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notabot

@notabot@lemm.ee

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Props to Alpine and Kali for disabling this bullshit out of the box (lemmy.world)

Context for newbies: Linux refers to network adapters (wifi cards, ethernet cards, etc.) by so called "interfaces". For the longest time, the interface names were assigned based on the type of device and the order in which the system discovered it. So, eth0, eth1, wlan0, and wwan0 are all possible interface names. This, however,...

notabot ,

It's amazing how many linux problems stem from 'Redhat, however, found this solution too simple and instead devised their own scheme'. Just about every over complex, bloated bit of nonsense we have to fight with has the same genesis.

notabot ,

I'm with our binary friend; the systems they try to replace tend to be time tested, reliable and simple (if not necessarily immediately obvious) to manage. I can think of a single instance where a Redhat-ism is better, or even equivalent, to what we already have. In eavh case it's been a pretty transparent attempt to move from Embrace to Extend, and that never ends well for the users.

notabot ,

No need for a custom solution, we already had ways to make predictable names that worked better than this. Giving each interface a name that represents it's job makes life so much easier when you have several, naming them after which PCI bus they're on does not.

notabot ,

Personally I'd do away with NetworkManager too and just configure the interfaces directly, but that might just be me being old and grumpy!

I think most distros go along because their upstream did. There are comparatively few 'top level' distributions, the main ones (by usage) being Redhat and Debian. Most everything else branches from those.
Redhat's got enough clout on the market that there's a sort of pull towards complying with it just to not be left put.

I use Debian, but I think they're crazy for swallowing everything Redhat pushes, they could easily stick to the cleaner options and have a better system for it. At least they let you opt out of systemd, so life is a little more tolerable.

notabot ,

He's definitely off my Christmas card list. He seems desperate to leave a legacy, but he keeps trying to turn Linux into windows instead.

notabot ,

That's fair, it does make sense to use it on a laptop, but it really should be the sort of thing you add when needed rather than having it jammed in whether it's useful or not.

Every time I need to do something even slightly different to a basic setup I find myself inventing new curses for those who screwed things up with these overblown, over complex, minimally functional abominations. Just give me vi and the basic configuration files and let me get on with it!

notabot ,

I've never actually tried BTRFS, there were a few too many "it loses all your data" bugs in the early days, and I was already using ZFS by then anyway. ZFS has more than it's fair share of problems, but I'm pretty confident my data is safe, and it has the same upsides as BTRFS. I'm looking forward to seeing how BCachefs works now it's in kernel, and I really want to compare all three under real workloads.

notabot ,

I do use Ansible, partly because it's easier to tell people that's how you do it rather than "I wrote a shell script, it took half the time to write, it's 20% the size and runs several times faster". To be fair to Ansible, if you're configuring a number of servers at the same time, it's not too bad speedwise as it'll do batches of them in parallel. Configuring one server at a time is agony though.

notabot ,

In news that will shock no-one, dbus was, of course, initially created by a Redhat engineer. I get the idea of having a general purpose bus that everything can communicate on, but they somehow managed to even make that complex.

You make a compelling case for Void Linux. I use Debian or a RHEL derivative for work, primarily so there's at least a chance to hand systems off to someone else to maintain, the less known distros seem to meet with blank looks.

I want to give NixOS a try sometime, as I like the idea of declaritively defining the system

notabot ,

I try not to think about the things they've done, it's not good for my blood pressure. They had a decent desktop distro, but they seem determined to trash it with terrible decisions.

notabot ,

He may have taken some ideas from there, but I still see more windows like ideas. We're one bad decision away from systemd-regedit. If that happens, I might just give up completely.

notabot ,

Having consistent interface names on servers that have several is useful, but we already had that option. The interface names they generate are not only hard to remember, but not terribly useful as they're based on things like which PCI slot they're in, rather than what their purpose is. You want interface names like wan0 and DMZ, not enp0s2. Of course, you can set it up to use useful names, but it's more complicated than it used to be, so while the systemd approach looks like a good idea on the surface, it's actually a retrograde step.

notabot ,

cries It's amazing how much damage they've done to the linux ecosystem. Not just badly thought out concepts, but the amount of frustration and annoyance they caused by ramming it into existence and the cynicism it's created.

notabot ,

I think the difference is the level it's happening at. As I said, I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like a simple, unfussy and minimal distribution that you then add functionality to via configuration. Having that declarative configuration means it's easy to test new setups, roll back changes and even easily create modified configuration for other servers.

notabot ,

Yeah, I know there was one a while back, and if you don't use ECC RAM, given enough time, it will eat your data as it tries to correct checksum errors due to memory corruption. That's why we keep backups, right. Right?

