jj4211

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jj4211,

I think people understand this, but it’s not just the stated bug that give people pause.

If they screwed up this, then what are the odds they made similar as yet unknown mistakes. Seems reasonable to demand some transparency to determine whether the circumstances leading to this screwup are truly limited to this one app versus a more systematic QA issue that could result in other mistakes in other products and software.

jj4211,

My favorite example of gnome attitude:

Gnome 3 carries forward virtual desktops, but now they can only be arranged vertically, and some folks complain they don’t like it that way.

Eventually gnome changes their mind and now virtual desktops are only allowed to be arranged horizontally…

Even fvwm had custom geometry for virtual desktops, doesnt seem like it should be that hard. The fact that they changed their minds you would have thought to be a clue that it should be configurable, but no…

Every time I try gnome I walk away with a feeling that I might as well use Windows. In fact, Windows has more powerful window management than gnome at this point.

So it’s always back to Plasma.

StarCraft could return, according to Blizzard president, but not necessarily as an RTS (www.pcgamer.com)

While Blizzard is very much focussed on its big money-makers like its various Warcraft games, from WoW to Hearthstone to Warcraft Rumble, as well as Diablo and the much-maligned Overwatch 2, he’s still open to StarCraft making a comeback. That said, RTS fans shouldn’t get their hopes up. While the series might return, that...

jj4211,

Do you guys not have phones?

jj4211,

I think it’s worthwhile to question an unknown outlet. If it’s a tabloid level rag then perhaps I should doubt the pilling on, if any of the smear worthy stuff might be fabricated.

No matter the outlet, if the material is accurate, then yes it’s reasonable. However we always have to be wary of folks outright making up stuff.

jj4211, (edited )

I’m not claiming it to be true or false, just saying I understand why someone might sincerely ask for folks to share anything they might know about the outlet in general.

However, the stance of “well, you better have a lot of evidence to be skeptical of a random unkown outlet” seems to be setting oneself up to be a sucker to anyone from any side.

jj4211,

While the court has its issues, it doesn’t seem to care to side particularly with Trump. They’ve had a few opportunities and have so far mostly sided against or at least failed to side with Trump in matters that either made it that far or tried to make it that far.

jj4211,

That doesn’t sound like “home” school though. It might have been the mechanism you leveraged to take alternative classes, but ultimately you got proper classes from an educational institution.

We can talk about reforming public education (a fair push for “homework is bad” exists right now, which may alleviate your problem, which is particularly common among people with responsibilities other than school) and we can talk about school choice, but literal home schooling I’ve not seen turn out well. Admittedly I’ve only known two or three folks, but they all were terrible to try to communicate with and had massive superiority complexes as well as lacking some knowledge/skills. Whether it’s for “not enough religion in the school, but we can’t afford private school” or "the school is not good enough to “enrich” my special snowflake ", the results are similar.

jj4211,

Eh, even if the parents are educating, the social development of such folks as I have seen is horribly stunted, and stunted during some key formative years. Doesn’t help when the parents are telling the kids they are so smart that no school could hope to teach them right.

Even if you acquire knowledge, life can suck if you can’t deal with people.

jj4211, (edited )

I suppose the question would be if it works for some people, and even then, would institutional learning really not work for the same people?

To the extent potentially functional folks can’t deal with educational institutions, it’s likely that the “real world” will inflict similar challenges. Usually best to acclimate to those situations rather than trying to avoid the unavoidable.

jj4211,

the other kids are dicks to her (as kids tend to be)

This is the point that I’ve observed to be a tricky one.

Other kids are dicks, but that also holds true for adults. Perhaps the most valuable thing I got from school is navigating that very scenario.

Also, I was at least somewhat to blame, by being an arrogant, insufferable, cringy little guy. If there were one thing that could have been better is if a trusted adult had me confront my own attitude earlier rather than just letting me think the problem was all with other folks.

I learned to recognize situations I didn’t want to interact with, how to avoid acting in a way to get dragged into such situations, how to engage amicably when I had to, and how to recognize and engage with groups that are more keeping with my tastes.

jj4211,

October 7th was not “oops, our weapons are just too imprecise to aim properly”. It was an up close and personal direct violent attack on civilians explicitly designed to avoid any police or military targets.

So it’s absolutely appropriate to shame Israeli falling to apply precision attacks and Hamas for quite deliberately targeting noncombatants.

jj4211,

There was counterpoint I saw that advocated for the value of shorting.

