curlftpfs has a very naive implementation of things, but is should still work relatively well if you read one file at a time!
Posts by Zakhar
161 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2016
Not just deprecated, but deleted: Google finally strips File Transfer Protocol code from Chrome browser
Re: Overkill for many sites
There is a case though where FTP makes sense: retrieving my own encrypted files stored in "the cloud".
I use encfs and the files are encrypted locally before storing. So, files at rest "on the cloud" are encrypted with my own key that is kept locally.
1. encfs is setup with a verification code so that if the file was changed the read would fail.
2. Indeed an attacker can see that I access my cloud provider and how much data. Encryption won't change that. To be precise, the FTP control flow is kept encrypted of course, only the FTP data flow in unencrypted. (--ftp-ssl-control option for curl)
3. see 1.
4. no, the hashes are in the encfs blocks themselves, and apart out of sheer luck you can't tamper with that.
Adding encryption on already encrypted data adds no protection, indeed granted that the protocol used also does "checksums".
Signal boost: Secure chat app is wobbly at the moment. Not surprising after gaining 30m+ users in a week, though
Max Schrems is back... and he's challenging Apple's 'secret iPhone advertising tracking cookies' in Europe
But to be the advocate of the devil
If there were no ads, you won't have "free" stuff like: search engines (without which the internet is pretty useless), e-mail service, etc...
Are you too young to remember times when e-mails service had to be paid for. It is still current practice to have this service with your ISP, and you pay for it with your subscription. Now you see, you have Proton Mail that "sells it" with the benefit of encryption. Of course encrypting your e-mail (with the likes of PGP) does not work with ads, that's why it has never been made widely available by any of the GAFA, and why Proton mail can sell it!
So yes, ads is a "business model" for those things that are almost "basic commodities" (like e-mail) but still have a cost: machines, storage, network, programs...
"There is no such thing as a free lunch"
So you should honestly ask yourself if you prefer some "free" service in exchange for a "reasonable" amount of ads, or prefer to pay for it and have no ad at all.
The whole debate in fact is in the "reasonable" level of ads. Once they ad makers are in, greed tends to become less "reasonable".
Re: Price comparison sites
A VM is not enough to protect you. With canvas fingerprinting, you'll have the same result on your machine whether in or out of the VM... I was quite impressed. Obviously you can also be betrayed by your IP address or other things. If you always use the same browser in your VM, it's also easy to fingerprint. A better defense would be to start a Linux live ISO, the more popular the better, in your VM, so that it resembles any other person running the same Linux ISO... apart from IP, canvas fingerprinting, etc...
The techniques of advertisers and responses of browsers (at least freedom conscious like Firefox) seems like an infinite race.
Windows to become emulation layer atop Linux kernel, predicts Eric Raymond
Re: Follow the money, always
Upvoted you. Indeed shareholders decide. What is the point investing in an O.S. when you have a free one that works pretty fine. What the corporate user (the one that pays!) wants is to run Office, he couldn't care less of what the O.S. is.
Also devs prefer open source. See all the examples like Hadoop. They are right about that and can see it in the news every day, see at the moment the Apple's tax chronicle. That is what happens when you depend on a company's policy. That can't happen with open source: Libre Office celebrated it's 10th anniversary didn't they.
But the real signals that what Eric describes would be happening is not Edgium. That is too easy since Chromium is already multi platform. The big signals would be:
- Porting Office to Linux
- And most importantly that M$ stop the racketeering business model (forcing down your throat a W$ license with each new PC, whether you intend to use it or not!).
The second signal would really be positive and prove they respect others... but it still makes money, so it's a hard decision!
Until that decision is taken, and as long the racketeering continues (35 years and counting) I'll write M$ and W$, and they won't get the respect of the open source community: where the devs are!
Microsoft will release a web browser for Linux next month. Repeat, Microsoft will release a browser for Linux – and it uses Google's technology
Re: "This means Linus Torvalds has definitely won, doesn't it?"
I strongly beg to differ on "M$ are playing a different game. They are selling services now"
The last time I checked the racketeering model is still there. Even if they might want to transition to a service/subscription model, that has not stop the racketeering so far, and you MUST still pay the M$ tax anytime you buy a PC, whether you intend to use the pre-installed W$ or not.
And don't tell me "it's because hardware vendors sell only that"... you perfectly know they have their arms twisted to do so by M$ despicable commercial practices.
