Posts by doublelayer

C: Everyone's favourite programming language isn't a programming language

Re: Umm

They could create one. I am not saying they have to, but even if I argue for the point they made, your objections don't apply. They did not ask for Rust to be the IDL used by operating systems. They said that C wasn't good at that purpose and could be improved. Since Rust takes a lot of its influence from C, it's likely it wouldn't be great at it either. It's not new to use a language for interfacing that wasn't used in writing the system, and other operating systems have done it.

"It seems weird to me that C provides a way to call into C, *and* a way to call out of C, and gets criticized because the language it uses is C."

C doesn't have ways to call out of C. Other languages link to C stuff and call in, but you never see a C program directly linking to Java or Python. It can link to libraries written in other languages that have chosen to have a compatible format, but in each case, the other language has to change itself to match C. If a C program contains a component in something that doesn't follow the standard C linking structure, a different interface language is used for that connection. This doesn't make C bad. It makes your compliment wrong.

Re: Other languages....

But they do serve a similar purpose and so it makes sense to compare them. However, it does not make sense to compare them in the simplistic way I did, hence my analogy to the simplistic way to compare programming languages that also doesn't make sense.

Re: Other languages....

The examples listed do not function under this rule. Java is listed under procedural, not scripting, but it is interpreted. So even if you choose to use this distinction, the original suggestion wasn't. This is why that categorization doesn't work very well.

Re: Meanwhile in 2040 ...

"... there will still be the same old my language is better than your language (grandad!) arguments."

Yes, but there will also be the "My language is real and because you use something else, you're pathetic" arguments, often from people who use something else but don't admit it. Both are cringe-worthy. There are cases for most languages that exist today, and just because someone uses one for speed, easiness, portability, or even familiarity, they probably are doing that for a reason. The argument that you must use Rust because you are likely to do your memory management wrong eventually is annoying, but so is being told that if you don't use C, you must not understand how computers work and you're thinking wrong.

Re: Umm

"The fact is that whatever language is most prevalent for writing OSes will require any other 'proper' programming language to have some sort of interface to enable system calls."

Yes, but that interface doesn't have to be the same language. You can write something in C and provide a different interface. This can have advantages in application portability and language usage. I think that's the main suggestion (or more likely lamentation) of the person quoted in the article. Many systems create an interface that doesn't require all applications to link with them, but most common OSes have taken a different view.

Re: Other languages....

I think this structure doesn't work very well. For one thing, what's the difference between a scripting language and a non-scripting language. Usually, the argument comes down to "I want to say that this one isn't good enough, so it's just for scripts". Lots of small maintenance scripts have been written in C. Many large applications have been written in Python. There's no real distinction.

Also, procedural is usually defined to include C, because each operation has effects which are present for the next operation. This is often as opposed to functional languages that attempt to avoid side-effects, languages that don't appear to be in your categorization system. This is without considering languages that manage to have both features. And even if you want to use the categories, you need a better name than "Algol-like", because some of those are not like Algol and you can argue for hours about how much alike they can be before the category applies.

This is like dividing operating systems into program loader, Unix-like (including Windows), RTOS, and just expecting everything to neatly fit in.

Re: Nothing new...

"I don't know. How many Fortran programmers love Fortran? How many COBAL programmers love COBAL?"

A lot of them. Whenever Cobol gets brought up here, many people remark on how much they liked it, how easy it was to read, how much they wish people still used it today. I don't know because I'm too young to have written it. People seem to like the things they've used enough because they already know how to use it. I'm guessing that, if people didn't like it, they did everything they could to switch to an alternative. This leaves us with many choices that some group of people really like, but not necessarily choices that have been designed well. There's a reason that Cobol isn't much used except in old systems today, and it's not because nobody liked it.

Complaints mount after GitHub launches new algorithmic feed

You already couldn't do an alphabetical sort if any number went over 9. And the reason that single integers aren't used is because people want to avoid breaking changes but still to get patches, which, when breaking changes are going to happen, means there are multiple branches. This is also the reason dates don't work if there are ever two versions being supported. You separate by . characters and do an integer sort from left to right. It's not that hard to do.

