Posts by Eddie G

Will Flatpak and Snap replace desktop Linux native apps?

Static or Dynamic

Would be interested to hear why (some code at least) can't be distributed as a big, old statically linked execs (no dependency hell)? I certainly do this with scientific code (that is bounced around various machines).

The arguments against concerning size/start up times don't seem to be an issue when Snap etc have similar issues. Updates require a full replacement, but (again) that's what the container systems seem to do anyway.

Drones aim to undo Ukraine's landmine problem

Re: great respect for Ukraine here

Specifically "...or Ukrainian volunteers mining roads with anti-tank mines. One of those videos showed a US international volunteer setting that mine.". The Ottawa Convention places no restriction whatsoever on anti-vehicle mines (to cut-and-paste directly from Wikipedia ... which maybe a bad move).

I agree with your point(s) about the use of anti-personnel mines, but felt you weakened your argument by muddying the waters with evidence of non-anti-personnel (technically) mine laying.

Re: great respect for Ukraine here

You are conflating a couple of things there. The Ottawa (and subsequent rounds of the) Convention do not include anti-tank mines, e.g.,:

"Mines designed to be detonated by the presence, proximity or contact of a Vehicle as opposed to a person, that are equipped with anti-handling devices, are not considered anti-personnel mines as a result of being so equipped."

Ubuntu 23.04 'Lunar Lobster' beta is here in all its glitchy glory

Re: I like Linux but...

I would guess part of the problem is the constant move towards "snap" packages? All of the compressed images in /var/lib/snapd/snaps ... all the uncompressed versions in /snap ... plus the cache directories. There are normally two versions of each package (current and previous). It soon adds up.

This drag sail could prevent spacecraft from turning into long-term orbiting junk. We spoke to its inventors ahead of launch

I assume the problem is with the mix of metre and fiber in the same sentence

UK celebrates 25 years of wasteful, 'underperforming' government IT projects

Re: small proportion of permanent secretarieshave first-hand experience of digital business change

I just saw "sed" and thought you where performing some sort of text transformation.

Try placing a pot plant directly above your CRT monitor – it really ties the desk together

Re: It’s amazing what you learn here.

I always have "alias DieHard=vi" set in my .profile!

Re: Back in the olden days

BFI Player doesn't support Linux of Firefox ... so they can just go and crash and burn (there is probably a public information short about that, but I couldn't possible view it).

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

Re: Still brickin'...

Someone seemed not to have too much of a problem installing Ubuntu 8.10 (way back in 2009):

https://chrisjean.com/setting-up-ubuntu-on-my-dell-studio-17/

I'd be surprised if things were any trickier with current distributions.

Watch this: Ingenuity – Earth's first aircraft to fly on another planet – take off on Mars

Re: No doubt the conspiracy theorists will be calling 'fake'!

Wikipedia tells me that it uses a Garmin LIDAR Lite v3 laser altimeter ($130 from Sparkfun).

It also has an inertial measurement unit (IMU).

The JavaScript ecosystem is 'hopelessly fragmented'... so here is another runtime: Deno is now a company

Re: Mozilla clueless

Try this

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/wiki#download

Expect €5m cloud, says European Centre for Midrange Weather Forecasts

Re: On premises cloud computing environment

Well, this facility will be in Italy ... whilst most of its users will be elsewhere in Europe. So it's not that odd a description.

Re: only JUST in the UK as of December 10th

There is a required spilt in personnel; anyone directly paid by the (EU funded) Copernicus programme is due to move out of the (post Brexit) UK. This includes, for example, a lot of the climate services projects.

LibreOffice 7.1 beta boasts impressive range of features let down by a lack of polish and poor mobile efforts

Re: Annoying little Libre ? well...........

Well, my Linux distribution didn't come with LibreOffice.

Anyway, if you don't want it, then uninstall it (then install OpenOffice).