Posts by VoiceOfTruth

Cloud security unicorn cuts 20% of staff after raising $1.3b

If cloud security was any good

Maybe there would be less need for a cloud security company.

I'm being flippant.

China offering ten nations help to run their cyber-defenses and networks

Re: There are two ways of taking over a country

-> In that context I see the US "help" to Ukraine as a ploy to establish a hold on the food supply to Europe

Ukraine has already asked for debt 'forgiveness' of about $50 billion. This war, brought about not by Russia or Ukraine, but by the USA and its poodles could not have come at a better time for Ukraine. I can hear them from here: let us off the debt and we will be your poodles.

Re: There are two ways of taking over a country

-> like many of China's "donations" to Africa

Britain, France, Germany, and Italy all went to Africa. We plundered everything we could. It rather puts your donations-in-quotes into perspective. We don't have a toenail to stand on and point an accusing finger.

with the help of Chinese tech vendors

That will automatically be more secure than the American backdoor-included crap.

Huawei claims it’s halved the time needed to build a 1,000-rack datacenter

Re: The US has done its job well..

And practically every month we read about new amazing and incredible security vulnerabilities in US equipment. If the matter was truly about security you would not see a Cisco anywhere.

Reminds me of Sun's Modular Datacentre

The difference was Sun's offering was designed to be portable. But the principle holds.

Broadcom to 'focus on rapid transition to subscriptions' for VMware

While I use LibreOffice personally, its database is very weak. And if you happen to need a desktop database like Access, it is not really an alternative.

VMWare was concentrating on products which people pay for, LibreOffice was concentrating on telling people about free software.

Perl Steering Council lays out a backwards compatible future for Perl 7

Re: Backwards compatibility

I don't have a problem with steam engines. I have a problem with people clinging to the steam engine method of programming. We've moved beyond that. There are very few steam engine manufacturers in the world. That era has passed. Why isn't Perl looking forward rather than backwards?

Would you make an electric car today with some steam valves added on just because? Perl needs to move on.

Re: Sensibly written

While I used Perl for a few years about 25 years ago, I would not want to go back to it. If you use any of the shorthand stuff it becomes illegible if you don't use Perl very regularly.

Re: Backwards compatibility

Imagine that your first introduction to Perl is a DNS thing. I know, I'll use Perl. Oh look, there's an example on the Perl web site. I'll use that.

Oh, it does not work. What have I done wrong? I've typed it exactly as it is there. Maybe I'll copy and paste it. Oh, it still does not work. Is it my version of Perl?

How the Perl web site has the audacity to inflict this sort of non-working example on the world I do not know. Why people defend non-working examples just because they are free I do not know.

Re: Backwards compatibility

-> I've wasted exactly zero seconds worrying about this non-problem.

How much time around the world has been wasted by typing $year += 1900;

Don't calculate the answer using Perl because you might need to munge the answer.

Re: Backwards compatibility

I know all this crap. And this is a new version of Perl, like Perl 6 was a new version of Perl. It's time to fix it and not keep saying 'it has always been that way'. This is the sort of crap which puts people off Perl, yet the Perl Luddites cling onto it. They have time to rename Perl 6 to Raku, but not fix basic deficiencies.

Go in its time package makes life easy. When I print the year I get the correct year, not a year -1900:

package main

import (

"fmt"

"time"

)

func main() {

t := time.Now()

fmt.Println(t.Year())

}

go run year.go

2022

Re: Backwards compatibility

-> Feel free to report the broken example (politely) to https://github.com/perlorg/perlweb. The fix is "use feature 'say';"

How about the Perl web site gets off its collective arse and publish working examples? It's incredible that they put this crap out there without even looking at it.

Re: Backwards compatibility

Hello. We live in the year 2000 something.

Re: Backwards compatibility

That's what was said 20 years ago. These people would still be using steam engines if they could.

The year returned by Perl localtime is wrong. It has always been wrong. So everyone in the whole world who uses it has to work around it.

Backwards compatibility

-> It all sounds wonderful, but the price would have been the breaking of some backwards compatibility

This has been around forever, and I don't care about backwards compatibility 25 years later. I want to avoid doing this with Perl.

#!/usr/bin/perl

my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime(time);

print("Year according to Perl: $year\n");

$year += 1900;

print("Fixed year: $year\n");

Year according to Perl: 122

Fixed year: 2022

Before you chime in I know that I can do:

use Time::Piece;

my $t = Time::Piece->new();

print $t->year . "\n";

That wasn't my point. My point is localtime(time) has forever been broken in Perl, and the reasons given were 'backwards compatibility'. Move on, Perl.

