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Japan declares victory in effort to end government use of floppy disks
  • This is a great point, but it probably doesn't do the job as well as more modern alternatives.

    1. Easy to lose, possible data leak concerns.
    2. Easy to retain data that should have been deleted.
    3. Easy to lose data if a disk gets lost or damaged.
    4. Likely wastes time when trying to track down the disk you need to getting someone to transfer it.
    5. Lack of access logs and auditing capabilities.
    6. Easy way for viruses to spread.

    Modern IT managed file servers solve a lot of real problems when well-managed.

  • Japan declares victory in effort to end government use of floppy disks
  • Convenience stores in Japan are much more than the cigarettes and lottery tickets of North America. They have lots of ready-to-eat food, snacks, drinks as well as some banking services, bill payments, faxing and more.

  • Why do many search engines seem to ignore operators (e.g. exact phrases, term exclusions, OR, etc.)? Is there a good reason for having a dumb 1997-level search logic that I'm not seeing?
  • There are a few reasons. Some of them are in the users' interest. Lots of people phrase their search like a question. "How do I turn off the wifi on my blue windows 11 laptop?"

    While ignoring stopwords like "the" and "a" has been common for a while there is lots of info here that the user probably doesn't actually care about. "my" is probably not helping the search, "how" may not either. Also in this case "blue" is almost certainly irrelevant. So by allowing near matches search engines can get the most helpful articles even if they don't contain all of the words.

    Secondly search engines often allow stemming and synonym matching. This isn't really ignoring words but can give the appearance of doing so. For example maybe "windows" gets stemmed to "window" and "laptop" is allowed to match with "notebook". You may get an article that is talking about a window of opportunity and writing in notebooks and it seems like these words have been ignored. This is generally helpful as often the best result won't have used the exact same words that you did in the query.

    Of course then there are the more negative reasons.

    1. Someone decided that you can't buy anything if your product search returns no results. So they decided that they will show the "closest matches" even if nothing is anywhere close. This is infuriating and I have stopped using many sites because of it.
    2. If you need to make more searches or view more pages you also see more ads.
  • What industry secret are you aware of that most people aren't?
  • There are some password managers where you need to either manually look up passwords and copy+paste or autotype them or select the correct password from a dropdown. Some of these will come with an optional browser extension which mitigates this but some don't really tract domain metadata in a concrete way to do this linking.

    Some examples would be Pass which doesn't have any standard metadata for domain/URL info (although some informal schemes are used by various tools including browser-integration extensions) and KeePass which has the metadata but doesn't come with a browser extension by default.

  • What industry secret are you aware of that most people aren't?
  • The reason I say browser password manager is two main reasons:

    1. It is absolutely critical that it checks the domain to prevent phishing.
    2. People already have a browser and are often logged into some sort of sync. It is a small step to use it.

    So yes, if you want to use a different password manager go right ahead, as long as it checks the domain before filling the password.

  • How did we switched from "Dinosaur are giant lizards" to "Dinosaur are giant birds"
  • I don't think that is quite accurate.

    We discovered many more Pluto-or-larger sized things that were closer to the sun than Pluto. It became increasingly obvious that there was nothing special about Pluto and we either needed to add hundreds of planets or "demote" Pluto.

  • What industry secret are you aware of that most people aren't?
  • You probably mean TOTP. OTP is a generic term for any one-time-password which includes SMS-based 2FA. The other main standard is HOTP which will use a counter or challenge instead of the time as the input but this is rarely used.

  • What industry secret are you aware of that most people aren't?
  • Tips for being secure online:

    1. Use your browser's password manager to generate random passwords.
    2. In the rare case you need to manually enter your password into a site or app be very suspicious and very careful.
    3. Never give personal information to someone who calls or emails you. If necessary look up the contact info of who called you yourself and call them back before divulging and details. Keep in mind that Caller ID and the From address of emails can be faked.
    4. Update software regularly. Security problems are regularly fixed.

    That's really all you need. You don't even need 2FA, it is nice extra security but if you use random passwords and don't enter your passwords into phishing sites it is largely unnecessary.

  • What industry secret are you aware of that most people aren't?
  • I'm not an expert on modern alarm systems but it seems that it is very common and fairly inexpensive to have cellular data backup. Not every system has it, but many do. In that case cutting the main connection will likely result in someone appearing on site fairly quickly.

    Many cameras also have some form of local buffering. So even if you are gone before someone does show up you still may find yourself recorded.

    But at the end of the day just put a bag over your head and you can be gone by the time anyone shows up without leaving a meaningful trace. Other than the very top-end system security systems just keep the honest people honest.

  • Like the morning dew
  • toilet water

    FTFY

  • Microsoft really wants Local accounts gone after it erases its guide on how to create them
  • They added telemetry. 100% of responses had internet access.

