ItsBob

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog --> Bad F. FO FRO GRO

Lol

> How do you deal with Microsoft's crap on a daily basis?

As others have mentioned, I don't! I left and went to Fedora about 3 months ago - still keep a W10 VM for my scanner as Linux still hasn't sorted that stuff but I use it once a month or something so no big deal.

It was my second or third attempt over the years to move to Linux and F35 is now rock solid and I can do .NET development with absolutely no problems now.

I had used Windows since DOS 5.x so it was quite a break for me :)

I was on a news site, might have been a newspaper site, and it had 640... beat that! :)

Just as another anecdote, mine failed to launch a local website I was debugging. That's my first time opening FF today.

I opened JetBrains Rider (on Fedora 35) and debugged my site (Alt + F5) and it launched to a blank page with FF locked up.

So this isn't to do with ME specificially trying to connect to an external service.

I agree with advertising being a racket but the internet used to work just fine before the likes of Google, Facebook and payments for access to things etc.

For those of us old enough to remember, there was a time when people created things for fun on the internet. It cost pennies (relatively speaking) to do it, and it still does, and there was no worry that we were being exploited in the process. And there was no expectation that when I visited your web page about the electronics behind purple Beany Babies that you were trying to monetize and data mine the shit out of me.

Plus, the website owners didn't give a shit if they knew who I was or not: if they really cared (and I really cared) I could sign the guestbook.

Some of them eve had ads. Nothing wrong with a banner ad that relates to the content. Nothing at all. But that's not enough. The ad companies want to run javascript to figure out every single data point that they can about me and everything on my home network.

It's not my job to validate a company's business model on the internet. If they need ads or microtransactions to survive and all ads are blocked and no one pays for their content, then they die. End of!

No, I do not want that kind of internet. We used to have a perfectly functional internet without mega-corps wanting to fuck me over constantly. We used to have a perfectly functional internet without SEO spam. We used to have a perfectly functional internet without constant monitoring and having to prove who I was etc.

We can have it again too if we really want it.

Yes but if you have reliable power from two different sources then the biggest risk (I'd imagine) is the failover circuitry! Something that should be tested tbh.

Also, there are banks of batteries and generators in between the power company cables and the kit: did they not kick-in?

Again, this is all pure speculation: I have absolutely no idea of the exact failure, nor how their infrastructure is held together - this is all just speculation for the hell of it :)

Really? You'd think at Amazon's scale an additional PSU in a 1U custom-built server (I assume they're custom) would be a few tens of $ at most.

Actually, now that I type that it makes sense. Scaling a few tens of dollars to a bajillion servers on the off-chance that you get an inbound power failure (quite rare I'd reckon) might cost more than what they'd lose if it does actually fail.

So yeah, they're potentially just balancing the risk here and minimising cost on the hardware.

Edit: changed grammar a bit.

I've built out many 42U racks in DC's in my time and there were a couple of rules that we never skipped:

1. Dual power in each server/device - One PSU was powered by one outlet, the other PSU by a different one with a different source meaning that we can lose a single power supply/circuit and nothing happens 2. Dual network (at minimum) - For the same reasons as above since the switches didn't always have dual power in them.

I've only had a DC fail once when the engineer was performing work on the power circuitry for the DC and thought he was taking down one, but was in fact the wrong one and took both power circuits down at the same time.

However, a power cut (in the traditional sense where the supplier has a failure so nothing comes in over the wire) should have literally zero effect!

What am I missing?

I've never worked anywhere with Amazon's budget so why are they not handling this? Is it more than just the imcoming supply being down?

I got an error trying to download the git client for Windows... must be this too.

Nope, I still click the "X" in the top corner every time I open it.

However, I use WhatsApp sparingly - my mum and one friend, that's it.

At some point I'll remove it completely.

You're assuming that "opt-out" is the right thing here!

It's not. All this stuff should be opt-in: I shouldn't have to tell people to leave me alone.

Honestly? I'm fine with this: You're using space on their servers - This is the very definition of cloud imo.

It's also a decent solution rather than just dropping the banhammer and locking your account so you can't then get your files out of their system.

If you're concerned about it, encrypt your files before uploading them.

I don't doubt that this is a major milestone: gawd knows, I couldn't program a car to do that.

But something that I would like to know is what happens when it fails? Or at least, seems to have failed?

At the moment, if I buy a car and the brakes fail and I crash into someone/something then it's likely there was a defect and the manufacturer was at fault. That seems reasonable when you're making a 2 ton machine capable of hitting over 100 mph, there should be a shit load of safety measures in place.

However, it seems that self-driving software is in its infancy and I've lost faith in tech companies to release a product when it's complete and ready, instead releasing it sooner with a bunch of bugs for the users to test. In addition, if my brakes fail, a sound mechanic would be able to verify that was the case and I'd be off the hook: you would be able to examine the faulty part.

