Posts by TVU

Red Hat promises AI trained on 'curated' and 'domain-specific' data

Hicks seems to be talking corporate BS. How can he say that ""I think Fedora has an incredible opportunity" when he's just gone and sacked the overall coordinating project manager for Fedora? I strongly suspect this won't end well.

Encoded 'alien message' will reach Earth today, but relax: It's just a drill

Encoded 'alien message' will reach Earth today, but relax: It's just a drill

It might perhaps be more productive to listen out for the signs of electromagnetic leakage emanating from industrial societies on planets orbiting around Sun-like stars

Asahi Linux developer warns the one true way is Wayland

"In a lengthy post on Mastodon, one of the lead developers of the Asahi Linux project to port Linux to Apple Silicon-powered Mac computers has asked users not to use X.org, saying: "we absolutely do not have the bandwidth to spend time on it"."

The problem I have with Wayland is that it is still a work in progress and it has yet to attain the full functionality of X11 and that includes handling multiple monitor displays the last time I checked. The following quote from another forum seems to be quite appropriate:

"You failed to read the fine print at the bottom of all the wayland promises over the past 12 years:

"It will improve your performance. Next year. Or the year after that. Or maybe the year after that. If you have the right hardware. And the right desktop. On certain tasks with certain apps. Maybe. Depends on the alignment of the stars and the moon, and if Jupiter is in the 2nd house"."

Larry Ellison cleared of forcing Oracle to overpay for NetSuite

Larry Ellison cleared of forcing Oracle to overpay for NetSuite

He got lucky...this time.

Ubuntu 23.04 welcomes three more flavors, but hamburger menus leave a bad taste

Re: Stop the KDE and Gnome trains, I want to get off

Have you tried Linux Lite?

Open source at America's famous Los Alamos Lab: Pragmatism as its nucleus

"It might surprise some, then, that the 20,000-node cluster, dubbed Trinity, running on Cray hardware relies on an open-source community edition of MariaDB"

Good, and it sounds like they have permanently avoided the menacing clutches of Larry's Oracle.

Star Fomalhaut has dusty little secret – two more debris belts and a potential planetary party

This solar system is not going to end happily. That star is twice the mass of the Sun and it has perhaps half a billion years before it will die so life will not have any time to evolve on any planet orbiting around that star.

Appeals court backs Apple over Epic, which isn't as bad as you might think

I'm calling that judgement a partial win for Epic Games where common sense has at last prevailed.

Where are we now – Microsoft 363? Cloud suite suffers another outage

"Cloud suite hit with yet another outage"

...which is why the customer should always have the option of standalone software on their own computer(s).

It's official: Ubuntu Cinnamon remix has been voted in

"And it looks like educational flavor Edubuntu is returning, too"

That's excellent news and I wish the Eickmeyers all the best with this educational venture.

Apple sued for allegedly firing, threatening union organizers

The unfortunate irony there is that Apple has now become the totalitarian monster that was portrayed in the original Apple Macintosh commercial way back in 1984:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8

Oracle reportedly making job cuts at health IT arm Cerner

"However, a report from Bloomberg suggests that Oracle has begun a round of layoffs in an effort to reduce costs"

Notwithstanding the move to cloud infrastructure, fewer staff very rarely, if ever, means a better service. Existing and potential new customers of Cerner ought perhaps to take note of this latest Oracle move with a view to making alternative arrangements.

Red Hat veteran will head up SUSE from May as Di Donato steps down

"that was the good SCO. Van Leeuwen left in September 2000, just a month after Caldera acquired the company. This was a couple of years before Caldera changed its name to SCO and began its legendary sue-stravaganza in a long run of Unix-linked disputes".

There is a good account of the bad old days in Stephen Shankland's Fact and fiction in the Microsoft-SCO relationship article:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/fact-and-fiction-in-the-microsoft-sco-relationship/

Also, I wish Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen all the best at SUSE.

Amazon to shutter Digital Photography Review

Re: Sorry to see it go, but it was bound to happen

I wouldn't be surprised if the slide started after the Amazon buyout because these large companies buy some site for the huge user/reader base, then find they can't really marketise that audience so they lose interest that then leads to neglect and decline.

Unfortunately, it happens all the time with GoPro and Kolor, Google and Picasa and Panoramio and all the rest.

Edinburgh Uni finds extra £8M for vendors after troubled ERP go-live

"By the end of the month, the university ordered a review into its disastrous go-live system2"

^ This is what happens when you make a pact with the forces of darkness (Hi, Larry!).

How the Internet Archive faces potential destruction at the hands of Big Four publishers

Re: For those neigh saying..

"What about works that are out of print? Or rare versions with forwards/notes by interested parties?"

