Posts by bombastic bob

Declassified and released: More secret files on US govt's emergency doomsday powers

Re: What an incentive for a false flag operation

Just a matter of when

[shhh... already happened a year or so ago]

Re: The Americans talk such crap about their constitution

you are "not wrong". Sadly.

This is why "emergency powers" MUST be limited. I would say no more than 30 days without direct legislative approval. No exceptions. And, it should require re-approval ever 30 days. And it should apply SIMILARLY to the states/provinces and OTHER more local authorities. (a constitutional amendment would be required for this in the USA)

The last 2 years speak LOUDLY about the ABUSE of "emergency powers". And do not forget pre-WW2 Germany, either. (yes that is a link to a relevant "Washington Bleep" article).

Re: All risks are relative

downvote for the obvious race reference

When management went nuclear on an innocent software engineer

Re: Don’t know about you

next to button that says "Do Not Press" on it.

Lewis Carroll had a different idea... and yet the outcome was the same

/me replaces the button with one that says "Press Me" - same effect

Re: Had me going

Simon might have been able to intimidate negotiate a better settlement at the end, perhaps with 2 or more months of additional meetings at an undisclosed island in the tropics, lots of adult beverages, and triple the bonus...

How to explain what an API is – and why they matter

Re: I'm sorry

if you think of REST as a guideline in which you can be as flexible a you want, not so bad. Just do not restrict yourself to XML or JSON and it suddenly becomes VERY easy to implement both as a server and on the UI end.

Re: I'm sorry

sometimes making up your own API is easier (rather than using someone else's concept).

curl http://localhost:1234/function/param1/param2 <-- simple to implement and parse

(this would return back success, errors, query results, whatever like any URL to a web server would, ideally as plain text)

No need for XML, PUT, POST, JSON parsers, or whatever... unless you WANT to have it return XML or JSON or whatever. Pretty straightforward and flexible and do what you want. Not *entirely* RESTful but much better, In My Bombastic Opinion.

(such an API invoked by a set of a simple web pages can do some amazing things, where simple code quickly forms request URLs from user input, implementing it on the back-end in PHP rather than as JavaScript in the client, and use off-the-shelf web server and PHP - or if you wanted to, do a javascript query, whatever and have your API return XML. Pretty fast to do xml as sprintf() and return it. Oh yeah, I would implement the server part in C. In fact, I *HAVE* !!! SEVERAL times!!!)

Re: Beware the wolf in sheep's clothing.

API as a marketeering buzz-term. Now with MORE TIERS!

This reminds me when $CEO decided that TIERS were good, and MORE of them were better. It's a *FIVE* TIER SOLUTION! I was supposed to implement that. right...

So, is that "NEW TIERS, NOW with APIs"? Or, is it "NEW APIs, NOW with TIERS"?

I think *I* am in tears...

We have bigger targets than beating Oracle, say open source DB pioneers

Re: Oracle and MySQL

I chose my (shared) hosting provider in one aspect because it has PostgreSQL where most only seem to offer MySQL or maybe the MariaDB equivalent.

MySQL has some odd quirks with respect to embedded quotes. They do NOT follow the SQL standard for that, and it kinda bugs me to have to escape quote marks when it is legit to have "Joe's Computer" in a text field, or double quotes for that matter - the 3" valve, or the 1" pipe. Deaing with this for MySQL adds unnecessary complexity. (the standard SQL way is to double the quote mark if it is an actual embedded quote mark, within whatever context you use it).

So for that, at least, I prefer a database that follows the standard closely so as to be more predictable.

Also PostgreSQL seems to be extremely compatible with others, generating SQL statements (for a dump) that are generic enough for pretty much any DBMS to be able to import the data.

And MySQL (to me) has always been difficult to set up out of the box. Too much security diddly-fiddly crap, or at least was when i tried it a few years ago. Contrast to setting up many PG databases from scratch, and it "just works".

