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Darren Hayes wrote an interesting article about his battle with depression and his journey to accepting being gay [1]. Savage Garden had some great songs, Affirmation is relevant to this topic.
Rorodi wrote an interesting article about the biggest crypto lending company being a Ponzi scheme [2]. One thing I find particularly noteworthy is how obviously scammy it is, even to the extent of having an ex porn star as an executive! Celsuis is now in the process of going bankrupt, 7 months after that article was published.
Quora has an interesting discussion about different type casts in C++ [3]. C style casts shouldn’t be used!
MamaMia has an interesting article about “Action Faking” which means procrastination by doing tasks marginally related to the end goal [3]. This can mean include excessive study about the topic, excessive planning for the work, and work on things that aren’t on the critical path first (EG thinking of a name for a project).
Apple has a new “Lockdown Mode” to run an iPhone in a more secure configuration [4]. It would be good if more operating systems had a feature like this.
Informative article about energy use of different organs [5]. The highest metabolic rates (in KCal/Kg/day) are for the heart and kidneys. The brain is 3rd on the list and as it’s significantly more massive than the heart and kidneys it uses more energy, however this research was done on people who were at rest.
Scientific American has an interesting article about brain energy use and exhaustion from mental effort [6]. Apparently it’s doing things that aren’t fun that cause exhaustion, mental effort that’s fun can be refreshing.
The last new PC I bought was a Dell PowerEdge T110II in 2013. That model had been out for a while and I got it for under $2000. Since then the CPI has gone up by about 20% so it’s probably about $2000 in today’s money. Currently Dell has a special on the T150 tower server (the latest replacement for the T110II) which has a G6405T CPU that isn’t even twice as fast as the i3-3220 (3746 vs 2219) in the T110II according to passmark.com (AKA cpubenchmark.net). The special price is $2600. I can’t remember the details of my choices when purchasing the T110II but I recall that CPU speed wasn’t a priority and I wanted a cheap reliable server for storage and for light desktop use. So it seems that the current entry model in the Dell T1xx server line is less than twice as fast as fast as it was in 2013 while costing about 25% more! An option is to spend an extra $989 to get a Xeon E-2378 which delivers a reasonable 18,248 in that benchmark. The upside of a T150 is that is uses buffered DDR4 ECC RAM which is pretty cheap nowadays, you can get 32G for about $120.
For systems sold as workstations (as opposed to T1xx servers that make great workstations but aren’t described as such) Dell has the Precision line. The Precision 3260 “Compact Workstation” currently starts at $1740, it has a fast CPU but takes SO-DIMMs and doesn’t come with ECC RAM. So to use it as a proper workstation you need to discard the RAM and buy DDR5 unbuffered/unregistered ECC SO-DIMMS – which don’t seem to be on sale yet. The Precision 3460 is slightly larger, slightly more expensive, and also takes SO-DIMMs. The Precision 3660 starts at $2550 and takes unbuffered DDR5 ECC RAM which is available and costs half as much as the SO-DIMM equivalent would cost (if you could even buy it), but the general trend in RAM prices is that unbuffered ECC RAM is more expensive than buffered ECC RAM. The upside to Precision workstations is that the range of CPUs available is significantly faster than for the T150.
The HP web site doesn’t offer prices on their Z workstations and is generally worse than the Dell web site in most ways.
Overall I’m disappointed in the range of workstations available now. As an aside if anyone knows of any other company selling workstations in Australia that support ECC RAM then please let me know.
With the recent resurgence in Covid19 I’ve been working from home a lot and using both my work laptop and personal PC on the same monitor. HDMI KVM switches start at $150 and I didn’t feel like buying one. So I wrote a script to change inputs on my monitor. The following script locks the session on the local machine and switches the monitor’s input to the other machine. I ran the command “ddcutil vcpinfo| grep Input” which shows that (on my monitor at least) 60 is the VCP for input. Then I ran the command “ddcutil getvcp 60” to get the current value and tried setting values sequentially to find the value for the other port.
Below is the script I’m using on one system, the other is the same but setting the different port via setvcp. The loginctl command is to lock the screen to prevent accidental keyboard or mouse input from messing anything up.
# lock the session, assumes that seat0 is the only session
loginctl lock-session $(loginctl list-sessions|grep "seat0 *$"|cut -c1-7)
# 0xf is DisplayPort, 0x11 is HDMI-1
ddcutil setvcp 60 0x11
For keyboard, mouse, and speakers I’m using a USB 2.0 hub that I can switch between computers. I idly considered getting a three-pole double-throw switch (four pole switches aren’t available at my local electronic store) to switch USB 2.0 as I only need to switch 3 of the 4 wires. But for the moment just plugging the hub into different systems is enough, I only do that a couple of times a day.
