Posts by chololennon

Debian 12 'Bookworm' is the excitement-free Linux you've been waiting for

Thanks for still supporting 32-bit x86 architecture

My Netbook Asus Eee PC 1000HE (which has Debian 11 + Trinity Desktop) appreciates a new Debian version which still supports 32-bit x86 architecture :-)

Fed up with Python setup and packaging? Try a shot of Rye

How about Poetry?

My experience with Poetry (https://python-poetry.org/) is very similar to npm or cargo (I also use maven/gradle with Java, and vcpkg/cmake with C++, but those are another story, especially with C++)

Dropbox drops 16% of staff, points finger at hard-up customers and AI

RE: Maybe if Dropbox stopped doing idiotic things...

"Maybe if Dropbox stopped doing idiotic things like removing external drive support for Mac users..."

Or forcing Linux users to use ext4. They lost me several years ago... Nowadays I am a happy user of MEGA (which encrypts my data in their servers, has a decent Linux/Android clients, and not least, the free storage is much larger than what Dropbox offers)

Boffins think they've decoded mysterious 819-day Mayan calendar

They took to long to figure that out...

"By increasing the calendar length to 20 periods of 819-days a pattern emerges in which the synodic periods of all the visible planets commensurate with station points in the larger 819-day calendar," the researchers wrote.

The Mayan numeral system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_numerals) was vigesimal (base-20) so I wonder why boffins took too long to figure that out :-P (of course I am just kidding, I am not an expert in Mayan civilization or calendars)

GitHub publishes RSA SSH host keys by mistake, issues update

I experience that...

I experienced that 12 hours ago when I was pushing several commits (the first group Ok, the second one, a few minutes later, with the scary message)... and of course I panic because it wasn't my rsa key, but the one from GitHub. So I checked my keys, I checked my GitHub account... I ended up updating my keys and the ones from GitHub. My worry lasted until I read this article, thanks Liam.

Check out Codon: A Python compiler if you have a need for C/C++ speed

Re: Definitely a subset

"Also I wonder how well it does with monkey patching."

No "dynamic" monkey patching according to this: https://docs.exaloop.io/codon/general/differences#type-checking

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 as a Linux laptop

Linux and high DPI screens

I don't understand why Linux distros still have problems with high DPI screens. Every time I update the OS in my notebook (an Asus ultrabook from 2015) I have to deal with grub2, tty consoles, systemd, KDE, Wine, etc. All of them have issues, and the solutions are in many cases just workarounds (not to mention particular applications like the ones coded in Java or Python which require their own hack or configuration) :-(

Google's Go may add telemetry that's on by default

Re: Anyone remember Ken Thompson's login hack?

Well, Ken Thompson works at Google now, and he is one of the Go designers, so nothing is a casuality.

Google unleashes fightback against ChatGPT, a Bard by any other name

Nothing new...

"A preview snippet of Bard in action shows the model generates responses in bullet points."

I see where this is going... the production version of Bard for sure will emit ads in the first N bullets (or worse, it will suggest responses according to the sponsors)... nothing new, it is like the old broadcast TV with ads --> cable TV without ads --> cable TV with ads --> streaming without ads --> streaming with ads... so we always end up having ads (and paying for them). Corporations/industries always reinvent themselves to continue doing the same.

WINE Windows translation layer has matured like a fine... you get the picture

Re: Ribbon interface holdouts

"16 years down the line, is there anyone who uses MS office on a regular basis who doesn't hate the ribbon interface?"

Don't forget the ribbon bar in the File Explorer, OMG! really, who invented that atrocity? Lucky me that I seldom use Windows

Smart ovens do really dumb stuff to check for Wi-Fi

Security expert?

"I really don't like the fact that my oven connects to China and Russia just to check if it has an internet connection," said van Rooij

Yeah, because connecting to google is really cool, lovely, secure and so on.

Native Americans urge Apache Software Foundation to ditch name

How about the Apache Helicopter?

I'd be worried more about the war/killing machine than the software foundation

ChatGPT has mastered the confidence trick, and that's a terrible look for AI

Amazing and disturbing (for developers)

Yesterday I watched the latest episode of "C++ Weekly" about ChatGPT. The host, Jason Turner, performed several tests on it related to C++ and programming in general. I have to say that the chat is really amazing, and also disturbing for a (C++) developer like me. The level of accuracy in the generated code and the explanations given for it, blew my mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIDA6pvjEE0

C++ zooms past Java in programming popularity contest

Re: Java RAM Consumption

"2x of the equivalent ARC program in Rust or Sappeur."