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

My guess, the money behind Poettering is a part of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish"...

Re: They call it progress

There are 2 kinds of progress, or perhaps a 3rd less obvious one as well.

Evolutionary: Progress forward in which things become faster, better, more reliable, by making EVOLUTIONARY changes.

Rotting: Progress towards a BAD END by making RADICAL changes that distrupt, and eventually CORRUPT everything to the point of decay.

Stagnation: a possible third which is as bad as ROTTING SLOWLY

Guess which one is systemd?

The Return of Gopher: Pre-web hypertext service is still around

Re: What do you mean "Removing FTP Support"?

*ahem* there are still a few ftp-only resources out there. REMOVING IT from the various browsers was ARROGANT, LAME, and JUST! PLAIN! STUPID!!!

Re: Gopher never dies

even though browser code bases REMOVE it, gopher still lives. But the same browser authors that remove gopher and ftp POINTLESSLY put CRAP IN ITS PLACE (tracking, 2D FLATASS, etc.) instead of staying the way they were.

You would think that browser devs (or the ones yanking their puppet strings) are a bunch of ARROGANT DWEEBS or something...

How to find NPM dependencies vulnerable to account hijacking

Re: Unvalidated Updates added to packages!

the whole system is a house of cards In My Bombastic Opinion.

And WHO gets the midnight phone call to correct the problem caused by an update to a trivial and insignificant shared thing that's merely in the dependency list and NOT even relevant to your code? Why YOU do, of course!

It's as bad as DLL HELL, and maybe even WORSE. [also why I statically link or build from source on a target platform whenever practical]

Re: I'll never understand how NPM is still a thing

Scumbag Sam

heh - that reminds me of a video game that has N.P.C.s known as "Thieving Scumbags". But they are useful in the game, if you use items to multiply your monetary gain at the end of a battle, it will also multiply any "recovered" loot stolen by scumbags that you kill (without letting them escape from battle). If properly hacked, you can get millions of currency units pretty fast by manipulating the scumbag characters like that, letting them steal, . and then 'recover' it by killing them before they escape.

(IRL I wish I could do the same thing - see icon)

Re: "an opportunity to preempt this threat"

heh - the snark is STRONG with THIS one!

Boeing's Starliner CST-100 on its way to the ISS 2 years late

Re: Just the two failures then..

the early astronauts were all test pilots. Modern astronauts should be more like commercial pilots, and be able to fly highly reliable craft on scheduled runs without incident.

Of course they'll still be still "test pilots" on the first few flights of any new system, but it seems to me that the Boeing design may need a bit more improvement in reliability before putting people on it.

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

perceived toxicity

'toxicity' comes from only a handful of people, In My Bombastic Opinion. But you can pretty much assume that BSD's Init system will not become systemd, nor will it have native Pulse Audio in lieu of OSS audio (which in my opinion should still be the standard for Linux). There is a port for Wayland, sort of experimental from what I gather, but it shall not be installed on any of MY systems. But it is there if you insist on it, right?

I recently DL'd an Ubuntu distro (the 'supported' Linux for a particular SoC system board) and it had WAYLAND on it. I was _NOT_ amused. Fortunately, use of package deletion and re-installation with Xorg fixed it. unfortunately did not fix the hardware incompatibilities with a particular LCD panel, however. I still have not tried loading FBSD on it. It's for a customer after all... but if I have to support a different Linux image maybe FBSD would actually work with that LCD panel... ?

Re: FreeBSD is the best all round UNIX today

I'm not aware that Xorg requires you to be in the wheel group, at least not from half a year ago when I last updated my ports. VirtualBox requires you be in 'operator' as I recall, and there are a few other things like wireshark that have group membership requirements. (Linux typically has some similar things like that)

But... THAT brings up one o the best features of FreeBSD: You can NOT su to root unless you are a member of wheel (gid 0). So, I typically do everything (including running 'startx') as a user NOT a member of wheel. This means I must su to a user that IS in wheel, then to root (2 step process) but if your system is ever compromised by an application running in your user context, it would be that much more difficult to gain root access.