Google did some interesting research on the impact of discrimination on code reviers [1]. It turns out that this is a bigger problem than most white men would have ever suspected and it even has an adverse effect on Asian people.
nothello.net is an amusing site to make the point that you shouldn’t use IM to say hello separately from asking the question [2]. A good link to share on your corporate IM system.
TechCrunch has an amusing article about the Facebook farewell to Sheryl Sandburg [3].
BleepingComputer has an interesting article about a bug-bunty program from a crime syndicate offering up to $1M in crypto-currency [4]. Among other things finding the real first and last names of the crime lord gets you $1M.
BleepingComputer has an interesting article about how “deepfakes” are being used to apply for work from home jobs [5]. I wonder whether the people doing that intend to actually do any of the work or just get paid for doing nothing while delaying getting sacked for as long as possible. I have read about people getting a job they don’t want to do that has a long training period so that they can quit at the end of training without working – apparently call center work is a good option for this.
BleepingComputer has an interesting article about phishing attacks that use a VNC remote desktop connection to trick a user into authenticating using the attacker’s PC [6]. The real problem here is getting humans to do things that computers do better, which is recognising the correct foreign party.
Fortune has an interesting article about the problems with Tesla self-driving and the possibility of a recall [7]. The main issue is apparently Teslas driving at full speed into emergency services vehicles that are parked while attending an incident. Having a police car unexpectedly occupying a lane of traffic is something you just have to deal with, either stop or change lanes. Teslas have been turning off autopilot less than one second before impact so Telsa can claim that it didn’t happen with autopilot engaged but in reality a human can’t take over in less than one second, a pilot I know says it takes 2-3 seconds to take over the controls in a plane.
BonAppetit has an interesting and amusing article about protest foods [8] which starts by explaining why Ukrainians are throwing pasta at the Russian consulate.
The NVidia blog has an informative post about how Pony.ai optimised their pipeline for sensor data for autonomous cars [9].
Matt Crump wrote an educational and amusing blog post about his battle with cheaters in university tests he administered [10].
The Cricket Monthly has an insightful article about how a batsman manages to see and hit a cricket ball that’s going well in excess of 100KM/h [11]. One particularly noteworthy part of this article is the comparison of what amateur cricketers do with what anyone who wants to be a contender for the national team must do.
Darker Shades of Blue is an insightful paper by Tony Kern about the needless crash of a B52 at Fairchild air base in 1994 [12]. This is specifically written to teach people about correct and effective leadership.
I have just returned a Philips 438P1 43″ 4K Monitor [1] and gone back to my Samsung 28″ 4K monitor model LU28E590DS/XY AKA UE590.
The main listed differences are the size and the fact that the Samsung is TN but the Philips is IPS. Here’s a comparison of TN and IPS technologies [2]. Generally I think that TN is probably best for a monitor but in theory IPS shouldn’t be far behind.
The Philips monitor has a screen with a shiny surface which may be good for a TV but isn’t good for a monitor. Also it seemed to blur the pixels a bit which again is probably OK for a TV that is trying to emulate curved images but not good for a monitor where it’s all artificial straight lines. The most important thing for me in a monitor is how well it displays text in small fonts, for that I don’t really want the round parts of the letters to look genuinely round as a clear octagon or rectangle is better than a fuzzy circle.
There is some controversy about the ideal size for monitors. Some people think that nothing larger than 28″ is needed and some people think that a 43″ is totally usable. After testing I determined that 43″ is really too big, I had to move to see it all. Also for my use it’s convenient to be able to turn a monitor slightly to allow someone else to get a good view and a 43″ monitor is too large to move much (maybe future technology for lighter monitors will change this).
Previously I had been unable to get my Samsung monitor to work at 4K resolution with 60Hz and had believed it was due to cheap video cards. I got the Philips monitor to work with HDMI so it’s apparent that the Samsung monitor doesn’t do 4K@60Hz on HDMI. This isn’t a real problem as the Samsung monitor doesn’t have built in speakers. The Philips monitor has built in speakers for HDMI sound which means one less cable to my PC and no desk space taken by speakers.
I bought the Philips monitor on eBay in “opened unused” condition. Inside the box was a sheet with a printout stating that the monitor blanks the screen periodically, so the seller knew that it wasn’t in unused condition, it was tested and failed the test. If the Philips monitor had been as minimally broken as described then I might have kept it. However it seems that certain patterns of input caused it to reboot. For example I could be watching Netflix and have it drop out, I would press the left arrow to watch that bit again and have it drop out again. On one occasion I did a test and found that a 5 second section of Netflix content caused the monitor to reboot on 6/8 times I viewed it. The workaround I discovered was to switch between maximised window and full-screen mode when it had a dropout. So I just press left-arrow and then ‘F’ and I can keep watching. That’s not what I expect from a $700 monitor!
