* Posts by bombastic bob

10507 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

No Mo'zilla for about 100 techies today: Firefox maker lays off staff as boss talks of 'difficult choices' and funding

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: dwindling pool

"they keep adding idiotic stuff that just bloats it. Pocket, for example"

And, the "developers" who do this are RETAINED...

If I ever get around to forking Firefox (I'd like to call it "Rebellion", with a 3D skeuomorphic appearance, no 'hamburger', no overt touch-friendliness, and *NO* *POCKET*) it would look more like it did prior to Australis, NOT have idiotic "features" like 'pocket', and do ONE THING WELL: browse the web.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: dwindling pool

it's my general opinion that the SINGLE THING that did the MOST HARM to firefox is AUSTRALIS.

That, and everything ELSE that comes with it.

Mozilla has finally learned that FEATURE CREEP (and removal) isn't "an upgrade".

So what they need to do, now that they've reduced their "head count", is focus on the basics. That is:

a) backward compatibility (something that FF 57 _REMOVED_, remember?)

b) reliability and stability (on FreeBSD and Linux this isn't bad)

c) *SPEED*

d) *PRIVACY* - give us a reason to *NOT* use chrome, because Firefox does NOT track [or at least lets you bit-fiddle manage what's happening]

More anti-tracking pro-privacy features: good

Hijacking DNS so _YOU_ can track us: bad

Just sayin' Mozilla, it's *OBVIOUS* to some of us...

ICANN finally reveals who’s behind purchase of .org: It’s ███████ and ██████ – you don't need to know any more

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: A group of people were entrusted with the administration of the .org domains ...

You apparently think PROFIT itself is IMMORAL, don't you?

Making a PROFIT (when you're a FOR PROFIT company) is NOT immoral. It's business.

Profit is _GOOD_. It's been driving our societies for MILLENIA. Without gain, why bother working? No "profit" means SLAVE LABOR. NOBODY wants to be a SLAVE. So you should be paid for what you do, and if you buy and sell things, the PROFIT is your pay!

(and if you're GOOD at it, your financial reward should be HUGE)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

mine does but the edit font is so @#$%ing tiny that it's hard to see ANYTHING, even the red squiggly underlines on spelling mistakes

(Hey El Reg can you make the edit font bigger? I am NOT on a PHONE)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

"many local internets"

yeah same here, fixed IP with a domain and a web site, DNS, and other things. Helps with customer projects, too. I can mirror a customer web site on my local LAN server, as an example, fix stuff locally, and say "hey take a look at yourdomain.mydomain.whatever" to see if they like it.

But as for ALSO being "part of the big intarwebs" - why could THAT be a problem? Or is it just the DNS system?

If you hate all that in the current DNS system, just use ".onion". Or create your OWN DNS system [which you'd have to pay for, probably, but it's usually cheap]. As for me I could create as many names as I want if you don't mind "mydonain.whatever" tacked onto the end of every name...

but yeah the existing system is there, relatively unfiltered, reasonably secure, and apparently NO POLITICS INVOLVED [or that's the goal]

/me imagines "Cancel Culture" applied to web DNS registration... *shudder* [and it's my general opinion that a FOR PROFIT corporation is LESS LIKELY to engage in this kind of DISCRIMINATION]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Bothered

transparency would be a good thing, yeah.

Aren't there existing laws with respect to companies doing international business? In the USA (well in Cali-fornicate-you at least) you have to file a statement of information with the state indicating who the primary corporate officers are, mostly for legal purposes.

So I would expect something similar, here.

There are also laws _AGAINST_ borrowing money to buy stock. That one dates back to the 1930's, something about unsecured loans being used to fund stock purchase and after a crash the banks have no cash...

Purchase of a company, I suppose, CAN be financed, if it's not through stock... though it _DOES_ seem to be a bit "shady" in that regard. But that's between the lender and the borrower I suppose, and I doubt the loan is without any kind of collateral.

Still I would expect that much of this "must be a non-profit" stuff is a complete misunderstanding of for-profit vs non-profit. Seriously, I bet a for-profit corporation could do the job at LOWER COST TO THE END USER than a non-profit one, simply because they have budgets and investors and bottom lines and need for revenue. And there is a LOT of competition out there for domain names.

