* Posts by J27

614 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Mar 2018

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Email blocklisting: A Christmas gift from Microsoft that Linode can't seem to return

J27

Sending email directly from a cloud-hosted server isn't the best practice. You're better off going with a reputable mass email provider because enforcing very strict policies on emailing will mostly prevent this from happening. With Linode, you could be sharing IP address ranges with any number of bad actors, but with an email provider, they watch and make sure their customers aren't sending mass scam emails and the like so you'll much less likely to have this issue.

J27

Yes, the domain doesn't have anything to do with your email reputation. It's all about the sending server. This is why people who send a lot of email pay big mail providers for dedicated IP addresses.

Final PCIe 6.0 specs unleashed: 64 GTps link speed incoming... with products to follow in 2023

J27

I don't think anyone has a consumer use for this yet. PCIe 4 isn't being saturated by GPUs yet. I'm sure there is a business case somewhere though, data centers have basically unlimited bandwidth needs.

Fans of original gangster editors, look away now: It's Tilde, a text editor that doesn't work like it's 1976

J27

Looks a lot like Edit for DOS.

Google joins others in Big Tech: Get vaccinated – or you're fired

J27

Re: I used to believe that too

The US has the issue that their more liberal party consists of a "progressive" arm that's center-right and a "moderate" arm that's right-wing. As a result most Americans think that any opinion that's left of centre is Communism.

Log4j doesn't just blow a hole in your servers, it's reopening that can of worms: Is Big Biz exploiting open source?

J27

A Feature of the System

I personally believe that the primary reason open source exists is to be exploited by big business. Big businesses fund open source because it would cost them a lot more to do all the development in house. Sure, there are some awesome developers who just post code because they can, but a lot of it is funded by big business, for big business and the rest of us just latch onto it like lampreys.

Log4j RCE latest: In case you hadn't noticed, this is Really Very Bad, exploited in the wild, needs urgent patching

J27

Re: Why should any language be able to load arbitrary code?

I'm not sure what sites you're visiting, but a lot of sites aren't even usable without JS these days. The Register being a notable exception.

J27

Re: Why should any language be able to load arbitrary code?

I totally agree with you, but since I write in modern languages I don't really have a choice. We don't have a budget to audit the source code of every library we use OR write it ourselves and while we could set up our own package server and only let in certain packages... there wouldn't be much point if we're not auditing the source code.

J27

Re: This is why . . .

Basically yes, Microsoft-focused development houses use C#. Of course when they find a bug in Serilog, NLog or Log4net, well then it'll be an MS-themed hack party.

MySQL a 'pretty poor database' says departing Oracle engineer

J27

I'd still rather use MySQL than Oracle Database, talk about an overpriced dumpster fire.

J27

Re: There is no reason not to choose Postgres

You're triggering my PTSD!

Microsoft makes tweaks to Windows 11 Start Menu for Insiders but stops short of mimicking Windows 10

J27

Re: Is that a feature or is it a bug?

The UI Paradigm in Windows 95, was revised in 98 and 2000 and slaughtered in Windows XP. Windows XP's UI was blown up in Windows Vista, which was then revised in Windows 7.

Which of these many UI styles are you talking about?

Can Rust save the planet? Why, and why not

J27

You can quite literally take your JavaScript and add types to it to make it typescript. The transpiler then strips the types off after type checking. If the code isn't the same there is either an issue with the transpiler or you didn't actually use the same code in the first place.

Typescript isn't actually executed by the browser in any case. When I was considering adding TypeScript support to the codebase of a large application I work on regularly I tested the performance difference for several common operations and it came out within the margin of error (+/- 5%). I'm using babel to transpile the code so perhaps they used tsc or something else?

J27

People said that about COBOL, Fortran. At some point something knocks the current king off their throne. Will it be Rust? No idea, but it'll happen eventually. But then you'll be able to charge a fortune for your C skills to maintain those "ancient" C systems that the new kids don't know how to fix. Should get you to retirement, worked for the COBOL guys.

Renting IT hardware on a subscription basis is bad for customers

J27

Re: Confused

It is on this side of the pond. In the UK the idea of negative negation is pretty popular. In the US, negative agreement is seen in most dialects. E.G. UK 2 negative = positive, 2 negatives = negative. As in. I ain't never seen no airplane no how. Means I've never seen an airplane.