I tend to assume that every storage system will eventually lose data, so having multiple copies is vital.

notabot ,

Yes, yes, but now lets take that, make it dependent on the session management system and dns resolver for some reason, make the command longer and more convoluted and store the results in one or more of a dozen locations! It'll be great!

/s

Dconf is bad, just imagine how bad a systemd version would be.

notabot ,

Do you really want to know? There are some things that the human mind is not meant to contemplate.

notabot ,

I was more suggesting that it might be a bit eldritch, but sometimes humor doesn't come across quite right/

The linked paper is focused on studying the 'perforation-type anchor' they use to hold the tissue to the mold as it grows, rather than keeping it alive afterwards. During growth the tissue and mold were submerged, or partially submerged, in a suitable medium to keep the cells healthy, and it was only when the resulting models were tested that they were removed (although one test did seem to involve letting it dry out to see if the anchors held).
Growing the various layers of cells seems to be a solved problem, and I suspect that includes keeping them supplied with nutrients and such, so the authors aren't examining that. What's not solved is how to keep the tissue attached to a robot, which is what the authors were studying.

notabot ,

I just wanted to say 'well done' for going over what you said, realizing how it could be interpreted adversely, and admitting it. Not enough people are willing to do that, so well done!

notabot ,

While I agree with most people here that finding a keyboard and screen would be the easiest option, you do have a couple of other options:

  • Use a preseed file
    A preseed lets the installer run completely automatically, without user intervention. Get it to install a basic system with SSH and take it from there. You'll want to test the install in a VM, where you can see what's going on before letting it run on the real server. More information here: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed

  • Boot from a live image with SSH
    Take a look at https://wiki.debian.org/LiveCD in particular 'Debian Live'. It looks like ssh is included, but you'd want to check the service comes up on boot. You can then SSH to the machine and install to the harddrive that way. Again, test on a VM until you know you have the image working, and know how to run the install, then write it to a USB key and boot the tsrget server from that.

This all assumes the target server has USB or CD at the top of its boot order. If it doesn't you'll have to change that first, either with a keyboard and screen, or via a remote management interface sych as IPMI.

notabot ,

Yes, that'll work too, it does involve adding the disk to your machine temporarily though, so just be carefully which disk you format to do it. Please don't ask why I say that, it brings back painful memories...

notabot ,

It's going to be a balance between your time getting an automated approach to work and the cost/effort of getting a monitor. Getting preseed working can be a bit fiddly, but it does mean you've learnt a new skill, getting a monitor sounds like it'll be a pain, and you might only need it once.

notabot ,

Putting a simple preseed file on a debian install image is probably going to be your best bet. Assuming you can run a VM on your current machine it shouldn't be too difficult to test it until you're happy with it.

I cannot make any post/comment containing the string [slash]etc[slash]passwd on lemmy.world (lemmy.world)

When I try to submit a post or comment containing the string [slash]etc[slash] passwd, the submit button goes into a loading state and spins indefinitely. The request is blocked by Cloudflare with status code 403. I can't even search for the forbidden string. You have to check dev tools to find out what went wrong, this error is...

notabot ,

Tried with 'Connect for lemmy' against lemm.ee and just got a full screen error that vanished after a second.

/ etc / passwd <- so none of the components are blocked.

notabot ,

I was going to roll my eyes at another "is this loss?" comment and move on, but then I looked at the strip again, and yes ot is. How did it get everywhere like this?

We could save so much bandwidth by replacing all loss graphics with the string "122L" and a short explanation of the specific circumstances.

notabot ,

You shall be my first disciple. Go forth and spread the good word of 122L! Soon all who read it shall know it's true meaning.