Then there's the Perl web site. Full of tutorials, some of which do not work. How about DNS? (https://learn.perl.org/examples/dns.html). If I copy and paste that (changing the resolver IP) and run it, do I get some DNS result? No, instead I get:

String found where operator expected at ./dns.pl line 17, near "say "Found an A record: ""

(Do you need to predeclare say?)

syntax error at ./dns.pl line 17, near "say "Found an A record: ""

Execution of ./dns.pl aborted due to compilation errors.

It's not good.

Campaigners warn of legal challenge against Privacy Shield enhancements

'Our' politicians vs Schrems

They probably regard him as a nuisance. They so badly want to do what Uncle Sam tells them.

Version 251 of systemd coming soon to a Linux distro near you

Re: Software Junk

-> What most people want

Call to the masses = fail.

Re: Software Junk

-> So, what you are saying is, we were sold junk that was insecure?

When you bought it, were you told "we will provide updates for ever more"? I think not.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

Re: Poettering is a dick

-> proving that when they cried for "multi-platform", the actually meant "runs on Linux". They didn't give a shite about all the stupid linuxisms other unixes have to work around to get software to work.

Yes! Some people confuse open source with Linux open source. They are two different things.

Re: Hacking off the Chromebook Locks

(b). Very good. So you did a bit of research or had prior knowledge.

Re: Software Junk

Evidently you haven't.

Some people, and particularly some people in the Linux mob, think that manufacturers owe them everything for ever. Can you ring up Ford today and say "hello, I have a Model T and it needs a new bobble'? No, you can't. Well you can try but you will get no for an answer. The fact that your Model T has worked up until now is irrelevant.

When I asked earlier how long hardware should be supported for, the first reply was 'a continual update'. In other words forever.

Have you ever worked in IT? I am guessing not, because you don't seem to have a clue. I cannot think of any piece of hardware we have bought that did not have an EOL date. Quite often we run that hardware beyond EOL, in a less critical role. Other times we had third party support (sometimes). If you look today at Cisco, Oracle (Sun), HP, etc, they announce EOL dates for hardware.

So why would a cheapo chromebook be expected to last with continual updates until the next ice age?

Re: Software Junk

Why would you purchase such hardware in the first place? A foolish penguin and his money are soon parted.

Re: Software Junk

-> Chromebooks are locked down so it's not possible for someone else to support it

Blah blah blah. Never heard of rooting a device?

Re: Software Junk

-> aftermarket spares

= not from the original manufacturer.

Re: Software Junk

-> Bad example.

You don't see the flaw in your argument? You didn't get it from the original supplier, did you?

Re: I hate to say it but it's working

I wrote in a post to a different article (about the release of FreeBSD 13) that "It seems to me that Linux has become a platform for running systemd, rather than systemd being a tool for Linux."

At some point enough Linux users (or perhaps one of the major distros) will wake up and dump systemd. It is the antithesis of UNIX as a whole and should be called out as such.

The supposed positives to systemd are are not actually all that positive. They bring some benefits. But those benefits are hardly necessities. All the major improvements to UNIX (and by extension Linux) were made before systemd. Now we have software dependent on systemd. How did this happen?

Unless systemd is stopped, it will emerge as a permanent layer above the kernel and everything will have to pass through it.

Re: Software Junk

Well I see your point of view but I disagree. At some point it is not worth time for a vendor to support something. I have seen a 70 year old water boiler in a house. Should the manufacturer still be keeping spare heating elements around (if they even still in business)?

If you were paying a continual service fee for the software that would be another matter. But I am guessing that you are not.

Re: Software Junk

-> Which is really not good enough. A device that is used as an interface to the wild and hostile world of the internet really needs its security to be up-to-date.

How long would you expect updates? 10 years? 20 years?

-> Why is the init handling system updates.

Becoz systemd is not an init system. It is The Blob, it is the boiling mass of alien gubbins in the Quatermass 2, it is The Thing. Our miserable earthly weapons are useless against it.

You will be consumed.

Elon Musk needs more cash for Twitter buy after Tesla margin loan lapses

Earth, May 2022

The world hangs on every word of Elon Musk.

Minimal, systemd-free Alpine Linux releases version 3.16

Alpine Linux is indeed different

-> if you want to broaden your skills

Broadening skills is a good thing and I encourage it. My opinion: we learn more from when things go wrong than when they go right. I am in favour of skilled Linux (or UNIX generally) users.

-> Alpine is interesting because it's not just another me-too distro

I prefer the term YALD to "another me-too distro".