And from MY experience with a non-profit, they're sometimes run by COMPLETE IDIOTS when it comes to things like spending money, retaining employees, and even JUST GETTING THINGS DONE.

Y2K quick-fix crick? 1920s come roaring back after mystery blip at UK's vehicle licensing agency

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Another 20 (18) years...

I can show you, if you step this way...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: 2038

actually the simplest fix is to make time_t a 64-bit signed integer, and be done with it.

Then, fix the userland code before 2038 to prevent further problems.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: 2038

all you really need to do is convert the time_t data type to be a signed 64-bit integer and then fix whatever software bugs happen NOW to deal with it...

ideally any code using time_t will simply work. And it helps to pay attention to integer truncation warnings, which would be there if you try to assign a 64-bit time_t to a 32-bit integer. THEN you would see it as a compiler warning and HOPEFULLY go "why is that" only to remember that time_t is NOW a 64-bit value.

Even in 32-bit kernels, you should have support for 64-bit integers... EVERYWHERE.

As for "other than POSIX" operating systems, let them deal with their own issues. POSIX can simply adapt a time_t that's 64-bit to fix it once and for all.

It's a no to ZFS in the Linux kernel from me, says Torvalds, points finger of blame at Oracle licensing

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Torvalds declared: "Don't use ZFS. It's that simple."

you DO have a good point...

/me has been using ZFS with FreeBSD for several years, since 8.x even, and it saved my ass a couple of times when hard drives started going bad after a few years of use, and I found out early because of ZFS, and preserved all files when moving to a new hard drive in both cases.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The problem is not Oracle (for once)

well I favor convincing the author to ALSO have a GPL version of it. dual licensing is probably the best way if you want your code to be TRULY "open" source.

MIT or BSD licenses merely require a copyright statement, can ship closed.

GPL demands code to be 'eternally open', no additional requirements (like a copyright).

So you do this: license under EITHER an MIT or GPL license, end-user's choice. Once GPL'd that fork will remain GPLd, but the original can be used ANY way desired, provided you include the copyright in your docs/license/whatever. Best of both worlds. It's what _I_ do.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The problem is not Oracle (for once)

"the problem is Oracle, the same wankers who want to copyright APIs so they are not to be trusted."

Mostly true; however, GPL is unfortunately incompatible with a LOT of other kinds of licenses.

Oracle _could_ dual-license their open source code if they wanted to. [I do that] Something like "You can use this code with EITHER a GPLv2 or [whatever license]" then include text of both and let the end-user choose which one. Once GPL'd it remains as such and becomes part of Linux, eternally patched and forked like every other chunk o' code that's been contributed to it.

I think that's what Linus wants to do. But it's hard for him to express this without the use of profanity...

Tea tipplers are more likely to live longer, healthier lives than you triple venti pumpkin-syrup soy-milk latte-swilling fiends

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Details?

"gender bending chemicals"

those are found in SOY, and unless you put soy milk into your tea, you're fine.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

Re: FlamingDeath

he may have been thinking of a slightly DIFFERENT word...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: O No

black tea has all the good stuff in it, too, just drink MORE of it, and you'll also have the benefit of CAFFEINE!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Nothing new here

well I like Earl Grey (black tea) with enough sugar in it to kill the bitter... as well as my daily quad cappuccino with lots of "fake sugar": (stevia) in it, and heavy cream in the foamy stuff. An chocolate syrup. yum!

I often use bags of Twining's English Breakfast to make iced tea. 4 bags makes 1 gallon of it (on the stove for ~10 minutes in a large pot on high, just short of boiling) then cool it in a sink partly full of water, then into a pitcher with 2.5 cups equivalent of stevia, and some 'fake vanilla' to go with it, or maybe peppermint oil, or something equally interesting, THEN into the fridge. I typically do a gallon of such tea every couple of days. Gotta maintain those caffeine levels!

/me wonders what kinds of looks of shock and horror will emerge from this description.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: missing details

compared to trans-fatty hydrogenated vegetable shortening, I would say so!

