ALSA. The "L" in ALSA stands for Linux. This was around the time Linux users used to often criticise software that only ran on windows for not being multi-platform - proving that when they cried for "multi-platform", the actually meant "runs on Linux". They didn't give a shite about all the stupid linuxisms other unixes have to work around to get software to work.

systemd is the worst example of this, and ironically, is affecting many linux users who didn't give a crap about "creeping linuxisms" before.

I'm not mocking about this, but there is a bit of reap/sow about the whole systemd takeover.

FreeBSD 13.1 is out for everything from PowerPC to x86-64

Re: Question

openBSD maintain LibreSSL, and they switched to it.

FreeBSD remained with openSSL, but libressl is available for ports that require it (e.g. openNTP)

Apparently 11th gen are supported:

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/drm-kmod-help-completing-the-compatibility-matrix-intel-gpus-vs-freebsd-versions.79362/

Re: "standard pc?"

word backwards and word forwards in tcsh on freebsd by default is escape b and escape f appropriately, though they can be bound to ctrl-left / ctrl-right if required by the bindkey command in the .cshrc.

So, yes, hardly a valid OS criticism.

Re: FreeBSD is the best all round UNIX today

"-> What you can't do is put FreeBSD's root file system in one PC partition, its home file system in a different PC partition and so on, as you can with virtually every normal Linux distro.

Not sure about that or what you did or what you are trying to achieve. I would like to see some clarification.

You're right to query that. You can indeed do exactly what he says you can't. WIth A UEFI install, that is even the default.

With an MBR install, the BSD partitioning is the default, because of the crappy MBR restrictions, but you still can do it that severely restricted way "like with virtually every normal Linux distro" if you want, but why would you want to?

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/05/20/freebsd_131/#c_4464187

Your comments on partitioning are completely wrong.

The other thing to point out is a more subtle difference, and one we've found that BSD types don't really get. Linux is a native PC OS: it was first developed on x86 PCs, and only later ported to other architectures. It feels at home on a PC. It uses standard PC partition types, it happily co-exists with other OSes, it uses native screen resolutions and control keys and other things as a matter of course.

FreeBSD, like the other BSDs, is different. It is not native to the PC, and while it runs fine, it expects a substantial primary partition to itself, inside which it builds its own partitioning system.

You have just touted a severe handicap of Linux as an advantage: How it has to use standard "MBR" partition types. That meant (before UEFI) the horrible hack for extended partitions (or whatever it was called) was needed for more than 4 linux partitions.

FreeBSD (due to it's history) has it's own native BSD partitioning system. The advantage here was that one "PC" partition can hold multiple freebsd partitions.

It made PC based installs much cleaner, but HAS ALWAYS BEEN OPTIONAL. Indeed, with UEFI, BSD partitioning is not used by default. It can still be used if you want, but without the stupid MBR restrictions, there's no longer any need.

.

The restrictions you cite do not exist.

You can (and always can) ignore MBR, EFI completely, and dedicate the whole raw disk to FreeBSD - that's what I do on my servers, and that would (obviously) make dual booting more tricky (as you allude to)

However, the default FreeBSD install in the MBR era used the MBR disk format, and used one MBR partition for it's own partitions. You allude to this too, but seem to think this was fixed.

There was nothing stopping you using two or more MBR partitons for the same FreeBSD install. - Freebsds built in partitioning scheme doesn't have to be used.

You could easily install FreeBSD the same crappy way Linux is installed on MBR: assign a few MBR partitions to FreeBSD, and don't use freebsds own partitioning within it.

You could also mix and match MBR partitions at will - the point is, you rarely saw it that way because it was a restriction.

So, the first sata/ata disk device is ada0.

"MBR" partitioning is referred to as "slices" (i.e. slice 0-3), and freebsds own partitioning uses a single letter.

A mounted device could therefore be any of the following combinations, depending upon whether MBR was used, and whether BSD partitioning was used (your choice)

No partitioning, use the whole disk as one:

ada0

Use MBR partitioning, but not freebsd partitioning (like linux)

ada0s1

ada0s2 ..

Use freebsd partitioning within an MBR partition:

ada0s1a

ada0s1b

ada0s1c..

ada0s2a .. (if required)

Use FreeBSD partitioning on a raw disk:

ada0a

ada0b

ada0c ...

... nothing stopping you mix and matching:

ada0s1a /

ada0s1d /usr

ada0s1e /var

ada0s2 /home

ada1 /archive

etc.

Of course, with EFI, the restrictions of MBR no longer exist, so FreeBSD defaults to using a "PC partition" as a freebsd partition, and doesn't use the BSD native partitioning at all (though you still could if you wanted to)

Open-source leaders' reputations as jerks is undeserved

Re: Offensive and poorlt thought through

Hmmmm. I disagree. Many in that category are actually quite humble.

