Posts by bombastic bob

The year ahead in technology fail: You knew they were bad, now they're going to prove it

Re: Nothing to see

pyrobot - the robot that halts and catches fire!

It could just be the capacitors...

IntelliJ IDEA plugin catches lazy copy-pasted Java source

sometimes copypasta makes sense when you're developing, but not in production. It might be nicer to simply have the tool add appropriate code comments when it finds things, like

"// TODO: refactor, duplicate code file1.java:342 file2.jave:189"

or something similar.

Re: copypasta

Spaghetti code yes. The 'sauce' code was written on a computer labeled 'Tomato' by a hacker doing the mushroom samba, while reading "The Onion": and adding garlic to taste. Yeah that was pretty cheesy. Now all your 'basil' are belong to us. THAT's using your noodle!

Some errors fill the screen. And some come from the .NET Framework

Re: the .NET Framework

I could have made a 486 CPU running an old x86 version of Linux work with >20 year old Linux software do a better job. I actually tested FreeBSD 4.7 through 4.11 on an old 486 (kernel+world took >24 hours to compile but GUI performance was actually acceptable). [Worth mentioning, even on that ancient hardware, I was quickly convinced that FreeBSD would make a better daily driver and server OS than anything post-XP excreted from Micros~1, beginning with ".NOT", and soon after, FreeBSD 5 became the OS for my main workstation]. And with "modern" display hardware, it would ACTUALLY WORK (and quite possibly MORE reliably). A typical touch screen with a basic USB 1.0 compatible HID interface could do the same job with that old hardware+software as it does with newer stuff, minus the ".Not" b0rkage. Seriously, COULD be done. (but finding a working SATA adapter or replacement iDE drive for it would be difficult, so it'd probably work better to use an RPi with Raspberry Pi OS on it)

i have recently done a lot of touch screen UI stuff using an RPi, and with Linux on it, the CPU load is small, unless you use Chrome for a web-based UI, in which case Chrome is a pig and hungry for a faster CPU and more RAM. But something more native generally performs nicely, even on an RPi 1.

".Not" tried to fix DLL Hell by inventing NEW ways of B0RKING THINGS UP.

Well, at the very least, that b0rked display in the article was 3D SKEUOMORPHIC looking.

A proposal to beat below-the-belt selfies: Crowdsourced machine learning using victims' image stashes

Re: a nice, friendly duck

if you are combining words to become 'duck', sort of like combining 'cat' and ''activity' to make 'cat-tivity', I can certainly think of other words that would combine well to form the word 'duck'

make sure nothing else slips through the cracks.

moan sigh I mean, groan

Re: I can sense some fun

What have you been drinking?

Koolaid perhaps? (But I think he meant the opposite)

Circling back to the topic, I wonder if they'll go after ASCII art as well. I have several good ways of indicating naughty bits with standard ASCII characters floating about in my head... like maybe naughty emojis or similar

*naughty-bits* <-- insert imagination here

Online retailers delaying sales of Raspberry Pi 4 model until 2023, thanks to a few good chips getting scarce

Re: all eggs, one basket

specifically, R.O.C. and unfortunately the source of the parts is no longer visible on various distributor sites so I cannot tell where they are being made. As I recall a couple of components were being made in R.O.C. at the time they went short and the availability is unstable. One I designed around by selecting a different component with negative logic and fixed it in firmware. I recall having seen tariff info on these parts so most likely R.O.C. but now it's no longer there, for good or ill.

What R.O.C. does (in many ways) is a kind of "lock in" that involves their internal tax code, moving parts from one area to another (or import from Taiwan or elsewhere) often having a tariff or VAT applied (or it used to, may have changed). So they built a bunch of factories of various kinds of components near to where board assembly is done, no tariff except at the end, unless you buy parts "elsewhere". This also affects design choices. End result, if an entire TOWN gets shut down due to the virus or a whim or anything else, you end up with shortages. All eggs, one basket again.

Paul Atreides (Dune) would say that "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing."