You see this big successful company. You know that if they are caught doing something illegal or wildly unethical, you could profit by shorting. So you fund a bit of research to see if there are skeletons. Selling to an embargoed nation, poisoning an area, bribing officials.

Shorting provides a motivation to dig for dirt instead of just cheerleading a company blindly.

jj4211,

True that the specific metric by definition excludes any use of fossil fuels that doesn’t have an electricity step (ICE cars, gas for heating/cooking/water heating).

However it is a relevant question to consider, to the extent those non-electricity applications remain an obstacle for reducing greenhouse emissions. An ICE car being replaced by an EV means more grid load, a Gas furnace being replaced with a heat pump means more grid load.

As an example, in my region they are talking about increased load incurred in part from EVSE and heat pump conversions. To meet that demand, a part of the plan is actually building out even more natural gas electricity generation (alongside energy storage, solar, and wind).

While it’s encouraging to see grids fairly claim reduction in carbon emissions (others have raised questions about whether this is a totally fair claim, but I have no idea), the total consumption picture is important to keep in mind.

jj4211,

We have a largeish number of systems that IT declared catheorically could not connect directly to the Internet for any reason.

So guess what systems weren’t getting updates. Also guess what systems got overwhelmed by ransomware that hit what would have been a patched vulnerability, that came through someone’s laptop that was allowed to connect to the Internet.

My department was fine, because we broke the rules to get updates.

So did network team admit the flaw in their strategy? No, they declared a USB key must have been the culprit and they literally went into every room and confiscated all USB keys and threw them away, with quarterly audits to make sure no USB keys appear. The systems are still not being updated and laptops with Internet connection are still indirectly bridging them.

jj4211,

Also, I keep a “rogue” laptop to self administrate along with my official it laptop to show I am in compliance. Updates are disabled and are only allowed to be fine y by IT. I just checked and they haven’t pushed any updates for about 8 months.

jj4211,

They do. In fact they mandate IT assets to have three competing patch management software on them. They mandate disabling any auto updates because they have to vet them first. My official laptop hasn’t been pushed an update in 8 months.

jj4211,

Ironically, we actually have a Segment of our business that provides IT for other companies, and they do a decent job, but they aren’t allowed to manage our own IT. Best guess is that they are too expensive to waste on our own IT needs. If an IT staffember accidentally shows competence, they are probably moved to the billable group.

jj4211,

There are certain ways in which the AI seems to plateau short of the desired usefulness in some ways. If the output is supposed to be verbatim specific to the point a machine could consume it, it tends to have these sorts of mistakes. It shines at doing a better job in ingesting direction and data that is ‘messy’ and processing it and spitting it back at a human for a human to similarly have to be capable of correcting ‘messy’ input, though with it doing a lot of the heavy lifting to be influenced by more data.

This is a huge chunk of huge utility, but for very specific things and things that really require expertise, there seems to be an enduring need for human review. However, the volume of people needed may be dramatically reduced.

Similar to other areas of computing. Back in the 1930s, an animated film might take 1500 to make it happen. Now fewer than a tenth of that could easily turn out better quality with all the computer assistance. We’ve grown our ambitions and to make a similarly ‘blockbuster’ scale production which is insanely more detailed and thoroughly animated we still are talking about less than half the staff.

It seems that AI will be another step in that direction of reducing required staff to acheive better than current expectations, but not entirely displacing them. Becomes extra challenging, since the impacts may be felt across so many industries all at once, with no clear area to soak up the potential reduced labor demand.

jj4211,

I’ll second this. Every time they mention the Israeli casualty toll, they mention the Palestinian right at the same time.

While interviewing someone about Israeli response, they took the time to raise the question about plans for Palestinian civilians (unfortunately the answer was “we must destroy Hamas”, clearly indicating the civilians dying is perfectly fine by him).

jj4211,

But there is a similarity, the hype pulls in all sorts of companies to blindly add buzzwords without even knowing how it might possibly apply to their product, even if it were the perfect realization of the ideal.

Yes AI techniques obviously have utility. 90% of the spend is by companies that don’t even know what that utility might be. With that much noise, it’s hard to keep track of the value.

jj4211,

No, that one comment was not vague, the only active “fighters” to be called “freedom fighters” were Hamas.

There is no ambiguity, no vagueness.

jj4211,

Why can’t we condemn both?

Hamas committed atrocities and Israel has responded with atrocities. That doesn’t make calling Hamas “freedom fighters” in this context any less deplorable.

jj4211,

Indeed, it’s to contain the “Linuxification” of the developer community.

