Posts by Grogan

Snapping at Canonical's Snap: Linux Mint team says no to Ubuntu store 'backdoor'

Well, fortunately an old school user like me can build my own system from scratch, my way, with all the old school goodness like init and shell scripting ("sysvinit scripts" whether SystemV or BSD init), ALSA only audio, Shadow only logins (no PAM), software installed to desired prefixes for ease of maintenance by hand, minimal dependencies, and normal old school directories like /bin, /lib and /sbin instead of "usrmerge" symlinks pointing to /usr. Oh yeah, and a kernel built without performance harming security mitigations... pfft.

That's what I'm using now, except I reboot to a customized Manjaro setup for games (Because for gaming, you need a lot of rubbish x 2 for lib32) which still beats the Hell out of booting to Windows to play games.

I swear distributors have lost their fucking minds. Even good distros like Slackware are starting to find it difficult to not conform with the new wave of dictatorial bullshit.

Snap is utterly retarded, and if that were to become the norm, there's no way I would use any distribution that forces it (and by force, I mean making it the only way to get a lot of packages)

Microsoft announces official Windows package manager. 'Not a package manager' users snap back

Re: Cough, Splutter, Gasp

"Why would you even want to be running multiple distro? Is there any benefit to running multiple distros?"

There are a few reasons I do.

1) I always have two Linux systems on the same machine, so I can boot to one to work on (or fix, or make a tarball backup of) the other.

2) I like to have a lean, clean, serious Linux system and another with a lot more crap (e.g. multilib) for goofing around and games. It used to be that I kept a Windows installation for games, but now I boot to another Linux system :-)

Re: Cough, Splutter, Gasp

Most "package managers" are just different front ends to the same package management system, that use the same repositories and package databases.

Even across different distros, the same or similar (familiar) front ends can often be used. For example "Synaptic" can be a front end for both dpkg (.deb) or rpm based distributions. There's even an "apt-rpm"

... and no, we're not going to homogenize everything because Windows converts can't wrap their heads around it. Choice is a feature of our environment.

We beg, implore and beseech thee. Stop reusing the same damn password everywhere

Re: In other news....

I am of a mind that security that foils the legitimate user is NFG.

A password that I can't remember is NFG to me.

So what I do, is mix and match different (hard) password phrases, so I just have to remember four 8 character phrases. If I forget what I used on some site or service, I know it's a combination of 2 of those 4. I can always get it before exhausting 5 failed login attempts :-)

The end result is pretty strong 16 character passwords.

Google tests hiding Chrome extension icons by default, developers definitely not amused by the change

Re: When will they learn?

Yes, browsers are like an operating system environment within themselves these days. Especially on platforms (e.g. Linux) where you can't rely on system library versions working correctly and have to bundle static for a lot of things.

Piss off Google... I hate your software because of stupid decisions like this. I don't use Chrome/Chromium anywhere, anymore. Vivaldi is still a top notch browser, but they are going to find it harder and harder to maintain the Chromium backend without all the unwanted changes, eventually.

I use Firefox on mobile too nowadays. It's a somewhat slower renderer (and there's a bit more penalty for using Ublock Origin... though the benefits of blocking crap outweigh that where relevant) but its worth it for having a better user interface and support for such extensions. Know what I hate most about mobile browsers? They all insist on loading your last session. Firefox is the only one I know of that has a setting to just make it start with my specified home page and not load tabs from the last session.

Remember that clinical trial, promoted by President Trump, of a possible COVID-19 cure? So, so, so many questions...

It's not so much about "virus levels", it's about surviving the infection. Much of the damage to tissue in a viral infection is the body's own immune system attacking cells. Necessary, to some extent, because virus infected cells need to be destroyed but if it goes too far it can kill the victim (lung tissue is pretty important obviously). That is how the hydroxychloroquine cocktail may help. It's an extension of "well, it helps with autoimmune diseases, so..." but its not been tested well enough for viral infections to make those claims. It is not anti-viral.

Internet samurai says he'll sell 14,700,000 IPv4 addresses worth $300m-plus, plow it all into Asia-Pacific connectivity

If IPV4 addresses are just being hoarded for speculative value, they should be taken away and allocated elsewhere.

