Posts by sev.monster

Should we expect to keep communication private in the digital age?

I'm so sorry.

Not sure about the use of "vulturistic" there

Sorry, I was being unintentionally speciesist to our vulture overlords. Such a horrible mistake will not happen again. I willingly flog myself 1000 times in repentance.

We get the privacy we deserve from our behavior

Re: confused

I see security questions as as a type of alternate, secondary password, or account recovery tokens. All of mine are procedurally generated unreadable streams of text. I can't wait for the day when a phone technician is forced to sit there while I read out my question's answers.

I am pretty sure anyone that installs uBlock Origin has that garbage blocked by default anyway, so sorry that I and millions of other people am depriving websites of such incredibly useful data... Not.

Quite simply, I don't want my data ingested by Google/Alphabet if I can help it, and part of the reason why I don't is because it is the "industry standard [for] website tracking". I don't give a hoot about their privacy policies or terms of service because we both know they will be worming and weaseling their way around with their horde of lawyers to extract as much data from you as possible while still having their legalese read good.

Also, I very much doubt a GP, who probably gets more referrals from other doctors and hospitals as well as insurance network searches than it does Google search results, is particularly worried about vigorously uplifting their SEO and ensuring users click through. If they don't get a new patient I don't think they would care, I shre wouldn't.

Also they agreed to remove it, that shows to me at least that the analytics data wasn't very useful to them anyway.

I am appalled by the number of people that voted for on this topic, especially here.

Do I expect, as in the sense of our current reality and what companies and governments are actually doing, privacy on the Internet? It is unfortunately unlikely, and I personally do not expect it, which is why I take extra steps to ensure I am safe.

But SHOULD we? Not in what currently is, but in what there is potential for? Thinking in terms of "oh, it's already happening, so we should just accept it", is not only terrifyingly pessimistic, but sets a dangerous precedent that others will follow. The only way we will get our privacy back from vulturistic corporations and overreaching government organizations is by declaring unchallenged that we have a right to our privacy for the information we do not openly disclose, and if we provide that data to a third party in confidence, do not wish to be disclosed by any potential data holders. We SHOULD expect and demand it, and if our reality does not match those expectations, then something needs to change.

Journalist won't be prosecuted for pressing 'view source'

Sorry, apparently I used the wrong icon.

Re: Transcendental question

What is the deliciousness factor of a spherical pi? Is it more delicious than a normal pi?

Re: The State changed its tune

Get off your high horse.

Name me a religion that is not based on unsound and unproven belief in an entity or action that cannot be observed or even proven to exist by scientific methods. It would be more difficult to find one that doesn't than it would be to name all of the religions that follow that generalization.

While not every religious person may fully believe in the truth of their religious belief system's deity or deistic ability, you cannot deny that the central purpose of not only every religion I can think of, but I assume all known religions is to circulate and support that belief (if it isn't to con people out of money ala Scientology).

The use of "man" here clearly represents all people. For centuries the word has been used in nearly every language to represent the human race. You know that and yet you still nitpick. The use of words is to represent our ideas and thoughts, which means the words themselves may not have the same power that you personally assign them in the eyes of the speaker you lambast. The intent was clearly and obviously not to damage women or in some way make them inferior, so why is it important to complain about? For example, I call women "dudes" because I call everyone "dude", that does not mean I hate women or see them as inferior, because that is not my intent. And because the average, not Twitter brainwashed person (yes that was a personal attack) understands my intent, they understand I mean no harm in the use of my words, and to this day no woman has ever complained that I call then "dude". Hell my girl calls everyone "dude" too including other girls.

In addition, I find it hilarious that you decry the, as you seem to be implying, classical use of the word "man" to define the human race, while trying to attack someone's stance against religions, many of which have deeply-rooted misogyny within them and are responsible for horrible atrocities and inequality against women etc. Remember in Christianity where women were used as tokens of reward to men in the bible and treated as essentially disposable? When, after allowing Satan to murder Job's wife, God simply gave him another and called it good? Or how about the treatment of women in Islam? Getting stoned for not wearing your full-body coverings seems really cool, let's defend those poor religions from being generalized.

I am apalled by and cannot sympathize with people that posit themselves like you.

Haha hey guys check this out:

sptth://illegalporn.moc!

What? That's not a website. Why are you saying something so illogical? Why are you looking at me like that? Look at it, does that look like a valid URL?

Re: Email

Oh no, my WhatsApp message was encrypted and decrypted to get to my intended recipient, guess I should arrest myself.

