The Penguin of Evil

Retired Linux hacker, gamer, retrocomputing, model trains

ESO: EtchedPixels & PenguinOfEvil (Wombles, Greymanes, Chill Mode)

Public Key

npub145t9a2fd7vh4k02ywsmshty68ws5jsc2jkewf3ew8a2vreatzajsrn6ugl

NIP-05 Address

etchedpixels_at_mastodon.social@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs269j74yklxt6m84z8gdct4jdrhg2fgv9ftvhycuhr74xpu743wegvhjtpg

Author Public Key

npub145t9a2fd7vh4k02ywsmshty68ws5jsc2jkewf3ew8a2vreatzajsrn6ugl

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Last Notes

2024-08-05 16:32:46

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@npub1lrv…tth9 I own almost no tech stocks so I'd hardly noticed 8)

2024-07-30 18:13:17

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@npub1ywy…cksd Sadly all I can think after too much gaming is "the ground will appear shortly once the lag spike is over"

2024-07-30 18:10:24

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@npub198t…hasj Check the battery on the 600E against the old lists of dangerous ones. The untimely death of my TP600 involved the fire brigade.

2024-07-26 20:08:25

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@npub10r2…w6yx Ultimately you usually end up at Kicad, but like gimp it's perhaps better to tackle paint beforehand.

2024-07-23 12:25:12

Chuckling somewhat over the Arch fork "CachyOS". I don't think it's going to be very successful in Wales given the name basically translates to shitos.
#linux #cymru

2024-07-19 08:42:39

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@npub17lg…9uux Are they signed garbage ?

2024-07-14 12:03:37

"If you see a robbery at an Apple store, does that make you an iwitness?"
#dadjoke

2024-07-12 17:58:54

Fedora turns on Firefox prototype advertiser measurement crap by default. You probably want to turn it off. People might want to file bugs for other distributions if they've done the same.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2297635
#firefox #privacy #fedora #redhat #linux

2024-07-04 10:14:14

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@npub15zu…s7lx They only do it so Sunderland have a chance to come first at something ;)

2024-07-01 21:21:50

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@npub1ywy…cksd Would "Hi are you new to journalism, I wanted to let you know .." be a proper reply ;)

2024-06-27 11:35:07

The worst thing about hackers cracking your password is having to rename the cat
#dadjoke #infosec

2024-06-26 12:36:50

Tech language that confuses non techies #134
Microprocessors are programmed with macro-assemblers

2024-06-25 17:10:58

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@npub1hxf…g8qu Promptly followed by the rightwing press running outrage articles about "Reckless cyclist speeds past train!"

2024-06-19 13:45:38

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@npub1gfd…7gg6 All those tech skills are needed to 0day your tractor now

2024-06-14 06:35:32

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 A question pollsters don't ask enough is "If everyone could get a house would you care about people seeking asylum here"

2024-06-13 18:14:58

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@npub1ywy…cksd And that'll be the wrong castle.

2024-06-13 13:26:44

The year is 2048, all applications are dynamically linked to systemd and only make calls through it. Systemd has replaced all the linux device drivers and file systems with message based services.
Then with a final flourish it is revealed that Systemd is in fact GNU HURD.

2024-06-13 10:19:10

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@npub1tvq…l6jk Given they didn't say that and it's dangerous that looks like Google AI is now churning out actively defamatory statements. Sooner they do that to someone rich and angry and it gets ugly the better

2024-06-05 12:14:25

The 1902 Waterloo Necropolis station is up for sale
#trains
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/the-necropolis-railway-station-is-up-for-sale-72810/

2024-06-04 23:05:47

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@npub1ywy…cksd Or they could wipe them all and put them on ebay so the rest of us can all have piles of nice extra cheap laptops.

2024-05-20 09:27:15

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 It's cheaper for the billionaires than having half of them nailed to trees, which is what is going to start happening otherwise. Some of them seem to have finally woken up.

2024-05-10 19:43:55

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@npub1tvq…l6jk I can't decide between Steamdeck/Proton and Windows 11.

2024-05-08 10:27:16

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@npub19la…hm4g Even weirder is that for years they've been busily packaging a broken weird gcc 68K fork not the real thing - not that packaging any 68K gcc is probably a high demand feature.

2024-05-06 19:12:12

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@npub1tvq…l6jk Everyone I know at Google left. Says it all. It might have better PR than twitter but the rest .. shrug

2024-04-28 12:41:28

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@npub15zu…s7lx Except that the UK is no longer a safe country due to the Rwanda law so he won't be able to send them back any more. Something I am quite sure the UK government has factored in and intended.

2024-04-22 20:25:08

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@npub198t…hasj You need another networked printer

2024-04-19 16:18:22

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@npub1ywy…cksd "My fear," confessed Torvalds, "Is that RISC-V will make all the same mistakes that everybody else did before them."
They already did, the RISC-V exception handling is *hideous*

2024-04-18 17:49:35

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 Cue age discrimination lawsuit

2024-04-18 09:45:57

Various people have suggested putting "before 2023" in searches to avoid all the AI crap and this really works well.
Even better put "before 2014" in any news searches and the news is much better too

2024-04-14 09:28:56

I am convinced things started to go downhill somewhere shortly after sunrpc.
To remote control the charge setting on an ecoflow battery unit you have to
- Perform a weird json encoded things in https handshake with login and password to get a new set of auth info
- Talk json over mqtt to a server in China somewhere with these new credentials