Before WSL, any developer dealing with backend development almost had to install Linux to have a vaguely decent development environment to align with what they get to use on the servers. While they were dragged into that world by their requirements, they may find that the packaging and window management is actually pretty cool. There reluctance to venture out of the Windows world transforms into acceptance and perhaps even liking it.

Now with WSL, those Windows desktop users say “I just need to click a distribution in the Microsoft Store and I’m golden and don’t have to deal with that scary Linux world I don’t know yet.”.

I’ve repeatedly have people notice I’m running a Linux desktop when I’m presenting and off hand say “you know you can just run Linux under Windows, you don’t have to endure Linux anymore”. They seem to think I’m absurd for actually preferring Linux when I can get away with it.

jj4211,

WSL may be fine for a Windows user to get some access to Linux, however for me it misses the vast majority of what I value in a desktop distribution -Better Window managers. This is subjective, but with Windows you are stuck with Microsoft implementation, and if you might like a tiling window manager, or Plasma workspaces better, well you need to run something other than Windows or OSX.

-Better networking. I can do all kinds of stuff with networking. Niche relative to most folks, but the Windows networking stack is awfully inflexible and frustrating after doing a lot of complex networking tasks in Linux

-More understanding and control over the “background” pieces. With Windows doing nothing a lot is happening and it’s not really clear what is happening where. With Linux, it can be daunting like Windows, but the pieces can be inspected more easily and things are more obvious.

-Easier “repair”. If Windows can’t fix itself, then it’s really hard to recover from a lot of scenarios. Generally speaking a Linux system has to be pretty far gone

-Easier license wrangling. Am I allowed to run another copy of Windows? Can I run a VM of it or does it have to be baremetal? Is it tied to the system I bought with it preloaded, or is it bound to my microsoft account? With most Linux distributions, this is a lot easier, the answer is “sure you can run it”.

-Better package management. If I use flatpak, dnf, apt, zypper, or snap, I can pretty much find any software I want to run and by virtue of installing in that way, it also gets updated. Microsoft has added winget, which is a step in the right direction, but the default ‘update’ flow for a lazy user still ignores all winget content, and many applications ignore all that and push their own self-updater, which is maddening.

The biggest concern, like this thread has, is that WSL sets the tone for “ok, you have enough Linux to do what you need from the comfort of the ‘obviously’ better Microsoft ecosystem” and causes people to not consider actually trying it for real.

jj4211, (edited )

Well, I don’t think it’s anti-monopoly evidence, but instead a way to intercept a popular search phrase and control the narrative.

You search for “how to download and install linux” in google, and the very top link is the Microsoft page. And the narrative is:
-I just want to get started: Oh, use WSL, that way you are using Windows really, and just a touch of Linux
-I need to use it for real: Oh, then use Azure, you can have us set up those scary Linux instances for you and Microsoft Terminal will hook you right up to those instances
-I really really want to use it: Ok, but remember, you’ll lose access to Windows applications, so there are downsides, and also, we are going to make this hands down the scariest looking procedure of the three…

jj4211,

Well, it’s making them plenty of money, but they pretty much get that money no matter what (from the device manufacturers when they sell hardware, and from businesses afraid to have their software entitlement coupled to the accident of their hardware).

Now it’s a game of using that guaranteed footprint to bolster the recurring revenue services (OneDrive, Office, Azure). They still get the money for however the copy got there, but also use the copy to launch folks into recurring revenue options.

jj4211,

True, for some uses.

If you only need command line use, it’s fine. I personally strongly prefer the environment in, say, Linux distribution running Plasma, but if you are fine with Windows applications, then fine.

If you need GUI Linux… WSLG can kind of sort of get you there, but it sucks. So if you live with any Linux GUI application for significant periods of time, then you’ll want to strangle WSLg and it’s weird behaviors. VcXsrv can help on this front.

If you are like me and find dnf+flathub an appealing strategy for installation and update of software, you like Plasma desktop management, then Linux ‘for real’ is the way to go.

jj4211,

Of course the problem is that wingetui isn’t there by default, isn’t integrated to Windows Update, no matter what, WinGetUI basically becomes yet another tray icon, alongside a half dozen other auto-updater tray icons that various vendors added since there’s no integrated facility to rely upon.

So sure, it’s a bandaid on winget, but it’s still awkward and the ecosystem is a mess. Compared to Linux where a distribution will have, in the box, an extensible central update facility maybe serving two different types of repositories (e.g. apt and snap, or dnf and flatpak).

jj4211,

True, though I’m mostly invested in the kernel networking behaviors, rather than having a nicely standardized place for proxy settings so that applications have a logical place to go.