Though this may not be the case with the RPi part shortages (which may be affected because of simple re-prioritization), it is ONE of the factors in the international supply fiasco.

all eggs, one basket

just pointing out the obvious: "Let's make EVERYTHING in China" - bad choice, obviously. Obviously NOW, that is. (when 'second source' is ALSO the 'first source' there IS no 'second source')

Sometimes, when the lemmings are running towards a place that everyone ELSE seems to say is REALLY GOOD, it does not necessarily mean that the proverbial cliff (that is rumored to have lemmings stampede to their deaths off of) is NOT dead ahead... even when such a thing has allegedly been debunked. "There is NO cliff" "the basket will hold" "look how much less it costs to have it made over there" etc.

And now it looks like bean counters were VERY, VERY WRONG. We taught our world-wide competition how to make our stuff, we invested OUR money into building all of our new factories there, they effectively hired slave labor to make the stuff, nobody else could compete so they stopped making stuff everywhere else, the rest of the world looked the other way from all of the various abuses and just quietly moved everything "off shore", and now, HERE! WE! ARE!!!

Is anyone ELSE *NOT* surprised? (and yet I have to assist others with working around this problem, more contracting work for me if it is solvable, but what if it is not, at least not in the short term? Re-designing the circuit board to use a different component may take longer or cost more than paying some scalper for components at 100 times the original cost)

Japan draws a LINE: web giants must reveal where they store user data

RE: weasel words

yeah they're just pissed about not being able to monetize user data in a way that can't be seen by Japan (or any other country that passes similar laws). So they'll aledge it will "cost the end user" in some way, instead of just ADMITTING THEY DO THINGS and supporting disclosure and opt in/out requirements along with it.

In other words, if they cared about end-users they would adopt GDPR-like policies WORLD WIDE, and just say somewhere "Our data is kept in servers in these places" and correlate it with the country from where the user signed up. Should not be too hard, right?

(icon because it's moderately amusing to use it for this case)

China lists 100 topics citizens can't include in online vids

Re: "Just like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter"

flouting the rules can reduce access to jobs, education, and even access to high-speed internet.

Apparently in China, it is "cancel culture on steroids".

I wonder what they'd do to you for a WINNIE THE POOH costume...

I ran the list through google translate, saw some specific mention of the use of hats and clothing that had faces of Chinese communist party leaders on them, and the practice of folding or otherwise distorting the hats and clothing to produce (assume humorous) facial expressions. That actually sounds kinda funny!

US Commerce Dept says China has brain-control weaponry

Re: "Nudge"

Just launch counter conspiracies that the original conspiracy theory was the work of deep state/Zionists/Islamists/white supremacists/whatever else triggers the group being aimed at.

many politicians do that already, from what I can tell

When do we get a new Firefox movie?

ask Mozilla...

(Who'd play Clint Eastwood's part?)

Re: Aren’t most weapons brain controlled…

my 'least favorite' one is a derivative of "People that are smarter than you are already working on it".

But the truth is that people who say such discouraging things are simply TOXIC and should be removed from any position of influence immediately.

As for brain-controlled things, back in the 90's there was this arcade-style video game in a computer store that had a couple of 'things' to put two fingers in, one for the right hand and one for the left. it was a downhill skiing game with a slalom course and you needed to "think right thoughts" for it to go right, and "think left thoughts" for it to go left. I played it for a few minutes, got the hang of it pretty fast. I haven't seen anything like it since.

Gnu Nano releases version 6.0 of text editor, can now hide UI frippery

Re: "fourteen new color names"

I only want 2 colors: bright white on black... so I can see what I'm editing.

Will I inhale coronavirus at this restaurant? There’s an app for that

Re: “Killer App”

Ph33r 2.0 - NOW with more ANGST!!!

(we're all SO in for an awakening about this nonsense)

icon because FACEPALM

Web3: The next generation of the web is here… apparently

I was thinking web 3.141592...

"Pi are not square, Pi are ROUND!"

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

Re: Will they then pay me?

in the case of web sites it is their choice to provide the content.

In the case of users with their phones, the bandwidth theft is STEALTHY

Re: Fork it and wave goodbye

what if they support the OLD API in parallel? Is there some technical reason why they can NOT ???