You again with your compiler/language that nobody uses it. Don't you get tired of always posting the same thing/ad?

Killing trees with lasers isn’t cool, says Epson. So why are inkjets any better?

" I also have an old HP LasterJet 6 monochrome laser for almost 25 years now and it is still going on and only 3rd toner cartridge..."

The same here, I bought my HP 1020 Laser Jet in 2007, and still has the same toner! Yes, nowadays I don't print too often, but 15 years on a row is quite an achievement. Another thing were the drivers, OMG! HP Printer drivers on Windows and Linux (at least for this model) were pure garbage (printer/driver crashes all the time) when I bought it (and for several years after that).

Google says Android runs better when covered in Rust

Re: C++ Memory Safety?

"It'd be quite nice if Rust object code had flags indicating whether or not "unsafe" had been used, to allow onward users of it to know."

That could be a good idea to be added to this:

https://github.com/rust-secure-code/cargo-auditable

Just 22% of techies in UK aged 50 or older, says Chartered Institute for IT

For seniors, IT world is complicated...

I am almost 50... +30 years of C/C++ (currently learning Rust), 15 of Java/Python, 2 of Typescript among many other programming languages, AWS, SQL/No-SQL, English/Spanish/French, etc etc. Even with my daily super effort to stay up to date with new technologies guess what... unemployed since July 2022 :-( (note: I don't live in the UK)

As others said here, companies/HR prefer young staff because the payment is lower and also, they are easily manipulated. Another thing to mention is the recruiting process... it's a mess, with a lot of non-sense (especially for senior developers) programming tests.

How I made a Chrome extension for converting Reg articles to UK spelling

RE

Well, the cultural (and more) influence of USA in Latin-america is huge; having said that, at least in Argentina, where both variants are taught, the English one is the most common.

It's official: UK telcos legally obligated to remove Huawei kit

Lapdogs...

"It is also widely acknowledged that the UK government has come under sustained political pressure from the US to ban Huawei equipment from its telecoms networks because it is a Chinese company"

The evidence is overwhelming your Honor.

Rust is eating into our systems, and it's a good thing

Re: I'm getting rusty

"I'm getting rusty"

So do I. I am an experienced C/C++ programmer (more than 30 years using them) who used to love both languages, but about 6 years ago I started to hate C++ with passion. Even with my experience I can't longer say that I am an expert in C++, but with 15 years in Java or Python I can do it, why? because C ++ is so bloated with new features that's impossible to know all of them, and of course, at the same time, we have all the nasty features available (e.g. the fiasco initialization). The language is so complex now that each programmer does what they can with their knowledge, which in turn ends up in horrible code bases when new, old, good and bad features are mixed. Another thing to mention: The same feature present in other languages is always more complex in C++, OMG! (e.g. just look what multithreading, concepts or coroutines are).

I'm sorry for my rant, but that's why I am learning Rust these days (I am still don't know if it is better or not than than C/C++, but I will find it)

Microsoft offers SQL Server 2022 release candidate to Linux world

Multi-platform code base?

It'd be nice to know if MS has a truly multi-platform code base or if they are compiling their Windows SQL Sever source code with the help of Wine :-P

Ad blockers struggle under Chrome's new rules

Re: Pihole, all the way

Sadly Pihole is not good at blocking youtube ads :-(

RE Ad blockers struggle under Chrome's new rules

"or perhaps my too many extensions and 50-100 tabs open!?"

Well, this could be seen as the egg and the chicken problem, but there is an extension to manage the open tabs, "Tab Wrangler", it is very useful (at least for me)

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-wrangler/egnjhciaieeiiohknchakcodbpgjnchh

The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it

Re: That's 50's american cars all over again

"I'm looking at KDE, right here in front of me. I don't see any of this stuff piled on stuff that mention"

Well, I really love KDE, I was using it for about 20 years. Currently I use Trinity Desktop in a netbook and Plasma in several modern PCs.

Having said that, my rant: the other day I updated my main laptop to the latest stable KDE, 25.4 (openSUSE 15.4)... OMG! it is bl**dy buggy (compositor crash all the time, widgets lost their configuration after reboot, fill mode does not work in Gwenview, etc, etc), awful new redesigns (hamburger menus everywhere), new start menu!, task bar with icons... I spent nearly 5 hours to configure it in a familiar way (dolphin is practically unrecognizable with its default configuration). Why the necessity to change things all the time, to look like Windows in every aspect? It is so buggy that reminds me the worst years of KDE 4, and, IMHO, it is so buggy because the developers are more interested in adding new designs/stuffs than delivering stable releases.