  • When the subway replacement shuttles roll in.
  • Yeah, I made the mistake of trying to ride the shuttle from Bloor–Yonge to Spadina. Bloor was under construction so the bus took a crazy long loop. Seemingly getting lost. Then after stopping a while at Dupont station they just announced that it was the last stop. On a bus labelled with route 1! It would have been way faster to walk, which I would have done if I had known that it was going to be absurdly slow and drop me off at the wrong station in the end.

    I do love the TTC but sometimes things go very wrong. I actually filed a feedback report that if the shuttle isn't going to follow the route it should have a different route number or some sort of warning before you board. They responded and said something like "sometimes buses take different routes".

  • Can someone explain me USA obsession with prom and similar school rituals?
  • I don't really mean literally to practice asking people out. But there are times in your life where you need to ask people for things. It is hard to get over the anxiety, risk of social embarrassment and practice showing confidence (even if you are not). These are valuable skills in all sort of social circumstances.

  • You'll regret using natural keys
  • It is true, don't do it.

    Even at huge companies like Google, lots of stuff was keyed on your email address. This was a huge problem so Google employees were not allowed to change their email for the longest time. Eventually they opened it up by request but they made it very clear that you would run into problems. So many systems and services would break. Over time I think most external services are pretty robust now, but lots of internal systems still use emails (or the username part of it) and have issues.

    IIUC Google accounts now use a random number as the key. But there are still places where the email is in use, slowly being fixed at massive cost.

  • Can someone explain me USA obsession with prom and similar school rituals?
  • FWIW I think it is actually a valuable social skill to be encouraged to ask someone out to prom. A lot of people don't have many similar experiences throughout their lives.

  • Can someone explain me USA obsession with prom and similar school rituals?
  • Prom is fun. You get to hang out with all of your classmates, ask someone out. A subset of people are always going to go overboard, but keep in mind that you don't see the "normal" cases. Most people just walk up to someone and ask them out. They find a date from the school or go alone.

    I'm from Canada so I don't know if the US is wildly different, but here it is a bit of a big deal, but I think part of that is what makes it fun, you sort of build a bit of hype around what would otherwise be just another school dance.

  • EFF Dice-Generated Passphrases | Electronic Frontier Foundation
  • It depends a lot on the hash functions. Lots of hashes are believed to be difficult to parallelize on GPUs and memory hard hash functions have different scaling properties. But even then you need to assume that an adversary has lots of computing power and a decent amount of time. These can all be estimated then you give yourself a wide margin.

  • Project Announcement: RSS Temple
  • Yeah, the fact is today that the more advanced bots are probably better at captchas than humans. There isn't really a great solution here. But I tried at least 10 times before I got one right.

  • Project Announcement: RSS Temple
  • One thing that I noticed is that reading items is very difficult because basically as soon as they appear on the screen they are marked as read and become light-grey on white. Either the "read" style needs to be more readable or the marking of read should be deferred until I am done reading the article.

  • Project Announcement: RSS Temple
  • Wow, that captcha is impossible.

  • Why can't you return empties in downtown Toronto?

    This is frustrating. I live in a small apartment and my nearest beer store is over 20min walk. I can get to at least 6 LCBOs in that time and dozens of grocery stores that sell alcohol. I'm not even the worst off..

    Note that in the map posted the middle location is Yonge and Dundas which doesn't accept bottles. So if you live in the downtown core you can be walking 30min easy (each way).

    You can see a map here, but which ones accept bottles or not aren't indicated until you click "show details". https://www.thebeerstore.ca/locations

    How is this acceptable? I am forced to pay a deposit on every bottle but have nowhere to return them. Either I save up and haul a giant bag 20min or drive. Either way a waste of space in my apartment and I don't even drink that much.

    It seems that we need a solution.

    1. Make LCBOs take bottles back. (or anywhere that sells alcohol, including Beer Store delivery)
    2. Remove the deposit and recommend recycling (sucks for bottles which are better washed and reused rather than crushed and reformed).
    3. At least make the Yonge and Dundas store accept empties. This would at least give options in downtown core that are less than 15min away. Still not great but closes a gaping hole.
    4
    Please recommend me some blogs about Linux or FOSS or similar that you follow through RSS.
    iusearchlinux.fyi Please recommend me some blogs about Linux or FOSS or similar that you follow through RSS. - iusearchlinux.fyi

    Hi. I have a category Little Tech Blogs in my rss reader where I put those cool niche blogs mostly about Linux, FOSS, programming, etc… Many of them I found by articles linked in this community, so I was wondering if you guys know about more blogs like that. By little I mean it’s run by one person o...

    2
    What is your favorite terminal emulator.

    I'm reconsidering my terminal emulator and was curious what everyone was using.

    143
    hub.fosstodon.org Facebook, Fosstodon & The Fediverse

    This is Fosstodon's official stance on the whole Facebook joining the Fediverse debacle.