I have to justify my IP addresses...

Crack police squad seeks help to flush out Australian toilet paper thieves

Toilet paper is in short supply, because every time somebody coughs, everyone in the area beshits themselves :-)

The shelves may be empty, but the disk is full: Not even Linux can resist the bork at times

Re: This can't be Linux

Any idiot can fill up their storage. That's not "Linux" that's stupid users and (possibly custom) software that doesn't clean up after itself.

Unless overridden in the filesystem, 5% of the storage will still be available for root owned processes. That's why they can still boot in single user mode and fix it.

US telcos tossed yet another extension to keep going with Huawei kit despite America's 'security threat' concerns

Re: Ugh

The Orange Ignoranus :-)

Windows 7 goes dual screen to shriek at passersby: Please, just upgrade me or let me die

Re: eh?

I've only used Windows for games since probably 2000'ish. Nowadays, while I still have a Windows 7 install handy, I very rarely boot to Windows to play games. There's basically one I care about that I can't get to work, Sniper Elite 4, and I don't play it that often anymore. That Windows install could almost go, but it doesn't have to. I never updated anyway, just Service Pack 1 and the Platform update (and runtimes as necessary, usually done by the game installations themselves).

My next build isn't even going to have a Windows install. I really despise Windows 10 (and 8.x before that).

Take it Huawei, Pai: Senate passes bill to rip 'dodgy' kit from rural telcos

That's OK, he'll take that money out of the mouths of the poor, and further defund public institutions and programs.

It will take a long time to undo the damage that Trump and the rest of those malicious, greedy twats that enable him have done.

US Homeland Security mistakenly seizes British ad agency's website in prostitution probe gone wrong

This is why Americans just should not have that power. Time to do something about those root servers.

Really... they get their property (domain that they registered and paid for) back only after jumping through American hoops and agreeing not to sue for damages? How generous of them. Again, typical American bullying.

Pope tells his followers to log off for Lent

... and don't forget to pour salt on the holes in your hands.

Really despise religion and Catholicism isn't one of my favourites... it's right next to that American rubbish. It's such hypocrisy too, fasting becomes "don't eat meat" and that becomes "have a fish and seafood feast".

How about the Papal Penis spending his Lent STFU'ing. It's time mankind sheds such silly superstitions as sky daddies anyway. Especially when it's used more to oppress and control people. Religion is holding back progress.

Having the Pope try to shame people into giving up their social interactions and information streams as a matter of suffering and sacrifice, really irks me.

London's top cop dismisses 'highly inaccurate or ill informed' facial-recognition critics, possibly ironically

"The head of London's Metropolitan police, Cressida Dick" <--- So not your average Dickless Tracy then? heheh

Firefox now defaults to DNS-over-HTTPS for US netizens and some are dischuffed about this

As if I'm going to let Mozilla choose a "name resolution partner" to control my DNS lookups. Not interested, not having it.

I don't do ISP DNS servers anyway, I use a service that I trust to return current (respecting TTL), unbiased results. In resolv.conf files as well as in my router/gateway for any other clients. I've also considered forcing redirection, but don't want to limit my abilities to query other name servers directly.

Microsoft uses its expertise in malware to help with fileless attack detection on Linux

Probably not, and the entire point is that you should not use it. (Because of the stated philosophy that we like)

I take that one step further. If I can't compile it, I'm not using it. This includes software that is open source, but is just too onerous to build.

EA boots Linux gamers out of multiplayer Battlefield V, Penguinistas respond by demanding crippling boycott

I didn't appreciate the flippant tone of this article either.

I have canceled my EA subscriptions. I'll buy games from companies more friendly to my environment. I certainly don't need to buy their games.

AT&T insists it's not blocking Tutanota after secure email biz cries foul, cites loss of net neutrality as cause

Well... these companies that sided with abolishing net neutrality needn't complain when they are accused of interfering with traffic every time there's a routing problem.

Shouldn't Uber freeze app accounts to prevent spread of coronavirus by drivers and fares? Oh, OK, it already is

Re: Well whaddya know

Drunk passenger: "Got room for a large pizza and a case of beer up there"?