The worst are the ones who think they know everything, but don't.

They won't admit to doing certain things that caused the problem, whilst you know they did.

They reply with things like "I tried that already", whilst clearly they didn't, or they did it wrong.

Sprinkled on top of that, some have the attitude that they are cleverer than you and that you should have it fixed by now.

When I did support (the team supported approx 10,000 internal employees), things would sometimes grind to a halt because there was no easy way to continue without telling them they were lying.

Biden deal with ISPs: Low to no cost internet for 40% of US

Re: Reality

In that case, would't 99.99 (+ p&p) be more appropriate?

Elon Musk wants to take Twitter public again 'within 3 years'

Re: Libtards meltdown

The people being banned are not banned because others "disagree with them", they are banned for using hateful and inciting language.

The guy who Musk recently referred to (the one Rogan and Tim Pool discussed on his show) used the 'N' word, and signed off with "#HitlerWasRight")

They also ban those that post dangerous and conspiratorial bollocks because the right-wing that read it believe the crap, then start drinking bleach and horse dewormer.

If those people weren't so stupid, and were able to think critically, then they wouldn't need to be banned, but if that was the case, stations like Fox News would cease to exist.

I left Quora because of their insane censorship of anything that may hurt someones feelings, but that's their choice.

In the right wings twisted definition of "woke", Quora ticks all the boxes, so I didn't leave because I thought they favoured the right-wing.

If you have guests in your house, are there limits on what they can say? However racist or illegal or rude?

Will you let anyone into your house to rant about any old bollocks, or are you into "censorship" too?

Re: Libtards meltdown

"You know, one of those people who loves free speech, as long as people are saying the things that you agree with, but are happy to have things censored if they don't agree with it. "

You mean those liberals angry at Kaepernick taking the knee? https://www.thenation.com/article/society/republicans-cancel-culture-kaepernick/

Or that Liberal DeSantis is banning books down in Florida, even maths books? https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/17/us/florida-math-textbooks-critical-race-theory/index.html

Or those liberals continually trying to ban gay marriage? https://www.losangelesblade.com/2022/05/04/ben-shapiro-if-we-had-a-supreme-court-theyd-overturn-obergefell/

Or left-wing-socialist site "Truth Social" that bans people that poke fun at its owner, or criticise Trump? https://mashable.com/article/trump-truth-social-free-speech-bans

Or communist Trump repeatedly calling for journalists and others who are "mean to him" to be fired https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/06/trump-attacks-cancel-culturebut-tried-recently-to-cancel-these-people/?sh=5e797bf34b2a

I could go on and on, but is that enough "Liberals" for you for now?

Amazon warehouse workers in New York unionize in historic win against web giant

Re: Good.

But they *are* the spawn of Satan if you're a money grabbing manager who want to screw your employees as much as possible.

You could argue that constructive engagement with the unions and staff would get happier and more productive employees, but for big companies with very many layers of management (especially in America) it's short term profits that count. Long term investments in staff don't get them the yearly bonuses they want.

RIP: Creators of the GIF and TRS-80

Re: And how about GINGER, GIST, GIBBERISH, GIBLET, and GIN?

That's not how acronyms work!

NASA isn't pronounced narsay

LASER isn't pronounce laasair

PIN isn't pronounced pine

And more relevant to this example, but in reverse, NASA GOES is not pronounced JOES even though the G stands for geostationary.. https://youtu.be/q0giRXI3FvA

Re: Even though I disagree on his pronounciation

And how about GINGER, GIST, GIBBERISH, GIBLET, and GIN?

Samba 4.16 release strips away more SMB 1

Re: Symlinks are the underlying problem.

I do note that my samba share with symlinks doesn't work correctly, but I guess that's a bug.. I use all sorts of weird and wonderful characters in filenames, and use catia mappings in smb4.conf to sanitize them for SMB clients.

Whilst the mapping are applied successfully to directories, files, and soft links, the mapping don't appear to be applied to the contents of the link, i.e. the file it points to!

Re: Symlinks are the underlying problem.

They are a mess though, with some utilities defaulting to following the link, and others working on the link itself.

e.g. stat(1) defailts to the link itself, unless you use '-L'

chmod(1) and many others follow the link, unless you use '-h'

touch(1) follows the link unless you use '-h', but the referenced file of '-r' is always followed regardless.

And of course, the classic test(1) which follows the link unless you are testing to see if it's a link,

so testing '-L' and testing '-r' on the same object will be true if you run it on a link to a regular file.

I.E. It will report the object is a regular file. It will also report it is a link.