Get over it: Microsoft is a Linux and open source company these days

Re: There is no 'good', no 'evil'

"There is no 'good', no 'evil' For corporations, there is only profit."

C'mon, there are "ways" and "ways" to a make profit (some legal, some illegal). Microsoft has plenty of examples of dirty ways of making them. And for a recent "evil" way you have the "Uber files" (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/uber-files-leak-reveals-global-lobbying-campaign).

Mega's unbreakable encryption proves to be anything but

Still better than others

"The findings, detailed on a separate website, proved sufficiently severe that Kim Dotcom, no longer affiliated with the file storage company, advised potential users of the service to stay away."

Well, I still prefer MEGA over Google Drive, Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive... the last 3 don't have encryption at all.

Unity and Trinity: New releases for forks of abandoned Linux desktops

A new version of Trinity is always welcome

I am running Trinity Desktop on Devian 11 in a venerable 32 bits Asus Netbook (EEE PC 1000HE) bought in 2009. The machine still has 7.5 hours of battery (9.5 hours when it was new).

Netflix to crack down on account sharing, offer ad-laden cheaper options

RE: Ads

I remember when cable TV was free of ads, nowadays it has more ads than broadcast TV (at least in my country). If Netflix introduces ads, for sure I will cancel my subscription.

How not to attract a WSL (or any) engineer

They lost their way

IT companies and their respective human resources departments have lost their way. This is insane. That's why in my Linkedin profile I encourage recruiters to read (they never do by the way) the following:

- https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210727-the-rise-of-never-ending-job-interviews

- https://medium.com/swlh/why-senior-engineers-hate-coding-interviews-d583d2855757

An open-source COBOL contender emerges

Re: "COBOL-2002, which introduced object oriented programming"

"So when will we have object oriented FORTRAN?"

We already have it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran#Fortran_2003

Cloudflare, Akamai: Why we're not pulling out of Russia

"Most of them don't even realize Putinski STARTED this mess"

I don't want to start a flame war, but this mess was started by uncle Sam several years ago.

Work chat app Slack suffers services outage

Re: I was happy today...

@an it guy Thanks, I know that trick, the problem with it, is that I have to manually set the profile icon, and the tray notification icon (at least on Linux) still changes when a new message arrive.

I was happy today...

The level of interruption that Slack generates in my daily workflow is astonishing (automatic channels, coworkers with silly questions, groups and groups and groups with the same people, etc, etc). I work remote so I have to be online, but Slack doesn't help here, it lacks of a simple busy status! (red icon, online and without alerts). I muted a lot of channels, but my boss complains all the time because I don't read messages on them. Nowadays it's more important to pay attention to Slack than to code a task. I have to tell you... I hate Slack... I was happy today.

Experimental WebAssembly port of LibreOffice released

It works, but...

In my PC (openSUSE/Chrome 98) it works OK (after a long delay to load), but the tab memory footprint is 1.17 GB. It's a nice proof of concept for wasm/LO, but I don't know of its real usefulness.

KDE Community releases Plasma 5.24: It's eccentric, just like many old-timers

Re: Is that Baloo thing disabled by default?

"On first run, immediately turn off indexing under File Search in System Settings/Workspace/Search."

I do the same, and after that, I install my old friend "kfind" (I also associate a directory with that utility in order to use it from Dolphin)

Machine needs more Learning: Google Drive dings single-character files for copyright infringement

Use MEGA instead

After Dropbox started to remove support for Linux users (only ext4 is supported) and Google started to flag my files, I switched to MEGA instantly (well supported on Linux/Android, 15/20 GB of free storage, and content is encrypted).

Kremlin names the internet giants it will kidnap the Russian staff of if they don't play ball in future

"People are up in arms because it's Russia and because Russia doesn't play by the rules."

OMG, in what world do you live in? There are countless examples of western countries not playing by the rules. I can make you a list if you want.

Re: On the Ocean Blue

"You think detaining people without trial for an indeterminate length of time because they may be doing something illegal is acceptable?"

Do you mean Guantanamo?

30 years of Linux: OS was successful because of how it was licensed, says Red Hat

Thank you very much Linu(s|x)

As a user and a developer, I have been using Linux for more than 20 years and what can I say... I am pretty happy with it.