Shhh! It's us, Microsoft. Yes, it's 2020. We're here with a new build of Windows 10

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: XP Home Edition!

"I'd rather burn Windows 10 with fire and go back to a fully supported Windows 7, thank you very much!"

and Khaptain asked: "Why?"

Answer: TOO MANY REASONS TO LIST HERE! But I'll start with these:

a) 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFACE FLUGLY UI design with "The Metro" "The Start Thing" UWP and "The Settings": and all of that "change because *WE AT MICROSHAFT FEEL* in spite of what customers actually want"

b) The Spyware and The Adware built into the OS.

c) The Store

d) The MIcrosoft Logon - able to track you WHEREVER you are online, or ON! YOUR! OWN! COMPUTER! for that matter! If they haven't already leveraged this, they will at some point.

On a related note...

recently I swapped in a new hard drive for a relative's older laptop, with Devuan Linux and Mate. It originally came with Vista. The performance benefits alone are worth it, but at least the system will NOW be maintainable... And the owner of this computer is a "content consumer", and it took only a short time (read: a few minutes) to re-learn to use a Mate desktop vs what was set up before in Vista. Lots of "thank you" responses. Data files and settings were preserved when possible. I copied _everything_ that was in C:\Users into the new file system, just in case.

even e-mail settings were just copied because the windows system was using thunderbird...

(ok remind me why people are actually USING WNIDOWS 10 again?? Because someone like ME hasn't come along and converted them over to Linux, right?)

Google and IBM square off in Schrodinger’s catfight over quantum supremacy

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: So we're up to 56 now

great. when can I play games and/or design stuff with it?

generating random numbers is boring

TikTok on the clock, and the hacking won't stop: SMS spoofing vuln let baddies twiddle teens' social media videos

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

why U.S. military bans TikTok? One reason, in this article

Recent article HERE deserves a reference.

(yeah article text includes at the end but I mention it anyway)

And I _TOTALLY_ agree, though this new discovery may not have been known when the military banned it...

What if everyone just said 'Nah' to tracking?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: We see that you're using an ad blocker

unfortunately the Advocate General needs to do what's necessary to PROSECUTE OFFENDERS or his advice is meaningless... and does he have the GONADS to do it?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: We see that you're using an ad blocker

"A new spawn of XUL must rise again!"

if *ANYONE* wants to fork Firefox to use the OLD INTERFACE (pre-Australis) I'd LOVE to participate in the development. Sadly I lack time (or funding to PAY myself) to do all of that work myself...

I suppose it'd have to be re-named, and merged frequently with the 'master' branch on Firefox for fixes and whatnot but the MAIN IRRITATION I have with FF is what you described as a crappy-looking interface, and plugin config is only PART of the problem!

Possible new name: "Rebellion" [I've been wanting to use that name for a long time, for this very purpose]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: But How ?

Here's what I've been doing... it requires Linux or FreeBSD to work properly though

a) normal browsing [including posts to El Reg] has NoScript plugin running in as restrictive a mode as I can manage for normal things. Fortunately, even Amazon usually works in this mode [I white-listed one or two of their things though]. [amazon seems to track itself, not others, so kudos for that]

b) For everything ELSE, I 'su - differentuser' and then 'export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0'. Since I'm listening on TCP port 6000 with the X server [not hard to set it up that way, but I don't wanna repeat myself with full instructions, just make sure you do NOT use '-nolisten tcp' in the X server command line and block external incoming connections on port 6000] i can THEN run Firefox as a different user's context, ON THE LOGGED IN DESKTOP. Easily. And it even plays videos properly!

c) in the 'differentuser' context, Firefox is configured to automatically DELETE ALL HISTORY AND CACHE whenever I close it. I have NOT figured out how to do that with chrome, but you can always delete its entire cache directory yourself and ONLY run chrome with a shell script that does this for you... [and the cache stuff is always in the logged-in user's /home directory so it only affects that user]

d) with FULL awareness of this I do not surf from site to site unless I don't care if site 'A' tracks me looking at site 'B'. If it's all on the same set of servers, who cares. If Faece-book (for example) is tracking me surfing the New York Times web site (for example) then I'll view them with separate browser sessions, so that no cookie/history/cache exists when I open up the NYT site. [an El Reg article from a while ago suggested that even cached vs uncachedd pages CAN track where you've been...]