It’s a fair criticism that in userspace, proxy settings have been not standardized and also TLS certificates are similarly a bit messy.

jj4211,

This is consistent with the “Linux is for backend services and command line” mentality. For me those are nice and important, but I prefer the Linux desktop experience, so those options are of no solace. The VM is ultimately constrained on what it can do UI wise.

I flip the relationship the other way around. Linux on bare metal, Windows in a VM. For people needing windows games, this would be a non starter, however I’ve got enough games between Linux native, emulators, and proton with steam. Windows as a separate box would be my strategy if needed.

jj4211, (edited )

Note that cars are heavily regulated, have speed limits, collision regulations, are required to only operate on designated paths and require training to operate.

Meanwhile the scooters can be used by anyone without licensing, have no speedometer, and can go anywhere without a pedestrian even having a clue a scooter might be coming.

Things could be better, but in these areas frankly an even lower speed limit would not make cars that much safer, and you’d be better off without roads in some areas and poof, cars would be gone. However electric scooters would still be zipping around.

jj4211,

Problem is that by “unsnapping”, you deviate from “Ubuntu”. You start having to add all sorts of third party packages, and the more that is needed, the more the value of aligning with a well tested baseline diminishes. Notably, Ubuntu declares an intent to make everything snaps, including the kernel and bootloader.

So it would seem more productive for someone railing against snap to avoid using Ubuntu and avoid bolstering the reputation of something they fundamentally disagree with.

jj4211,

I’ll add that the ‘pseudo-sandbox’ is of some dubious value, as far as I can tell the app declares how much or little sandboxing it wants and the user doesn’t really get the opportunity to consent or even know that a snap has full access versus limited access.

I’ll also say that some functionality is broken in snaps (and flatpak). For example I used KeepPassXC browser integration, and then when snap was used instead of native, it broke. A number of extensions broke and the development attitude was everyone pointing fingers everywhere else and ultimately saying “just find a ppa with a browser ok?”

I’ll second the “screw it, I give up on packaging, my app is now a monolithic flatpak, snap, appimage, or docker container” mindset of a lot of developers.

jj4211,

I’ll give flatpak and snap one thing: they did make some concession to avoiding duplication, unlike docker which utterly duplicates everything.

With flatpak and snap, applications can depend on/pull in a maintained external layer. So you might want ‘gnome environment, version 43’ and other applications that want that can all share. That layer can be updated independently of dependencies. You might have two instances of the gnome layers (say 43 and 44) due to different applications declaring different versions, but it’s not too bad.

Now there is some duplication, some libraries that an app says “oh, no particular layer for this one, fine I’ll just bundle it”. But at least there’s a mechanism to not necessarily do that for everything.

jj4211,

The idea is that the application may want libraries asynchronously of the distribution cadence. Worse, multiple applications may have different cadence and you want to use both (some app breaks with gnome 45 and so it needs gnome 44, and another app requires gnome 46).

Or some pick forks of projects that neglected to change the shared object name or version, so you have two multimedia applications depending on the same exact library name and version, but expecting totally different symbols, or different ‘configure’ options to have been specified when they built the shared library.

So we have this nifty mount namespace to make believe the ‘filesystem’ is whatever a specific application needs, and for that to be scoped to just one.

There’s also an argument about security isolation, but I find that one to be unfulfilled as the applications basically are on the honor system with regards to how much access it requests of the system compared to a ‘normal’ application. So an application can opt into some protection so it can’t accidentally be abused, but if the application wants to deliberately misbehave it’s perfectly allowed to do so.

jj4211,

And to be explicit about it, zypper, dnf, apt, flatpak all have a specific mechanism to declare repositories and one ‘update’ check will walk them all.

snap does not, and manually doing a one off is useless. AppImage also has no ‘update’ concept, but it’s a more limited use case in general, it’s a worse habit than any repository based approach.

jj4211,

I’m not sure how Valve is seen to forfeit any Windows related profit.

They are still thoroughly supporting Windows. A Windows gaming system will have Steam on it, and most gamers still prefer Steam while on Windows.

When Windows 8 happened with the Microsoft store, Valve saw the writing on the wall for the eventual problems they would face, and did SteamOs and SteamBoxes. However, not much skin off their back, as they didn’t “bet the company” or anything. It then pretty much let those efforts die off when the Microsoft Store wasn’t quite the imminent existential threat it looked to be. However, the Xbox-ification of the Windows ecosystem may prove to be a more imminent and dire threat now that Microsoft realized that “hey, we actually do have a gaming brand that enjoys some popularity and is basically just a Windows box already”.

