In light of current events: Surveillance Self-Defense by the EFF https://ssd.eff.org/
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Open Source Software and Publications by Christian Kruse
This page contains random thoughts and impressions by me.
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Cory Doctorow wites about DRM products and that they are defective by design. He asks a good question: if DRM is so good for us, then why aren’t DRM products labeled as such?
In our open letter on DRM labelling – a letter signed by a diverse coalition of rights holders, public interest groups, and publishers – we ask the FTC to take action to ensure that people know what they’re getting when they buy products encumbered with DRM.
He further points out that DRM is often designed as a kill switch:
What’s more, most modern DRM is designed for “renewability” – which is a DRM-vendor euphemism for a remote kill-switch. These DRM tools phone home periodically for updates, and install these updates without user intervention, and then disable some or all of the features that were there when you bought the product.
Interesting read!
22:46,
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Passengers: 4.5 of 5.
22:11,
I had a very pleasant experience with the Deutsche Telekom – wow!
22:09,
Trying to talk to a MSSQL server instance via Ruby tunneled via SSH. Oh the pain…
08:50,
Of course things like software quality, bad UX (e.g. still none of the hands-off/continuity features work) are a reason for me: why would I pay the „Apple tax“ if „it simply works“ is no longer true?
Another reason is the hardware, and that’s a complex one. On one hand Apple hardware is really good, e.g. the touchpads are the best I know. But on the other hand they do stupid things like soldering the SSD and RAM onto the board or gluing the battery. At least the SSD should not be soldered, as I use my hard disks heavily (due to big databases) it is likely that it breaks before the computer is broken.
Also software freedom is a reason. I like the ideals behind the GNU project and think this is the right way.
But my absolutely main reason is performance. Linux performs so much better… I have a script touching and inserting about 2 million rows, one at a time. My Linux finishes the job within two hours, while my macbook needs six(!!) hours to complete the task. The overall performance is so much better, and disk I/O is in its own league.
07:49,
Nicolas Perriault wrote a nice article about switching away from the Mac to a Linux desktop. He has a similar vita (computer-wise) as me:
I was a Linux user 10 years ago but moved to being a Mac one, mainly because I was tired of maintaining an often broken system (hello xorg.conf), and Apple had quite an appealing offer at the time: a well-maintained Unix platform matching beautiful hardware, sought-after UX, access to editor apps like Photoshop and MS Office, so best of both worlds.
I, too, was a Linux user (Gentoo, to be accurate) until some time in 2006 (iirc) and I too got tired repairing my system over and over again. Now he is switching back to Linux:
To be frank, I was a happy Apple user in the early years, then the shine started to fade; messing up your system after upgrades became more frequent, Apple apps grown more and more bloated and intrusive (hello iTunes), UX started turning Kafkaian at times, too often I was finding myself tweaking and repairing stuff from the terminal…
My reasons are are a bit different, but I can relate to that.
08:20,
I would not buy it, but I think it’s very cool to have a full-pledged Linux-capable computer in this size.
15:51,
For my Emacs using friends: this is an interesting article about a possible Org workflow. The author seems to use Org-mode for about a year and describes the features he can’t live without:
I’m writing this short guide in an effort to introduce the features in org-mode which I’ve found I can’t live without. I’ll go over how I use org-mode, and it’s powerful built-in summary/calendar view known as
org-agenda
, in both my work and in my hobby projects. I also include some details about how everything was implemented, or at the very least provide the reader with references to understand my code. This guide is only an introduction to my workflow and is by no means self-contained!
I read these descriptions with curiosity, I often take a thing or two out of them I didn’t know before. For example last week I learned about the org-agenda-follow-mode
, a true piece of heaven!
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In this interesting article Wesley Moore writes about switching away from macOS. He writes about his motivation and reasons:
- Access to regularly updated, pro hardware.
Not restricted to Apple hardware that makes choices that I don’t value, such as:
- Removing the Esc key.
- Removing all legacy ports necessitating the use of dongles for everything.
- Prioritising thinness and weight over everything else.
- Access to hardware that Apple doesn’t make, such as 2-in-1 laptops.
- Getting comfortable with an alternative before I’m forced to.
- The ability to inspect and contribute to the OS I use.
Using an OS where developers are first-class citizens.
I can understand his reasons: I for myself have similar problems with Apple nowadays (besides the moral issues). Interestingly he also favors elementary OS:
Elementary is stunning and definitely my favourite. It won’t appeal to everyone but their philosophies and direction really resonate with me.
I’m trying out elementary as well (using it for a week now, I am pretty happy with it), so it was nice to read that somebody else likes it as well - especially since loads of Linux users I know think that this not the way Linux is supposed to be.