Driver: "Sure"

Passenger (leaning forward): Baaaaarrrfffff!

Parks and recreation escalate efforts to take back control of field terrorised by thug geese

Back around 1999/2000, I had an apartment in the Etobicoke district of Toronto Canada, near Lakeshore BLVD. A stone's throw from my building was a nice lake side view of belching smoke stacks, and there was a nice park. It was also overwhelmed with geese (Canada geese) and I am not exaggerating, I've never seen so many geese anywhere in my life. You couldn't walk on the park lawns, as you'd be slipping in goose shit and you couldn't take children to this park for geese would chase people and try to hit them with their wing bones. People don't realize it, but geese are dangerous birds and can easily break a child's leg. But nobody was allowed to do anything about the geese, any time a call for action came up people were "Nooooo!" (and of course most of these people didn't even live in the area).

Noisy, smelly, ornery things. I hate them.

Bada Bing, bada bork: Windows 10 is not happy, and Microsoft's search engine has something to do with it

Dinosaur here... I use Trinity Desktop (TDE), a fork of KDE 3.

What's ironic is that back in the day, while I liked KDE, I considered it too bloated. Now on today's hardware, by today's standards, this is the snappiest desktop (other than minimalist standalone window managers like fluxbox) I have. It takes minutes to compile nowadays vs. hours back then, too.

I grew very disenchanted with XFCE, it's no longer the light weight desktop it used to be when it was based on GTK+2. Blech.

Plasma 5 is visually nice, and feature rich but it's very messy with ridiculous dependencies and bloat, as well as making a horrible mess in the user's home. I'll never install that again. That's what got me to switch to Trinity, self contained in /opt/trinity and ~/.trinity.

RIP FTP? File Transfer Protocol switched off by default in Chrome 80

Re: Such a fuss..

Yep, it's a user login. It's basically a subsystem launched by sshd. If you give users a shell that allows them access to the whole machine (no jailing of any kind, relying solely on filesystem permissions), they will have the same access with SFTP that they do with a SSH shell. It's really not for public downloading.

I've seen (stupid) clients that restrict access to files you own when making use of SSH2/SFTP protocols but if you can log in with that, you have shell access anyway.

Also, it's not at all like FTP. More connection overhead and no control markers in stream for resuming transfers. It's not a replacement for FTP. I use the standard sftp client (I like it... takes wildcards and uses most shell conventions) to transfer files to/from servers but if anything happens you're starting over with that 8 Gb tar archive backup etc.

Google started making noise about this some time ago, and it was then that I dropped all Chrome(ium) based browsers and went back to Mozilla Firefox.

There are still FTP download links out there. Some driver downloads for Windows still use FTP at the back and, and there are plenty of times I click to download a tarball from ftp servers.

FTP is a good protocol for downloading. For one example... it inserts control markers in the stream for reliably resuming transfers. Firefox has limited support for resuming http(s) transfers, if the download fails. If it stalls and you cancel, it's game over. Chrome? Not at all.

Google doesn't get to control my Internet.

At last, the fix no one asked for: Portable home directories merged into systemd

Context of optional

Systemd's optional features tend to be optional in the sense that distributors decide what features they are going to implement. Your distributor will initially decide whether to use homed for home directories (I don't necessarily mean on removable media etc.) and if you know how, you can undo it. Similarly with the binary journals, a user can edit the configuration to disable the journals and install and configure another sysklog program (e.g. syslog-ng).

I dislike systemd but I can work with it if I have to. I have one distro (a heavily customized Manjaro) that I use for gaming and I have defanged systemd as much as I can. I use straight forward static networking, I disable the binary journals and use syslog-ng, I disable unwanted init units with systemctl, mask static units that I don't want, as well as unwanted things that start through sockets. I don't mind using systemctl so much, but I do dislike what's behind it (that system of unit symlinks etc.)

Stuff like this is not "optional" for the average user though.

For my real system, I'd use Linux from Scratch (non systemd of course) and/or Slackware.

PSST! New PCs with Windows 7 preinstalled are out there – and will be into 2015, at least

The UNTOLD SUCCESS of Microsoft: Yes, it's Windows 7

Re: What the hell did they expect?