Sure, my IP address will be known. Ideally it won't be traced back to me. But it could. So the next step would be Tor or a VPN. But for now, what I described is "secure enough" for me.

And THIS way, I can STILL view those sites that _INSIST_ I promiscuously allow javascript... and then I exit the browser and ALL of their tracking B.S. goes byebye!

Not sure what Firefox's 'private browsing' does but I expect it's LESS than what I just described.

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

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: "ban people based on their legit OS and legit game"

" I can't see many Linux user paying for software, or they won't be using Linux in the first place"

are you assuming that people using Linux are just CHEAP, and _NOT_ using it because it's more "fit for purpose" than WIN-10-NIC ???

(I wouldn't mind paying for software that's worth paying for, and have done so on many occasions in the past. It's just that there aren't a lot of commercial things designed to run on Linux, which is sad and a part of the problem of getting Linux onto desktops...)

I'm about to put Linux on an old laptop that a relative has. Doing this will actually SOLVE problems that slowly crept in BECAUSE of it having Windows (Vista) on it. No Win-10-nic. Linux. With Mate. Just put new hard drive on order, just today even.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Computer Games?

said the man who posted on the comment section for an El Reg article about video games

(did anyone else see irony in that?)

(oh I guess the post above mine said something like it - what I get for NOT being able to just 'see all' and have to only see only one 'page' at a time - makes it hard to follow threads properly)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: EA hardly needs Linux as an excuse to ban people

in the USA you can go to small claims court. no lawyers

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

I'm simply not interested in their games, nor with playing games online. I tried XBox online years ago, ended up being invited by someone with the user name "booster something" which should've clued me in right there [but I hadn't heard the term 'booster' before]. Results predictable. I got fed up with the thing early on and just said "this is a waste of time and effort, I'll just play solo or with someone else in the same room".

But yeah the devs for those games are probably arrogant millennials that (back when XBox live was first starting out and they offered a free month trial subscription with every XBox) were logging in as "booster something" so they could artificially prop up their own status at the expense of noobs.

And _now_ they're quick to assume that ANYONE using Linux is there to CHEAT. Like maybe THEY would have done???

Long-term Linux Mint: 19.3 release unchains the Gimp, adds HiDPI, is kind to your older, less-beefy kit

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Tomboy and ".Not" aka Mono - GOOD RIDDANCE!

I always hated Gnome including Tomboy and hauling in gigabytes of Mono crap...

GOOD RIDDANCE! (it's ABOUT TIME!)

YEARS AGO I would've simply left it out of the package dependency list and let people install it if they want it. AND! I! WOULD! HAVE! KEPT! GIMP! THIS TIME AROUND!!!

Gimp = worth keeping

Tomboy = what the hell is THAT for, and WHY did it install gigabytes of MONO ??? [ok it's gone now but I made my point]

Reusing software 'interfaces' is fine, Google tells Supreme Court, pleads: Think of the devs

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

yeah I fear I have to side with Google *cough* and Microsoft *cough* on this one, because I can see the tea leaves being VERY VERY BAD if Oracle gets their way in this...

every API could suddenly become PROPRIETARY!!! Writing a competing product would THEN be IMPOSSIBLE... and say goodbye to Wine, and other open source alternatives to commercial products, maybe even Open and/or Libre office.

And THAT would be COMPLETELY *FELT* ('feel' being the OTHER 'F' word)!

(only the lawyers win when all of this CRAP happens)

Linux in 2020: 27.8 million lines of code in the kernel, 1.3 million in systemd

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

with 42 up votes recorded, I'll post my approval this way instead.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: A new book: "Systemd (feat. Linux)"

multiple windows - yeah, multiple tabs are a bit better. I've been using pluma (and before that, gedit the gnome 2 version) to edit code for quite a while now. Pluma finally solved the "spaces at the end of lines": problem and now is a pretty useful editor, does code element 'color tagging' and things like that. Not perfect, but usable out of the box for that purpose.

