Posts by Chewi 180 posts • joined 4 Feb 2013
Several of us at work have upgraded early for WSL2. Most won't get it for a few months. Some have had trouble actually getting it to start the upgrade in the first place but I haven't heard of any problems once upgraded. I've already switched my main dev environment from VirtualBox to WSL2. There's a couple of rough edges but the performance alone makes it worthwhile.
Aww, a down vote? I should have been clearer in saying that I do still use SMS myself for that very reason and because I avoid social media in general. I do have Signal but no one else does. The Signal app also works well for plain SMS. None of this changes the fact that SMS is still falling out of use. Don't shoot the messenger. ;-)
As someone who helped to implement the STIR/SHAKEN protocol to allow telcos to block robocalls, I was wondering why it wasn't extended to SMS, but apparently it's being looked into. I guess they figured it was less of a priority because it's arguably less annoying and SMS is falling out of use anyway.
I did get it working on the third attempt. Booting from the ISO to start the install instead seemed to do the trick. You don't get the opportunity to install the VirtIO network driver though and Windows seemed to have a hard time believing I didn't have Internet access. It literally asked 4 times.
> Let's connect you to the Internet.
I don't have the Internet.
> Are you sure? It's really useful!
Yes, I'm sure.
*REBOOT*
> Let's connect you to the Internet.
I don't have the Internet.
> Are you sure? It's really useful!
Yes, I'm sure.
> Okay…. so how about online telemetry?
I'm keen to try WSL2. I have a few systems to update so I downloaded the ISO. Most of my instances are QEMU VMs so I started with one of those. The first attempt failed and rolled back. The second attempt seems to be stuck in a blue screen + reboot loop. Good thing I made a complete backup beforehand! You'd think choosing the completely clean install option would be straightforward. I can only guess that it's having trouble with the VirtIO drivers or there's a more general QEMU problem. It wouldn't be the first time.
My corporate environment has meant that I've had to run a CentOS development environment under VirtualBox on Windows 10. Unlike most in the company, I prefer to do nearly everything under Linux, not just building software. I am a distribution maintainer, after all. A few have broken ranks and booted straight into Linux but it isn't feasible for me as there are a couple of Windows-only applications that I need for my role. My new working arrangements at home made VirtualBox awkward to use and it's buggy as hell anyway so I switched to my own build of QEMU. It's still not the smooth experience that I'd like though. I know others have switched to WSL, which I've been curious about, but I wanted to hold out at least until WSL2, and even then I had my doubts. The mention here of graphical applications and Wayland is seriously encouraging though so I'm going to give it a really good look.
I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking this. I was really angry when I saw this reported in the mainstream media. They're taking the totally wrong angle. Sure, they have cause to be concerned if the intent is malicious damage but that seems highly unlikely. The official warning talked about potential theft of "intellectual property" and that makes me sick. Placing more concern over that than the welfare of humanity makes them no better than Trump trying to score that exclusive vaccine deal.
I've got that say that even though I'd long enjoyed the desktop version, I was very sceptical about the Android version when it first appeared. Surely it couldn't be faster than Lightning, which is simply a light wrapper around Android's built-in WebView. I don't know how they did it but it really is and it's a joy to use. The bookmark syncing is particularly useful too.
Although I couldn't think of any specific cases where this might cause me issues, I was initially still a bit worried that it would break something. But when I realised it only affects mixed content, that's not so bad at all. That already gets flagged up to some degree anyway.
Despite voting "no" last time, I am quite keen to have IndyRef2 in light of recent events. I'm not fully decided at this point but I would still like to be given the choice. Police Scotland, however, puts me off voting "yes" more than any other issue and not just because of what this article addresses.
I attended a presentation where they showed how it reveals the details of Windows network share activity happening on the LAN. They didn't appreciate it when I pointed out that you would never see this much detail from modern systems because all the traffic would be encrypted.
Few are likely to want it but anyone know if these can do 32-bit? I gather the Cortex-A72 usually can but I'm unsure whether it's true in this context. Cavium ThunderX is (usually?) 64-bit only, which means no one else offers 32-bit ARM in the cloud, unless it's lower spec 32-bit-only bare metal.
I'm very surprised to see the Arran Brewery featured here as I've visited the place and it's tiny! A reminder that these bastards can take down businesses large and small. Anyhow, it's well worth a visit, the island is beautiful and the beer is excellent. I recommend Red Squirrel.
I dealt with them for the first time this month. My mobile wi-fi dongle worked a treat in Jersey and was a great deal at just £35 with 6GB data included. No other network came close. However, the whole experience was soured by appalling customer service.