It's not at all new, and I don't think anyone would claim it. It's just a standard to clarify a few things that a lot of people have already done for a while. For example, we don't get the 2.01 version number format under that standard, but most people had already realized it was annoying and stopped doing that. It's an old concept, and nothing got invented in stating a few suggested rules.

Nvidia reveals 144-core Arm-based Grace 'CPU Superchip'

There's not a ton they can do about the fact that more people want to buy them. I'm sure they'd like to make a bunch more of them, but that's true of a lot of places and TSMC has its hands full building everything else we also want. Also, depending on how much power you need, there are GPUs out there at more reasonable prices. Not the most powerful ones, sure, but you can do a lot without having the best chip released.

How not to attract a WSL (or any) engineer

Re: high school

"When it comes to assessing culture fit... What's really quite important to me, is that someone can recognise their flaws or things they do that would get people's backs up. We all have them right?"

Absolutely, and if you asked me this question and I didn't want to leave, I would do all I could to not tell you what they were. An interview is where I convince you I'm good at this job, so bringing out a list of things to see if any of them are stuff you hate is not on my list of priorities. My teams tend not to hate me. I've been complimented on my group interaction by lots of colleagues. I'm more diplomatic than many developers I've known. You don't find that out in half an hour, so, since everyone who is not is going to act that way, I will too.

More importantly, the self-assessment part of this isn't the important part of this. You would like to know how people react to having this pointed out and changing things, because an annoying person who doesn't want to be and acts to change their ways is better than a mostly fine person who refuses to consider anything could be wrong. You also have the problem that what a friend might consider annoying might not apply to work (my friends might not care about many of the things I know a lot about and consider me boring, but I tend not to make my colleagues talk about irrelevant things). I have a feeling that, if I (a complete stranger to you) asked you to catalog your flaws to me, the resulting list would be hard to create and would probably not have a ton of relevance to you in your actual life. Your interviewers are complete strangers too, and they'll act the same way.

Re: high school

I thank you for the sentiment, and improvisation was definitely my favorite part of being in that band. However, I don't think most hiring managers take the same view which is why I don't include any musical credentials on my resume. Maybe I just don't know how they think (actually, I know that is true), but whenever I've mentioned something that's not directly in line with the job they're going to ask me to do, many seem to take it as a negative. Anywhere I could go at least accepts all my technical projects as assets, but most other things appear to be ignored.

Re: high school

You want to tell us what reason that would be? Because from the face of it, it seems like a way to indicate to someone that they don't want to work for you. Maybe it's a test of how quickly they can come up with a fake annoying trait that seems to speak in their favor--you didn't think they were answering honestly, did you? Or are you just seeing whether they can be insulted (with the stupidity of the question, not the content) and not show their displeasure?

Re: high school

The person to whom you replied was complaining about the term "high school", not the question. I do have an answer to your question though. First, I don't have a problem with the term; I assume this was written by and for a country where that is the typical term and that they could easily translate it if they wanted to inflict the same questioning on someone in a different country.

But now, no, I can't think of a legitimate reason for any of those questions. "How did you get on at high school?" is stupidly generic and has no right answer. "What would your high school peers remember you for?" isn't going to receive an honest answer, and I'm assuming they want an answer along the lines of "That guy who only wrote kernel drivers and so we don't remember them", which just isn't true; I wrote code but I did other things, but I have a feeling that playing in a jazz band isn't going to win me the job.

Asking specifically about mathematics is a little more relevant, which still means not relevant. If they want to hire someone who has advanced skills in that area, ask them to solve some typical mathematical problem. Even looking at their university courses in the area would give you more information. A person could rank highly in math due to being in a small school or could rank low if they're being compared only to similarly advanced students. Also, nobody knows that number now and in most cases, they didn't get one at the time (I got As in all of them, but I don't know how many people had those so I can't give you a ranking). What's more, they're looking for a developer. That probably includes a bunch of mathematical skills, but they're not even asking this of someone being hired as a mathematician.