I didn't say that programs didn't work, I said it made it more difficult to use them and that a shell replacement was needed to restore arbitrarily removed functionality.

Re: What the hell did they expect?

Well... the problem is STILL that Microsoft makes it difficult to use "legacy software" (read, software that isn't dumbed down for the tiled, "Metro" environment and the Microsoft store). That "start menu" is still dysfunctional.

Fuck that... it needs a shell replacement (e.g. ClassicShell) at the very least.

In Linux distributions, at least you have choices on the desktop environments you can use, window managers and GUI behaviour.

Friends don't do tech support for friends running Windows XP

Re: "13 years. 13 years. 13 years is far too long to expect support."

... and crap like that (and things like no downgrade rights for consumer editions of Windows), is why I employ "licensing tools" with no remorse.

I'm still going to help people with Windows XP computers. They don't have to change their lives to suit Microsoft's agendas. Most people who are used to XP don't want a silly new version of Windows

Re: I've been helping friends (and businesses) upgrade from XP to ...

Bah... go ride the baloney pony off into the sunset. Modern Slackware has decent versions of everything, has a fully functional environment out of the box, for compiling things they don't provide and it's simple to administer for anyone clueful. Once that's done, it can be be used by Grandma and it won't change.

Just as we said it would: HP clamps down on server fixers

Re: Just say

Yep, not only small businesses but I'd bet that a lot of web hosting companies will avoid HP server hardware. Dell Poweredge or machines built in house.

Microsoft-backed lobby group demands market test of Google's proposed 'search fix'

I run a computer service business where I do things like go to homes and offices to solve computer problems, remove malware, I get and set up new hardware for people etc. and generally do things for them that they don't know how to do themselves.

I remove Bing anything on sight. Bing toolbars, Bing Desktop, Bing Search Provider (I actually delete it, not just make something else the default heheh) and if MSN is the homepage, I change it. I haven't yet met anyone that wanted Bing back.

To be fair, I'll also say that I remove all other toolbars and/or things like "Google Desktop" as well (I can't stand pollution) though I make people's home pages plain old Google (www.google.ca in my case) unless they specifically want something else. It's a very useful, fast loading page without a pile of crap on it and seldom stalls the first opening of the browser like some of those other asshole portals.

I do that primarily because Google finds the things people want instantly, even before they finish typing it. I know that choice is a good thing, but I don't see the point of using anything other than Google to search. I personally try others, but I have yet to find one I like better than Google. However, I'm not above saying that it's partly vindictive, because I detest Microsoft and distrust their search results.

You'd be surprised at all the people that can't, or won't learn how to change their home page when it gets hijacked, by the way.

Behold the world's first full-colour 3D printer

When they come out with a 3D printer, that can print a 3D printer I'll be interested. Until then, it's a scam and I'll not be dazzled by pretty colours :-)

Developer's rare $50,000 Twitter account @N stolen in web shakedown

Man, that sucks. Not only for the victim of the extortion, for losing such a username that he obviously liked, but for everyone, because with such ruses being widely employed, it's going to make it more difficult for legitimate people to recover accounts from online services. It's already damned difficult enough for most folks to follow through the steps. There's always something they don't have or don't get.

His life was basically in that creep's hands. It's a good thing the thief wasn't unnecessarily cruel.

Yes, HP will still sue you if you make cartridges for its inkjet printers

Very well, HP... I will boycott your products on behalf of everyone I influence. I can't stand a bully... after market ink cartridges are perfectly valid and if it wasn't for that asshole American patent system and them trying to cooerce the whole world into adopting it (If you want to trade with the U.S., you have to abide by their whims) commodities wouldn't be as expensive as they are.

I have a lot of customers that buy after market ink cartridges, and when I tell them what HP is doing they'll avoid those creeps like Jack the Ripper. They are probably the most prominently marketed brand of a lot of devices here, but not the only.

I can't stand the layers of bloated shitware consumers have to pollute their computers with to interface with HP products anyway. It's particularly distasteful when someone with an older computer buys an HP printer as a replacement. It shouldn't take all of a computer's resources just to operate a printer.