09:25,
Manton Reece writes about silos:
08:10The message is clear. The only web site that you can trust to last and have your interests at heart is the web site with your name on it.
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Such a beautiful picture, and not only because of the model
10:58,
The Elixir and Phoenix communities seem very interesting to me. I am tempted to port another software to Elixir/Phoenix just to see how it works out.
06:39,
I got kruse.cool 😎 You now can contact me via email by christian
at kruse.cool
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This site has now a Let’s Encrypt certificate! 🎉
08:17,
Over the weekend I have been moving my stuff from a dedicated server to three DigitalOcean droplets (affiliate link). I’m down from 60 EUR to about 20 EUR. Yay! :)
I also took the chance and moved my configuration to deployment via ansible. What a relief!
I also have to admit, I’m impressed by the work DO did, it is really fast to create a new droplet. It is just a matter of under a minute.
08:15,
This one is mainly for my US friends: Why electronic voting is a bad idea
20:11,
„Wizards never tell!“ „I could tell! … But that would be a story for another time.“ 😂
19:49,
I don’t think that this is good news… I think that is ridiculous
11:04,
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StackOverflow coders, beware! Round about half of the PHP/MySQL questions on Stack Overflow contain SQL injections.
13:07,
My good friend Tobias just discovered that Homebrew tells Google every command you execute.
I wasn’t aware of that, either, and I surely never confirmed this – I would never say yes to that.
The good news? You can disable that with brew analytics off
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The last week I have been writing on a new iOS project. I hadn’t had so much fun during work for ages.
Learning new things is fun, and the iOS ecosystem is pretty neat!
06:45,
The question is: why do you need a light bulb with ZigBee?
13:40,
Avoid the IoS: the internet of Shit
20:55,
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I’m rolling on the floor laughing – „It took millions of years for mankind to evolve. Now they’re hunched over cellphones, playing with your balls.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC7H99-7wxk
08:00,
I think we should create a new term for this type of problems:
to jeena: to fuck up your computers with weird and esoteric problems.
you jeenad your hardware!
09:17,
Yeah, my boss liked that part most ;-)
08:25,
I have to face it: I’m no longer target audience for a MacBook Pro. They dropped all ports, still only 16GB RAM and still an old CPU. This is not what I expect from a pro notebook. I like the idea of the touch bar, but it doesn’t compensate the missing features.
After careful consideration we decided not to buy a new MBP but instead bought a Tuxedo Notebook which I can get with 32GB RAM, a fast i7 Kaby lake CPU and a lot of ports (inluding a network port).
07:04,
„If you buy a Linux notebook your macs file for divorce“ 😂
10:52,
Interesting article about the Don’ts of mobile websites https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/10/how-to-poison-the-mobile-user/
08:06,
Upgrade to iOS 10.1 now https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207271
19:17,
„Upgrade your SSH key“ - you really should https://blog.g3rt.nl/upgrade-your-ssh-keys.html (via @rodneyrehm). I did this a few weeks ago.
09:52,
Does Google really do hiring tests like this? I can’t belive it, this seems so dumb. The answers the guy gave have all been correct and the recruiter obviously didn’t know anything about CS.
If this is true that would explain a lot…
07:27,
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Interesting article comparing functional and iterative programming constructs https://medium.com/@lasseebert/iterating-in-elixir-90fdc0005dfc
07:40,
Waiting for the database – the story of my life
13:53,
„Knock, knock, Neo“ – I love this film!
23:00,
Apple removed Dash from the App store… https://blog.kapeli.com/apple-removed-dash-from-the-app-store
09:13,
It is impressive how none of the shiny new iOS-macOS features work for me.
I did the complete Apple dance more than once (disable/enable iCloud, disable/enable 2 factor authentication, reboot devices, etc, pp). And the worst of all: I am not able to debug that. How would I?
Just works my ass.
09:08,
Try not to rant too much about PHP ;-)
06:46,
That feeling when you compile a piece of code you have been working on for several hours for the first time…
14:36,
According to this Article the IoS (Internet Of Shit) just delivered the largest dDoS attack (665gbps, wtf) so far. Yay!
08:00,
Today Jeena linked to an interesting article: „Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won’t Get A Choice“. Basically he is describing how Google is searching for control (as every business is sooner or later). Especially the point about Chrome is more relevant than ever: Chrome is by far the most used browser.
06:48,
Deichkind – Like mich am Arsch (Like my ass) – a genius classic german hiphop music video
17:41,
Migrating to Rails 5 – what a PITA
08:52