Once the racketeering model will end, I'll respectfully write again Microsoft in full instead of the M$ abbreviation they continue to deserve!
Shareholders rules
You have to realise that this is not a technical question, because these big companies are ruled by shareholders and finance, not by technique.
What is the point in 2020 to write a core browser engine from scratch when you can use an open source Chromium base.
Does it bring your company such an added value that businesses (the only one that accept to pay for anything) would prefer to use your browser or choose your O.S. because of the browser?
I guess the answer to that question is obviously no.
Chromium being mainly under BSD licence, you don't even strictly have to submit your own changes to the core engine if you don't wish to... Although contribution gives a "good image" and avoids having to re-apply changes when the core evolves (rebasing hell!) which is also good to reduce costs.
Since there is no financial interest, why bother, anyway the project won't be funded because that would be contrary to shareholders' interest.
So you end up with "marketing", since a proprietary O.S. is expected to come with a browser, you only develop some "decoration" on top of an existing code: behold edgium.
There is also a "big company issue" and globalisation. Most of the initial technical geniuses got promoted to "manager", and again to save cost, subcontracting all the I.T. to India is the rules. In the end, nobody in-house has any clue of what a line of code is, so Microsoft is being realistic doing only "decoration": the only skill they can hope to use successfully!
The same reasons work for the core of the O.S., but there is a transition issue between the racketeering model and the "service" model that Microsoft is now embracing. In the end, why continue to develop the core of an O.S. when a Linux kernel + "Windows D.E." (instead of Gnome/KDE/LXDE/You-name-it) + Office would be perfectly fine for all end users!..
(Of course "developers" would have to adapt, but those not already Linux-fluent are being trained with WSL1/2!)
Re: Geniune Question
Out ot curiosity, I might give it a try to see if they made Teams work on Linux with Edgium (or wait for someone to try it!)
That is because, although C-level believe M$ marketing BS that "Teams work on any platform even on a browser", that is completely false and completely fails to work on Linux on any recent browser (Firefox/Chromium), even when changing their UserAgent to pretend to be a M$ browser. In fact it does not even work on the current Edge on W$10...
Not that I like Teams, of course it's a complete piece of crap, but they make us use it at work...
But it they make it work with Edgium on Linux, it would mean that it works on Chromium too, and instead of choosing a browser with 2 evil, I'll use Chromium instead...
Climb every mountain, wsl --mount every Linux disk in latest Windows Preview
Apple hits back at Epic, says Fortnite crew wants a 'free ride' on fees: Let the app store death match commence
Microsoft accused of sharing data of Office 365 business subscribers with Facebook and its app devs
GitHub redesign goes mobile-friendly – to chagrin of devs who shockingly do a lot of work on proper computers
Quick, get the popcorn: Amazon Web Services says Microsoft's benchmarks for Azure are a load of stripe
Any workload (but office-related) is necessary slower on Azure.
Seriously, beside running "Office-related" workload, I can't imagine how any other workload could be more efficient with the overhead of running VM's on top of window machines crippled by a 30 years old filesystem + antivirus.
Nobody ever seriously explained how this miracle could happen... or stated that Azure's bare-metal O.S. is NOT window.
Dev darling Docker embraces Windows Subsystem for Linux 2
What are the benefits?
This is a serious question.
Can anyone explain what would be the benefits of running a Linux VM on top of Windows to develop for a Linux target, compared to developing natively on a Linux box.
I can clearly see the limitations, some of which are already acknowledged by Redmond: overhead of the VM, poor direct access to hardware, disk I/O hindered by a 30 years old file-system on top of which you must run "anti-virus", having to pay for the O.S. license, etc...
Sorry if lack imagination, but I don't see where are the benefits. Can someone enlighten me?
Home users due for a battering with Microsoft 365 subscription stick
Re: Cheaper hardware ?
You have to realize they will continue the same way they do today : racketeering + blackmail.
Racketeering: you will have pay minimum "2 years subscription" with each new PC. Whether you decide to use Microshaft crapware or not is irrelevant to them since you already paid.
Blackmail: the PC maker will receive a "commission" which is a portion of your "2 years minimu subscription" so that he pre-installs Microshaft CrapWare on the machine. If the PC maker wants to sell "naked" machines, or machines with an other O.S., fine... but then no "commission" on pre-installed machines.
