Saturday, January 08
Daily News Stuff 8 January 2022
Terrible People Edition
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Terrible People Edition
Top Story
- Everyone in this story deserves everything that is about to happen to them: A new "tech startup" wants to allow people to bet on lawsuits using purpose-made cryptocurrencies. (Motherboard)
That's an awful idea in at least three different ways but the people behind it aren't likely to have much time to enjoy the chaos because they are dumb enough to market the idea with "50%+ annual returns".
Yes, anything that offers that is a Ponzi scheme - or a robbery - and yes, the feds do still take a dim view of such things.
Unless they're the ones running it.
- Weekends are Question and Answer time. Drop your tech questions in the comments and I'll attempt to answer them tomorrow.
Tech News
- If you offer a Patreon subscription in an international subscriber's local currency, you are now subject to the laws of that country. (The Register)
Says a ruling by Lord Justice Fuckbiscuit of Britain.
Since this is in regards to a libel suit, and libel laws in Britain are shit, this is important.
The solution is to block all GDPR countries at the router. Let them eat cold kippers and warm beer.
- SonicWall has its own Y2K22 bug. (Bleeping Computer)
There is at least a patch for this one, unlike Honda cars which are trapped in 2002 until August.
- How a routine gem update created $73k in subscriptions. (SerpApi)
They weren't hacked and subscribed to garbage services as I first thought. Rather, after updating the libraries for a code deployment (Ruby libraries are called "gems") their software charged existing customers an extra $73k.
Why?
Because (after much debugging on their side) there was a change in what "or" meant in a MongoDB database library.
The maintainers of that library should be strapped to the outside of a rocket and launched directly at Cygnus X-1 because you do not ever, ever, ever do that.
- First impressions of Web3. (Moxie)
Web3 is the web, only fucked up with catastrophically bad blockchain implementations which promise to decentralise everything but in fact centralise it on new platforms that don't answer to you any more than the current ones do but also cost you money.
The article gives a specific example of the rapid corruption of a supposedly decentralised protocol.
- What is Web3? (Substack)
Is it all a scam, or is it only almost all a scam?
- AMD's cheap(ish) new RX 6500 XT video cards kinda suck. (Tom's Hardware)
Only 4 PCIe lanes and missing hardware for video decoding, meaning that task lands back on your CPU, makes it a big pile of meh.
- A fire at ASML's factory in Berlin affected less than 1% of the floor space. (Tom's Hardware)
But the area is involved in making key components for EUV lithography, and ASML is the only company in the world that makes machines for EUV lithography.
And EUV lithography is what is used to make all the latest computer chips. All of them.
Party Like It's 1980 Video of the Day
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:32 PM
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1
"there was a change in what "or" meant in a MongoDB database library."
Statically link everything. Never upgrade, except for actual security fixes.
One of the problems that Free Software has had (since the beginning) is that you are the never-ending-beta-tester. Obviously the shittier for-pay software companies also do this, but if you're building something at a large scale and you depend on other idiots's software, you might want to have a contract.
Tech related: someone somewhere (I can't find the link now) recommended "wezterm" as a xterm + tmux replacement. It's written in rust, after all! Also, it pulls in something like 1/4 of a gigabyte of crates to emulate a terminal and do multiplexing.
Statically link everything. Never upgrade, except for actual security fixes.
One of the problems that Free Software has had (since the beginning) is that you are the never-ending-beta-tester. Obviously the shittier for-pay software companies also do this, but if you're building something at a large scale and you depend on other idiots's software, you might want to have a contract.
Tech related: someone somewhere (I can't find the link now) recommended "wezterm" as a xterm + tmux replacement. It's written in rust, after all! Also, it pulls in something like 1/4 of a gigabyte of crates to emulate a terminal and do multiplexing.
Posted by: normal at Saturday, January 08 2022 11:10 PM (obo9H)
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web3 is definitely a terrible idea, but that moxie blabfest dosn't know the distiction between the [World Wide] Web and Web 2.0. I mean, he calls 'em web1 and web2, ffs (after starting off with a plausibly deniable "Get off my lawn!"). What he calls web1 was the pre-www internet of netnews, email, fingerd, and .plan files.
Also, despite being a terrible idea, it will probably be pretty widely used. No, wait: because it's a terrible idea . . . I mean, Web 2.0 being stupid didn't stop it from becoming the dominant scheme. Thankfully, it didn't destroy the WWW, and nor will web3 destroy Web 2.0 or the WWW.