Prince sues 22 music file-sharers for ONE MEEELLION dollars each

Prince sickens me and you couldn't pay me to listen to that little prick's drivel. I hate it.

If someone pays me a million dollars, I suppose I could promise not to piss on his grave though.

Go ahead and sue me for "saying mean things on the internet".

Valve showers Debian Linux devs with FREE Steam games

Re: Try game streaming now

Installing SteamOS on a general purpose computer is pretty pointless anyway. Install a full distribution with the Steam client on the hardware you speak of.

As for the low latency kernel patches they use, that doesn't amount to a hill of beans in terms of game performance. Besides, the Linux kernel can be configured for low latency decently enough anyway with the various pre-emption settings and timer configurations.

Re: probably be a low take up

Well... even Stallman concedes that games are entertainment and that there are going to be non free games.

I've still got games that I bought a decade ago that I can still make run. Unreal tournament 2004, Doom 3 and friends, Quake 4. At worst, you might have to drop some compatible libraries in the program directories. (Their wrapper scripts do LD_LIBRARY_PATH variables, if such paths aren't baked right in)

About the only thing I am aware of that would prevent the Loki installer from running on a modern distro is the lack of GTK+ 1.x. It's idiotic not to include that, for all the 2 megabytes of space it takes up. It still compiles, even on x86_64, with patches. (most of the problem is just the older GNU autoconf scripts and macros). Games on Linux tend to just run out of their own directories. Use the Loki installer if you have to on one distro, then just copy the game directory to other systems (stuff prompts for license keys on first run, if applicable). Mine have been moved many times.

Spanish cops tweet handy dope-smuggling advice

Some cops have a change of heart, too. Marijuana use shouldn't be persecuted like it is.

I'm not sure if I should post a link to it here, but if you look up Barry Cooper or Never Get Busted Again, you'll find a star drug interdiction agent from Texas who changed his tune, after reluctantly smoking marijuana given to him by his girl friend and finding great relief from the stresses and depression and alcohol abuse he was experiencing. He realized that what he was doing was wrong.

He made videos of how to get away with concealing small amounts of marijuana and gives you tips on how these drug interdiction squads operate and what they look for on the highways. Innocent things like patriotic veteran bumper stickers because "Veterans often use marijuana". He said something to the effect of "They put their lives on the line for this country, and I had no problem putting them in jail. I was wrong"

He's also been a bit of a crusader.

Because of this, he's had death threats from cops, threats that his wife is going to be raped while he's in prison etc. He's a "traitor" according to those meat heads.

Mystery 'doughnut' materializes in front of Mars rover: 'OH MY GOD! It wasn't there before!'

Re: It is quite obvious

Thumbs up, not because I believe the lunar conspiracies, but because it was funny :-)

MPAA spots a Google Glass guy in cinema, calls HOMELAND SECURITY

Don't so much as hum "Happy Birthday to You" from memory, in public, or you'll be infringing.

Americans try and paint everything as a threat to national security. Copyright infringement is a threat to national security because imaginary property is about the only thing the USA has left.

Pathetic bullies whose influences are waning.

Google stabs Wikipedia in the front

Not a day goes by that I don't search for something and have a Wikipedia link in the top most list of search results. I almost always click it, because Wikipedia usually provides just the right amount of abridged information that I'm looking for.

If in doubt I'll append wikipedia to my search keyword(s) to ensure it.

I use Google to find Wikipedia articles every day. Even when Wikipedia is begging for money (and I have donated a few times because it's very useful to me). Google brings me there. I love reading Wikipedia articles.

I'm betting that Google is not really harming Wikipedia, it's probably like the whinging news sites that don't like the summaries because it lets people decide if they are going to waste their time clicking or not.

By the way, I've noticed that people can't resist spreading FUD about the accuracy of the information on Wikipedia. Usually academic types, that think it's too easy. They earned their degrees by poring over dusty tomes in snobbish libraries. Who reviews those books? Can peers flag and edit them? I'll bet it takes a lot longer to get information corrected. Never, in existing copies. Did anyone check the thesis of Dr. Cleverbritches who claimed that it takes 6 PSI to blow air up a particular species of South American tree frog's arse?