A "2 years minimum contract" at 15,99€ plus a "cheap" 200€ for the machine, that is almost 600€, the price of an average PC.
Business as usual. Some things will never change!
What could wreak the havoc in their plan though are 2 things:
- "home" users don't need a PC anymore. They use smartphones (and tablets) and are happy with that. No Redmond there. Other evil at work, but at least Google has the decency not to charge for their behaviour.
- (less likely) the remaining "power" home users might very well decide to give Linux a try, and that could raise the demand for "naked" PCs making the "blackmail" less relevant and the evil plan could fail.
- (even less likely and scary) they could decide to build a "Redmond-Linux distribution", let's call it Winux, because it is economically irrelevant to support an outdated O.S. (WX) when you can just grab the free Linux, and charge for support of that to home users. That is the last E of EEE strategy... and has begun with WSL. They are also publicly ditching their internet engine for Blink which is open source. That is the state of their irrelevance in I.T.
Microsoft slips ads into Windows 10 Mail client – then U-turns so hard, it warps fabric of reality
YouTube supremo says vid-streaming-slash-piracy giant can't afford EU's copyright overhaul
Microsoft promises a fix for Windows 10 zip file woes. In November
"Are computers that dual boot Linux / Windows 10 counted as 50 per cent on Windows 10, or only if booted into Windows 50 per cent of the time?"
Since you have paid for it when you bought your PC, thanks to Redmond's racketeering policy, it is counted as Windows even if the first thing you do is wipe it out to install your favourite Linux distro.
There are very few hardware vendors that will respect the EU law in this case and propose a meagre refund, but since this is a "manual process", I bet it is still counted as Windows.
Microsoft points to a golden future where you can make Windows 10 your own
Windows is coming to Chromebooks… with Google’s blessing
Google leaps on the platform formerly known as Firefox with $22m splurge for KaiOS
Re: Please keep it open
Indeed. They say they are open source but read on their site: "code will be available soon"...
Plus since Google made a generous donation to be sure they will include all their tools by default, that does not look good if you value privacy.
But you know: "there is no free meal", someone has to pay for those 22M$!
GNOMEs beat Microsoft: Git Virtual File System to get a new name
Microsoft commits: We're buying GitHub for $7.5 beeeeeeellion
Leave it to Beaver: Unity is long gone and you're on your GNOME
Re: On the face of it
That is because most people ranting about Unity are stuck with their habit and not patient enough to look at what is better.
A good clue of this non sense rant is that those people give no objective reason. They are only subjective : "It's bad, I go elsewhere"... Admittedly taste is indeed subjective, and the beauty of Linux desktop is that you have a lot of choice.
Let's be objective, I tried 18.04 live for a few minutes, there is an essential feature I couldn't replicate from Unity that I find essential: application menu in the top bar.
Objectively, whoever decided screen must have a ratio of 16/9 made "vertical space" a scarce resource, and going back to a desktop where the "vertical space" is eaten by:
- top panel
- title bar
- menu bar
... is a big big regression for me.
No doubt I will find somewhere a Gnome Extension that fixes it, and true for the rest Canonical has done a decent job at providing a close user experience of all the bonuses we had with Unity.
I'm also short of the "workspace selector" icon for the dock that was a click away in Unity, but no doubt it is somewhere also...
So you are very right, look at "objective" features complaints, and you'll see Unity haters never give you any clue.
Government demands for people's personal info from Microsoft reach all-time low
Five things you need to know about Microsoft's looming Windows 10 Spring Creators Update
Worst-case Brexit could kill 92,000 science, tech jobs across UK – report
Re: So one remainiac commissions a report from load of other remainiacs...
Anyway, many thanks to all the brexiters from Paris.
Instead of moving hot air, here are sources showing some short term effect:
(London Real Estate prices down for the first time in years: -0.5%)
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/jan/08/uk-house-prices-fall-halifax-wages-buyers
(For those who don't read French is says that we are now around +9% a year in Paris which we hadn't seen for a long time!)
https://www.pap.fr/actualites/immobilier-paris-bat-des-records-de-prix/a19952
So I just made a nice amount a money, only last year, thanks to your vote.
I am very glad, please continue!
As for the long term effect... sorry I lost my crystal ball, but apparently your politics have found it, so all is well!