The beauty of it: if you have a headless embedded system running Linux, and you want to edit code on that system, you can install pluma [just don't bother with an X server] and other X11 GUI tools, enable TCP connect on your workstation [must run Xorg, not Wayland, for this], and then in a console (serial or ssh) to the embedded system, "export DISPLAY=workstation.LAN:0.0" and on the workstation, "xhost +embedded.LAN" and then you can run pluma from the console and it displays on the workstation.

On a related note...

I believe that X11's built-in method of doing 'remote desktop display' *IS* the SINGLE! BEST! FEATURE! of X11 because it was literally designed for that VERY purpose! And on a desktop, it'll leverage multi-core to do it.

But you KNOW that if systemd could STOP that ability, and force you to use WAYLAND, it WOULD... (all too many distros make it unnecessarily difficult to set up the X server that way, from [ab]use of display managers to just obfuscating where all of the magic config files ended up)

NOTE: on FreeBSD, I have '.xserverrc" in my home dir that says "exec Xorg -listen tcp". On other systems (like Linux) you probably have to muck with /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc and/or config files like /etc/slim.conf to remove the "-nolisten tcp" and/or change it to "-listen tcp" but if your distro isn't insane, it should be easy enough to do. Just make sure you block incoming port 6000 at your firewall.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Lazy upgrades

I've been using ZFS with FreeBSD for quite a while now (years in fact). I have 2 systems that are "all ZFS" that are my priomary desktop and backup desktop systems.

I put ZFS on 2 hard drives on 2 systems years ago. One was a workstation, one was a server. Occasional scrubs revealed that the hard drives were going bad, so I replaced them with no apparent data loss, while it was still possible to clone the drives using tarball-style backups.

So yeah ZFS is extremely good at automatic data recovery (especially if you enable replication on critical mount points) and error reporting. It also supports compression (I typically compress everything I can).

As for error handling, you'll potentially get things reported to you that never otherwise would with other file systems, at least from my experience, so you can do something about it before a REAL problem happens.

I don't know about the stability of ZFS on Linux, but in FreeBSD it's been _exceptional_ for quite a while now.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: "It solves a problem that people have."

"As systemD absorbs more and more, like the home directories"

Like 'The Blob' from that movie in the early 1960's (*pop* Beware of the blob it creeps, and leaps, and crawls, it's crawling up the walls... etc.)

Absorbing home directories - that *ENTIRELY* *BREAKS* the beauty of the common desktop model as it is *BEFORE* that happens. Additionally, there's the fact that '/home' can be a) on a different partition, b) EASILY backed up (and restored) using tarballs [including user preferences], c) can be CLONED ONTO MULTIPLE SYSTEMS AND VM's using those backup tarballs, *AND* d) is NOT a monolithic "the Registry" like Windows. And standard directory names and links do NOT have spaces in them!!!

These are HUGE advantages of the way Linux does things TODAY, as compared to Windows [let's say]

And I can (unfortunately) see the systemd "developers" going off into the weeds to "solve" this...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: "It solves a problem that people have."

there is a less than stellar implementation at times.

Fixed it for ya

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: "It solves a problem that people have."

you're welcome

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: six of one....

system V method was VERY secure, actually. It was easy to see what started (S## script symlinks) it was EASY to see what was stopped (K## script symlinks), and it was EASY TO READ THE SCRIPTS [and create your own, or modify the ones that were installed to meet your needs].

Good luck with doing ANYTHING THAT SENSIBLE with the hideous abomination known as "systemd".