Re: People don't care

re: EFF being a "Google chearleading group"

don't be so sure... this may be the proverbial straw we all need to convince them of the error of their ways, FINALLY breaking the camel's back while those of us in the REAL world say "see I told you so".

President Biden orders transformation of 'Federal Customer Experience'

Re: Interactions

be careful what you wish for... google analytics and CAPTCHA are TWO bad things I can think of at the moment (Cali-Forn-You already has CAPTCHA on their web pages)

a unicorn - you DO have a point!

Sadly...

Re: Customer survey email

"pandering to the perception" is NOT comedy. Neither is injecting race.

Intel's mystery Linux muckabout is a dangerous ploy at a dangerous time

Re: What security nightmare?

in order to insert a kernel module you need to be root

in order to modify an existing module you need to be root

doesn't that kind of defeat the possibility of an exploit?

Re: "Open source is there to be subverted"

if subscription models start to take hold for hardware activation, an alternative WILL present itself, or market forces will drive sales to the floor. It would be like paying rent for your car engine. NOBODY would EVAR do that.

I also like NVidia. I have no problem with BLOBS because sometimes they are necessary, for regulatory reasons (WiFi drivers) as well as graphics stuff. So long as the driver has the right hooks that enable kernel reconfig and recompile, that is good enough for me. No need to force everyone to unzip their secret compartments for everyone (and their competition) to go fishing in.

At least they ARE supporting Linux, and in NVidia's case, also FreeBSD

(my 2 FreeBSD workstations have NVidia cards and I am happy with them)

Re: What security nightmare?

Compiled into the kernel? (other than embedded, who does this any more?)

I would expect that this kind of support would be in a dynamically loaded kernel module, loaded as needed.

It's the new kinder gentler less profane and angry Linus, now. Extreme prejudice, maybe, but no unkind words about the submitter's mother.

Some dry wit and well targeted adjectives might be in order, though...

Intel has to consider the perception of "unlock keys" for their hardware. I think it will cause them to lose sales. I bet AMD is paying very close attention. (they could easily implement this as part of the final assembly and test process and not reveal it exists outside the company, then just sell it with a different model number)

Also worth mentioning, RPi has a feature unlock key for a hardware MPEG decoder last I checked.

CentOS Stream 9: Understanding the new Red Hat OS release for non-Red-Hat-type people

anti-business sentiment may get you upvotes, but people do not work for free. Money has to come from somewhere and pay for the development. Though I think Poettering should not be paid for what HE did to Linux (systemd, pulseaudio, etc.) the reality is that people who work on Linux often need paychecks.

So there you go. And the more talented you are, the more pay you should get (based on the value of your work, of course).

That being said, IBM is traditionally good at marketing, and that may be a great benefit to RH. Down side, they are going to want to be paid somehow. So IBM hardware with RHEL is a likely solution they would offer, bundled because it all makes sense.

And I still think that if RH needs more money, they just need to add enough value to their offerings that people are willing to pay for them.

Or else, Rocky Linux is starting to look pretty good.

Re: No thanks.

when you have options, if there is value added to paying for support, go for it. The salary of your own Linux guru vs paying RH for their expertise is one of those choices the bean counters make.

So if you do not need support, use CentOS or Rocky or one of the others. RHEL if you need support.

And maybe RH should start making it more valuable to buy the support... (not by taking away competing distros but by offering more and more services)

Re: No thanks.

I recently installed the latest Rocky Linux and it "worked out of the box", though I ran into a problem caused by one of the pre=installed packages (it was using a hard-coded IP address for something and it happened to match the IP of my intarwebs gateway - fixing that was a bit of a pain but a recursive grep for the IP address in /etc found the files responsible and I changed them, all good). Mostly I need to stay current and informed which is why I installed it in a VM for testing/eval.

Unfortunately no Mate support, though. There are some instructions in various places (that I did not try) to install Mate but it's not officially part of Rocky, which tries to track RHEL as faithfully as they can like CentOS used to. And on the official IRC channel it's a friendly bunch of people.

