Will it take an SD Card?
No?
No it is, then.
Posts by ForthIsNotDead
937 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Sep 2009
We seem to have materialized in a universe in which Barney the Purple Dinosaur is designing iPhones for Apple
Would be so cool if everyone normalized these pesky data leaks, says data-leaking Facebook in leaked memo
Wednesday 21st April 2021 10:12 GMT 
Confusing
There's some quite confusing nomenclature in this article. It makes reference to 'vulnerabilities' and 'scraping'. But scraping is not a vulnerability - it's merely the act of code 'reading'/parsing the output of a page (in a web context). That is not a vulnerability. It's just software, and is very very difficult to defend against.
I'm no fan of Facebook at all, but I have some sympathy with their argument at least at the technical level. It is very very difficult to defend against scraping simply because, server-side, it is is very difficult to discern a human reader from a (cleverly developed) scraping application. Therefore, I can (up to a point) see where they are coming from. To be clear, I'm not defending the lifting of 533 million users records - and maybe that's where the vuln crept in - nefarious persons had access to more than they should have had access to. But the scraping itself is not a vuln.
"Longer term, though, we expect more scraping incidents and think it’s important to both frame this as a broad industry issue and normalize the fact this activity happens regularly.
I hate to say this, but that sounds reasonable enough. It does happen regularly. Heck, Google do it to most news websites the world over! In fact, they do it to YOUR site when they index it. The fight against scraping is an arms race, just like the fight against web tracking. Sophisticated, custom-written scraping apps will pause, scroll the 'screen' up and down, interact with 'like' buttons, share content etc to mimic the actions of a human user. I don't think there's much that can be done about it.
More nefarious, and the article doesn't really point this out (though I noticed a commenter above spotted it immediately) is the obvious attempt at distraction/re-direction away from the fact that 533 freaking MILLION records were snarfed, and instead, they respond to the scraping side of the issue.
We see you Facebook.
Debian devs decide best response to Richard Stallman controversy is … nothing
Patent battle over Facebook Live and 'walkie talkie' tech rattles through High Court in London
Microsoft's Surface Laptop 4 now includes AMD options for biz customers, boasts up to 19 hours of battery life
So how's .NET 6 coming along? Oh wow, Microsoft's multi-platform framework now includes... Windows
Tuesday 13th April 2021 10:22 GMT 
Nope.
Additionally, Microsoft has made progress on its plans for "hybrid desktop apps" based on embedding Blazor web controls into desktop applications. In this preview, developers can add BlazorWebView controls into WPF and Windows Forms applications running on .NET 6.0. Support for .NET MAUI is planned for a future preview. Microsoft is hyping this approach as a way of modernising existing desktop applications en route to becoming web applications, or cross-platform desktop applications. Blazor allows HTML5 controls and CSS styling to be programmed using C# rather than JavaScript.
We ran up a hybrid WPF and BlazorWebView application using a sample from developer Jorge Arteiro. It worked, but for an application running on the desktop on .NET 6.0, does it make sense to embed chunks of C# running on a separate .NET runtime delivered via web technology?
You know what? I think I'm just gonna give this whole thing a massive miss. I simply don't want anything to do with it. I like the C# language very much, but I simply cannot, and (more seriously, I suppose) will not learn all these new presentation frameworks/systems just to place some fucking GUI objects in a window.
I'm going to leave all this shit to someone else. I dunno - I just feel like we really need to get back to basics on this stuff. Surely the correct way to do this is for MS to produce one system, and have platform specific middleware that knows how to draw those objects on its host operating system. You know... Like Java did... 25 FUCKING YEARS AGO.
What the fuck are you doing, Microsoft?
</rant>
Android, iOS beam telemetry to Google, Apple even when you tell them not to – study
Mozilla VPN now nudges users to put shields up on dodgy networks, adds LAN access
Wednesday 31st March 2021 12:19 GMT 
"The first is a bit of nagging that is generated when a Windows, Linux or Mac device is connected to a network that suffers from weak encryption or lacks password protection. A notification will now appear suggesting that maybe something a little stronger is needed. Clicking this will fire up the VPN service."