To some extent, that might be covered if the works concerned are out of copyright in some area of the world. I don't like the legal action that these publishing groups are taking and I hope that Internet Archive can be left alone and to at least be allowed to lend/supply books that are out of copyright, and also where the author is deceased and where books are of print since the publishers aren't going to make money anyway.

Don't Be Evil, a gaggle of Googlers tell CEO Pichai amid mega layoffs

" "We call on you and Alphabet more broadly to make these critical public commitments. Our company has long touted its commitment to doing right by its users and workers, and these commitments will show Alphabet adhering to the final line of its Code of Conduct: Don't Be Evil."

Unfortunately for you, when Page and Brin sold out both their souls and business, Pichai's Code of Conduct is now, "Just Be Evil".

Vessels claiming to be Chinese warships are messing with passenger planes

Re: Peak China?

"Demographically China already has some serious issues - even a few years ago there were reports of labour shortages - and Covid has made much of the old developed world realise that they can no longer rely on China as a manufacturing site so have started to diversify. The current leader of the China seems dead set on rolling back the changes that Deng Xiaoping made and that enabled the country to become what it is today"

^ Exactly this. It's not only Covid that's done damage to the Chinese economy but also Xi Jinping himself with his none too subtle attacks and restrictions against China's tech sector so he has been effectively strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs for China.

His more Maoist centralised control policies will mean less freedom to innovate and there is no way now that China's economy will ever equal and surpass that of the USA and the longer he stays in office, the more damage he will do especially since the relatively pragmatic and well-informed Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, has now been replaced with the Xi Jinping loyalist Li Qiang meaning that there is now no one to speak up for business and economic interests.

A smaller Chinese economy will also ultimately mean that there's less money around to pay for all things military unless they want to print money and that never ends well.

Ellison's healthcare obsession carries risks for Oracle

Re: Cerner will lose them business

"Spoken with a few people who are very keen to move off Cerner since Oracle bought it"

Indeed, because licence compliance audits will be coming their way in 3, 2, 1...

Adobe reckons it'll complete $20B Figma mega deal by year-end

CEO Shantanu Narayen said of the purchase on last night’s earnings call: “We remain excited about the opportunity to advance product design, accelerate collaborative creativity on the web, and redefine the future of creativity and productivity".

^ It's all very well for you to say that but it will be for the US Department of Justice to decide whether you get to keep Figma.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 as a Linux laptop

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 as a Linux laptop

The sad thing here is that the Lenovo ThinkPad appears to be not as Linux-friendly as the good old IBM ThinkPad.

UK Prime Minister wants £800M to spend on big British iron

^ Now that is a complete denial of reality and the very fact you have chosen to remain anonymous indicates that you are afraid of being associated with your own opinions.

I think you will find that the dishonouring side was the one led by a lying, deceitful, serial philanderer who introduced the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.

"This week British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unveiled his Science and Technology Framework..."

If Sunak really wants to make a difference to British science then he ought perhaps to consider rejoining the Horizon programme and to ensure that the UK becomes an Associated State for science and technology cooperation purposes.

Bringing the IBM Thinkpad 'Butterfly' back to life

Re: Low bar

"I enjoy old hardware articles"

So do I particularly since modern equipment seems to be far more fragile with a shorter productive lifespan.

Fedora 38 will still support framebuffer X11 and NIS+

"but there is some concern that it's not ready for prime time just yet"

When is a Poettering product ever ready for prime time use? (Well, someone had to say it)

Patches to make WINE work on Wayland display server protocol are being merged

I think I would still regard Wayland as a work in progress, e.g. there can still be issues when working with multiple monitors although others have a more frank assessment:

"It will improve your performance. Next year. Or the year after that. Or maybe the year after that. If you have the right hardware. And the right desktop. On certain tasks with certain apps. Maybe. Depends on the alignment of the stars and the moon, and if Jupiter is in the 2nd house".

MacStadium brings macOS instances orchestrated by Kubernetes to AWS

I think that this was a telling comment:

"since VMware disclosed last year that vSphere ESXi 7.0.x would be its final release to support Mac platforms, leaving some customers to cast around for an alternative virtualization platform for macOS and Xcode development"

Under Tim Cook's tenure, there appears to have been a significant change in emphasis with those who use macOS for serious development and enterprise work being neglected, e.g. macOS Server was axed last year, while Macs are effectively becoming lifestyle toys. Indeed, if a business is using a large number of Macs that need managing, the easiest thing to do now is to just go straight to Jamf Pro.