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.

Early on I used to put / /usr, /var, and /home on different UFS slices, not quite the same as partitions but effectively that's what they are. Since UFS+J the need to keep frequently written partitions separate is much less important, sort of like using EXT4 in Linux... though on my server I still did it that way for uber reliability and easier recovery (the remainder of the disk is a ~1.5Tb ZFS partition). So yeah depending on how you set things up, you can boot from ZFS, have it all in one UFS+J 'slice', or use separate slices for different mounted directories.

-> In our testing, in a VirtualBox VM, trying to install onto ZFS failed

Again, not sure what you are doing here. I tested FreeBSD + ZFS in VB and it works fine..

I also have not had difficulty with this sort of thing, though I have yet not tried building a 13.1 system in VirtualBox. Maybe their VirtualBox drive was emulating IDE instead of SATA ? Though I am pretty sure that this has still worked for me (using IDE emulation), just that did not perform as well if I remember correctly.

Still there is one pair of facts that come out of their experience: First, you kinda need to read the handbook before proceeding with an install, and understand what it is you are doing. Second, you can always start over.

System, Software, or Standard?

Within the COPYRIGHT file that is part of FreeBSD's source, it says 'Berkeley Software Distribution ("BSD")' when talking about the software, so I can assume that this is the correct term.

Wikipedia is usually accurate but also frequently NOT and so always my skeptic hat remains on, especially for topics that are in any way controversial or in any way debatable.

(/me has been using FreeBSD since right before version 4.8 was released (my first upgrade experience), best overall platform for doing POSIX application development in my bombastic opinion)

Icon, because, BSD

Google Russia goes broke after bank account snatched

Re: woke-global-climate-change-bullcrap

the climate is still changing.

not because of humans. that is my point.

Re: woke-global-climate-change-bullcrap

see icon

Re: woke-global-climate-change-bullcrap

"99.9%" of WHOM exactly? names, research on who they are, and obviously pointing out "appeal to authority" and "hearsay" logical fallacies being at work in that assertion.

And how do you know that "Any scientist" does NOT include ME?

XKCD is NOT a scientific proof of anything... but THIS just MIGHT be.

Re: woke-global-climate-change-bullcrap

because our eco-facists [snip] have decided to decarbonise the economy, we're facing a massive increase in demand for electricity

like, from electric cars and electric heat.

tit for tat

All that the USA really needs to do is re-introduce the Trump-era energy policies, and export fossil fuels to EU and other places (undercutting anything Russia offers) which would bankrupt their war effort and END THE RECESSION AND THE INFLATION THAT CAUSES THE STAG-FLATION, but NOOOooo... woke-global-climate-change-bullcrap. (only IDIOTS think this is a GOOD thing, In My Bombastic Opinion)

so instead we get "tit for tat" BULLSHIT.!

what a bunch of... well... BULLSHIT

Intel plans immersion lab to chill its power-hungry chips

Re: Yes, but...

technology to lift chips out of hot oil

a basket with a handle on it?

Re: There's already one datacenter I know of doing exactly this

immersed in some sort of oil

why did I just get a mental picture of the movie "Fight Club" in my head...

Re: Has Intel considered reducing the power consumption ?

I explained the reasons for power consumption vs speed in an earlier post, above. Reducing power consumption is a goal, not always achievable. And there are patents that would need licensing, no doubt, if Intel starts copying AMD. They each have their own kind of "cleverness" no doubt, and this will rearrange in the future as these things continue to get smaller, run on lower voltages, and crank up the clock frequencies.