2024-04-11 15:55:29

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@npub198t…hasj I have one of those somewhere. It must be a candidate for the weirdest most unusable mouse ever created

2024-04-01 10:52:27

Nice to see C++ got an award today for "longest running computer language prank"

2024-03-30 10:09:47

At a certain level I am amused that probably millions of dollars of careful espionage work has been pissed away by a fraction of a second delay in an exploit.
Far more of a problem though are systems that dynamically assemble stuff from latest versions of things. We can be sure that some maintainers of those thousands of tiny pieces are careful, reliable maintainers funded by various governments who if the call comes will use that trust to flip them for bad causes.
#xz #infosec

2024-03-29 11:50:50

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@npub1ywy…cksd Not sure they'd notice. Junior told me she couldn't imagine having to wait 5 minutes for a game to load off tape - then spent 15 minutes watching Sims4 do an update 8)

2024-03-28 16:56:48

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 "In a sense all work is becoming like university academics' work."
You mean underpaid, with abusive management who expect them to work all sorts of unpaid hours to keep up.
Yep sounds about right.

2024-03-12 10:53:07

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@npub15zu…s7lx It would mean if you scanned a plate close up you'd be able to verify it was authentic because a cloner wouldn't be able to copy the private key embedded in whatever tpm or similar they used. Long range is much trickier. Same people who wanted smart digital driving licences (no licence inserted in slot no drive) and uploadable digital insurance certificates (no insurance no drive)

2024-03-12 10:15:58

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@npub15zu…s7lx This is why the smart folks in the police were asking for smart numberplates (with cryptographic handshakes via RFID or similar) quite a time back.

2024-02-24 09:44:16

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 Don't overlook stuff like https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6396757/ and the studies on PM2.5 and reproduction and fossil fuel related pollutants and reproduction.
It's not just choice involved here.

2024-02-23 11:23:21

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 It depends on the council I am sure but generally enforcement is after-the-disaster only. It could also easily be improved if landlords not only had to register properties but upload the current certificates each year and tick boxes / upload photo evidence on checks being done.
The exception is the "right to rent" tory stuff. That is enforced hard and leads to a climate of fear where letting agents penalize people who don't look or sound british by demanding lots of paperwork

2024-02-23 11:01:07

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 There are a long list of things covered
- EPC at least E (proposed C in a few years), unless prohibitive cost
- Gas and electrical safety checks plus CO alarms
- Registration for multi-occupancy (and all in Wales and some cities)
- Fire safety and alarms, no old non fire safe items (eg sofas, tiles)
- Legionnaries testing if there are tanks
- Safe and habitable, dealing with stuff like mould
- Building maintenance
- Rehousing in the event of loss etc
Way more than owned homes!

2024-02-22 22:54:27

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@npub1g0t…tvm4 With #landlord hat on there *is* an enforcable duty to maintain. It's just no council has any budget to go fight with a big landlord or HA, especially when the only result will be "ok, you can find them somewhere new to live we are selling up".
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 is fairly clear on the matter for example and there are bits in other legislation and regulation too.

2024-01-24 16:18:55

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@npub1src…fms4 Yes but there are lots of competing malls and your microwave works with all of them. Apple is the equivalent of buying a vendors microwave and then only being able to buy food from the vendors shop at 30% markup.

2024-01-10 17:54:32

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@npub1src…fms4
- Have you turned it off and on again ?
- Has it only happened once and have you tried a few more times
- Weird, it's working here
- I've tried the sequence you describe and it all looks good
- I'll escalate it
(Crickets...)

2023-11-25 20:21:35

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@npub1psd…9sr7 @npub1myg…r2hj @npub19kd…4jdw @npub15ea…a2ud There is a brief period (in historical terms) this is true, assuming the overhang isn't removed by drug resistant bleach immune superbugs etc. It's only the transitional plunge that has this problem, then it goes down.
Many of those costs are also caused by medicine's 'war on death' attitude to end of life care and rules/laws where keeping a dog suffering is a crime and stopping the human in the situation from suffering is a crime but that's another topic

2023-11-25 19:12:41

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@npub1psd…9sr7 @npub1myg…r2hj @npub19kd…4jdw @npub15ea…a2ud (c) is debatable longer term. Lower population should mean less pollution, less accidents, better food, better quality of life. All those reduce medical spending. The bit where it shrinks rapidly will be ugly but otoh it also rapidly leads to the young being the main voting block which might lead to massive corrections of path.

2023-11-25 19:10:25

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@npub1psd…9sr7 @npub19kd…4jdw @npub15ea…a2ud You don't have a house because oligarch housebuilders didn't build enough so they maximised sales value per unit. You can't afford to rent because oligarch vulture capital funds bought it all to rent at maximum possible prices. Not really a surprise they are desperately paying people to point at someone else.

2023-10-14 13:11:02

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@npub1psd…9sr7 @npub1t5c…j8x8 @npub1f5c…hqzn Presumably because they can meet some of the classified requirements. But there's more to it than that. Government is even more risk averse than corporations. What's the plan if Elon goes totally rogue, what's the plan if SpaceX goes bust (say from some kind of disaster and lawsuit). Government is obsessed by risk avoidance.

2023-10-14 12:53:37

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@npub1psd…9sr7 @npub1t5c…j8x8 @npub1f5c…hqzn Not just pork barrel. There's a lot they want to put up that they don't want anyone to know about and I doubt they consider SpaceX suitable for some of the military stuff.