Hold on to your aaSes: Yup, Windows 10 'as a service' is incoming
Re: Who didn't see this coming?
No please, Redmond... don't do that!
The day the monthly subscription starts we will see truckloads of n00bs going the penguin way. On top of having to respond to inept questions, it will attract all the malware makers.
We are happy with our 1% ...
... ah no, they said it recently doubled... well, let's hope it's not starting yet... and let's imagine they don't count WSL as Linux (who knows!)
[PS: sorry we can't have both sarcasm + penguin icons!]
Windows Store nixed Google Chrome 'app' hours after it went live
I bet on Google
Redmond should realize the O.S. is now a commodity.
The O.S. should do his job which is handling your hardware and allowing you to run your software, and you should not even care what type of O.S. you run (unless you are a programmer).
On the other hand, users care about being able to run the software they like.
There was a similar "battle" in France between Free (a French ISP) and Google, around Youtube. At some point you couldn't watch comfortably any decent Youtube video. There were investments needed (network, cache, etc...).
Free said that users will change to another platform (Dailymotion?).
Google said that users will change ISP.
Fortunately, they end up with a deal: Google did some infrastructure investment for Free, and in exchange Free gave to its clients an Android-TV box (so that Google gets even more data, like what program you look on TV and when!).
We have the same battle here: Redmond says users will use other services than Google (GMail, Youtube, GMaps, etc...) and Google bet they will rather use another O.S. (Android/Chromebook...) to have the service.
My bet is that the service will win!
Get ready for laptop-tab-smartphone threesomes from Microsoft, Lenovo, HP, Asus, Qualcomm
Re: So...
Exactly, it went so well with RT, they want to do it again.
And that will be a lot of fun when the device reboots in the middle of phone call because it decides by its own will (or M$ will) that it has to do an update right now, and that it can't wait for another minute you finish your conversation.
Munich council finds €49.3m for Windows 10 embrace
The Quantum of Firefox: Why is this one unlike any other Firefox?
Universal basic income is a great idea, which is also why it won't happen
Homo Sapiens is obsolete
I'm startled nobody talked about that in the comments.
That is the real issue behind this UBI idea.
We have had revolutions: the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, but the next revolution ("digital") jeopardizes what makes the difference between homo sapiens and the other living creatures: intelligence.
A.I. boffins speak of an inflexion point called "the singularity". It is the point where the machine will outsmart mankind. Knowing that IQ progresses very slowly (if any at all) and that machines still more or less follow Moore's law, this "singularity" is said to be between 25 to 50 years in the future.
At this point, what will the society do with all those obsolete person?
Of course there are other alternatives than UBI, but that scares me even more!
For those who understand French, I can recommend the speech Laurent Alexandre gave at the 2017's USI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3WOPKNvbt8
His alternative is transhumanism.
Frankly, having a chip inside my brain is not what I would vote for when we discover everyday the dark actions happening all around, the last one being Intel stuffing a spyware in every CPU...
So pick you choice, between having my brain "enhanced" by Intel/Google or UBI, I'll vote UBI.
Welcome to the scary future!
Re: Housing problem
You have not understood what UBI is then!
U = Universal. Means that whether you work or not, you have it. Doing otherwise is just what the state or private insurance pays for unemployment. It does already exist and is not UBI.
Obviously, if you decide you are prefer not working, you won't be able to live in the center of big cities on UBI only. So there won't be any housing issue, or it could marginally push up some prices in remote locations that no ones fancies.
Where hackers haven't directly influenced polls, they've undermined our faith in democracy
And so what
Isn't democracy about influencing people to vote for who you want?
Is it the fault of these poor (alleged) Russians that some people that can't even connect two dots and are easily influenced... and that they have the same vote than a Nobel Prize which is much harder to convince?
So now you want to decide that the "National Official TV Network" (whatever its name in any country), and the "National Official Press" have the right to influence people with their propaganda, but Facebook or the like have no right to influence anyone? How would this be democratic? I believe in the U.S. a company (like FB, Google, or any one) has the official right to support a candidate of its liking, why would you want to deprive them from this right?
It makes me laugh, same as when people were shocked when Berlusconi "bought" his election (yes, he owns TV, that was easy!). At least Berlusconi did it with its own money, not with tax payers' one.
Wake up. Democracy is a game with its rules. Some understand the rules better than others.
Is it the Russian's fault if the game is rigged?