A third of you slackers out there still aren't using HTTPS by default

Re: exactly

self-hosted web pages (I like setting up my own frequently used link pages this way) and embedded systems (that only access 'localhost' let's say for a web-based UI) ABSOLUTELY DO NOT NEED HTTPS or SSL (in general).

For this reason as well, "legacy" (not encrypted) http access MUST remain available.

And can you imagine implementing SSL on an ARDUINO? You _CAN_ implement a config web page (I have done it) using a wifi or ethernet shield... using "legacy" http.

Google advises Android users to be careful of Microsoft Teams if they want to call 911

Re: What else is Teams doing?

Is it monitoring every call on your phone, or absolutely everything thing you are doing.

yeah, like in WHAT THE HELL, MICROS~1 ???

(see icon - this is ACTUALLY VERY VERY VERY BAD)

The Omicron dilemma: Google goes first on delaying office work

Re: QALY

Thank you for the doom and gloom.

As for me, if I had not already established natural immunity by having recovered from the virus in early January of 2020 (2 weeks after a co-worker returned from China and had to go home sick half way through the day) I might consider DELIBERATELY "catching" the Omicron variant because it has been heavily reported that along with its much more infectious nature, it has ALSO evolved into a less deadly version of itself. And as such, it is likely that recovery from THIS version would at least partially inoculate you for the OTHER variants... just like a vaccine based on the first version of the Wuhan Flu (upon which the existing vaccines were based) should at least PARTIALLY protect you from serious infection from the variants.

Remember "Cow Pox"? It is probably the first documented vaccine, which protected people from getting smallpox. A brilliant British physician discoverd this in the late 1700's and by the early 1800's it was being used to eliminate smallpox. Something to consider. The practice of weakening "the cause of the disease" and exposing people to it (there's a name I cannot recall) had already been established but was not widely practiced. This was done with Cow Pox, and then "test" patients exposed to weakened smallpox (and did not catch it), similar to modern day clinical trials and double-blind tests. It really was cutting edge stuff at the time. And it saved lives, DELIBERATELY giving people a weaker version of a disease that caused the immune system to recognize the deadlier one.

But yeah, doom and gloom scares people into letting go of their freedoms and voting for people that manipulate them. Can't have any TRUTH or REAL cures, now can we?

Meg Whitman – former HP and eBay CEO – nominated as US ambassador to Kenya

I think I wanna hurl...

see icon

Aircraft can't land safely due to interference with upcoming 5G C-band broadband service

Re: WTAF?

Are you sure it was the FAA and _NOT_ the FCC behind this?

Regardless, crashing airplanes hurts EVERYBODY (not just those on the plane)

Flash? Nu-uh. Windows 11 users complain of slow NVMe SSD performance

I'm still going to stick with 10 7 until I absolutely can't, though.

fixed it for ya!

Intel updates mysterious 'software-defined silicon' code in the Linux kernel

Re: Trust free zone

From the article: allows users to activate dormant features in silicon

Malware authors aren't "users". And they (probably) already thought of at least 9 of those ways you mentioned...

AWS wobbles in US East region causing widespread outages

Re: I’d love to comment but…

I've been seeing load performance issues with things relying on googleapis all week, and youtube videos that just sit there not playing for several minutes within the last hour.

More may be broken than people are willing to admit...

(then again this is my anecdotal experience out here on the left coast of the USA, so YMMV)

Microsoft gives Notepad a minimalist makeover to match Windows 11 style

Re: Lipstick, pig, Windows

non-oinky end. I'd like to add THAT.

Re: FFS. How slapdash can Microsoft get? It's Notepad one of the simplest Apps ever written.

Pluma still runs rings around it. It's built around cairo and GTK 3 so it's probably possible to port it to windows...

So many cool features, too. I like the auto-indent and syntax highlighting, since I use it 99% of the time when editing code. And it's got TABS.

And on my Mate desktop, with "ClassicalOK" theme, it's NOT all 2D FLATTY FLATSO MCFLATFACE!!! And it has REAL scrollbars, not those "chrome-like" Adwaita scrollbars [like the ones I see in Notepad in the screenshots]. And I believe it has an undo buffer that's VERY deep... which, of course, is VERY nice to have at certain times.