If my self-driving thingy failed on one of these level-3 roads, and I crashed into a bunch of nuns crossing the road would I be on the hook for it? How would I be able to prove in court that it failed and wasn't a result of me being a muppet. Coz you can bet I won't be able to examine the source code after the accident, unlike being able to see the faulty brakes in the earlier example.

OMG, the mere mention of G-Police and I was catapulted back to the 90s... I loved that game!

So much so, that I tried to find a copy of it earlier this year but couldn't get one (bootleg or otherwise) that would run :(

Great memories! Sad news though.

I mean that the Gov will come along and say:

"See that hashing thing you have, this secret gov. order that you can't tell anyone about says you need to look for this list of hashes too. If you find them, you have to let these 5 people know and if you tell anyone you'll accidentally shoot yourself three times in the back of the head to commit suicide!"

How do you know that there isn't already a secret order in place to look for a particular list of hashes? Perhaps something that has been sealed due to national security?

If it's triggered, send the details to a particular group of individuals with certain clearance to view and verify.

If they have the ability to do this, they will definitely do this!

> You do know that Apple is scanning your photos server-side, right ?

Yes.

They have every right to. It's their servers.

However, this is MY phone (ok, not mine, I don't use Apple devices but you get my point)

I meant that they won't hide what it will do. It will be called something benign and fluffy and it will be "for your protection".

That's what I meant.

And if the government makes it illegal to have a certain document, or a book, what happens then?

You can guarantee Apple will report you. They have to. It will be the law.

It will be used for human rights abuses. Guaranteed.

I don't believe that they'll slip it under the radar at all. I think they'll brand it as something awesome and magical and just add it anyway. People, for the most part, don't scratch the surface EVER, so they'll just think it has a cool scanning feature built-in now.

> The "scanning" feature that underpins this has been deployed for years

Yes, I agree that your phone has the ability to find stuff like this based on ML etc. However, if their algorithm finds something that matches a hash of child porn, you'll be reported (after notification or something, can't remember).

Can you imagine what that would do to people? The risk of fucking this up and destroying someone's life is far too high. It's a stigma that will never go away even if it's proven false.

And what if the government decides that they want to ruin a political adversary? The technology is there to report them, rightly or wrongly, for child porn on their phone and ruin them. Again, proving that it was false will not be enough if it leaked out in the first place.

In my opinion, it's my phone (yes, yes, I know they all dial home to the mothership, I only lease it etc.) and I should have complete say over it and this is one more step away from that goal.

It's on the dystopian highway imo.

Unfortunately the old-fashined way: do it out of hours with a backup first :(

I've never had to work on a 24/7 critical system so I dunno how to do that.

Problem with something like this is the cat's out of the bag.

The code has been written, tested and merged etc. The project has reached a point where it's ready to ship.

Apple have done their homework and they will not release ANYTHING unless they think they'll either make money from it or at the very least, not LOSE money from it. It's all about money, nothing else.

It's coming whether we like it or not now :(

And you can be sure that others will follow. It will be in Android at some point and possibly Windows and MacOS too.

I try not to be negative and cynical these days but the tech oligarchs make that incredibly difficult.

You're right, it's been a while since I went there. I forgot about all that shit.

I'm sold.

Death to Pinterest

Ok, genuine question - Why do people hate Pinterest so much? I have no feelings towards it either way (I don't have an account on it but I have viewed some things over time)

Does this not mean it's time for a new open source license? Perhaps one that stipulates all the freedom current ones have up to a point?

I am not a lawyer and know little about open source but is it possible to create a new license that allows free use up to a certain revenue level?

> I think a mostly vegan diet would probably be the best you can do as an individual to protect yourself from severe covid

I know two vegans, who don't know each other as it happens, and both of them have what I'd call a shitty diet.

Sure, everything they eat is vegan but have you seen the contents of some vegan products? There are many things packed full of "filler". Especially stuff that comes in a box (although that's true of regular processed food too)

It's not like vegans just eat a steaming pile of broccoli each meal.

I'd say a diet that makes you healthier would be more appropriate: for some, that would be a high-animal-fat diet, others might be something else and so on.

Edit: I get your point: eating healthier is key but to say vegan is probably the wrong way of putting it.

I'm trying to be a bit more positive these days given all the negativity surrounding us but I'm under no illusion that FB's raison d'etre is data-gathering and advertising at all costs, even to the detriment human life. I get it. I also don't use social media at all so I'm not their customer.

It's a long-shot, I know but I thought I'd chuck it out there. I wanted to find out if there is a potential genuine benefit to this system without all the anti-FB stuff getting in the way.

Is this jumping on the bandwagon or genuinely beneficial? I'm willing to give FB the benefit of the doubt here.

However, I'm a total rookie when it comes to crypto, blockchain etc. and giving a company that permabans via ai with no human fallback control of payments seems like a bad idea to me.

I've honestly not been as excited (in astronomy-terms I mean :D) about science as I am about the James Webb telescope. I can't wait to see what it shows