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: "R" class virus

you miss the point with regards to "the registry". I blame "the registry" for the following windows (unsolved) problems:

a) slow application startup

b) slow load times for 'file open' dialog boxen

c) delays during bootup

d) why does it take 20 minutes to create a new user in Win-10-nic? THE REGISTRY!!!

polluted registries slow EVERYTHING down. The POSIX sensibility of every application having its OWN config file, located in ~/.config or ~/.application-name , makes MORE sense. Sure, PRIOR to this 'registry thing' it was always an INI file in C:\WINDOWS (which really should NOT be user writable) but it does NOT need to be in C:\WINDOWS if you have a "user home directory" and that's the entire point here with the POSIX way,

POSIX does it right, WINDOWS DOES IT WRONG, and we do NOT need a "systemd" to MAKE LINUX DO THINGS THE WINDOWS (aka WRONG) WAY !!!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: "R" class virus

"strongly convinced that there are people both inside and outside IT that actually want this systemd takeover to happen and are quite willing to pay shitloads of money to push that agenda."

a) they FEEL (not THINK) that it is "better", and their ARROGANCE demands they CRAM IT INTO OUR BODY ORIFICES whether we want it or not, without the benefits of anything even remotely "slippery"

b) they did NOT read Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority" or they did and were confused by its conclusion...

c) they have a hidden agenda in which systemd becomes "the new windows" and they can THEN inject adware, spyware, online licence activation, DRM, subscription licensing, ... [and crowd out the non-systemd-Linux distros and BSDs and Apple for NOT having it]

d) all of the above

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I've had .....

"if they just made OSS work like it does on BSD systems.."

It wouldn't be the first thing ported to L from BSD. I'm pretty sure netfilter originated on one of the BSD's as ipfw. The code just looks TOO similar in too many ways... [I did netfilter kernel modules for a $CUSTOMER a decade or so ago, spent a lot of time in the low-level guts].

But yeah it wouldn't surprise me in the least to have seen contributions from the same devs at the very least.

And so it could be with OSS. That'd be awesome, actually! [I *love* OSS for sound on FreeBSD, it's solid and has been working VERY well for ~10 years or so as I recall, no serious problems on my end when it first appeared, and no observed problems at all for nearly a decade].

Mozilla, Google, take notice please: Direct OSS support from your web browsers!!! Just make it a compile option, at the very least. [as I recall you only support pulseaudio on FreeBSD]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: I've had .....

"I think he really is an Employee of MicroSoft in disguise ... or a total asshat ....."

you, sir, are WAY too kind...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: A new book: "Systemd (feat. Linux)"

good one!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: "It solves a problem that people have."

auto-restart services... (*sigh*)

a) run a simple shell script that does "service blahblah stop" sleep 1 "service blahblah start" whenever 'ps ax | grep blahblah' doesnt return anything back. have it loop every 5 seconds or something.

b) don't use applications that crash

c) log in with ssh periodically and do a 'ps ax' to see what's running

d) if it's mission critical, it should restart ITSELF [and NOT need a 'systemd']

by "solving" that one problem, and introducing BOATLOADS of "feature creep", systemd basically did it WRONG but the "developers" *FELT* [not thinking, FEELING, with emotions, which make CRAP decisions] it would be "BETTER" and they were *FREAKING WRONG*!!!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: "It solves a problem that people have."

I also use FreeBSD, and whenever possible, Linux distros like DEVUAN that do *NOT* have systemd.

Unfortunately, I made a decision for embedded development for a customer, to use Raspbian (based on Debian) and THAT has systemd in it. I've had to waste several HOURS trying to un-do systemd's STUPIDITY (like 'out of the box' assuming that all serial ports are MODEMS, and hence run the modem daemon/service/whatever-the-hell-it-is which kept B0RKING the startup sequence for device control of a serial port connected device from a headless Raspberry Pi, but I digress...).

systemd has TOO! MANY! BUT-IF! QURKY! STUPIDTHINGS! EMBEDDED! IN! IT! and in TOO many cases I've had to *FIGHT* *IT* to make a simple Linux-based embedded solution ACTUALLY! WORK!!!

However, by using Raspbian, rather than a Devuan distro, it's more likely to support "bleeding edge" hardware that plugs into the RPi, or that was my thinking...

[fortunately only a few hours wasted out of hundreds, so it's hard to say if my decision was in any way "bad", though it was the safest path in my opinion]

I! *HATE*! SYSTEMD!!!