Pesky protesters FORCE GOOGLE STAFF INTO THE SEA

Re: Oh for f**k's sake....

Protesters who obstruct or disrupt transportation or communications SHOULD be forcefully disbanded. I have absolutely no tolerance for that. Go to the government buildings and protest (as is your democratic right), but don't get in my fucking way.

Around here, the "gentrification" is two fold. The elite buses ferry high paid employees to a nuclear plant in the area. The lowest of employees (e.g. janitorial) make ridiculously high wages there and the area's economy (and rent) is geared towards it. Worse than that, are all the rich city fuckers coming up here and paying (in some cases) millions of dollars for real estate, which inflates property values. (Most of those people are snobs that I truly despise, too) That's just the way it is, complaining about it won't help.

I generally don't like activism. It seldom changes anything, because activists always seek to go after people who have nothing to do with their problems. The politicians just sit there in their ivory towers, unhindered.

Linksys's über-hackable WRT wireless router REBORN with 802.11ac

First of all, it is the WRT54GL (Linux based) not the 54G that is most useful. I still use those (all over town!) and can still get them. I use DD-WRT on them and they are rock solid. They cost about $79 CAD here in Bumfuck Ontario Canada.

Furthermore, this new router is going to be too expensive. Almost 3 times? They can make those fit, sideways.

Finally, I have always hated Belkin routers. No new ones for me, now that Linksys is Belkin. I'll use one of the many others capable of running Linux firmware when I can no longer get the old ones.

Intel ditches McAfee brand: 'THANK GOD' shouts McAfee the man

Re: Um, me too

Yep, it's light weight, unobtrusive, looks after itself with updates and is free for both personal and business use (on up to 10 computers). There's a lot to like about Microsoft Security Essentials.

The only thing it isn't, unfortunately, is very effective. In my experiences, it's not even as effective as AVG, which isn't saying much.

Queue up all the people who say that they've been using it for X amount of time and never had a problem. I can personally say the same for using no antivirus software. See this shit in the field, with the very users that need protection the most, where it fails to stop and/or fails to remove something it's already let get hooked.

It's an easy mistake to make, to be impressed with security software if all you do is watch their gyrations on a clean computer and let them nag you with ominous sounding messages about trivial objects or actions they block, or worse... pop up messages that a file or web site is deemed to be safe. (Fuck off, Norton)

I have stopped installing Microsoft Security Essentials on customer computers, and I remove it on sight these days and install something stronger (Avast, Avira, even AVG for grandmas that have gotten along well with it in the past. Sometimes something they already know is the best choice.) If someone wants to buy something, I like Eset Nod32.

NEVER those asshole Internet Security suites though. (Cure worse than disease)

Drug dealer demands jail to escape 'unbearable' missus after NYE row

Sounds reasonable

It sounds funny when presented like this (yes, it is funny!), but it's about his only smart course of action. He's ordered to remain at that residence, and if he can't stay there for whatever reason, he pretty much has to go in to the police if he doesn't want to be charged with violating his conditions. We don't know his wife, but it's possible that there could be trouble if he stays.

He might have been able to work out an alternate arrangement in court to serve the house arrest, or barring that... go back to jail. I'm not familiar with Italy's court system, but I'm guessing that he'd get a shorter sentence, when the judge amends it to jail instead of house arrest.

Lyrics upstart Rap Genius blacklisted by Google for Justin Bieber SEO scam

Re: I hate to break it to you

You're part of the problem then, you Internet polluting whore. This just means that honest operators who "optimize" by choosing their keywords carefully for the content on their sites and have legitimate reciprocal links, are buried in the crap that people like you promote.

Google will do their best to mitigate this behaviour, whether YOU like it or not.

Snowden: 'I am still working for the NSA ... to improve it'

Re: Eddy Is A Crackpot

I don't think that... I just think that Snowden is now trying to rationalize this after the fact. He certainly did commit the crime that he's accused of. (yep, it's true by definition)

Indirectly, he's doing his country a favour. Bad for overreaching security agencies (they'll be kept on somewhat shorter leashes now) but good for humanity, including Americans in the long run.