Yeah, I just needed to make that point. Why can't Micros~1 just "GET IT" for once???

MySQL a 'pretty poor database' says departing Oracle engineer

Re: Captain Obvious

Micros~1 has another analysis product that's part of 'Office 364' (the name of which I cannot recall) so why do they need 'Excess' any more, right?

I have seen (and played with) Libre's "Base" and it seems kind of primitive but does a lot of what I used to do wtih Excess a couple of decades or so ago...

But as for MySQL and its quirks (example: for embedding a single quote in a text column, MySQL breaks the rules established by the SQL standard) I had a HELL of a time setting it up. And like it has been mentioned in the article, setting up PostgreSQL is pretty simple. In fact i did it last week to create a test database for adding new tables, etc. and a web-based UI to query things. Needed a test database so I did not disturb the production one. And the production one is actually on a USB drive plugged into an RPi 3b+. (it analyzes final testing phase of a piece of equipment that goes through a rigorous test, with various things tracked like serial numbers, any repairs that were done, test results, and so on and a cron-activate script sends a ZIP file of psql output every weeknight to someone to be imported into that Micros~1 thing I could not remember the name of).

Re: There is no reason not to choose Postgres

dBase - the first and the WORST!

Clipper, at least, was compilable into something that could interface with C. So for some stuff it almost made sense... except it did not do SQL and STILL stored numbers in the tables as FREAKING TEXT.

I'm glad it all just faded away...

China's Yutu rover spots 'mysterious hut' on far side of the Moon

Re: Get the popcorn ready....

First thing I thought of was a chunk of something we sent there...

How about the bottom half of the LEM that was tested by Apollo X ??? Or the top half of a LEM that was launched into orbit to return astronauts to the Apollo command module? Those things were dropped back onto the moon, so maybe just "space junk". That's what I'm thinking.

Re: What if it's full of Rabbits?

maybe they'll offer us some mochi...

Netgear router flaws exploitable with authentication ... like the default creds on Netgear's website

Re: Linksys?

my very old DLink wifi router (which is ONLY on the LAN) has a checkbox to allow remote admin from outside the LAN, i.e. via the WAN port. Of course it is OFF. I think there's also another one that allows someone on the wifi network to configure it, and I believe THAT one is OFF as well.

(unfortunately they were ON by default, as I recall - it has been many years since i set it up)

Re: Bombe

and, if I remember correctly, we can indirectly thank the way the Nazis often (robotically) included certain phrases at the beginnings and endings of the messages, apparently longer and more consistent phrases than the usual "Dear sir"

Also if I remember correctly, there were 2 codes used. Code #1 was in the book, and the 2nd code was encoded using the 1st one. but lazy operators might re-use the same code for the 2nd one. And so there you have it... procedural insecurity, ripe for being cracked by brilliant code breakers. (Bletchley Park is such a cool study on ciphers and cracking them)

Re: The world needs to be reformatted.

I recently upgraded to a new ISP (now AT&T) and the modem it uses has a default "alphabet soup" password that is restored on factory reset. It appears to be uniquely assigned, and as it's printed on a sticker on the modem itself, and can ALSO be changed (until the next factory reset), I would think that this might satisfy a reasonable security requirement for NOT using identical default passwords and still provide for recoverability (etc.).

At least, as far as I know, none of the (uniquely) pre-assigned passwords are "admin" "love" "sex" "money" "password" or "god"

(so yeah it is one way to do it)

Prisons transcribe private phone calls with inmates using speech-to-text AI

Re: Difference?

and the irony that there seem to be activists for "Prisoner Privacy", like this is "UPSIDE DOWN CLOWN WORLD" or something...

What will life in orbit look like after the ISS? NASA hands out new space station contracts

Re: The best technology of the '70's. Again.

I wonder if Musk would actually build an Arthur C. Clarke style "spinning wheel" space station on his own... (naw he'd probably ask for gummint money anyway, it's what he does, heh)

But chances are, a SpaceX space station would outperform at a lower cost. My $0.20 worth (was $0.10, formerly $0.02, but inflation again)

Maybe a tire company can build inflatable sections?