Posts by F0ulRaven

Twitter is suffering from mad bro disease. Open thinking can build it back better

When Twitter and Facebook first hit the mainstream, I was very surprised how the media and the public sector took to it without their usual ' Other social Media establishments are available' that they usually brush private enterprise with.

A decade later, and we are at the turning point where having a Mastodon server to manage your social media is just hitting the thought processes of the mainstream.

Obviously, if Musk had a brain, he would have already worked out what was needed was a Twitter server app (think Azure Stack etc) that various industry organisations managed, and worked as a Twitter federation - he would earn for more than he will for blue ticks in licensing.

You could then have different rules for what was acceptable on each Twitter server, yet, people could still share the news, and find each other for trending.

The main issue with Mastodon is its a bit complex to set up properly, and that is the reason people use Twitter - any fool can set up an account, and most of them have!

As it is, Musk is having a public nervous breakdown and Twitter will end up as a lesson in not letting money go to your head!

After 40 years in tech, I see every innovation contains its dark opposite

Whatever we create, history has shown us, we can be assured the next generation will totally misunderstand our intentions, and pivot in an absurd direction.

Will cloud giants really drive colos off a financial cliff?

Cloud is going to be growing for at least the next 5 years - its when that growth stops that the problems with start for these smaller datacentres.

AWS and Azure are only going to be turning on their partners when the goal moves from growing the market, to gaining market share.

The App Gap and supply chains: Purism CEO on what's ahead for the Librem 5 USA

The sales patter is good - just wondering where the holes are.

We have had a generation who have been brought up on the idea that if they are the product, the hardware is going to be cheaper, so $2k for a device that doesn't make money off my data, sounds like a truly honest approach.

However, how true is it, really?

There is always going to be a backdoor in any device, where there is a chance a bad guy is trying to outsmart the government.

You only have to look at how the secure phones for criminals, EncroPhone, was not secure to see that in action.

I am only interested in privacy from the ideological perspective, but I am yet to be convinced this is the ground braking device it claims to be.

Did you know Twitter has an open-source arm? This is what it's been up to

Love what's being discussed by the technical people - but as soon as the blue haired biology haters delve into it, the only thing on their mind is how do you use this to moderate nazis to death - and that isn't how this works!

However, working out how to combine a real life ID with an online avatar, in the same way as a biological person and a legal version of that person can co-exist, is the real challenge of web 3.0 - and this is a great start!

Privacy and computer security are too important to be left to political meddling

Expectation and reality are different

I expect my communications to be private, but I know they are not as if I go and start using multi level encryption and someone notices, I am quite sure there will be a knock on my door asking why is my communications set up so they can't be read - what do I have to hide?!

This malware gang plants incriminating evidence on PCs, gets victims arrested

Personally, I'm impressed.

A dirty gang doing stuff to activists so the government isn't seen to be doing it is what politics is all about!

If the East India Company has taught the modern Indian government this alone, it would seem a history lesson well learned!

Securing open-source code isn't going to be cheap

This is going to run forever - the why is open source not as secure as it should be, considering it is ideologically clean and doesn't involve any capitalism?

Play Store class action has £15m budget for defeating Google in London court

Of course, this whole deal works in everyone's favour - except the obvious Android user who has been wronged!

In this case, the lawyers get a huge payout which keeps them happy, but Google also win in this deal.

If they end up paying a $Billion for a fine, that is a $Billion they take out of their tax fund, and surprise, they pay less tax on what's left!

For yet another year, what seems to be the law helping the little man turns out to be the law helping the rich guys stay rich!

Suspended sentence for bank IT worker who broke into his boss's webcam because he didn't get a payrise

A bit of reinvention will work wonders for him, and be an interesting side project.

Open source, closed wallets, big profits – nobody wins the OSS rock, paper, scissors game

Open Source started as a free way of sharing useful code in a way that didn't end up being locked away in a proprietary way.

There never was any expectation of having to support the code, so why are we having this discussion?

If you want it fixed, make it into a tender, and post it, maybe on Reddit.

It will then get fixed and shared, and someone will get paid, and the process easily fits into the corporate process of paying for things.

Why are we trying to make things difficult?

Google says open source software should be more secure

If any funding does become available, it needs to be linked to support rather than the software itself.

People write the software for fame and fun, they don't do the support with the same spirit.

Seems to me we could use some of the ideas used within blockchain and crypto to help pay for the support, like the miner model?

That could then still be open rather than end up becoming a Google tax for everyone?

Open source maintainer threatens to throw in the towel if companies won't ante up

Free software is always worth the price you paid for it.