Oh no, now I visited a HTTPS website, whatever shall I do. Guess I'm going to jail again.

Re: Wondering if some monetary damages would make sense. The "american way"

You said everything I would have. Good shout.

Re: Wondering if some monetary damages would make sense. The "american way"

Why does everything have to be about race? Can't he just be a plain idiot?

Sorry, those images must also be decoded to be displayed on your screen, unless it's RAW or some formats of BMP. 10 years in the slammer, punk.

Massive cyberattack takes Ukraine military, big bank websites offline

Re: Defacement

Wealthy Aristocratic Federation, they got tired of the banks having more money than them.

Re: Parting Shot?

I definitely think this is more of Russia's/the USSR's classic "burn them from the inside" strategy they have been employing over the decades. Make the Ukranian people fear the direction the government is taking them and give them the idea (warranted or not) that their infrastructure is insecure and fallible. I'm sure Russia's goal is to increase the number of legitimate pro-unification/pro-Russia citizens until it reaches a point like what happened in Donbass. From then they can continue to shuffle in arms through Luhansk an Donetsk to provide to the separatists and sit back with their feet up to watch the chaos unfold, maybe poke it with a stick every now and again.

Re: Preparedness vs Lassitude

Nice fanfiction. Do you self-insert the US every time you schizopost?

RAID expansion comes to OpenZFS at last

Re: Yes yes yes!

I would personally recommend you do. Yes, back when ZFS outside of Solaris barely had any functionality out of the gate (no manual scrubs, oh my) and there were multiple forks for different distros, I would have certainly not recommended it unless there was no other solution, it wasn't ready for primetime by any stretch of the imagination. But by this point, since the OpenZFS merger, there is a command for basically anything you want to do with the system and you are generally no longer restricted on what you want to do. I would not hesitate to use it for production, though I would probably hesitate to update it very frequently, as I ran into this issue myself after an update.

I would also say OpenZFS is probably more stable on FreeBSD, though I have not used a BSD in long enough to say that for sure, and they have been making strides to get feature parity with FreeBSD and Linux. (Solaris/Oracle compatibility is another story.) Here on Alpine Linux, that bug I linked is the only issue I've run into using ZFS on root, encrypted volumes, the System Attributes feature, and more, so my own empirical evidence says it's "stable enough" at least for my uses. Performance has also improved on Linux to the point that only the most heavy of FS I/O will show a clear winner to simpler filesystems like ext or XFS.

If you don't need the features ZFS provides, or if you need redline performance, by all means don't use it. But the tools are easy enough to use by now and the features so plentiful that it can probably suit many different use-cases. I for one use bookmarks and snapshots to do incremental backups to an off-site pool, which is not something you can easily do with a more traditional FS setup.

Also, on the topic of bugs, as far as I can see the GitHub tracker is in decent enough shape for such a large project. You should also pay attention to just how much is fixed on the reg, and not just the open issues. I definitely get where you're coming from though, but I myself have learned to expect a little jank in any project that isn't part of some corporate monolith... and even then, that doesn't guarantee quality (coughWindowscough)

Disclaimer: I am probably biased toward ZFS since I use it extensively.

Re: monsters...

Yes, the combination of block device/physical volume management, logical volume management, and filesystem into one is absolutely a boon for ZFS. Being able to see the entire landscape from one vantage point (or two with zfs vs zpool on CLI) is incredible. Compare and contrast to the pain of setting up RAID encryption the "traditional way", and I never want to go back. This is ignoring the great features ZFS offers like mentioned.

Re: Yes yes yes!

ZFS offers a userland tool to access the low-level parts of your block devices, vdevs, and pools: zdb. It does not hide anything from you and allows you to see all features, fields, and structures of your pools. ZFS isn't "magic", and is actually very well structured, with its use of feature flags and vendor extensions being clearly deliniated both in source code and in practice, as zdb will show you. Its simplicity might seem untrustworthy, but in reality it is actually that straightforward. Furthermore, the userland tools you are provided with are about as "manual" as you can get without redesigning the wheel—really, you could make the same claim about Btrfs, or any other monolithic, all-encompassing filesystem.

...Of course, no matter how ultimiately trivial ZFS's various systems are once you understand them, there is a good bit of jargon when you dig past the usual basic use-cases, with a lot of additional features, extensions, and configuration tweaks whose purpose and use may not be immediately apparent. There is no shying away from the fact that ZFS, being a well-matured project with lots of different tools under its belt, has a degree of complexity, but you also don't have to use or even enable the features you don't want to use on your pool. It is additionally possible to decypher ZFS internals if you have some lower-level knowledge in other filesystems, and the ZFS official documentation (both for end-users and developers) is very thorough. There are also lots of blog posts where even the practically ancient ones give lots of useful insight. Since a lot of people use it, including large corporations, there is no shortage of experts either, of which you might be able to pick the respective brains of if you ever see the chance arrive.