Russian court deems Instagram and Facebook as 'extremist', WhatsApp spared

Re: Perhaps

There are two reasons that might not work very well. The first is the blame game. If Russia forces the app to close, the government can only do so much to explain why and the protests would be against them. If WhatsApp closes on its own, the government can say that, had they had the power, the app would still be operating. They can paint the action in the same light as the other companies that have abandoned Russia and blame either the company or a different country for making it happen. This argument wouldn't be incorrect, though it would be misleading.

The second reason is that WhatsApp allows communication using encryption, which is quite important for people inside Russia. With government crackdowns on all protesting activity and anything that looks like it might get there, anyone who is going to talk about Ukraine, let alone arrange to help in any way, needs protection from Russian surveillance. WhatsApp isn't my favorite way to get there, but it does work. Cutting it off could hurt those who use it to evade the dictators more than the dictators themselves.

Android's Messages, Dialer apps quietly sent text, call info to Google

Re: Gdpr 3% fine

The way things have been going, they will pay nothing because something very bad has happened to the Irish Data Protection Commission. I imagine it looks like those science fiction shows where the terrible alien plague has left an area visibly undamaged but with every human instantly killed. At least that would explain how all the privacy risks under their jurisdiction continue completely unchecked. We may need GDPR 2.0 which is identical to the first version but says that any EU country can take any action named in the law, reserving none to the country in which the entity is based. It also has the benefits that many countries can assess their own 4% fines.

Review: ASUS dual-screen laptop may warm your heart, will definitely warm your lap

If they keep all the same ports and switch the power port with another USB-C, that's exactly what you get. I don't think having a port that doesn't have data lines helps ensure they didn't skimp on the other ports. I also value that it's easier to find a compatible USB-C adapter than whatever proprietary cable the manufacturer chose.

Unable to write 'Amusing Weekly Column'. Abort, Retry, Fail?

I would prefer longer labels. Having a button labeled "No" is confusing when there's no "Yes". You have explained what they're for in the message, which at least avoids ambiguity, but it still looks weird. You could put labels on the buttons that clearly indicate what they do: "Save and exit", "Discard changes", "Continue editing [or whatever they're doing]".

The file format thing is true in a lot of applications. They all do something like it. Libreoffice is, unfortunately, one of them. Yes, I know that the ODT format is nicer and open and all that, but this file is a docx and the user who sent it to me is expecting a docx back. Stop complaining that I'm going to use a format you already know. At least Libreoffice has that option. Some other word processors (Apple, this means you) won't allow you to save in anything but their own format and will pull up a dialogue if you try. For someone who has the habit of saving whenever I've completed part of something, this is very annoying.

Re: Is Your Message Really Necessary?

Macs now use APFS which they switched from HFS+ a few years ago as long as you're using an SSD. This switch was a source of several problems. Apple figured this was doable during an OS upgrade and didn't treat it as concerning. Some machines simply failed to switch, causing them not to boot at all. A full reinstallation was necessary. I had this happen to me and debugged it on a couple others as well. I figured that would be the last of it, and for a while, it was.

Then a friend who hadn't had that happened came to me looking for help clearing files from their disk as it was nearly full. I gave them the standard advice on finding caches or unneeded software and deleting it, but it wasn't working. When I finally ran manual tools to figure out what data could be purged safely, I found that, for some reason, Apple had converted this laptop to APFS successfully, kept a backup HFS+ copy of it all, and had been automatically cloning every operation from one to the other for years, halving the disk space available. I backed up everything, including a full image of the disks, and nuked that from orbit. It was the only way to be sure.

Re: Turbo Pascal - Missing Semi-Colon at line 454

In one of my courses on programming language design, the professor wrote several small languages which were designed to teach us how different programming languages would be designed if someone only knew lisp syntax, didn't mind lots of unclear reserved terms, and wasn't at all interested in not having people hate him. These small languages had canonical interpreters, and the students would first write some projects in those languages, and later would reimplement part of the interpreter. The canonical ones had very bad error messages. You'd never get a line or location reference, and as I recall there were a total of five possible messages: "Invalid syntax", "Invalid type", "Invalid value", "Code error" (this mostly meant stack overflow), and "Test failed").