Thunderbird 91 lands: Now native on Apple Silicon, swaps 'master' for 'primary' password, and more

Re: Still no tray support

That's not an excuse, a multiplatform application has to deal with that, especially if those features are related to desktop integration. Slack, Skype or Zoom, just to mention a few, don't have that problem.

Still no tray support

Zillions of years using Thunderbird (mostly on Linux/KDE, but also on Windows) and we still have to rely on different add-ons to minimize the application to (system) tray. Add ons that support only one OS, or don't work very well or stop working at some point (the majority)... I don't understand why it is so difficult to implement that feature into the application (at least on Windows it is very simple)

New GNOME Human Interface Guidelines now official – and obviously some people hate it

Re: KDE Config

Actually I always try to restore my old configuration, but more often that I want, a lot of problems arise because the configuration was changed.

"The reason I use KDE over GNOME is having the menu in the with the window bar."

Be aware that KDE guys are introducing hamburger menus everywhere :-( like in recent versions of Dolphin. Luckily there is still the option to show the "old" menu bar. The problem is that every time I install a fresh KDE Plasma I have to reconfigure the desktop in order to get rid of the new "simplicity". e.g. the not so modern default Dolphin configuration (without panels, hamburger menu, home restriction, big icons) is really awful, just a copy of MacOS/GNOME. On the positive side, Plasma remains as the most configurable desktop, that's why I still use it.

Linux 5.13 hits rc5, isn’t yet calm, Linus Torvalds is only mildly perturbed

Re: Still brickin'...

"Don't suppose there will ever be an rc of Linux that focuses on making it straightforward to install...?"

1. How is a kernel RC related to a distro installation? Linus and kernel developers don't create distros.

2. You can't generalize based on personal anecdotes. I can say the opposite, in more than 20 years using Linux I barely had problems when installing it, on the contrary, installing Windows sometimes was a nightmare due to driver problems. IMHO both of them are very easy to install especially nowadays.

China all but bans cryptocurrencies

Re: "And then there’s the Digital Yuan"

"As for blockchain, could someone please tell me how that non-scalable technology..."

Why "non-scalable"? If you said that because of the energy needed to mine some crypto currencies... well not all blockchains use the proof of work algorithm.

Re: Self Interest, Public Interest

"People view banks as a place where their money is safe, and currently they are"

No, they aren't safe: there are countless examples of banks acting as criminals (actually IMHO most of them are criminals) stealing the money of their customers... they never pay for their crimes. In effect, states always bailed out them in the name of lesser evil for the entire economic system. Banks never lose.

Activist millionaires protest outside Jeff Bezos' homes to support tax rises for the rich

Re: Absolute DREAMING

"I don't know where you are, but in the 1980s my mother was unemployed, we had no central heating, and no television. Today, I'm unemployed, have fully functional central heating, and a television. And this computer to reply to you. How is that "no better off"?"

Are you being sarcastic? (because of "I'am unemployed") If you aren't, just one thing: Personal anecdotes are not scientific evidence, you can't generalize based on personal experience.

Visual Basic 6 returns: You've been a good developer all year. You have social distanced, you have helped your mom. Here's your reward

Re: Extreme VB Programming

"I learnt from a book all sorts of "proper"/extreme programming you could do with VB. Passing string pointers around, direct read and writes to memory locations, multithreading, accessing the real Windows API and best of all, how to hack MTS and COM+."

Was the book "Hardcore Visual Basic" from Bruce McKinney? I learned almost all those topics from that excellent book :-)

"Fond" memories

As a guy who was a developer for Microsoft OSs in the 80's/90's (MSDOS/Windows) I used a lot of tools from Microsoft like (Visual)C++, (Visual)FoxPro, GW-Basic, QuickBasic, and of course, VisualBasic (I even used the version 1 for MS-DOS). The language/IDE was good, but it was way behind Borland's tools like Delphi or C++ Builder. I used it in big businesses projects, but it was a pain. Having said that, one of the best programming book I've ever read, was one related to Visual Basic, "Hardcore Visual Basic" from Bruce McKinney. It was very funny, useful, and with a lot of "secrets".

Report: World's population of developers expands, JavaScript reigns, C# overtakes PHP

Re: Ermm. nope!

Decent logging library for Javascript? That just doesn't exist ... the most popular, Winston, is one of the worst logging libraries I've had the "pleasure" to work with (and I've used several libraries in C / C ++ / Java / Python). It looks like it was designed by a centennial hobbyist who has no idea how to use a log or how a logging library must be.