Desktop bust and custom iPhone 13 Pro made from melted-down Tesla car for the Elon Musk dork in your life

J27

Everything Caviar announces is so clearly idiotic that you have to wonder if they do manage to find enough suckers to buy this junk or not.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s: Impressively average, which is how corporate buyers like it

J27

Lenovo's notebooks are only "Impressively average" in specs and appearance. They're tops when it comes to things like the "drop down a stairwell" test, which is why they're good. They're durable and since the design changes so slowly you can keep them out there for up to 10 years without the tech-clueless users complaining their machine "looks old". That's why they're so good for enterprises.

I also buy them for older family members, and in that use case they're nearly unbeatable. Literally, they stand up to a beating very well.

GPU makers increasingly disengage from crypto miners

J27

Re: "counterargument"

How dare you bring logic into a discussion of cryptocurrencies! Crypto is the future, despite it being both less convenient and not supported by anything but the greater fool theory!

Microsoft slows Windows 10 release cadence to yearly. If they're all as dull as the November Update, this is fine

J27

They're slowing the bi-yearly feature updates to once yearly. No one said anything about security updates.

J27

Re: Is it stable yet?

If you're that risk averse, and I know this is a common joke, but I really mean this switch to Linux. You clearly dislike what Microsoft has been doing recently and Linux allows you to pick most of the interface independently of each other to get what you really want, whatever that might be.

Apps made with Google's Flutter may fritter away CPU cycles. Here's what the web giant intends to do about it

J27

Yeah, React JS isn't about performance. It's about making it easier for the programmer. I fully acknowledge it, but I still use React JS otherwise we wouldn't be able to produce the fancy UIs the stakeholders want in the required time frame.

That's just how it is today. It's similar to the reason that almost no one writes programs in assembly anymore. But if you can figure out how to get users to care about how much CPU web applications use I'm open to it, that would create a bunch more programming jobs making my skills even more valuable.

Windows 10 2004 is nearing the end of the road. Time for a Windows 11 upgrade?

J27

Re: Thin ice

Microsoft Access is a flat-file database program. It's terrible, but it does exist.

J27

Re: Upgrade? Nah!

I honestly don't feel like there is a big difference between using Windows 7, 10 and 11. They all work, more or less, they all run everything I need to run.

Microsoft touts Windows 11 SE: A locked-down OS to give Chromebooks a run for their money in schools

J27

Re: Privacy

Chromebooks are much worse than Windows, ditto for iOS and Android. Mac OS is about on par. But for some reason the greybeards always get hung up on Windows when we really should complaining about the lack of privacy in ALL the major OSes.

Microsoft previews Visual Studio 2022 for Mac, but why bother when VS Code runs just fine on Apple hardware?

J27

Re: I actually use VS for Mac

That's patently not true, if it were a real version of VS then they'd be trying to charge $899 for a license like they do with real Visual Studio.

New year, new OS: OneDrive support axed for old versions of Windows from 1 Jan 2022

J27

I predict they did a survey of installed clients and found out that less than 0.1% were running any flavour of Windows 8.

Bitcoin doomed as a payment system and its novelty will fade, says Federal Reserve Board of Governors member

J27

Bitcoin is too slow to transact, the fees are too high and the value is too volatile. Obviously it doesn't make sense to use as a payment system, the doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense at all or that a cryptocurrency that made sense to use as a payment system is impossible.

Randal K Quarles seems very ignorant on the topic at hand. Perhaps he should do some research before putting his foot in his mouth again.

Microsoft: Many workers are stuck on old computers and should probably upgrade

J27

Let me rephrase Microsoft's point here:

Our partners wanted an excuse to sell you new computers.

Cisco requires COVID-19 shots for all US staff – even remote workers

J27

Re: Get rid of the religious exemption.

That's a matter for medical boards to crack down on. Phony exceptions should result in license suspensions.

Zuckerberg wants to create a make-believe world in which you can hide from all the damage Facebook has done

J27

Did this work for Alphabet? It did take a while for people to learn Alphabet = Google so maybe a short while?

If you're using this hijacked NPM library anywhere in your software stack, read this

J27

Those are the perils of open-source software. Closed-source software suffers from having no insight on the inner workings at all. It could be riddled with flaws and if the developer walks off you're totally SOL. You also missed the point if you have issues with open-source software you can fix them yourself (maybe you can't, but I definitely can).

There is no panacea, but I think software that's developed open-source but with a big corporation paying the bills is a good middle ground. E.G. .NET Core, My SQL. That way you know it's likely to keep going, but if it doesn't you can pick up the code and fix it yourself or maybe someone else will.

J27

Re: "this hijacked NPM library ..."