When we were tasked with reimplementing these, we were graded on whether it could run proper code and reject erroneous code, but not on exact duplication. So I gave my versions proper error messages. This was mostly because, if I did it wrong, they were helpful in debugging. Still, I couldn't help but adding a message along these lines: "This is where [language name] would say invalid type, but since this is a proper one, your actual error is". I would remove that part before submission in case the professor saw it and didn't like it, but I got an approving comment from one of the graduate students who assisted them.

While I haven't seen that one, I have seen "Are you sure you want to cancel? Continue/Cancel". I had a fun argument over what each button was supposed to do.

The answer in this case was that cancel canceled the cancellation and continue continued the cancellation but didn't work, giving you a new box with a cancel button and a progress indicator that never moved. Clicking that cancel button, which should theoretically have canceled the continuation of the continued cancellation didn't do anything, which was probably for the best as the confirmation box for that would likely have been recursively confusing.

Client demo in 30 minutes. Just what could go wrong?

Re: What's in a name?

I wonder if that's due to birds' use of magnetic fields. The power cable probably leaks more of a field than data cables. Either that or they're just a different diameter and the data ones are more fun to eat.

Samsung updates its most popular smartphone range

Re: Dear Samsung.

While Samsung isn't the only one that makes that kind of thing, they've got one. It's the Galaxy Xcover 5. For each of your requirements:

"makes & takes voice calls & text messages,": Right, like all the others. It does it.

"has a headphone jack,": Yes.

"a removable battery,": Yes, capacity 3000 mAh.

"an SD card slot that accepts high capacity cards,": SDXC supported.

"an update schedule on the software that means it won't be landfill in a few years,": It's on Android 11 and they said it's getting updates. They could be lying, but they've actually been doing it recently.

"all for a price under $500USD.": You can find the price in your country, but I saw it for €240 (converts to $275), so it should hit your limit even if the first search result was off.

This should do it: compares the A3 (2017), the A32 5G (2021), and A33 5G (from this article).

Re: *This* shiny stone is much better than that shiny stone I sold you yesterday!

There are sites that compare specs, but it really comes down to exactly what you want to match. Do you want a phone that has as fast a CPU as your S8? Similar battery life? Same size? Same number of lenses sticking out of the back? Same number of pixels captured?

Qualcomm reveals it's not selling to Russia during Twitter spat

Re: Policy via social media: It's a thing now

Media is not the problem. You can replace the archives with archives on new media if you decide it's not good enough. The archivists know this already--if they decided to use a kind of tape, they kept the drives around to read it at least until having copied it onto the new kind. People who didn't intend on archiving their stuff didn't, but most of that would, if on paper, have been shredded and recycled by now anyway.

"Then there's old proprietary stuff like memory sticks and CompactFlash cards. I had family photos on those that were a nightmare to recover."

What was the problem? Because if it was that you didn't have any readers, that's a problem that can be fixed easily on Amazon. I've still got a CF reader here. I don't have any cards anymore and the reader runs on USB 1.1, but it's still available.

"Heck, how about old formats like Flash? [...] trying to play them now is almost impossible."

No, it's not. The flash player isn't installed by default anymore? Go download it manually. Or use an OS that didn't have it removed. We have converters for a lot of this stuff and virtual machines for the rest. I won't guarantee that every format can be converted, but if you're willing to do some work, you can tackle most of them.

Red Hat effort to shut down WeMakeFedora.org deemed harassment

Re: Pocock is a wanker - Not!

I am not familiar with all of his statements. I have read the one you linked. However, it's difficult to decide which group of people is correct without a lot of background knowledge that they have and I don't. I can say that the statement you linked is not a clearly good one; it identifies inconsistencies in the actions taken by Debian to resolve a set of harassment claims. That's well and good, however, it uses those inconsistencies to jump to the opposite conclusion that Debian came to without doing any more to prove that one (I.E. Debian said this guy was wrong, there was a possible conflict of interest* and some sources who didn't announce themselves publicly, thus this guy must be perfect and the accusers are wrong). It also includes several strange statements, such as alleging that a person was likely present at a crime (which was also alleged to have not happened) and chose to do nothing about it. That's not a convincing argument to me.