Also, despite being a terrible idea, it will probably be pretty widely used. No, wait: because it's a terrible idea . . . I mean, Web 2.0 being stupid didn't stop it from becoming the dominant scheme. Thankfully, it didn't destroy the WWW, and nor will web3 destroy Web 2.0 or the WWW.
Posted by: normal at Saturday, January 08 2022 11:33 PM (obo9H)
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GREAT blog!! Makes my day - EVERY morning. Thanks!
Blog display question: US-based user and have already tried multiple browsers with different security settings. When you post the music videos or anime the insertion appears and works. Great.
But it is clear that you have other embedded items that do not appear AT ALL. Example: your Jan 7 post where you say "Chief nerd and Mozilla cofounder Jamie Zawinski was quoted as saying:" shows...nothing. There is a blank line, then the next text.
When I look at the code it is usually a Twitter embed. Sure, I can open it up and extract the link to see the item in another browser window, but I was wondering what is up with the Twitter embed...?
Or is there a preferred browser/ settings you use for testing I can mimic.
Thanks
Blog display question: US-based user and have already tried multiple browsers with different security settings. When you post the music videos or anime the insertion appears and works. Great.
But it is clear that you have other embedded items that do not appear AT ALL. Example: your Jan 7 post where you say "Chief nerd and Mozilla cofounder Jamie Zawinski was quoted as saying:" shows...nothing. There is a blank line, then the next text.
When I look at the code it is usually a Twitter embed. Sure, I can open it up and extract the link to see the item in another browser window, but I was wondering what is up with the Twitter embed...?
Or is there a preferred browser/ settings you use for testing I can mimic.
Thanks
Posted by: Rick at Sunday, January 09 2022 03:05 AM (hLJXN)
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Re: twitter display, US
I use Pale Moon.
When I have Javascript turned on, I see the twitter stuff. Adblock Latitude does not seem to block that stuff. IIRC.
Javascript off, I don't see the twitter.
Over on Moe Lane dot com, when Moe posts tweets, with javascript off soemthing displays, but the bulk of the content is missing.
I use Pale Moon.
When I have Javascript turned on, I see the twitter stuff. Adblock Latitude does not seem to block that stuff. IIRC.
Javascript off, I don't see the twitter.
Over on Moe Lane dot com, when Moe posts tweets, with javascript off soemthing displays, but the bulk of the content is missing.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, January 09 2022 05:25 AM (r9O5h)
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Have now read your commentary on web3.
First thing that comes to mind, back in the day I asked a CS prof about difficulties of debugging decentralized code, or something like that. His opinion was that it tends to be difficult enough that a lot of the people who can do it have PhDs.
Other hearsay suggests that making decentralized code work without defects is pretty challenging.
So, it doesn't surprise that what may have been a dumpster fire of a specification could have been written.
First thing that comes to mind, back in the day I asked a CS prof about difficulties of debugging decentralized code, or something like that. His opinion was that it tends to be difficult enough that a lot of the people who can do it have PhDs.
Other hearsay suggests that making decentralized code work without defects is pretty challenging.
So, it doesn't surprise that what may have been a dumpster fire of a specification could have been written.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, January 09 2022 05:31 AM (r9O5h)
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Twitter: if you're using Edge, try setting tracking protection to Balanced instead of Strict. I had to do something like that to get it to show.
Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, January 09 2022 06:14 AM (Z0GF0)
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More Twitter embed info: In Brave, there is a setting for Twitter embeds in the Social media blocking screen.
Posted by: benzeen at Sunday, January 09 2022 08:06 AM (/p5qM)
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The Twitter embeds are odd for me, too. On this site, I see them in Safari but not Edge on my Mac, while over on Ace of Spades, I see them in both, but in Edge they're just a block quote without the usual Twitter UI wrapper (which is how they initially show up in Firefox and Chrome, before being replaced with the gaudy version). Meanwhile, neither site shows them on my iPad.
-j
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, January 09 2022 08:55 AM (ZlYZd)
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I might be able to code the Twitter embeds here to have a fallback that doesn't need JavaScript and doesn't trigger the embed blockers or enable Twitter tracking.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, January 09 2022 02:05 PM (PiXy!)
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