:)

notabot ,

I reckon it won't be long before we can just replace these sorts of inages with a short prompt and just have an AI generate the image on demand. We can swap bandwidth usage for energy usage instead. I'm not sure that's a good trade, but with the way the internet is going that just makes it more likely to happen.

notabot ,

The device captures visible and infrared light, just like a typical night vision scope. They're working on expanding the spectrum too, which could lead to some interesting and useful results. I understand that, for instance, skin cancers are more visible under certain UV wavelengths, so imagine a doctor being able to just put on a pair of glasses that convert that wavelength to give you a once over during a checkup.

notabot ,

The material captures visible light too, so headlights would be brighter, but I wonder if there's a way to reduce the contrast by either filtering out some wavelengths (like driving glasses) or the material simply not boosting it's output past a certain level?

notabot ,

The article says:

The photons travel through a resonant metasurface, where they mingle with a pump beam.

From that, I think it's suggesting it needs a separate beam of photons to amplify the signal, much like a transistor needs a supply current to amplify the signal it gets.

They also say:

This new tech also captures the visible and non-visible (or infrared) light in one image as you look through the 'lens.'

Which sounds like it produces an image showing both the IR and visible spectrum in the visible range.

Mind you, re-readind it, most of the article just talks about IR, so I'm not certain what it's actually doing. It could just be transparent to the visible spectrum. It wouldn't be much good for driving if it did that though, the windscreen blocks a lot of IR and you'd need IR headlights!

notabot ,

Remember to look after yourself. When you're already calm and happy within yourself it's easier to be 'successful' in whatever you're trying to do without burning out, which makes it easier to be calm and happy, creating a positive spiral.

That professor who is happy, calm and confident? He's had a great weekend skiing/hiking/playing with the kids or grandkids/generally looking after themselves by unwinding and enjoying themselves. He's calm because his mind is clear and he has the energy he needs to work and confident because he knows he's good at what he does and trusts himself. That might not be your professor exactly, but they're examples from profs I've had in the past.

Do yourself a favor, take half an hour out today and do something positive to improve your own well-being. Take a walk somewhere green, write a list of all the things you need to do that are bothering you, contact a friend you haven't spoken to in a while just to say hi, if you've got some slack time in your week see if there's some voluntry work you could enjoy doing, start learning a new skill. Just pick something and do it, even if you'd rather be sitting in a dark corner ignoring the world. Keep doing it. Things can and will get better if you push them in that direction. Good luck!

notabot ,

It doesn't really matter whether the FMR is one in a hundred or one in a million, for the uses it's being put to it's still too high. If it was only being used as one factor for authenticating someone (I.e. the 'thing for are') but still required the other factor(s) (the 'thing you know' and the 'thing you have') then it'd be adaquate.

As it stands, when it's being used either to pick someone out without further scrutiny, or to make payments with no further checks, it's simply unacceptable. There's good arguments to say it's not just the error rate is unacceptable, but that the technology simply shouldn't be used in those scenarios as it's entirely inappropriate, but that's a separate discussion.

notabot ,

If you are engulfed by the planet as soon as you step foot on it the question of whether they provide adaquate nutrition is rather moot. Mind you, if you, all other surface dwelling life, and presumably most of the scenery have sunk into the planet, can it truly be said to be made of sandwiches any more?

notabot ,

I think it would depend on the ratio of jam to peanut butter and bread. High sugar concentrations are an excellent way of preventing bacterial growth as it acts as a desiccant which is why jam can last so long without spoiling. So, unless there's enough moisture in the peanut butter and bread, your discarded gut bacteria will die out. It turns out that too much of a good thing really can be bad for you.

notabot ,

That may be your perfect search engine, I jyst want proper boolean operators on a sesrch engine that doesn't think it knows what I want better than I do, and doesn't pack the results out with pages that don't match all the criteria just for the sake of it. The sort of thing you described would be anathema to me, as I suspect my preferred option may be to you.

notabot ,

A question that's been on my mind for a while: can you run vim in emacs? That way you'd have the best editor in the most comprehensive OS.

notabot ,

I don't know? Are you?

  • God
notabot ,

NaevaTheRat? You're not really a rat are you? You're a Drop Bear. This is exactly the sort of thing a Drop Bear would post to entice more victims people to come to Australia.