I cannot say who is right. I can say that when two large open source projects both decide they don't like you, there's probably a reason that's larger than disagreeing with their decision after you resigned.

*The alleged conflict of interest was running for election to the board of an open source project, which doesn't strike me as a large one, but anything's possible.

Even complex AI models are failing 5th grade science

"moving a satellite does not include checking the rear-view mirror for another satellite in the left lane, or paying attention to road signs, or needing to be wary of rain, snow or ice."

It does though. If you're moving a satellite, one of the major reasons you'd be doing it is so it isn't going to hit another one or come close to doing it. That's both now as you move it and later on because you can't constantly be moving the thing. You also have to be aware of local conditions, which includes space weather. Those are the things the computer calculates when it decides where the satellite should be going and the correct movements to get there. That's going to be reviewed by a person, but the person doesn't do the calculation and tell the computer.

Re: Interpreter please

I'm not sure which countries use which set of terms. Since these are American researchers, they're using the American grade numbers, which go from 1st (age 6-7) to 12th (17-18).

Re: The next question...

I suggest that's a different proposal. Driving a car is a mechanical task, albeit a very difficult one requiring a lot of things the human brain is good at doing. Writing a program to drive a car may include a bit of statistical calculations for visual things, but most of it will be non-AI code that can be more rigorously tested. In either case, the car doesn't have to figure out your goals in order to follow the course you set and not drive into any solid objects. Many other processes have been automated in this manner, and while I expect this one to take a lot longer because it is much more complex, you don't need to get AGI to do it.

The thing this research tested is the problem solving ability of AI software, which as we know is abysmal. Even if it wasn't, it's unlikely we would want a car to start doing it--it shouldn't decide where to take you, after all. There are things where you need general intelligence and problem solving, which is where humans come in useful, and cases where you need fast and accurate machines. You wouldn't ask a ten-year-old to move a satellite in orbit either, but when a computer does the calculations and activates the movement, it's completely normal.

How CAPTCHAs can cloak phishing URLs in emails

Ah, with plain text, there's no risk. There's no way it could look like this:

New required training from HR. Please complete this training by the end of this month through our external training provider and acknowledge completion. Take the training here: https://convincingfakeprovidername.training/2In2lc4Z

With that URL leading to a captcha to throw off a scanner looking for URLs. Are you about to ban them as well? The same tactic can be used by putting the URL and/or link in an attachment, which could be PDF, DOCX, ODT, or HTML itself, whatever is most likely to be opened by a user. Somehow, you assume that having a link that doesn't show the URL makes this worse even though a user can see the URL and all the security training suggests that they do. The users who still don't check would often cheerfully load even very suspicious URLs.

Re: An automated scanner gets stopped at the puzzle.

If your workers only need the internet for a small set of sites, that should work fine. If they need to do more with it, for example if anyone would ever be expected to do online research which could take them to sources you hadn't known about, it won't work. My employer does not do that because, if they did, I'd have hit it about ten times in the last month and that would be low in comparison to others.

The right to repairable broadband befits a supposedly critical utility

I thought the same. I can go into the cable system and figure out where my line is (or probably I can't, having never done it, but I'll at least figure that out before doing something). Having recently had a network debugging phone call with a nontechnical person, including the verbatim quote "Should we connect the router directly into the WiFi" on a network that has only one router that also does the WiFi, I do not want the average user going down to where my line is. If the downside is that I don't either, that's a reasonable precaution.

UK Supreme Court snubs Assange anti-extradition bid

Re: Wasn't it Facebook what won it for Trump?

The argument is that the information was stolen by Russia and put on Wikileaks so that the various Facebook operators could refer to it. In addition, Wikileaks isn't free software that people can use on their own, it's a platform over which a few people have control whether they choose to use it or not. You can decide whether you care about either distinction.

Viasat, Rosneft hit by cyberattacks as Ukraine war spills online

Re: As much use as a chocolate teacup

"How are they going to receive the email if their connection to the internet is down?"