(so I'd think Intel is probably trying to become less power hungry than AMD while AMD tries to keep their edge on Intel, for the moment at least)

for speed inside of a CPU, higher speed means higher current. Lower voltage reduces power (current times voltage) and smaller logic gate sizes reduce current. The materials determine the practical limits on logic gate sizes and voltages, as well as operating temperature ranges. A *LOT* of variables go into this mix, and current designs are asymptotically hitting those limits.

Just to put things into perspective, anyway... (the physics reasons behind the need for better cooling).

Oh, and component density and location on the wafer plays a big part in sinking the heat away from the places that generate it the most also. Gotta be "clever":.

the main reason why higher speed needs higher current has to do with internal capacitance. It requires a bit of extra current to flip the charge on a gate from a 1 to a 0 or vice versa when you ALSO have to overcome the parasitic capacitance. Think of it as being like a tiny unwanted battery that needs to be charged and discharged in the right direction every time you change the logic state. And there are ZILLIONS of those, constantly being charged and discharged at gigahertz frequencies. No WONDER it heats up! I could get into reactive vs resistive current too but in the interest of being brief I think that paints the right picture.

Re: Cloudy climate change

News Flash: Man Made Climate Change is a *MYTH*. CO2 is at EQUILIBRIUM, and is VERY bad at absorbing black body radiation (the thing that defines a 'greenhouse gas') for temperatures ACTUALLY found on Earth... *ESPECIALLY* when you compare it to something like WATER. (CO2 is actually effective on MARS where it's avg -80F or similar even with only that thin CO2 atmosphere)

Saving money on electric bills, however, *IS* important. THAT bottom line determines whether people get a raise next year (or the boss gets his new expensive chair). For THIS reason, liquid cooling make sense. NOT for 'that other bogus UN-SCIENTIFIC reason'.

Biden tours Samsung fab, talks chip cooperation with South Korea

"The embarassment" should just stay home (and stop 'doing things')

As soon as he opens his mouth and (in a voice that sounds, in my opinion, like he's been drinking to excess) makes half a dozen gaffs (yet states the obvious once or twice, enough for a "favorable" sound bite on friendly media) the current occupant of the White House ("Sleepy Joe" Biden) will continue to have an overall negative effect on the USA, and maybe even the WORLD, with his diminishing approval and nearly 60% overall disapproval due to his DISMAL failure at anything resembling a "leader"... let alone the ZILLIONS of things he has gotten wrong from foreign policy to domestic oil production and baby formula. [keep in mind the exec branch controls the FDA, which did NOT need to drag its feet while baby formula was recalled and store inventories dwindled].

I just hope his weakness and general incompetence does not set off WW3 before he gets REPLACED in 2025...

Basically we'd all be better if he left S. Korea and just shut up for 3 years.

Export bans prompt Russia to use Chinese x86 CPU replacement

Re: Russian politics aside

Acknowledging accomplishments and seeing them in a clear light isn't really "Jingoism" but rather a national pride in a positive kind of way. Or, good old fashioned flag-waving patriotism. 'Queen and Country' is fine with me, even as a US'ian. (aggressively saying how great you are in order to bully or intimidate or manipulate would be true Jingoism).

It's sort of like saying "if it's true, it ain't bragging".

(and my experiences working with UK engineers has been pretty positive, especially when compared to China)

Re: Russian politics aside

brevity being the sole of wit, and admittedly TLDR, I shall summarize a rebuttal

You appear to be forgetting a few details...

* Under COMMUNISM, the constant looming threat of "getting disappeared" or bad social credit STIFLES true innovation. Seen enough examples of it to confirm. "The nail that sticks up gets the hammer"

* Much of their "progress" was literally STOLEN from universities and corporations that were acquired or "partnered" with over the last decade or so (this is well established)

* They routinely do not respect intellectual property. "4th shift" was a term coined about the all too frequent off-the-books manufacturing that violates copyrights, patents, etc. for "internal consumption" (mostly, not always). Seen that, too. FTDI knockoff chips a few years ago is an example of it getting out of hand.