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    General Programming Discussion @lemmy.ml kevincox @lemmy.ml
    Default to Less Than Quadratic
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    nixos @lemmy.ml kevincox @lemmy.ml
    Bisecting the Linux Kernel with NixOS

    cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/551377

    > Recently my kernel started to panic every time I awoke my monitors from sleep. This seemed to be a regression; it worked one day, then I received a kernel upgrade from upstream, and the next time I was operating my machine it would crash when I came back to it. > > After being annoyed for a bit, I realized this was a great time to learn how to bisect the git kernel, find the problem, and either report it upstream, or, patch it out of my kernel! I thought this would be useful to someone else in the future, so here we are. > > Step #1: Clone the Kernel; I grabbed Linus' tree from https://github.com/torvalds/linux with git clone git@github.com:torvalds/linux.git > > Step #2: Start a bisect. > > If you're not familiar with a bisect, it's a process by which you tell git, "this commit was fine", and "this commit was broken", and it will help you test the commits in-between to find the one that introduced the problem. > > You start this by running git bisect start, and then you provide a tag or commit ID for the good and the bad kernel with git bisect good ... and git bisect bad .... > > I knew my issue didn't occur on the 5.15 kernel series, but did start with my NixOS upgrade to 6.1. But I didn't know precisely where, so I aimed a little broader... I figured an extra test or two would be better than missing the problem. 😬 > > > git bisect start > git bisect good v5.15 > git bisect bad master > > > Step #3: Replace your kernel with that version > > In an ideal world, I would have been able to test this in a VM. But it was a graphics problem with my video card and connected monitors, so I went straight for testing this on my desktop to ensure it was easy to reproduce and accurate. > > Testing a mid-release kernel with NixOS is pretty easy! All you have to do is override your kernel package, and NixOS will handle building it for you... here's an example from my bisect: > > > boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackagesFor (pkgs.linux_6_2.override { # (#4) make sure this matches the major version of the kernel as well > argsOverride = rec { > src = pkgs.fetchFromGitHub { > owner = "torvalds"; > repo = "linux"; > # (#1) -> put the bisect revision here > rev = "7484a5bc153e81a1740c06ce037fd55b7638335c"; > # (#2) -> clear the sha; run a build, get the sha, populate the sha > sha256 = "sha256-nr7CbJO6kQiJHJIh7vypDjmUJ5LA9v9VDz6ayzBh7nI="; > }; > dontStrip = true; > # (#3) `head Makefile` from the kernel and put the right version numbers here > version = "6.2.0"; > modDirVersion = "6.2.0-rc2"; > # (#4) `nixos-rebuild boot`, reboot, test. > }; > }); > > > Getting this defined requires a couple intermediate steps... > Step #3.1 -- put the version that git bisect asked me to test in (#1) > Step #3.2 -- clear out sha256 > Step #3.3 -- run a nixos-rebuild boot > Step #3.4 -- grab the sha256 and put it into the sha256 field (#2) > Step #3.5 -- make sure the major version matches at (#3) and (#4) > > Then run nixos-rebuild boot. > > Step #4: Test! > > Reboot into the new kernel, and test whatever is broken. For me I was able to set up a simple test protocol: xset dpms force off to blank my screens, wait 30 seconds, and then wake them. If my kernel panicked then it was a fail. > > Step #5: Repeat the bisect > > Go into the linux source tree and run git bisect good or git bisect bad depending on whether the test succeeded. Return to step #3. > > Step #6: Revert it! > > For my case, I eventually found a single commit that introduced the problem, and I was able to revert it from my local kernel. This involves leaving a kernel patch in my NixOS config like this: > > > boot.kernelPatches = [ > { patch = ./revert-bb2ff6c27b.patch; name = "revert-bb2ff6c27b"; } > ]; > > > This probably isn't the greatest long-term solution, but it gets my desktop stable and I'm happy with that for now. > > Profit! > >

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    SaaS RSS hosting
    www.rss-hosting.com RSS hosting

    Simple and cheap cloud hosting for your RSS feeds and content. You can create or import RSS feed, edit it, add messages, get a download link for sharing and check statistics.

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    felixcrux.com Feeds: The Only Civilised Way to Read Online

    An introduction to RSS/Atom feeds and why they are so incredibly useful.

    Feeds: The Only Civilised Way to Read Online
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    UI, UX and usability @lemmy.ml kevincox @lemmy.ml
    Predictable UX
    0
    I started an RSS to Email Service

    I know the Email isn't everyone's favourite RSS reader but it works really well for me. I wasn't happy with any of the existing services so I started my own.

    https://feedmail.org is a low-cost RSS-to-Email service with nice clean templates. I'm happy to answer any questions.

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    feedmail.org Easy RSS-to-Email Service - FeedMail

    Get updates from your favourite sites by email. The latest news, directly to your email.

    This is a service I created to consume RSS feeds via email. This has been my preferred way to consume RSS for a while but I never found a service that I was really happy with and no self-hosted tool easy enough to manage.

    So I created FeedMail mostly for myself but decided to share with others. I would appreciate feedback and any questions you have.

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    kevincox kevincox @lemmy.ml

    https://kevincox.ca

    Posts 23
    Comments 673
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