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azdle

@ azdle @news.idlestate.org

Posts
12
Comments
122
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • How programmers comment their code

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  • Unless you're working with people who are too smart, then sometimes the code only explains the how. Why did the log processor have thousands of lines about Hilbert Curves? I never could figure it out even after talking with the person that wrote it.

  • It's called attaining divinity

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  • C was originally created as a "high-level" language, being more abstract (aka high-level) than the other languages at the time. But now it's basically considered very slightly more abstract than machine code when compared to the much higher level high-level languages we have today.

  • which dynamic dns hoster?

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  • IMO, the best free option is https://freedns.afraid.org/. The biggest downside of that one is that you have to login a couple times a year (IIRC?) to keep it active. I actually still use this even though I have a paid domain, I just CNAME my real domains to the afraid dynamic name. That was easier than changing the config every time I become unhappy with my domain registrar and have to reconfigure everything after swapping.

  • Purism (creator of FOSS friendly laptops and phones) offers buying shares of the company, reports revenue of 8M in 2022 and 5M in 2021

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  • I'll start off with a proviso, I haven't s much touched my Librem 5 in at least a year (maybe even 2?), so if they've had some massive turn around in that time I don't know about it. All of this post is just what I think I remember, if you want actual facts go dig around in the wayback machine or something.

    The promise of the L5 was super grandiose. They were going to create this mobile device that could completely replace your android device. It was going to launch with a custom matrix client that would let you make voice and video calls, which no other matrix client at the time could do. It was gonna be great and it was going to be delivered in a year.

    Now clearly that was never going to go off without a hitch. I don't blame them for being late nor for not delivering all their promises right at launch. But when things started getting delayed they seemed to be doing everything in their power to not communicate with backers. And anytime they would say something, they would say "well we didn't hit that deadline, but we promise we're totally super duper close now". And then they'd blow through that deadline without a word too.

    I did eventually get my phone, obviously, but it wasn't anything like a usable device. The battery that it came with was smaller than advertised and it didn't have any power management so you got a few hours of battery life. The cameras just didn't exist as far as the software was concerned. The privacy switches would randomly kill power to the modem when you lightly brushed against them without the switch moving out of the 'on' position. Which was super annoying since you had to reboot the phone any time you wanted to turn the modem back on. And rebooting took ages.

    Even at this point I was still rooting for them to succeed. I really want a proper Linux phone and have since 2008.

    But ever since then, I really haven't seen much of anything change with the software, at least for as long as I was paying attention to it. One of the cameras got support added by a community member at some point, but the pictures it was taking were so bad it looked like some 1999 digital camera taking pictures in a dimly lit room even in full sunlight. There was no way to know if an application in their store was going to work or not, most didn't, mostly because they were meant for a larger screen & a mouse.

    I pulled it out a few times on and off over the years, but the last time I did, I couldn't even figure out how to get it to update. So, I haven't really even touched it since then. (I've got it out connected to power to see what it's like now. Though, I'm not sure it's charging, is flashing green (with an occasional flicker of red) a good thing?)

    Since receiving it, the only communication I've gotten from Purism has been "Investment Opportunities". I'm not sure why I'd invest in a company that still hasn't delivered what it promised me over 5 years ago.

    I absolutely want them to succeed, and I hope they prove my pessimism wrong, but at this point I absolutely would not put my money on that happening.

  • Purism (creator of FOSS friendly laptops and phones) offers buying shares of the company, reports revenue of 8M in 2022 and 5M in 2021

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  • Why is TikTok seen as privacy invading and bad, but Facebook is fine?

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  • If saturated fat is the most unhealthy part of cooking oils, then why don't we remove it?

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  • the encryption keys, why can't the government just sneak on them?

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  • You're not mistaken, it is definitely possible with at least RSA, though, I would guess it may not always be possible. It also sounds like it's still a bad idea unless you know all of the parameters used to generate the keys and can be sure what information is actually encoded in the keys.

  • Haier response to my feedback after Louis' YT video.

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  • That doesn't mean the issue wasn't/won't be escalated. It might even mean it's more likely since someone bothered to make a response macro for it, they presumably got more than one or two emails about it. So it's probably more likely to make it on a "list of issues we saw this week/sprint/month/quarter".

  • I've never had a Steam account or done PC gaming. I have a OLED SteamDeck coming, what do I need to know?

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  • Why docker

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  • How good/bad is Firefox sync.

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  • As others have said, it's quite good on privacy. For the truly paranoid, IIRC you can even self-host the sync server.

    From the security perspective of privacy, do make sure to use a good password for the Mozilla account, the account password is also the encryption key for the E2E encryption.

  • The fall of Firefox: Mozilla's once-popular web browser slides into irrelevance

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  • The day Firefox shutters its doors is the day the internet truly dies.

    *the web

    The internet has so far been doing a much better job surviving as a proper decentralized system than the web.

  • Surgeon Simulator and Lost Skies devs Bossa Studios lay off a third of staff due to "perfect storm of events"

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  • Oof, that's rough. I really hope they're able to recover. I Am Fish is my all time favorite game, I really hope they survive to make an 'I Am Gull' (or w/e).

    (P.S. to a mod: English seems to be blocked as a language on this community.)

  • What is your favorite controller(s) to use with a laptop?

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  • are you able to use the bluetooth functionality on Linux then?

    Yep. Well, I've technically only tested it on SteamDeck, but it works out of the box there, so I'm fairly confident it'd work on other distros too.

  • What is your favorite controller(s) to use with a laptop?

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  • I use an Xbox Series X/S controller (I think? I don't actually own an Xbox Series (is that the name?)). I usually use it via Bluetooth (requires a FW update that can only be installed via windows to actually work), but I aprecieate that there is also a dongle I could use (though, sadly that requires out of tree kernel drivers [edit: on Linux]).

  • Threads accounts will be available on Mastodon and other services that use the ActivityPub protocol.

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  • Should I move to Docker?

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  • Unfortunately, no. Samba needs a different label. Doing that relabels things so that only containers (and anything unrestriced) can access those files.

  • Should I move to Docker?

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  • IMO, yes. Docker (or at least OCI containers) aren't going anywhere. Though one big warning to start with, as a sysadmin, you're going to be absolutely aghast at the security practices that most docker tutorials suggest. Just know that it's really not that hard to do things right (for the most part[^0]).

    I personally suggest using rootless podman with docker-compose via the podman-system-service.

    Podman re-implements the docker cli using the system namespacing (etc.) features directly instead of through a daemon that runs as root. (You can run the docker daemon rootless, but it clearly wasn't designed for it and it just creates way more headaches.) The Podman System Service re-implements the docker daemon's UDS API which allows real Docker Compose to run without the docker-daemon.

    [^0]: If anyone can tell me how to set SELinux labels such that both a container and a samba server can have access, I could fix my last remaining major headache.