Seriously though it's a country I'd love to visit one day.

notabot ,

If you have a stove I can definitely recommend heating your pizza in a dry (with no oil) frying pan. Set the temperature medium-low and heat a slice or two at a time for a few minutes. It comes out like it was freshly cooked.

notabot ,

Thanks, that rather made my day.

notabot ,

Oof, that sucks. It seems like the universe really does enjoy a cruel prank sometimes. I hope you've found something equally enjoyable to fill the pizza shaped hole in your meals.

notabot ,

Hmmm, it's hard to debug pizza remotely, but maybe the heat wasn't high enough, it normally only takes a minute or two to heat through and cooking it for longer probably would make the base go hard.

Thanks for reporting bavk though, and I'm sorry you had a suboptimal pizza result.

notabot ,

If you don't need external calling you don't need a trunk, it's just for connecting to the outside world. I found [[https://www.asterisk.org/|Asterisk]] was a good place to start. The config is rather involved though, so there are various front ends for it.

Note-taking app that looks too good to be true? - Siyuan

Recently stumbled upon this note-taking app called SiYuan, but it honestly looks a bit too good to be true(?). Has anyone here used it or got any experience with it? Trying to replace Obsidian is a difficult task, and I've been through almost all note-taking apps there are out there, however this one looks fairly similar....

notabot ,

You can sync Obsidian yourself too, it's just a bunch of files, so anything that'll handle them works.

notabot ,

I'm using syncthing, but I think I recall the sort of issue you mention. Android locks down cross-app access quite hard, but if you move the files to your SD card (or tge emulated one if you don't have one) it acts as shared storage and your sync program and obsidian can both read and write to it. On my device, the path is /storage/emulated/0/Documents/<whatever>

notabot ,

SysV init works more reliably, is smaller, does just one job and is much, much better architected.

SystemD tends to fail if you do anything out of the ordinary, is massively bloated, has it's claws into far too many parts of the system, is IMHO poorly architected, the many of the individual components are poorly designed and the whole thing is a huge, and utterly unnecessary, attack surface.

SystemD is probably adaquate if you just want to use your machine in the most basic way, but as soon as you try to do anything beyond that you start running into the rough edges and bad design decisions that it's plagued with.

notabot ,

SysV init does one job, it runs a set of scripts in an admin defined order, the init portion of SystemD attempts to solve a dependency graph at boot time and execute the startup scripts (units) in the order it devines from that. The big problems I've had around that have been services silently failing to start because it failed to resolve the ordering, and the difficulty of inserting a new unit into the ordering in a specific place. It's doable if there happens to be a target at the point you want, but if not you can't really do it as the existing, and any new, services all sequenced on the existing target. With SysV, of course, setting the service start order is trivial.

The thing is, if SystemD was just an init system it wouldn't be as bad, and has some useful ideas, but it tries to replace huge swathes of the system. As you say, some, and I'd say most, of the default housekeeping services suck, and you need to replace them. Unfortunately this then breaks the much vaunted integration of those services. Leaving them on the system isn't a great plan as it just leaves the extra attack surface. So now you need to contemplate repackaging it to exclude the stuff you don't need, which is a huge pain, and makes keeping up-to-date a big job. You've also got to worry about breaking dependencies from other packages.

Probably the biggest issue though is the huge attack surface SystemD exposes on your system. We've just seen an example of how that can be taken advantage of, with malware in a library way down the dependency chain from the system library that gets jammed into all sorts of things. I understand there is an effort underway to reduce those dependencies, but it'll always be worse than simply not doing that in the first place.

The architectural and design issues are to do with the way the different parts are so tightly linked when they have no rational reason for being, the level of complexity introduced to core services and the incoherence of some of the choices around behavior. A recent bugbear was the automounter. It works most of the time, but if a mount unit fails it just gives access to the mountpoint, when by definition you obviously and explicitly didn't want that. It also has a nasty habit of marking the unit failed, so future attempts also get bypassed until you reset it or have a recovery unit to do that.

Anyway this turned into a wall of text, and its late, so I'm going to stop there, I hope it's reasonable coherent.

notabot ,

You can, but I found it a bit laggy. It basically wraps your tcp stream over https, so I think the extra overhead was what was slowing it down.

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