In short, if engineers in China regularly INVENTED something of significance over what is invented in EU, UK, and USA (etc.), I would be concerned about China having the potential to dominate the technological world. But they won't unless we DELIBERATELY HAND IT TO THEM. So what we (the rest of the world) need to do is stop them from COPYING our stuff, through illegal and unethical means, starting now, and moving into the future.

(and having stuff BUILT there is just TEACHING THEM how to make OUR tech)

Re: Military implications?

One wonders what effect shifting to these slower, less capable, chips will have on Russian military hardware.

They won't be running Micros~1 authored software, so slower CPU and less RAM should be fine.

(yeah that was a SLAM on Micros~1® BLOATWARE™)

As for the sanctions, which we ALL know are nothing more than VIRTUE SIGNALLING at this point (if they were serious they would OPEN UP U.S. OIL PRODUCTION and CUT OFF PUTIN'S CASH FLOW, but i digress), it's yet ANOTHER way to ENABLE and PROMOTE our competitors in China to UNDERCUT U.S. manufacturing in the long term.

* great job promoting Chinese alternatives to U.S. higher end CPUs

* great job empowering China (and Russia) to develop replacement tech by FORCING WORLD OIL PRICES HIGHER so PUTIN MAKES MORE MONEY

* great job DRIVING CHINA AND RUSSIA INTO MORE/CLOSER PARTNERSHIPS on things

* great job NOT dealing with the CAUSE of the Russia/Ukraine war (and Putin's war-funding machine)

* great job HURTING RUSSIAN CITIZENS and *NOT* *POOTIE*

etc.

I could keep going but I'll stop for now. I'm all over the place on this one so I'll use the pirate icon...

Foxconn forms JV to build chip fab in Malaysia

Re: Incompetence

I was hoping it would be an indicator of a new trend, "not made in China" by a Taiwanese company

Monero-mining botnet targets Windows, Linux web servers

Re: Linux as a target? But is this really the case?

A Linux server with (apparently unpatched) wordpress interface. OK it's WORDPRESS and not Linux, if you think about it...

(this is why I like using rsync with SSH key login on a mirror directory for web stuff, which you could test locally and maintain using source control and only update with official 'merge' builds if you have at least some discipline in your team)

I think the rent-a-server I have for the company domain has wordpress capability, but you have to enable it. Guess what I will not be enabling...

The new generation of CentOS replacements – plus the daddy of them all: RHEL 8.6

Re: It was sad to see Centos go

well, it's not really "gone" just EOL'd in its original form, and re-defined as "stream"

but yeah this is old news now. centos.org is pretty straightforward about it.

Rocky Linux seems good enough to me depending on your use case

I had some good experience testing Rocky Linux last year. The only down sides are the GUI (do not like much) and the use of RFC1918 addresses internally (which I had a hard time locating to change them to something else). it's a built-in wut dun it. I forget what exactly but it irritated me.

hint, grep -r "192[.]168" /etc

Otherwise basic setup was simple enough and "it just worked"

Arm, Microsoft at pains to say this CPU arch can be trusted with real server work

Re: Few mention power consumption

ARM might have an advantage in massively parallel processing algorithms. More cores in less space on the die.

So perhaps some better use of parallel cores in the data center? Then 'slower wide' vs 'faster narrow' might prove some interesting concepts.

(unfortunately I think too many things are still "linear" in nature and do not parallel well)

if it were open source, it would go a LOT faster... (because a lot of contributors would want to participate)

Elon Musk says Twitter buy 'cannot move forward' until spam stats spat settled

Re: Less than 5%!!

a corollary to what you say about precision and accuracy - increasing the number of samples tends to 'average out' accuracy problems and CAN result in better precision, kinda like how "oversampling" works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversampling

So rather than 100 random samples, how about 10,000 random users gathered from various locations, asked to participate in surveys in some cases (but not all), and things like that?