So Valve saw that the Nintendo Switch was such a hit and extrapolated to PC space. They could have had a horribly awkward device running Windows, which has forever sucked at serving this form factor and is not even vaguely amenable to ‘total controller control’. However they decided to revive the SteamOS efforts since it was moderately close to enable them to actually deliver a pad-first UI for a handheld, with Valve branding front and center rather than Microsoft.

So the closest I can see to that claim is that Steam Deck opted out of supporting a handful of games (that also likely don’t work well on the relatively low end specs anyway) rather than trying to make a Windows hand-held work against all the design points of Windows.

jj4211,

The nvidia drivers can be a pain, and some distributions don’t care about nVidia’s support schedule and push a kernel update and nVidia will no longer compile.

Also, the fact that a kernel update means the nvidia driver must recompile is a pain.

I’m holding out hope for the open drivers (they basically moved all the proprietary bits to run on the GPU) to eventually mean that the premiere nVidia experience is already integrated at some point in the future.

jj4211,

Nouveau? I’ve not exactly had a very reliable experience, and as far as I can see Nvidia doesn’t really help to ensure that works in a timely way or a reliable way.

jj4211,

To be fair, while most of the GOP might have their shit together, they have a crazy faction blocking them

In a way, it might just be possible that this marks a realization that they will have better results working in a bipartisan manner than trying to appease the nutjobs.

jj4211,

Have their shit together meaning they can actually function as a coherent group to achieve actually getting something done, whether I agree with them or not. When you toss the “Freedom Caucus” into the fray and if you refuse to work at all with democrats, then the party “does not have their shit together” insofar as they can’t pass anything. To try to pick their own speaker they utterly struggled.

Here they wanted the government to keep functioning by and large, but a small contingent just wants to burn everything down. The fact that the larger population of GOP were willing to work with Democrats rather than try to appease the nutjob wing is evidence that they “have their shit together” enough to actually get something passed they wanted to get passed.

jj4211,

That’s the password on my luggage!

jj4211, (edited )

I can certainly see that as the case for impulse purchases.

What baffled me was a stretch where I was getting banner ads for a particular company’s multi million dollar yachts. I was wondering who in the world would be swayed by such a frivolous thing as a banner ad for such a gigantic purchase.

jj4211,

Is it really just autistic folks? I see marketing material all the time that frustrates because they tell me nothing about the product I’m trying to research.

Like a phone product page saying things like “our camera helps you capture the moments that matter”. Well, duh, I know what a camera does and everyone has a camera, but is there anything particularly nice about your camera? Marketing material wastes so much material on uselessly vague stuff. Extra madness when their web design hijacks scrolling to pause my scrolling to change it to advancing some animation…

jj4211,

My understanding is that it’s about loss prevention.

They think that self checkout is a high risk for shoplifting, so they want it to be a manageable amount. They need confidence in their security monitoring strategy before they go all in.

After a long trial here including employees monitoring and AI monitored video, the store near me now has maybe 30 self checkouts, with 10 having nice big bagging areas. I never have to wait in line anymore.

jj4211,

Self checkout for heavy items is usually even easier than normal checkout. With normal checkout, I’m expected to lift the stuff and put it on the belt. With self checkout, I can grab the scanner gun and pew pew them while still in my cart.

jj4211,

Gitlab is an interesting project.

Admittedly looks good and has the feature set, but…

You dig in at all it’s a mess. If it screws up, it’s a mess. Every five minutes they seem to have another extremely severe security issue. Even when it’s working right, it’s a resource hog.

Has the feel of a lot of mismatched stuff duct taped together, but the duct tape looks great. So as a user, great. As an admin, a bit of a mess.

jj4211,

Some say they don’t keep logs, and you’d have to trust that. Note that this same caveat applies for a VPN provider promising they are running diskless endpoints. Or that they don’t have some third party monitoring their stuff even if diskless. Or that a law enforcement agency can’t come along with a warrant to require them to monitor an account’s activity moving forward, even if logs are not possible.

If your online activity justifies this level of paranoia, there’s probably no meaningful protection available for your wants in practice. If your provider is operating in a jurisdiction that is problematic for your online activity, they can probably ultimately be compromised. If you are just using it to access a different country’s streaming library, you probably don’t need to be that paranoid. If you are trying to disguise illegal activity that is illegal in the jurisdiction of the VPN endpoint, well you are likely boned with logging or not.

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