As an example, while the task seemed daunting at first, I managed to recover data from a completely dusted pool (a problem caused by my own negligence, no fault of ZFS—in fact if I were using it more effectively, I would have had proper redundancy that could have rebuilt the pool) by manually accessing the device with zdb. It is a very useful tool and gives you a curated, structured, parseable view of your data in a way that I have never seen from any other filesystem, and while the ease of something like extundelete would certainly be welcomed if anyone would want to make something like that, I ultimately had everything I needed to play part-time data analyst and recover what I needed without too much hassle.

I used this article at the time to get my bearings with zdb. It should still be relevant. Haven't had the need to look anything up since due to a lack of problems, now that I know what I'm doing.

Huh, my CPU fan just started spinning at max speed... Must be Windows Defender doing another cheeky silent scan.

IT technician jailed for wiping school's and pupils' devices

Microsoft 365 and Intune is tightly integrated with Windows 10 and 11's built-in MDM, and plenty of schools have switched to it. When logging in to desktop apps from home, you must make sure to select "Do not manage my device" or whatever it is during initial setup, or else your device will be enrolled in Intune and covered by corporate policy. Unfortunately most are either too daft or too impatient to read or understand the prompt they are given, and as such will happily enroll their own personal devices, making them surprised for some reason when the dialogue that read "Dude we get full access to all your shit" results in all their shit being deleted.

Frankly it's partially their own fault for not reading, and their devices would not have been able to be reset had they not consented to it in the first place.

Critical 'remote escalation' flaw in Android 12 fixed in Feb security patch batch

Re: Android 12 is a dumpster fire

You decided to join right as Android committers decided to lock down apps even more into an iOS-like walled garden without the interoperability or feature set of said walled garden, unless you're a Google user :)

I once said it was dishonest to say Android was exclusively a Google product since Android is/was an open ecosystem, but damn me to the Google Gulag if they don't have a stranglehold on it now.

This is going well: Meta adds anti-grope buffer zone around metaverse VR avatars

Re: You got to be kidding...

I tried to feel up the market, but I got arrested.

US grounds investors in Chinese drone maker DJI over 'Xinjiang human rights abuses'

The worst part for me is that there are a huge number of incredible craftsmen that have emerged out of the Chinese intellectual theft and sweatshop economy, but getting to those vendors still requires you to support the regime in some manner. I like a number of the brands on SHENZENAUDIO for example, and have had one on one interaction with some of their staff, and they're all pleasant, smart people, yet stuck in an ecosystem that I would rather not support.

Do I shelve my curiosities and worldly desires to decry a despotic government, or do I enjoy its and its peoples' spoils and fund the machine? This is the position most of the world is in that is in relations with China, I think, including those in the Belt and Road Initiative.

There is no war in Ba Sing Se.

Why not put your priorities in the right order and point the fingers at the biggest culprits?

I don't see how that helps when all parties are at fault, but okay.

You fear China's military expenditure while ignoring the actual reality of Western military intervention across the globe.

I fear China's continual expanse and quiet control of nations and states via incurring massive debts and placing strategic outposts around the globe. I despise Western (in your case focused on the US) military intervention and wish they would stop. They act like they are the saviors of the modern world.

Do you raise concerns about the 'israeli' military industrial complex and their activities in Palestine?

Yes. The Middle East in general is a constant hotbed of human rights abuses and potential warcrimes, all in the name of a stretch of dead earth that no one else gives a shit about and long-dead religious figures. None of it is any kind of excuse for the kinds of atrocities committed in the name of their gods and their goals. For your clarification, I am talking about both sides. And when the guillotine falls, the ones that lose the most are the civilians, of course.

Do you raise concerns about the Saudi and UAE military complex and their destruction of Yemen?

See above.

What about your own country's involvement and it's naval parades in the South China Sea?

You are assuming I'm of the United States. While correct, don't assume my position based on that. The US has no reason to be doing about 80% of the military action it is, and is only doing so to at the behest/to further the coffers of the defense contractors and arms dealers that make a killing (ha) off of war.

What about the NATO Cabal and their constant and buffoonish attempts to incite WW3 with Russia?