Using a phone, a neighbor's connection, someone reading it to you from a different place. How would you like them to get the information out? They probably have sent paper mail, but it's not going to arrive before the users have found an alternative way to connect.

Apple, Google urge monopoly watchdog to leave them alone

Re: Meddling regulators

Their point appears to be that, because it was founded by someone with a particular point of view, that perhaps it isn't the best impartial decider of what developers think. Having looked at the articles on their home page, it's pretty clear they're taking a stand against the calls for competition. It's got two pinned sections about it and a few recent articles.

In my quick scan of their website, I agree with some of the things they're saying. They are, however, not even trying to pretend to be impartial. Their opinion should be placed in the same bucket as their controllers. I haven't found a good list of exactly who directs them to advocate as they do, but that Google is in the list doesn't surprise me at all.

Another data-leaking Spectre bug found, smashes Intel, Arm defenses

Good plan. You make the AI and come back to me when you're done.

114 billion transistors, one big meh. Apple's M1 Ultra wake-up call

Re: Apple on a super computer

"You'll probably see Linux on an M1-Ultra based system on the top500.org list pretty soon."

No, you won't. For one thing, the top 500 are really powerful distributed computers. Building that out of individual Macs which weren't intended for that is possible, but when you could do it with nodes that were designed for industrial-scale operation, most people who are going to use that much power will do that.

For another, the existing methods of running Linux on M1 are... well I don't want to be unintentionally insulting about them because the people who are doing the work are quite intelligent and have solved lots of hard problems. The problem is that there have been so many hard problems they've had to work on. Apple isn't actively blocking Linux (yet), but they didn't do anything to make it work. Those working on it have had to reverse engineer lots of components and they do this because it's fun for them. The type of person who is going to build a supercomputer, with the budget that this requires, doesn't want to run their system using something experimental which had to hack through undocumented systems. They can get lots of server-class hardware that was designed by people who expected Linux on it. They can buy chips by people aiming for high-performance applications who also designed for Linux. They will do that.

Cryptocurrency ATMs illegal right now in UK

Ransomware didn't come into existence when cryptocurrency did. The small outfits might shut down without it as a cash flow mechanism, but the big ones that regularly get massive payments will find an alternative. Making payment of the ransom illegal is as if not more likely to put them out of business (some will still pay and break the law, but fewer).

Ukraine invasion: We should consider internet sanctions, says ICANN ex-CEO

Re: It would force up the cost of military networks.

Exactly. If Russia's goal was to be a better imperial power as it seems is Putin's dream, they have spent their money in completely the wrong way. They do have a lot of toys though, including comms equipment.

Re: its over

So? I didn't say it would miraculously make everyone friends. I just pointed out that it provides the opportunity for people to know about and, if they're willing, befriend people. The teenagers in your example may be ignoring you, but they're probably interacting with someone else who they like.

Re: It would force up the cost of military networks.

Or you use a VPN. Tunnel into Russia, then route to the military network.

In Russia's case, most of that is moot because they do have separate military networks. Russia wastes a ton of money on military junk they don't need. They didn't decide to go all in on nuclear weapons and skimp on communications, figuring that they'd just use the internet for it.

You're probably right for how smaller countries communicate with their military. I'm not sure how expensive it is to rent satellite uplink for military purposes, so some countries might not bother.

Re: Now that I can get behind

No for two reasons. First, ICANN doesn't provide services to those people ICANN turns on .ru, and Russia manages it. The allocations of .ru domains are up to Russia, and they're not going to sanction themselves. ICANN could either turn off the entire registry (actually, they don't have a switch but they could manage it eventually) or not, but they can't deallocate only those .ru domains owned by the individuals.

Second, ICANN is not a government and is not under the sway of a single one. ICANN could theoretically be forced to comply with American instructions because their headquarters is there, but if the U.S. decided to flex those muscles, there would be a new good argument to move it into a place that supports its independence. The administrators understand this and know that, if it were moved because some government was being dictatorial, it would likely be put under the control of the ITU. The ITU not only couldn't implement sanctions at all but would end up giving more authority to those countries that want to use the internet for their own purposes. For example, one of the countries that has argued most often for exactly that to happen is... Russia itself.