-> being unusually small and simple

That is a good thing. Far too many YALDs are complex and bloated. They are near copies of each other excepting a few insignificant bells and whistles. Alpine is a worthy distro.

UK opens national security probe into 2021 sale of local wafer fab to Chinese company

-> Sale of IP and national interests is certainly a service the UK government now offers.

There it is. The government are pimps. They don't do anything themselves because they have useless degrees.

Woof woof woof

How do you like our barking today, master? British politicians doing America's work. Thanks for the bone. Woof woof woof.

These same politicians would sell the whole country for a few dollars.

UK government reviewing stake in BT owned by French tycoon Patrick Drahi

The British poodle

Would the government kick up a stick if it was an American individual who bought this stake? Good boy, here's another bone.

Predator spyware sold with Chrome, Android zero-day exploits to monitor targets

-> Definitely if they do it in the EU, UK,

In the UK it would be rubberstamped by the judiciary.

Foxconn factory fiasco could leave Wisconsinites on the hook for $300m

-> Because they could

Because of court orders to do so.

-> kidnapping innocent Brits

If you are referring to Nazanin Ratcliffe, that is half the story. She was a dual national. And like a lot of dual nationals, when it suits them they are one nationality and it when it doesn't they are the other.

Re: A lesson learned...

One does have to wonder how many backhanders and brown envelopes were involved.

Is Wisconsin known as a high tech state? I don't think so.

We have bigger targets than beating Oracle, say open source DB pioneers

Re: Oracle and MySQL

Fair enough. Your comment is much more reasoned than my mildly sarastic one.

-> The truth is that MySQL was never going to replace Oracle.

Yes, this was just hyperbole. It was never going to happen. MySQL has some good niches, and getting it up and running is a doddle. But it wasn't and isn't a drop in for Oracle.

Postgresql is a great pleasure to use.

Oracle and MySQL

-> but Oracle has been doing pretty good engineering in MySQL,"

Yeah, fixing a shed load of bugs and massively improving it over all.

-> "They don't do development in public," Zaitsev said.

MySQL was not always open source, was it?

Quite a bit of sour grapes in this article.

Original killer PC spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3 now runs on Linux natively

ABI

-> The closest thing to compatibility between them was an ABI called the Intel Binary Compatibility Standard or iBCS

FreeBSD still has this, in the form of brandelf. I needed to run some Linux binaries on FreeBSD a few years ago and this worked.

Quad nations pledge deeper collaboration on infosec, data-sharing, and more

The quad

Quite how Japan thinks it has any moral right to 'neutralise China' is beyond me. It had a filthy and criminal history in China, and should hang its head in shame for ever more. Instead it celebrates its war criminals.

It's 2022 and there are still malware-laden PDFs in emails exploiting bugs from 2017

Re: Give us a small PDF reader

I last used Evince years ago, but gave it another spin at your suggestion. On FreeBSD there is a evince-lite package/port which doesn't drag in 4 tons of Gnome stuff, just a half a dozen small dependencies. It's actually not bad at all.

Give us a small PDF reader

One which doesn't try to do everything under the sun, but just renders onto the screen the PDF. Don't say Foxit, that is bloated these days too.

FTC urged to protect data privacy of women visiting abortion clinics

People?

-> People living in those states would, in theory, have to travel to another state where abortion is legal to carry out the procedure lawfully

Do you mean women?

New audio server Pipewire coming to next version of Ubuntu

Re: Try it!

Is that what you have heard on the grapevine, or what you have heard with your own Mk1 ears?

Re: Will it finally fix the bluetooth HSP/HFP issue

-> I'm wrong, the two need to interact in a meaningful way for this to work.

Why is this so in the Linux world? How many Bluetooth devices and sound devices are there for Windows?

I turn on my BT headset and it works on Mac and Windows. On Linux I have to wait until two groups of people knock their heads together in a meaningful way?

-> So that's tomorrow's project

A project to turn on sound. Welcome to the Year of the Linux Desktop.

Re: Will it finally fix the bluetooth HSP/HFP issue

You get a thumbs up for using Void Linux. Why does Void Linux garner a thumbs up from your humble VoiceOfTruth? Because, as it states on the web site Void Linux is 'Not a fork!'. That's right, it's not just another Ubu clone with some new awesome desktop wallpaper.

I may be given to mild hyperbole when I refer to tens of thousands of Linux distros. Void Linux goes one further than me! 'Unlike trillions of other existing distros, Void is not a modification of an existing distribution.' There you have it. Trillions of other distros.