NATO doesn't have much power in and of itself, but the aggression toward Russia has been somewhat untoward. Nor am I in support of the nonsense that often goes on at the UN. Of course, one cannot ignore China's pandering to both Ukraine and Russia in an attempt to stay on good trading terms with Ukraine and continue to get support from Russia. China is not innocent here, though they may act like it. (Aside: Best case solution would be for Ukraine to chill out and abide by the treatise they signed to avoid an all-out war; this time they will lose more than Crimea and Donbas, as Russia already has its foot in the door and has spread dissent throughout the nation.)

I doubt you do. Instead, you raise 'concerns' about a Country that has rarely engaged in military activities outside its borders in the last 70 years!

You show your true colors. China's consistent and obvious expansion and growth of power outside of its borders, militaristic in nature or not, is a cause for concern. Their massive army and constant development of new tech is a cause for concern. Their grip on a significant portion of the world's production is a cause for concern. If you don't see that, you are either blind or attempting to push your own agenda. Being the lesser of evils does not miraculously make an evil a good, and being the lesser evil only because you lie and deceive and distract and work outside of the limelight (or redirect it) doesn't help.

I am not saying other countries and nations are not guilty of the same things China are doing, because many are. But China is finding and utilizing footholds where no one else even has a chance to step—either that or they are very good at making it seem like they are, and are faking it until they make it.

How ridiculous is that?

I agree, your pandering is pretty ridiculous.

China is the last country on earth one should be concerned about - unless it's being provoked by the Anglo-American Neo-Imperial complex and it's "Five Eyes" old boys club ...

In fact, I haven't read something so ridiculous in a good while.

It has been long known that the military industrial complex is the biggest threat to any democracy.

...but pointing fingers does not help anyone when the finger being pointed is in defense of another country with its own military industrial complex. Do you know how much money is invested into the Chinese military? How many tens of thousands are regularly brought in to reserve and active forces? What about China's regular state-funded military parades to show off its incredible might and prowess, is that simply to be ignored?

Re: El Reg censorship

Much as I loathe your presence, your posts are still here. Freedom means letting even the obvious sympathizers say their bit. Can you say that about your lovely China that blocks words from being said on its social media platforms, actively participating in enforcing its own dictatorship-in-disguise?

Meanwhile, our loyal vulture overlords will process your trite as they are able.

Re: Those that live in glass houses

They are largely not directed to "censor" under "state mandate". They are private corporations with their own (admittedly often twisted) interests. For someone complaining about a lack of evidence and finger-pointing, I see the exact same conduct from you when it benefits you.

You are making a false equivalency anyway. Some private corps potentially censoring information (what information? when?) meanwhile the PRC is blocking access to entire websites that do not fit its political narrative, regularly pays thousands upon thousands of people to spew Chinese propaganda online, and forces its populace to use backdoored and ACTUALLY CENSORED state-sponsored and sometimes state-run websites? How is that even in the same ballgame? It's not even in the same stadium.

Begone, tankie. We see your ploys.

Re: Those that live in glass houses

This is hilarious and clearly paints your true aims (or your complete lack of knowledge) if you think Native reservations are "re-education camps". They are given the ability to enforce their own local law, have their own police forces even. They are protected under Common Law of the US and usually nothing more, giving them lots of freedom to do as they wish. Hardly "re-education camps" as the people inside are 1. free to leave at any time and 2. only allowed to be there in the first place if they are a Native or have enough of a lineage to them.

Just stop. You are not gaining any ground with these propaganda posts.

Re: Those that live in glass houses

There is no war in Ba Sing Se.

12-year-old revives Unity desktop, develops software repo client, builds gaming environment for Ubuntu...

Re: Your reporter was very fond of Unity

I'll have you know, my very correct opinions on the disadvantages of everything I don't like are forged in the deep fires of having to deal with dumb bullshit, with a sprinkle of indescribable and indistinguishing rage. Therefor, it is my pleasure to serenade your ears with my copious curses and desk-punching so that you may not suffer the same fate.

Re: my 12 year old...

I taught myself trig (or the parts of it that I needed to use to achieve my goals) but yet I tested into the lowest bracket of math when attempting to transfer college credits... Guess I'm practical over theory.

Re: What is there to say?

It's dangerous to always assume your ways are the right ways and everyone else's is wrong. That kind of thinking has led to some of the worst atrocities this species has seen.

This statement could apply to bob as well.

Infosec chap: I found a way to hijack your web accounts, turn on your webcam from Safari – and Apple gave me $100k

Re: Nice to see Apple pays out

Someone sounds bitter. Personal experience with Redmond?