Microsoft pushed 'inaccurate' Windows 11 upgrade to unsupported devices

"Windows 11, version 21H2 devices were offered an inaccurate upgrade to Windows 11"

...and this is just yet another example of atrocious quality control of Windows updates *sigh*

Light from a long time ago reaches James Webb Space Telescope

"We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we've discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe."

As with the fourth neutrino issue, the thing to do is abandon any hopes/preconceptions, go with the actual evidence and then formulate a new development theory that fits the confirmed evidence that has been directly observed.

Uncle Sam to block Adobe absorption of Figma over monopoly fears

"the federal executive department of the US government is planning to block the proposed $20 billion sale"

As Nelson Muntz of The Simpsons would say, "Ha Ha!".

Seriously though, the takeover of Figma by the huge Adobe Corporation was a highly anti-competitive act and, despite any claims to the contrary, Figma would have been completely subsumed into Adobe's perma-rental extortionware way of doing things to the detriment of existing Figma customers and wider consumer choice.

It is also good to actually see some government intervention at last to really promote competition and prevent a vast and ever increasing monopoly. It is also a very welcome F U to Adobe Corporation and not before time.

Who writes Linux and open source software?

Re: This is old news ...

"Isn't that rather the point of FLOSS: ANYONE is free to use and contribute, and if something works well for someone better than the alternatives, why wouldn't they use it, and maybe choose to help develop it"

Indeed, and Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has raised some valid points.

If 92.5% of recent kernel development came from corporate entities then that is not necessarily a bad thing because it is also in these corporations' interest to have a modern, up to date kernel including the latest features which we all benefit from. It also guarantees continued professional development of the kernel as well. The alternative is what we see elsewhere in the open source world where useful software has been abandoned because the few volunteer developers have retired or their paid work now takes up more of their time.

Gartner: Oracle probes orgs for Java compliance after new licensing terms

Re: Oracle really is the worst.

"It’s a strategic objective of the CIO and CTO functions".

^ Now that is an eminently sensible strategy to have the removal of all costly Oracle products as a job description objective for senior executives.

Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

This comes across as just more of Oracle's usual snakery* - customer compliance audits that invariably find in favour of Oracle.

The moral of this tale is to wean your company off any of Oracle's proprietary products at the earliest opportunity because one day they will come for you too.

*Definition:

The act of doing something shady. To be conniving, plotting, evil-doing. Trying to screw people. To act like a snake in the grass, e.g. Larry was up to his usual snakery.

Yukon UFO could have cost unfortunate balloon fan $12

Interestingly, this particular Pico balloon was filled with inflammable hydrogen* so it really would go out with a bang if attacked with some $400,000 missile.

*Source = the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade website before it was removed/taken down.

systemd 253: You're looking at the future of enterprise Linux boot processes

Re: This is perfect for a Friday story

There are very rational reasons why many people have valid reservations about Lennart Lennart Poettering's misguided creation and Nala Ginrut's observations are presented below:

"Few years ago, I was working for SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) as full-time developer. My boss asked me if I’m interested in maintaining systemd for SLE. At that time I know little about systemd. Then I said “I’ll see what I can do”.

I’ve downloaded the source code accompanied with 2000+ backport patches, this took almost a half day. When I was waiting, I had reviewed the code and try to find out what’s in it. And I had contacted several experienced colleagues to learn about it from them.

Finally, I could figure out that systemd takes advantages of Linux kernel things to start services in parallel. This sounds good, but it introduces unbelievable complexity for such a functionality. If you’re a common desktop user, maybe you rarely encounter problems, or you may endure some bugs in systemd. But for an enterprise version Linux, it makes the work of maintainer hard.

And the 2000+ backport patches implies that I (as the maintainer) have to maintain all of them alone, since it’s backported. I discussed with my boss, and told him this kind of work requires a small group people, rather than one man effort. Fortunately, my boss agreed with me completely, so he managed to throw out this package to a bigger team.

Even now, I still remember the complexity in systemd code, and I always tell my engineer team to avoid such kind of complexity in the project. Eliminating complexity is far more important than adding features without clear mind. Don’t try to put every good features into just one project. Every feature is good, but package all of them, you’ll get shit.

I don’t know who got this package finally, but I hope she/he is fine…"

^ The home user might not notice systemd's effects and consequences but for those of us who work in deployed enterprise Linux situations, we do get to see the downsides of systemd.

systemd 253: You're looking at the future of enterprise Linux boot processes

I'm not sure I like that scenario and I'd much prefer to see systemd 451 that automatically replaces itself with sysVinit and then self combusts in flames never to be seen again.

The quest to make Linux bulletproof

The quest to make Linux bulletproof

I just wanted to thank the author for differentiating between the OpenZFS file system and proprietary Oracle ZFS and I would like to see more of that happening.