If you want support, employ someone, or pay a donation with your request for a patch, but don't whine!

FOSS was always too idealistic for its own good, the only licence I ever liked was the BSD one which at least was honest.

Think its time for a FOSS patch subscription scheme which works like the music payment scheme for musicians.

GCHQ was rebuked for ignoring spy law safeguards as pandemic hit Britain

So the UK and the west are just as corrupt as every other country, but, unlike smaller countries, have a process in place to 'prove' they are not corrupt!

Who'd have thought?

UK regulators to scrutinise cloud resilience in response to financial services sector's reliance on the fluffy stuff

A well set up Terraform script should fix this at a basic level, but the main problem is every cloud provider has a slightly different way of doing the same thing, so multi-cloud compatibly is always a work in progress!

Even when they get rules in place to 'make it so', the reality is always going to be playing catch up!

Spruce up your CV or just bin it? Survey finds recruiters are considering alternatives

Whatever process gets finally chosen as the holy grail, will get gamed and we are back to square one.

A LinkedIn account only gives job creating power to another Silicon Valley Tech monopoly, and do we really want that?

I think a new business model where the recruiter becomes a personal employees manager and does the whole process of finding the best suited employer would be an interesting development.

However, still can't get away from the idea that recruiters would then occupy the space between pimp and slave trader!

Worst of CES Awards: The least private, least secure, least repairable, and least sustainable

How grumpy am I?

So what we used to do in the old days, when someone brought out crap, was to not buy it.

Why is that such a radical idea these days?

Is all this demanding for the government to rule our lives, because as covid shows, governments really knows best, some way to remove the concept of self responsibility?

As an example, here's what I do; I realise that Alexa is just a microphone connected to a datacentre, that listens to everything I say, so ... I don't buy one.

If a billion other idiots do spend their cash on one, why is that a problem?

I have one life, I'm not going to waste it telling other people they are idiots. Firstly, they won't appreciate it, and secondly, they won't believe me, which is why they bought the Alexa in the first place!

It really isn't difficult, and when everyone has learnt what we all used to do, these companies will change their behaviour.

Personally, I wonder about all these activists wanting to glow in the limelight of being virtuous, but then realise, its just their way of making money, so if we don't give them any attention either, eventually, even they will give up and get proper jobs!

Web3: The next generation of the web is here… apparently

We are in strange times where nonsense becomes reality if enough people believe it.

I gave up on bitcoins as a serious idea around 2013, and gave up on blockchain about 3 years later, but then realised that facts are irrelevant if enough people are involved, and keep convincing themselves that they are all on the bus to endless riches.

Web3 will happen, if only so you can use a simple term instead of gullible millennial with a gaming habit. But as for becoming rich? Only if you are willing to sell up and walk away, and none of those involved wants to point at the naked man.

Linux Journal runs shutdown -h now for a second time: Mag editor fires parting shot at proprietary software

Reality is a bitch!

Really sorry to hear about the end of Linux Journal - it was a quality mag in a world of quick answers via Stackoverflow etc.

That is the real problem - we live in a TL:DR world, and the people who are still willing to invest time in reading depth are few and far between. They are also not people who spend money, free beer is what brought them to Linux in the first place!

What LJ should have done is to sell their brand rather than their words - Get their logo on the talking circuit that makes up so much of the vacuous world milking Linux - because that is what the reality of Linux is these days - a few people write some genius, and everyone else starts selling the potential, style over substance.

Not that any of this really is news. Stealing BSD code is what actually built the internet, all that has changed is the lawyers have more complex licensing to get paid to play with.

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London Gatwick Airport reopens but drone chaos perps still not found

How to push an agenda..!

This story is amazing for how useless the authorities seem to have been.

Anyone with any sense would have jammed the signal and just followed the drone home to whoever was controlling it, but they didn't - why?

I think this was an PR campaign for a black ops type company who were doing this to help the various useless agencies who can now lobby for more powers, and extra funding for equipment - its win / win all around!

A web where the user has complete control of their data? Sounds Solid, Tim Berners-Lee

This is what an ideology looks like

Solid, is, at best, a data wallet, which could be used to store your user name and passwords, but it can't force other web services to use it instead of its current method

- now, am I the only one who's thinking, Is Solid just wanting to be Facebook or Google, but got to the party a bit late?

If you really want to do something for users data, maybe Tim should be asking users what they think first?

Or just like the other bit tech companies, does Tim think he knows better?

This sounds to me like the only choice on offer is who do you want to be your data overlords?