(nuke it 'till it glows, then SHOOT IT IN THE DARK - see icon)

TikTok boom: US Army bans squaddies from using trendy app on govt-issued phones

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: who in the first place?

NSA back door on the military.... I don't think they need to bother with that one. I'm sure they had access to everything I knew, everything I did, and everything in my service record, when I was in the Navy. Well it wasn't called 'NSA" back then but same idea.

[on a related note, there is still some classified information I won't disclose knowledge about, nor discuss, because it hasn't been made public knowledge, even from 30+ years ago].

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

Re: GPS enabled military phones :-)

seeing that link wants me to say "based"

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I think you'll find the ban covers more than just work phones

When you're in the military, the command you belong to may declare a particular place "off limits". This may be because it's a den of drug dealers (seen), a religious cult (seen), or just some place that the command does not like (have not seen, but they have the perrogative).

Extending this to personal electronics is NOT unprecedented. Enforcement would be up to the individual commands, but believe me, if you're doing something that puts your shipmates in any kind of danger, the others around you will have a LOT to say about it!!!

Example: noobie on a submarine leaves the toilet lid up after peeing in it. He's told by a senior member of the crew to put the damn lid down, because when the boat takes an angle, it'll slam down on the crapper making a loud noise in the water. Or the same kind of thing, NOT shutting the doors properly, or slamming them too hard when you DO shut them. It's not just about not waking people up in berthing, or making an irritating noise, it's about NOT putting noise in the water.

Same things with "apps" on your personal phone. if it's snarfing up data about YOU, it could ALSO be indirectly snarfing data about your crewmates. So yeah, it's a concern. And I think anyone in the military who has a brain would agree with this, and I'm sure they'll share info about 'safe' alternaties to otherwise slurpy "CRapps".

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: social media data hoovering is an obvious security risk

it bypasses the Chain of Command.

How does Trump's direct words bypass the chain of command? I think the people at the top have every right to directly order those at the very bottom, but in dealing with grievances, that's where 'chain of command' really applies. You go to YOUR platoon/division first, then up the chain, with respect to grievances. Yeah I was in the Navy for 6 years so I know how the system works. And it's NOT a bunch of unthinking grunts being dictated to like robots. We have robots for that sort of thing anyway...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: social media data hoovering is an obvious security risk

actually Kennedy started the Vietnam War, and LBJ turned it into the quagmire that we all remember today.

Nixon actually ended it, and by pulling out U.S. troops, allowed the VC government to overrun the places we were defending. Many people believe that if Nixon hadn't been side-tracked with Watergate, he might have ended it more like the Korean War, which happened while Nixon was Vice President, I might add.

(unfiltered history for the benefit of millenials, who probably aren't exposed to unfiltered history very often, the revisionist kind being more suited to manipulating them through FEEL)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: social media data hoovering is an obvious security risk

If cold war history is of any consequence, we're probably reading Xi's mail in real time. even the encrypted stuff.

The thing is, what's obvious about China is what they do to their OWN people. They'll build this capability [like Google and Facebook] into social media stuff and NOW the chinese government gets to snarf data from U.S. government-issued phones if TikTok is allowed to be on them. That's really what it's about.

So, from the government's perspective, it's ok to spy on China, but it's NOT ok for them to have an equal access to our military via government-issued phones...

I guess that point was already made, but I'm just saying it straight-up to avoid any doubts as to what they're doing.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: social media data hoovering is an obvious security risk

"I guess the Trump feed is Ok as he reminds you a lot of McCarthy and Nixon right?"

Not even REMOTELY close. Nixon was a liberal republican who started the EPA and tried to regulate the economy through price/wage freezes. McCarthy was more like the P.C. gang nowadays with "guilt by accusation". The modern-day McCarthy-ism includes various smear tactics LIKE leaking classified and private information like a sieve to the willing press corps, AHD holding sham impeachments for non-crimes based on opinions and heresay, with no actual DUE PROCESS (like the accused being able to face and cross-examine his accuser, produce his own witnesses, etc.).

But hey, you've got the "pandering to the perception" part nailed in the quote I included at the top. Trump is actually the OPPOSITE of that. "Drain the swamp"

icon, because, facepalm