Bots and spammers clearly lower the value of Tw*tter. I have seen the results of questionable filiings prior to acquisitions before. One company got shafted with $millions in excess obsolete inventory, valued at purchase price (not what it was worth) but then they TURNED AROUND AND BURNED HOSTILE A TAKEOVER with the SAME THING. yes it WAS the early 90's... and the ivory tower most definitely got their "golden parachutes" out of the deal,

My guess: Elon is aware of such tactics

NASA's InSight doomed as Mars dust coats solar panels

Re: Insight?

well I think Mars is less than 0.1 atmospheres and so vacuum cleaners wouldn't have a lot of differential pressure. compressed air nozzle might be the only 'air method' of cleaning.

Re: Insight?

yeah, mentioned the static electricity in another post. It's a big problem in super dry air.

Re: Insight?

Windshield wipers wouldn't help a whole lot...

* Mars has no water in significant enough quantity to spritz them

* Static electricity in an environment like that would keep the dust on the panels anyway (water would help in dust removal by undoing the static electricity's effect)

And so the dust accumulates. Kinda like every top shelf in the house...

As for convenient dust devils (which appear in certain parts of the desert all of the time in summer out here in Cali-F-You, along I-5 near the truck weighing station for one, little mini tornados) I have a dust devil (vacuum cleaner) that might help, if I could just send it to Mars...

(Also send a robot maid to operate it - as it hums the theme from 'Space Balls')

It is possible that an air compressor nozzle could blow dust off of the panels. But that would add a lot of weight to the thing, nozzle, tank, hose, robot arm attachment, extra camera, and the power to run the compressor long enough to pack enough air to blow dust off of the panel which could rapidly become a 'Catch 22' situation if you need more power to pound air into the tanks to clean the panels but can't... quite... get... enough *couch* *choke*

I do have to wonder if inverting the panel with ultrasonic transducers vibrating the panel might shake dust off effectively. So nightly maintenance maybe flip the panel and buzz it for an hour? NASA? Or a 2 sided panel that flips around and buzzes during the day (so they alternate)? that along with anti-static coatings, anyway.

The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs

Re: Not that unreasonable

why did you have to "go there" with the CO2 thing?

Re: Not that unreasonable

that sounds like a very boring future outlook. There's nothing like the roar of a muscle car!!!

Re: Not that unreasonable

my car has an automatic, but I manually shift it a lot; It's controlled from the center panel though 'cause it's officially a "sports car" [a Mustang]. Put it in 1st to accelerate around corners in the turn lane, pass everyone, get ahead of the slowpokes. Works pretty well for that. It shifts 1st to 2nd at around 45mph, 2nd to 3rd at 70mph, when floored. Basically I drive it like a manual transmission when I want the *extra* *power*

(that way best of both worlds, and do not have to work a clutch in bad traffic, though I rarely have to commute)

That's what a good UI lets you do - maximize your potential!!!

Re: Why are they all the same?

The Windows 3.0 SDK came with a copy of that book (Common User Interface Design by IBM or something like that). I have it somewhere, probably in a pile of old books

GPL legal battle: Vizio told by judge it will have to answer breach-of-contract claims

GPL: Compliance Web Page

Although the GPL _does_ mention hard media (on request), one of the simplest ways to comply is a simple GPL compliance download page. Then, if a user asks for hard copy you can burn a CD or DVD with the requested source, or even send a USB drive or SD card if it's faster/cheaper. Chances are this will not happen often and is WAY cheaper than non-GPL alternatives or (worse) violating GPL. I've set this up a couple of times, just explain it to everyone concerned and set it up on github or something and point to Linux distros and upstream sites and if you modify something, put the source in a tarball and put it on your site.

Not sure why Vizio had not done this. Pretty much all companies that have been successful with open source will have something like this. I pattern lot of what I do off of what Linksys did back in the day. I was able to build images with what they provided, and could modify things if I wanted, so it works when done properly.