That's actually quite a useful function. We might snort at it, but think of your spouse, or kids, or parents using their computers while in a coffee house/uni dorm, or something like that. I say yay. I'm really liking the drive for privacy that Mozilla is on at the moment.
Scottish National Party members found among list of names signed up to rival Alba Party after website whoopsie
Tuesday 30th March 2021 10:49 GMT
Alba
People of a certain age will recall Alba, the manufacturer of 'hifi' (really, quite lo-fi) equipment, walkmans, radio cassettes, radio clocks etc. They were pretty big in the 80s. You couldn't walk into a Dixons without seeing a wall full myriad of Alba twin-cassette (with soft eject), hi-speed dubbing, 3 waveband tuner, with graphic equaliser and turntable with rumble filter (copied from Amstrad) systems. All for £99.99.
Like these (SFW)
Is the new Alba party any relation?
Tools down: Singapore’s training bots and drones to digitize construction work
Raspberry Pi Foundation boss waves off listing rumours, says biz discussions may have been 'over-interpreted'
OVH founder says UPS fixed up day before blaze is early suspect as source of data centre destruction
Friday 12th March 2021 13:05 GMT
Re: 300 Cameras
If it really was a battery fire then any amount of cameras will not have made any difference. You could have been standing right in front of it with a fire extinguisher in your hand. Would have made no difference.
The only solution to this potential issue is to locate the batteries away from the servers. I mean hundreds of feet away in a separate building. That of course escalates costs enormously, but what will be the cost of this disaster?
Don't be a fool, cover your tool: How IBM's mighty XT keyboard was felled by toxic atmosphere of the '80s
Friday 12th March 2021 10:18 GMT
The 80s were generally a happy time...
The music was great. But Jesus... there was a lot of fag smoke, fag ends, and ashtrays everywhere. It was awful. One the best laws ever passed (I think it was by Labour - might have been as a result of laws passed in the EU) was banning smoking in public places. What a difference. It's amazing how one becomes accustomed to norms so quickly. Watch an old episode of The Sweeny or anything around that time and it seems outrageous to see people smoking in offices!
I remember when I left school in 1987 I was sent to work on a YTS helping to run a really old ICL computer system for an agricultural dealer (Shukers, in Shrewsbury - in case anyone remembers it!). One of the ladies in the office was such a prodigious chain smoker that she was given her own office. And this in an office full of smokers. She was one of my favourites, but god.. the stench and fog when you went in there, and the yellow walls and ceilings... Shudder...!
This developer created the fake programming language MOVA to catch out naughty recruiters, résumé padders
Twitter sues Texas AG to halt 'retaliatory' demand for internal content-moderation rulebook in wake of Trump ban
Thursday 11th March 2021 09:32 GMT
Re: First comment is obviously a sealion, figures
"It's a far-right haven. It's fair comment to call it a far-right-friendly place. It may have non-far-right people on it, but it's known, well known, for being home to far-right internet outcasts."
Define 'far right'. I think you actually mean 'right wing'. In my book, 'far right' would be jack-booted Swastika toting Nazis (even though the Nazis and Fascists were left-wing political institutions - but never mind).
It's become clear to me over the years that, as far as people 'on the left' are concerned anyone with views to the right of theirs is 'far right'. It's got to the point where I don't even argue about it any more.
If you'd have said Parler is/was predominantly right wing, I would have agreed with you, in the same way that Twitter is predominantly left wing.
A Code War has replaced The Cold War. And right now we’re losing it
Wednesday 10th March 2021 13:41 GMT
Rust to the rescue?
I do wonder.
Are we on the precipice of being able to deliver reliable software on a large scale? It's in our hands I suppose. Regarding Rust specifically, I note that we've had languages such as Java that have already solved issues such as memory fragmentation and memory leaks, though those languages never solved the shared resources/threading/race-conditions issues that plague so many large-scale commercial software development projects.
Rust in particular has made great strides in solving these problems, at the expense of some complexity, it could be argued. I do think that, metaphorically speaking, we're standing at the foot of some event horizon in classical computing paradigms. Rust (and it may not be Rust, but some derivative that has similar ideas and conventions, just expressed differently) maybe the start of the next phase of software development technology. Where it's effectively not possible to write the software 'wrongly'.