This is made very difficult by the way NPM works. Because NPM doesn't just pull down the library you want, but also the dependencies of that library, recursively. So you may have vetted one library, but missed all of it's dependencies dependencies. Add that to short development timelines (unless you're doing government work) and checking all the sources is a nearly impossible task, especially when code is updated all the time.

Add that to the fact that the current JavaScript ecosystem is heavily dependent on NPM and you have a recipe for disaster.

J27

Re: WTF is anyone paying?

I'm convinced these people don't have off-site backups. So if they even had backups, they're encrypted too.

If you can't be bothered to look after your backups, at least use an online backup service.

Florida man accused of breaking Mastodon's open-source license with botched social network launch

J27

Re: Wonder if there's a software developer somewhere...........

I doubt it, The Annoying Orange is so cheap that this is most likely a byproduct of him refusing to pay the money actually necessary to build a platform.

Apple's Safari browser runs the risk of becoming the new Internet Explorer – holding the web back for everyone

J27

It's both. Google's half-baked ideas combined with Apple's inaction. Things were a lot better when they worked together.

BOFH: You. Wouldn't. Put. A. Test. Machine. Into. Production. Without. Telling. Us.

J27

Oh man, back when I worked in IT if someone tried this the SLA for non-production systems was 1 business week. So anything I didn't feel like doing or was created by a hard to deal with user would just get left to that last day.

So I wouldn't have even contacted the beancounter until nearly a week after the request came in. And good luck getting anything escalated because the help desk was outsourced to another company who didn't pay their staff enough to care. In fact, the help desk was so bad that 95% of the tasks came in via a web application that was incapable of bothering me at all!

Did I mention this was a cable company?

Microsoft's .NET Foundation under fire as resigning board member questions its role

J27

Microsoft IS .NET

J27

I'm with you, as a mainly .NET-focused developer for many years it's blatantly obvious that the ecosystem is still very Microsoft-focused. This was a key reason for my teaching myself Node.JS so I'd have something else to fall back on.

Windows 11 in detail: Incremental upgrade spoilt by onerous system requirements and usability mis-steps

J27

Re: New version of Windows? Yay!

That would be the 1H 2023 release because they're on a 6 month cycle.

J27

Re: No Hope ?

Just use Linux now then.

Texas law banning platforms from social media moderation challenged in lawsuit

J27

How can you claim to be against censorship and then turn around and tell private companies what they can and cannot do with their platforms? Shear insanity.

Salesforce should rename its Dreamforce conference to Feverdreamforce because this is getting ridiculous

J27

Re: Holy crap

I did too, congratulations to the Slack founders for getting out at the right time and getting 10x what the company is worth.

Patch now? Why enterprise exploits are still partying like it's 1999

J27

No one wants to pay for the effort necessary to properly secure software, so we're all just "doing the best we can". Hard to make money on security features your users never see and don't understand.

VMware shreds planned support for 'cheese grater' Mac Pro

J27

Honestly, Mac OS is missing a lot of server features, the hardware is ridiculously overpriced and updates often break things. You'd be crazy to run Mac OS severs in 2020. Even if you only have access to Apple hardware just install Linux or BSD. Apple has been very clear for years since they discontinued the Xserve. They do not care about servers.

Docker’s cash conundrum is becoming a bet on a very different future

J27

I think they need to take a look into how a company that essentially just maintains Docker has over 300 employees, that's a lot of overhead to maintain a mature development toolset or even develop a new one.

Only 'natural persons' can be recognized as patent inventors, not AI systems, US judge rules

J27

I mean, this is pretty obvious. The inventor in this case is the person who developed the AI.

The unit of measure for fatbergs is not hippopotami, even if the operator of an Australian sewer says so

J27

Re: Pural

English is Germanic language, if you want a Latin language you need see French, Spanish, Italian, etc.

Windows 11 will roll out from October 5 as Microsoft hypes new hardware

J27

Re: How do I opt users out of this "upgrade" ?

You can't turn off Windows Update. You can block the servers in the host file if you want, or disable your TPM and/or secure boot.

Start or Please Stop? Power users mourn features lost in Windows 11 'simplification'

J27

Its a perfectly good version of Windows a small segment of people grabbed about non-stop for years? Nah, it's more like Windows 8 where they changed the interface for no reason and pissed everyone off.

Eight-year-old bug in Microsoft's 64-bit VBA prompts complaints of neglect

J27

Re: Win64

I don't think Office for Mac supports VBA.

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