I ordered at 9pm on a Thursday. They said they offered next day delivery for orders before 10pm but the system claimed the next day was Monday. I chose Saturday delivery at additional expense, as I was departing on the Monday. By Saturday morning, it was not appearing on their tracking system. Support assured me it would surely arrive later that day. Of course it didn't. On Sunday, support assured me it would surely arrive on Monday. Still no sign of it on the tracker or at my front door so I ventured out to the nearest store to buy another one.
Publishing their store numbers would be far too helpful so I wasn't able to check their stock in advance. The store staff informed me that they didn't have any so I had to drive half an hour in the opposite direction to the next nearest store. Even that took a while as they had to faff about converting a contract unit to PAYG. I made sure the damn thing worked before driving off.
In Jersey, it all worked fine until it hit 1GB and refused to go any further. I was met with cookie overflow errors when trying to log into the website that could only be resolved by clearing my cookies and starting again. I eventually called them up and they gave no explanation for the issue but gave me a further 6GB to play with.
The original order did eventually show up... the following Saturday, the day before I returned. :-| On getting back, I called them again to ask for a return envelope. You'd think I'd asked for the moon on a stick. What seemed like a simple request too half an hour and a lot of inexplicable confusion on their side. At the time of writing, I still have not received the envelope. What I did get shortly after that call, was an unexpected email to tell me that they had disabled the adult content filter as I had requested. WTF.
Suffice to say that I will be requesting an unlock code for the dongle at the first opportunity.
Are you sure they've ceased allowing this? I was surprised and disappointed to read that but according to this U12+ guide, you just have to choose the All Other Supported Models option in the drop-down.
"Not sure if semantics has evolved over the last decade, but if something still takes up storage space, it's NOT removed. Just because something is hidden or disabled doesn't mean it's removed."
Assuming these apps are on the /system partition (which they probably are) then you wouldn't be able to use that space, even if they were removed, at least without rooting. On the plus side, disabling them does prevent further space being taken up by (non-firmware) updates, which are not applied to /system.
It included the winning entry for a competition to do the best home-made DOOM video. I recall some kid shouting "you got the super shotgun!" and his Dad doing some heavy breathing while standing on a green piece of paper. *lol*
The cover disk featured huge a collection of DOOM maps harvested from various BBS's at the time.
I am starting to wonder whether I've got mixed up with a different magazine. Hopefully not. I definitely got Computer Life at one point at least.
Didn't know you were involved with that. I bought one issue, the one that was almost entirely about DOOM and it was one of the best magazine issues I ever bought and certainly the most memorable.
As for your stance on ads, I think you're right on the money. I don't use ad blockers on principle.
The reception in my house is fine but my VQ Christie radio is the buggiest piece of crap I have ever had the displeasure of owning. There's practically nothing good I can say about it except that it looks nice. I complained and they sent a replacement but it was just as bad. I should have got my money back while I had with chance. I would entertain you with all its crazy quirks but I don't have the hours to spare.
> Of which I only even recognize Blackfin (AMD?) & Tile (IBM?)
Blackfin is Analog Devices, not AMD. I have one such box sitting here. With no MMU, it's not the easiest thing to run Linux on but it has some analogue phone ports, which are usually quite expensive. I now have a broadband-only line from A&A but I had toyed with the idea of hooking this box up to the phone port on my alarm system so that it could trigger a bunch of other things in the house when the alarm goes off!
It's worth pointing out that this probably applies more to private projects than open source ones on the Ruby side. It's considered bad practise to commit Gemfile.lock in open source projects and you're not supposed to lock down dependencies to exact versions in your gemspec either. The gemspec may have something like ~> 1.2 and the whole of 1.x may be vulnerable and unmaintained but it's not clear whether this checks for that. Such cases often involve more than a simple "bump" too.
As a tech parent, I'm not going to give any immediate opinion over whether tracking in schools is good or bad, I need to think about it.
What's interesting is that this isn't even a new problem. Back in 2000, I was collared by the head of sixth form because they'd discovered a bunch of kids playing Doom in the library and they'd traced the original download back to me. I only shared it with a select few but then some idiot started handing it out to everyone and it quickly got out of control. Obviously I'd be able to cover my tracks a lot better now. ;-) I was told to apologise to the head of IT but he couldn't seem to hide his enjoyment of commandeering the PCs remotely, leaving the kids rather spooked. I suppose the fact that he was able to do that was also a concern in itself.
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