It's in our hands. Or, within reach. It's up to us to grab it and use it.
Linus Torvalds issues early Linux Kernel update to fix swapfile SNAFU
Linux Mint emits fix for memory-gobbling Cinnamon – and future version may insist on some updates
'It's dead, Jim': Torvalds marks Intel Itanium processors as orphaned in Linux kernel
Takes from the taxpayer, gives to the old – by squishing a bug in Thatcherite benefits system
We turn away for a second and Corellium is already showing off Ubuntu on Apple Silicon
Judge denies Parler an injunction to force AWS to host the antisocial network for internet outcasts
Friday 22nd January 2021 09:21 GMT
Re: Another snowflake
Agree. There's a huge difference in 'tone' between the British and American Register writers. As soon as I opened this article I checked the author, saw it was a San Francisco writer, and thought "Oh, here we go."
I'd be more inclined to support their argument if they could make a convincing argument as to why Parler should be shut down, and Twitter allowed to remain online? If the argument is *truly* one about violent speech, then Twitter is every but as guilty as Parler. Thing is, it's got nothing to do with violent/hateful speech. It's all about Parler being primarily right-wing (bad) and Twitter left-wing (good).
It's as simple as that.
Friday 22nd January 2021 09:14 GMT
Re: Censorship by Private Companies
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
And just like that, Amazon Web Services forked Elasticsearch, Kibana. Was that part of the plan, Elastic?
Friday 22nd January 2021 09:04 GMT
Re: amazon just keep on eating...
Just boycott Amazon. We're building a large SCADA system in the cloud. None of it is on Amazon. Because they are shady bastards who cannot be trusted. Not only do they not play fair wrt Open Source, but they will simply collude with others to shut your business down if they don't like you, as we have just seen recently.
Who can trust a business that operates like that? What happens if our venture becomes very successful and very profitable? We'd expect a call from Amazon execs saying "Nice little earner you've built there. Running on our kit we see. Shame if something happened to it."
It's been a day or so and nope, we still can't wrap our head around why GitHub would fire someone for saying Nazis were storming the US Capitol
Friday 15th January 2021 09:46 GMT
Re: Communist = Nazist
Well said. I wish I could give you more than one up-vote. Instead, here's a virtual beer. --->
To add to the literary works that you cited, I would also add Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, and Anna Funder's Stasiland, an eye-opening insight into life in the GDR running up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. I've read them all and they are simply heart breaking. Thanks for the recommended reading. I've just ordered them from Amazon. However, next on my reading list is Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
Regards
Lay down your souls to the gods of rock 'n' roll: Conspiracy theorists' 5G 'vaccine' chip schematic is actually for a guitar pedal
Arm at 30: From Cambridge to the world, one plucky British startup changed everything
Mall of duty: Black Ops. No, you're not a customer, you're just an ad audience metric
Wednesday 25th November 2020 13:13 GMT
It's completely anonymous so I guess the argument is they don't need your consent. You're in a public space so there's no expectation of privacy etc.
I take your point though. It's a small step to correlate your presence in front of that screen with your phone GPS via Facebook or whatever, and work out it's *you* standing in front of the screen. This doesn't have to be in real-time. It could be hours after the fact - perfectly fine for serving you custom adverts.
"Hey! We noticed you looking at Ann Summers! Here's our offers on dildo's and butt plugs!"
The thing is creepy.
Vodafone launches platform that promises to play nicely with dusty legacy IoT kit
Wednesday 25th November 2020 09:16 GMT
Re: So basically it's SCADA ...
Why do you say much less security? If anything, it will help to make a lot of old legacy RTUs *much* more secure. Literally tens of thousands of old RTUs are still connecting on dial-up modems, speaking widely-known and understood protocols (e.g. MODBUS, DNP3 etc.) over completely open lines. If I know the phone number of your RTU, there is literally nothing stopping me from dialling it up with a dial-up modem and a DNP3 server (for example) and exchanging data with it and god knows what else.