Re: its over

How much does an open internet allow warmongers more than before? Warmongers have been existing for quite a long time. The global internet has many benefits and downsides, but one major benefit of it is in deterring war. Free communication allows information to get to the people on both sides of a border, people to become closer to one another in spite of geographic or even linguistic barriers, and citizens to know what's being done in their name. Those things might end up hurting the warmongers more. Yeah, if I was always this idealistic, it would be silly, but it does sometimes work. Meanwhile, if you cut off Russia's military website from outside countries, it will do nothing to prevent them relaying orders to troops or wanting to cause damage. If you cut off the entire internet, you're surrendering an advantage you still have.

Moscow to issue HTTPS certs to Russian websites

Re: Huh?

You can manually add a CA if you want to, but automatically adding one to every browser in Russia is going to be a lot harder. The average citizen is going to not do that, visit a site that redirects to HTTPS, and get a browser warning.

"Anyway, TLS is pretty broken as this demonstrates."

Neither the part I answered nor the rest of your comments demonstrates this. TLS as a protocol doesn't care where the CAs are. It's fine. Even including the issue of CA governance and use, you need to demonstrate why the existing system is flawed; less centralized power might be nice, but it would also eventually weaken the ability to monitor for unsavory behavior and revoke those untrustworthy authorities, something browser-makers frequently do. Requiring every site to issue a key and find lots of others to cosign it will not be done by many sites, putting users at greater risk.

Re: "Z" for zombies

It does not swap in Google. Google does not run LE. Also, LE certificates use a key you generate yourself, so nobody gets to decrypt that traffic. I would not be confident that Russia's CA does the same, giving them a potential to MITM more traffic.

BOFH: Gaming rig for your home office? Yeah right

Re: Please do remember...

So, if I have correctly parsed your prose, your objection is that the BOFH spoke about the benefit to the company? Was it this bit that had you concerned:

"Yes, but if the quantity is zero, one has to wonder whether you're just feeding and watering a bunch of your mates on the company dime and then axing the product to spend more work time playing MMORPGs at home – instead of coming into work."

Your job doesn't have to be massive in your life for you to dislike someone who is lazy and wasteful of others' resources. It doesn't have to be central for you to prefer to see your employer run efficiently. And, in this fictional world, it was likely the BOFH's personal money (well, the IT budget, but that's just two terms for the same thing) that was being wasted.

What attitude would you prefer to see from employees? Would completely flat apathy be your goal? Or are you hoping for a more adversarial relationship? Given your description of it as "Stockholm syndrome", I don't know what would please you.

Re: Simon is on form, these days!

Since that guy wasn't working at his desk (or possibly at all), probably that's not it. I'm guessing the time in the office will be very unpleasant and may end with a large cash payment.

Biden issues Executive Order to tame digital currencies

Anything that makes money easier to transfer or to hide makes crimes involving that money easier, that's true. However, like a lot of life, we don't often operate on that kind of logic. The internet also makes a lot of crimes easier, but it's not a great excuse to ban it. Cryptocurrency is frequently used by criminals, but so are many other more established parts of the financial system. In short, just because money laundering is possible doesn't make some system immoral.

As for privacy, on that I must disagree. If I was a small-scale Russian citizen, I would be buying cryptocurrency as much as I could right now. Russia has been taking lots of restrictive steps regarding their citizens' money. You can't withdraw very much from the bank. You can't convert it into other currencies. You can't transfer it outside the country. Each of these is weak and has a few exceptions, but they really don't want the average citizen to have monetary control. This is the case for two reasons. They are going to have an economic collapse and they want to use their citizens' money to blunt it. As a citizen, that's not reassuring to me. The other reason is that they like the control that they have over the citizens by doing so; if they want to monitor or restrict the actions of one of them short of imprisoning them, financial control can do it for them. If I had to live with that, I would want as much value as I could get out of their control and ideally easy to take with me if I can manage to leave the country. It also helps if I'm going to use the money in a way that displeases them, for example by funding protest efforts or protecting those who participate in them.