As someone that has used a Microsoft product in the last week, which is already too short of a time, so am I.

Google sued for firing staff who claim they tried to follow 'Don't be evil' motto

Re: Politics, not Good

Okay, got any sources of your own?

Re: Politics, not Good

Got those links bruv?

Robo-Shinkansen rolls slowly – for now – across 5km of Japan

Re: Up the workers!

The previous owner doused it in enough superglue to give it a nice glazed donut look, but that hasn't stopped one half of the fob body from breaking off, which is what holds the key neck. My only option was to further douse it and tape it up for good measure.

This also means that should the battery die I'll have to try and carefully de-gunk it or I'll be SOL.

Re: Up the workers!

Don't even get me started on car keys.

My 2006 commuter car has the keyfob (made of thin plastic, as you do) connected to the actual key. The car can detect if the fob is close to the ignition key slot. If the car turns over and the fob isn't present after a second, it kills the fuel pump and the car stops. So, no aftermarket keys, no spare keys without the fob attached, and no using your own car if the bulky fob breaks off like mine has. It's currently secured together with superglue and packing tape and seems it will not last much longer.

And yes, they no longer make the fobs anymore, and it does not appear to be user-serviceable or programmable. Not that that will stop me if my hand is forced...

I get that this is for security, but I would rather my car do the engine starty bit when I tell it to, thank you.

Reviving a classic: ThinkPad modder rattles tin to fund new motherboard for 2008's T60 and T61 series of laptops

I was using my trusty X220T as a server while on its dock for years up until I got a propet piece of kit for the job. Only problems with it are the terrible thermals and quickly dying battery—everything else is fine.

Matrix for the masses platform Element One goes live: $5 a month with WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram bridges

Re: Open Bridges? Maybe not.

That's kind of unfair. The whole point is to give Matrix users the option to better centralize their own communication network. If you want to join a Matrix room from IRC, then become a Matrix user yourself: set up your own server and bridge and do it. It's not hard, did it myself like 3 weeks ago and it took me an afternoon. How else do you expect this to work?

...Also, if your response to this is "well I prefer using simple/command line clients", Element is surprisingly simple and clean, and there are multiple options for CLI Matrix clients, including one for Weechat. With the latter, you'd be able to IRC while you Matrix, without the need for a bridge at all.

Re: WHAT?

Increased adoption for Matrix is definitely a plus. They are also planning E2EE for all bridges, though I don't think it's done yet. You can still do E2EE on Matrix communications.

Signal and iMessage are still controlled by third parties on their servers and at their discretion. At least with Matrix you have the option to roll your own.

Yes, of course there's now malware for Windows Subsystem for Linux

Unfortunately WSL2 is not compatible with the latest LTSC, so it still has some life left.

Scalpel! Superglue! This mouse won't fix its own ball

Re: Ball crud

Not long after your post, someone uploaded a video.

China to push RISC-V to global prominence – but maybe into a corner, too, says analyst

China already steals designs, and now it's even more beneficial for them to do so since there won't be any international competition for the resulting domestic revisions.

Re: Redistribution

I don't think China needs to do much of anything to tarnish the name of communism. Looks a bit rusted already, really.

Re: better power consumption performance promise

You're a bit outdated, their "ghost cities" are being populated quickly as they reap the benefits of selling them at high prices and making citizens happy with the dictatorship. Probably how they're getting away with raising the child limit, economically.

Ransomware crims saying 'We'll burn your data if you get a negotiator' can't be legally paid off anyway

Re: It is easy for us to say "don't pay"

If anyone "deserves" to be punished, it's the management that allowed the company to be put in such a position. The boots on the ground employees likely have little to no say in the direction of the IT department, even the IT staff themselves, while the upper managrment does. If the employee was not directed to do something, and something bad happens to the company because of it, it's the manager's fault. Get rid of that manager, salvage what you can, and those hundred some innocent employees hopefully get to keep their jobs.

Re: If we see professional negotiator from Recovery Company™ – we will just destroy the data.

There's also the fact that there's no incentive for them to actually delete any exfiltrated data, besides a potential increase to legal woes if they get caught. Who's going to stop them extorting the same mark twice with the same data, after all?

"Oh hey we found some juicy data in your previously extorted files, so we're extorting you again! Surprise, a criminal organization lied!"

Re: They called themselves "Evil Corp"?

The paperwork for sanction placed againt them was delivered to the courthouse in a very slow moving steamroller. Save the enviroment! Flatten bumpy roads! It's a win-win!