Getting those shonky old RTUs off of dial-up alone is a very good start. If they can be moved inside private APNs then it will make a significant contribution to security; anything is better than what we have now, and will make a nice stop-gap while these ageing and creaking old RTUs are slowly swapped out for more secure devices where security is baked in to the inherent design.
Cheers
UK Court of Appeal rebukes Home Office for exceeding its powers with bunkum 'national security' GSM gateway ban
China offers world its COVID QR Code movement passport at G20 Leaders' Meeting
YouTube is going to splash adverts all over your videos, and won't pay creators unless there's a big enough audience
Friday 20th November 2020 13:10 GMT
Re: This will drive good content away from YouTube
So, in the name of greed, all the good content will end up leaving YouTube and all that will be left is the dross, punctuated with so many mid-roll ads that nobody will bother watching.
I honestly think Google wouldn't mind at all if it goes under. I think they underestimated the absolutely collosal costs that running YouTube, with its insatiable appetite for hardware and storage resources entails. I may be wrong, but last time I read something on the matter, it was still making a net loss.
Add to that all the issues of policing content, copyright infringement, and the ever-increasing amounts of disk storage that is required to maintain it, they'd probably be quite glad if they could throw in the towel.
Some calcs on YouTube's storage requirements here (a few years old):
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-total-size-storage-capacity-of-YouTube-and-at-what-rate-is-it-increasing-How-is-Google-keeping-up-with-the-increasing-demands-of-Youtube%E2%80%99s-capacity-given-that-thousands-of-videos-are-uploaded-every-day?share=1
Microsoft emits Preview 3 of next-gen WinUI framework, says Linux support 'is not off our roadmap'
Friday 20th November 2020 11:06 GMT
Wow what a fuster cluck
This doesn't really enamour me to developing Windows applications, to be honest. I might as well develop in Python and use Tkinter as the GUI engine - the same code will run anywhere. Okay, so it might be as flashy, but at least I know I can continue to deploy my app years into the future and it'll 'just work'. Seems there's no such guarantee with Windows any more. Why? Why so many GUI implementations? Why introduce GUI dependencies? It used to be (in Windows) that you drew your GUI, filled in it's properties and events and you were done. I don't do Windows dev for a long time, but sounds like we've moved a long way away from that. Why? What a mess.
Dell online store charges 16 million dollars for new laptop with paint job
When humans return to the Moon in '2024', HPE would like us to remember: We built the computer that simmed this
Linux Foundation, IBM, Cisco and others back ‘Inclusive Naming Initiative’ to change nasty tech terms
Thursday 19th November 2020 09:52 GMT 
What is this heresey?
** The 14th Official Gathering of the Software Terms and Definitions Sub-Committee **
** Urgent Communique for immediate release **
It has been brought to the attention of the sub-committee this day, that the concept of 'Boolean', or 'binary' truth exists within the software development discipline. Comrades are reminded, that only the Software Terms and Definitions Sub-Committee or their appointed deputies thereof may adjudicate and adjudge on what is 'true' and what is 'false'. Comrades are respectfully reminded that evaluating 'truth' is a complex exercise, based on careful consideration of facts known (or unknown), opinions (where these align with permitted and authorised principles) and denunciations.
Comrades are therefore hereby instructed to submit all software boolean expressions for adjudication by the Software Terms and Definitions Sub-Committee (Boolean-Sub-Committee) for evaluation and ruling. Failure to comply with the above directive will be met with punitive consequences.
Thursday 19th November 2020 09:40 GMT 
So... looking at their alternative names...
... they prefer the following for master/slave:
Preferred:
* Control plane/control plane node
* Controller/doer
* Primary/replica
* Primary/secondary
Also acceptable:
* Leader/follower
* Parent/child
Comrades, I feel I have to lodge strong objection to 'leader/follower'. The very notion of a leader and a subservient follower is the very epitome of traditional bourgeoisie class structure. Did we not revolt in order to remove these class structures? Yet here we are being encouraged to embody those very class-structure stereotypes in our software? Comrades, we must reject this motion immediately. The gender-non-specific persons that have made this suggestion shall be reported to the software-terms controlling committee forthwith.