I considered checking for Philips firmware updates but decided against it because I didn’t want to risk voiding the warranty if it didn’t work correctly and I decided I just didn’t like the monitor that much.
Ideally for my next monitor I’ll get a 4K screen of about 35″, TN, and a screen that’s not shiny. At the moment there doesn’t seem to be many monitors between 32″ and 43″ in size, so 32″ may do. I am quite happy with the Samsung monitor so getting the same but slightly larger is fine. It’s a pity they stopped making 5K displays.
Elon Musk has made the news for spending billions to buy a share of Twitter for the alleged purpose of providing free speech. The problem with this claim is that having any company controlling a large portion of the world’s communication is inherently bad for free speech. The same applies for Facebook, but that’s not a hot news item at the moment.
If Elon wanted to provide free speech he would want to have decentralised messaging systems so that someone who breaks rules on one platform could find another with different rules. Among other things free speech ideally permits people to debate issues with residents of another country on issues related to different laws. If advocates for the Russian government get kicked off Twitter as part of the American sanctions against Russia then American citizens can’t debate the issue with Russian citizens via Twitter. Mastodon is one example of a federated competitor to Twitter [1]. With a federated messaging system each host could make independent decisions about interpretation of sanctions. Someone who used a Mastodon instance based in the US could get a second account in another country if they wanted to communicate with people in countries that are sanctioned by the US.
The problem with Mastodon at the moment is lack of use. It’s got a good set of features and support for different platforms, there are apps for Android and iPhone as well as lots of other software using the API. But if the people you want to communicate with aren’t on it then it’s less useful. Elon could solve that problem by creating a Tesla Mastodon server and give a free account to everyone who buys a new Tesla, which is the sort of thing that a lot of Tesla buyers would like. It’s quite likely that other companies selling prestige products would follow that example. Everyone has seen evidence of people sharing photos on social media with someone else’s expensive car, a Mastodon account on ferrari.com or mercedes.com would be proof of buying the cars in question. The number of people who buy expensive cars new is a very small portion of the world population, but it’s a group of people who are more influential than average and others would join Mastodon servers to follow them.
The next thing that Elon could do to kill Twitter would be to have all his companies (which have something more than a dozen verified Twitter accounts) use Mastodon accounts for their primary PR releases and then send the same content to Twitter with a 48 hour delay. That would force journalists and people who want to discuss those companies on social media to follow the Mastodon accounts. Again this wouldn’t be a significant number of people, but they would be influential people. Getting journalists to use a communications system increases it’s importance.
The question is whether Elon is lacking the vision necessary to plan a Mastodon deployment or whether he just wants to allow horrible people to run wild on Twitter.
The Verge has an interesting article from 2019 about Gab using Mastodon [2]. The fact that over the last 2.5 years I didn’t even hear of Gab using Mastodon suggests that the fears of some people significantly exceeded the problem. I’m sure that some Gab users managed to harass some Mastodon users, but generally they were apparently banned quickly. As an aside the Mastodon server I use doesn’t appear to ban Gab, a search for Gab on it gave me a user posting about being “pureblood” at the top of the list.
Gab claims to have 4 million accounts and has an estimated 100,000 active users. If 5.5% of Tesla owners became active users on a hypothetical Tesla server that would be the largest Mastodon server. Elon could demonstrate his commitment to free speech by refusing to ban Gab in any way. The Wikipedia page about Gab [3] has a long list of horrible people and activities associated with it. Is that the “free speech” to associate with Tesla? Polestar makes some nice electric cars that appear quite luxurious [4] and doesn’t get negative PR from the behaviour of it’s owner, that’s something Elon might want to consider.
Is this really about bragging rights? Buying a controlling interest in a company that has a partial monopoly on Internet communication is something to boast about. Could users of commercial social media be considered serfs who serve their billionaire overlord?
Windows 10 added a new “PIN” login method, which is an optional login method instead of an Internet based password through Microsoft or a Domain password through Active Directory. Here is a web page explaining some of the technology (don’t watch the YouTube video) [1]. There are three issues here, whether a PIN is any good in concept, whether the specifics of how it works are any good, and whether we can copy any useful ideas for Linux.
Is a PIN Any Good?