There is still the potential for Oracle to initiate vexatious court case litigation which is why support for OpenZFS is not currently included in the Linux kernel. Understandably, Linus Torvalds does not want to include such support in the kernel until a categorical assurance is given:

"And honestly, there is no way I can merge any of the ZFS efforts until I get an official letter from Oracle that is signed by their main legal counsel or preferably by Larry Ellison himself that says that yes, it’s ok to do so and treat the end result as GPL’d".

IBM demands $500,000 from boss after she jumps ship

"lawyers that sells mainframes as side gig"

Tbh, that sounds like the perfect description of Larry's Oracle these days.

Make Linux safer… or die trying

Re: Unix was always diverse

"If SCO had realised the possibilities of the mass market and set their prices accordingly its likely that neither Windows nor Linux would have got any hold on servers"

Indeed, and they were the masters of their own misfortune there. There is a good account of those bad old days in Stephen Shankland's Fact and Fiction in the Microsoft-SCO Relationship article:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/fact-and-fiction-in-the-microsoft-sco-relationship/

I want the next Bond movie to feature a villainous corporate entity called "SCO Corporation".

Re: Unix was always diverse

"Unix was always diverse"

I fully agree there and what really did it for the commercial Unices was the huge and extortionate licence and royalty fees that came with them. As soon as the free and open source upstart Linux cousin came along, that marked the end of Unix domination and if they were creatures, they'd have been put on the risk of extinction list now.

Chipmakers threaten to defect to US, EU if UK doesn't get its semiconductor plans sorted

Re: Ireland

"Has Brexit been good to Ireland?"

Yes, very much so. For example, AstraZeneca's new $360 million manufacturing facility will be built in Ireland and not the UK. Various reasons apply there including lack of government action on coherent strategies and incentives to invest (also applies to semiconductors + any other advanced industry), higher taxes (can't reduce them now given the huge Truss/Kwarteng stuff up) and all the bureaucracy and extra customs tariffs that now apply thanks to Johnson's very hard Brexit.

There's also more north-south trade going on on the island of Ireland and more investments have come in including financial ones. For example, arch Brexit hypocrite Jacob "Rules are for the little people and the poor" Rees-Mogg set up a new Somerset Capital office in Dublin to ensure that his own financial investment business was not disadvantaged by the hard Brexit that he loves and approves of so much.

Google miscalculates severance payments for some Googlers

"Just needs less Hedge Funds trying to squeeze them for profit at the expense of human lives being thrown under a bus".

Indeed, and hedge funds are, like short sellers, parasites that contribute nothing to wider society and that contribute nothing to innovation either.

Twilio axes roughly 1 in 5 staff in fresh round of layoffs

"These changes hurt," said CEO Jeff Lawson in the Form 8-K filing"... but I am still going to sack you because I am only pretending to care (just like so many other CEOs).

Creator of Linux virtual assistant blames 'patent troll' for project's death

Patent trolls are malevolent parasites and the US, EU, UK and other OECD jurisdictions ought to do very much more to restrict them, to defeat them and to close them down completely. Large corporations might have the ability to defeat them but small scale open source projects often do not have the resources to take them on. They also have another toxic effect in that they stifle innovation as in this case.

UK prepares to go it alone on post-Brexit science plan

Re: Not quite

"So why is the largest political group in NI refusing to allow an assembly to be formed due to it's objection to the NI protocol?"

That is a factually incorrect statement. The largest bloc in the Northern Ireland Assembly based on the last election is the nationalist bloc comprising parties that are committed to Irish unification, i.e. Sinn Fein, Social Democratic and Labour Party and People Before Profit.

Equally importantly, the business community in Northern Ireland does not have an overt objection to the Northern Ireland protocol although they would like to see the rough edges smoothed off the current trading arrangement which could very well happen in the near future.

Re: “My Lifetime as a Lettuce”. The memoirs of Liz Truss

"Even now, they still can’t admit that this is all caused by Brexit"

Indeed, although it's Johnson's ultra hard Brexit that has caused the current situation and May's softer Brexit would probably have preserved most, if not all, of the science and technology links with Europe.

I think that Donelan's statement is both premature and unhelpful because there is a case for cautious optimism. If the UK and EU can come up with an agreement to solve the Northern Ireland Protocol issue then that does potentially open the way to the UK joining the Horizon programme and other initiatives, e.g. becoming a formal Associated State like Norway is for science and technology cooperation purposes.

Don't bore us, get to the Horus: Elementary OS 7 is here and looking good

One thing I particular like about Elementary OS is their AppCenter where developers can actually get paid for the apps that they have produced and I'd like to see more of that going on.