I also raise strong objection to parent/child. In a perfect utopian society such as ours, there are no parents. Only guardians. Children are collectively taken care of by the collective, which clearly does not represent the same software relationship that is being described here. Indeed, it presents unpleasant authoritarian connotations which surely go against the spirit of what is being attempted here? Surely, in a peaceful collective, where all comrades are peers, the perfect description would be:
WillingParticipant1/WillingParticipant2
Though I encourage my comrades to come together in the spirit of participation in order to work, collectively, on the truly noble goal of removing '1' and '2' from the above; Having a WillingParticipant1 and WillingParticipant2 implies some sort pecking order, again unthinkable in the true software development collective. Are we not all peers, comrades?
Indeed, in an effort to solve this problem, I move to form a committee to look into possible alternatives. I appoint myself leader of this committee. Any objections, comrades?
Thursday 19th November 2020 09:13 GMT
Re: What are we going to do about the embedded devices?
Tsk. Just tipex over the offensive and fear-inducing names on the circuit boards, and replace them with nice words like 'flower' and 'peace'. See? Wasn't hard was it?
Meanwhile, I'm struggling with a Python app that I am developing right now which talks to obsolete RTUs made in the 80s using a long obsolete serial protocol. I literally have functions called poll_slave (in the master) and reply_to_master (in the slave).
I am reporting myself to HR for re-education as soon as I finish this post. I you don't see me again, please tell my family I love them.
Apple to halve commission for developers turning over up to $1m in sales via App Store
GitHub restores DMCA-hit youtube-dl code repo after source patched to counter RIAA's takedown demand
Tuesday 17th November 2020 11:26 GMT
Re: It might attract less attention if it wasn't called...
But YouTube doesn't 'give' content to you. By watching it, you accept their terms and conditions. You have effectively entered into a contract and that contract doesn't permit you to download their content. And further more, their model allows you to view it. Not download and keep it. If you want to watch it again, you need to visit their site and watch it again.
My points certainly are guesswork - IANAL. However, I've been involved in software development day-in-day-out since 1987.
Tuesday 17th November 2020 11:05 GMT
Re: It might attract less attention if it wasn't called...
I disagree with your point #1 - unless I've misunderstood you. Youtube-dl does not permit distribution in any way. It simply facilitates the downloading of a file (video file) to my hard disk. What I choose to do with that file once it is on my hard drive is outside of the influence or control of Youtube-dl. Exactly the same with a browser: If I download a copyrighted image from, say The Daily Mail or BBC news using my browser, it's subsequent distribution by me is outside the influence or control of the browser.
Any legal criticism of Youtube-dl wouldn't be fought on the grounds of facilitating distribution. It does not facilitate distribution. If that were the case, Torrent clients would already be outlawed. Yet they are not. Why? Because they are also routinely used by universities and all manner of organisations to distribute their files perfectly legally.
Any legal action against Youtube-dl would surely have to be fought on the specific issue of downloading from YouTube, which would be a violation of YouTube's terms of usage. In such a case however, it would be for YouTube to bring suit, and so far, they haven't; preferring to engage in a technological arms-race with the Youtube-dl devs.
Interesting times...
Tuesday 17th November 2020 10:02 GMT
It might attract less attention if it wasn't called...
YOUTUBE-DL
The clue is kind of in the name, isn't it?
Don't get me wrong, I use it too - I download programming tutorials for offline viewing on my phone without burning my mobile data. I'm not really interested in using it to download music videos/albums though... I mean, for that, well I could just watch/listen on YouTube.
For me, the argument that a software application can be used for copyright violation is a flawed argument. I can use my browser to download copyrighted images all day long. So should we ban browsers until the ability to download images is removed? What about downloading applications? Some of the applications may be pirated. Let's remove the ability to download apps from browsers, too.
Of course, this wouldn't stand up in court, and I suspect that Microsoft/Github understand that too, which is why they feel confident enough to reinstate youtube-dl now that the letter of the take-down request has been obeyed.
It will be very interesting to see what the RIAA's next move will be. Still, I would advise renaming the application to something a little less controversial.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