A PIN in concept is a shorter password. I think that less secure methods of screen unlocking (fingerprint, face unlock, and a PIN) can be reasonably used in less hostile environments. For example if you go to the bathroom or to get a drink in a relatively secure environment like a typical home or office you don’t need to enter a long password afterwards. Having a short password that works for short time periods of screen locking and a long password for longer times could be a viable option.
It could also be an option to allow short passwords when the device is in a certain area (determined by GPS or Wifi connection). Android devices have in the past had options to disable passwords when at home.
Is the Windows 10 PIN Any Good?
The Windows 10 PIN is based on TPM security which can provide real benefits, but this is more of a failure of Windows local passwords in not using the TPM than a benefit for the PIN. When you login to a Windows 10 system you will be given a choice of PIN or the configured password (local password or AD password).
As a general rule providing a user a choice of ways to login is bad for security as an attacker can use whichever option is least secure.
The configuration options for Windows 10 allow either group policy in AD or the registry to determine whether PIN login is allowed but doesn’t have any control over when the PIN can be used which seems like a major limitation to me.
The claim that the PIN is more secure than a password would only make sense if it was a viable option to disable the local password or AD domain password and only use the PIN. That’s unreasonably difficult for home users and usually impossible for people on machines with corporate management.
Ideas For Linux
I think it would be good to have separate options for short term and long term screen locks. This could be implemented by having a screen locking program use two different PAM configurations for unlocking after short term and long term lock periods.
Having local passwords based on the TPM might be useful. But if you have the root filesystem encrypted via the TPM using systemd-cryptoenroll it probably doesn’t gain you a lot. One benefit of the TPM is limiting the number of incorrect attempts at guessing the password in hardware, the default is allowing 32 wrong attempts and then one every 10 minutes. Trying to do that in software would allow 32 guesses and then a hardware reset which could average at something like 32 guesses per minute instead of 32 guesses per 320 minutes. Maybe something like fail2ban could help with this (a similar algorithm but for password authentication guesses instead of network access).
Having a local login method to use when there is no Internet access and network authentication can’t work could be useful. But if the local login method is easier then an attacker could disrupt Internet access to force a less secure login method.
Is there a good federated authentication system for Linux? Something to provide comparable functionality to AD but with distributed operation as a possibility?
I’ve currently got Covid, I believe I caught it on the 11th of April (my first flight since the pandemic started) with a runny nose on the 13th and a positive RAT on the evening of the 14th. I got an official PCR test on the 16th with a positive result returned on the 17th. I think I didn’t infect anyone else (yay)! Now I seem mostly OK but still have a lack of energy, sometimes I suddenly feel tired after 20 minutes of computer work.
The progression of the disease was very different to previous cold/flu diseases that I have had. What I expect is to start with a cough or runny nose, escalate with more of that, have a day or two of utter misery with congestion, joint pain, headache, etc, then have it suddenly decrease overnight. For Covid I had a runny nose for a couple of days which went away then I got congestion in my throat with serious coughing such that I became unable to speak. Then the coughing went away and I had a really bad headache for a day with almost no other symptoms. Then the headache went away and I was coughing a bit the next day. The symptoms seemed to be moving around my body.
I got a new job and they wanted me to fly to the head office to meet the team, I apparently got it on the plane a day before starting work. I’ve discussed this with a manager and stated my plan to drive instead of fly in future. It’s only a 7 hour drive and it’s not worth risking the disease to save 3-4 hours travel time, or even the 5 hours travel I’d have saved if the airports were working normally (apparently a lot of airport staff are off sick so there’s delays). Given the flight delays and the fact that I was advised to arrive extra early at the airport I ended up taking almost 7 hours for the entire trip!
7 hours driving is a bit of effort, but sitting in an airport waiting for a delayed flight while surrounded by diseased people isn’t fun either.
In response to my post about Android phones without Google Play [1] I received an email recommending Joplin for notes on Android [2].
Joplin supports storing notes on a number of protocols including Nextcloud and WebDAV. I setup WebDAV because it’s easiest, here is Digital Ocean instructions for WebDAV on Apache [3]. That basically works. One problem for my use case is that the Joplin client doesn’t support accounts on multiple servers and the only released way of sharing notes between accounts is using the paid Joplin Cloud service.
There is a Joplin Server in beta which allows sharing notes but that is designed to run in Docker and is written in TypeScript so it was too much pain to setup. One mitigating factor is that there are “Notebooks” which are collections of notes. So if multiple people who trust each other share an account they can have Notebooks for personal notes and a Notebook for shared notes.
There is also a Snap install of the client for Debian [4]. Snap isn’t my favourite way of doing things but packaging JavaScript programs will probably be painful so I’ll do it if I continue using Joplin.
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