EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
More here. At least somebody looked into the security and attack potential of these things.
2 hours.
We all know this. You typed a loooong line of commands in your shell and you made one typo.
That’s the worst.
Now. There’s a command that aims to help:
It is rather simple. But extremely effective.
The Fuck attempts to match the previous command with a rule. If a match is found, a new command is created using the matched rule and executed.
Grab it on github. Install it right away. It went into my toolbelt in an instant.
If you’re old enough to have used MS-DOS you know the benefits a read cache introduced back at the time for floppy disks. Without such a cache everything data intensive was magnitudes slower.
Now after all these years more and more stories emerge about how certain thresholds and timeings where set back in the days.
This is such a story:
Mark Zbikowski led the MS-DOS 2.0 project, and he sat down with a stopwatch while Aaron Reynolds and Chris Peters tried to swap floppy disks on an IBM PC as fast as they could.
They couldn’t do it under two seconds.
So the MS-DOS cache validity was set to two seconds. If two disk accesses occurred within two seconds of each other, the second one would assume that the cached values were still good.
Raymond Chen blog
There are more links in the original article – so go there and down that rabbit hole!
HACK LIKE A PROGRAMMER IN MOVIES AND GAMES!
GeekTyper was inspired by the various media where hacking is usually portrayed incorrectly.
Simply randomly mash your keyboard and code will be simulated on your screen.
This is hilarious! :-) I’ve had way to much fun poking keys while trying it out…
Of course there’s also a screensaver that you can install. Recommended for office use. Not recommended on airplanes and other public spaces.
I’ve just checked with a real person. I’ve used the Visual Studio skin and typed away. Oh the aww.
For those on macOS:
The firecracker exploded. Apparently after 2 weeks of usage of the Chuwi Hi10 Air the eMMC flash is malfunctioning.
In a totally strange way: Every byte on the eMMC can be read, seemingly. Even Windows 10 boots. But after a while it will hang and blue screen. Apparently because it tries to write to the eMMC and when those writes fail and pile up in the caches at some point the system calls it quits.
Anyhow: It means that no byte that is right now on this eMMC can be deleted / overwritten but only be read.
The great chinese support is really helpful and offered to replace the device free of charge right away. That’s very nice! But I came to the conclusion that I cannot send the device in, because:
It contains a full set of synched private data that I cannot remove by all means because the freaking soldered-on eMMC flash is broken.
The recipient of this broken tablet in china would be able to read all my data and I could not do anything about it.
Only an extremely small fraction of data is on there unencrypted. Only that much I hadn’t yet switched on encryption on during the initial set-up I was still doing on the device. And that little piece of data already is what won’t let me send out the device.
Now, what can we learn from this? We can learn: Never ever ever work with anything, even during set-up, without full encryption.
The first device in my household recently has updated itself to the newest Windows 10 1903 build.
On the very first moment of the login screen appearing and logging in I could tell that I hate one specific change that has made it into this latest update.
And it’s the default mouse cursor.
Back in the Pre-Windows Vista days, when I used to work for Microsoft, I was using the latest internal build of Windows and just around the first RTM (release-to-manufacture) build they touched up on the final designs.
I remember vividly when the mouse cursor had changed from the one we new and used since Windows 3 to a shorter tailed more “high-def” looking one.
Since then there were a couple of changes on the cursor but the general design was kept.
Now apparently with the latest Windows 10 update from 1803 to 1903 I got a new – old default mouse cursor.
By reflex I changed it back to the one I love and stored safely in a backup. I cannot stand the long tail and the weird pixel-ness of the cursor. It just looks kinda weird to my eyes.
Which one do you like better?
“The only thing we can say is that data show a number of people rent cars without driving them.”
Growing number of car-sharing users don’t rent cars for driving
Wait. What?
“Usually the only place I can take a nap while visiting my clients is a cybercafe in front of the station, but renting a car to sleep in is just a few hundred yen (several dollars), almost the same as staying in the cybercafe.”
Growing number of car-sharing users don’t rent cars for driving
Right…
And to spice things up a bit more:
Catching up to some YouTube things during dinner made us see a Japanese TV commercial sporting the German DLG quality seal. Funny to see that these kind of quality seals carry over even to Japan…
The German Agricultural Society (Deutsche Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft), commonly known as DLG, is an international non-profit organisation for agricultural industry in Germany. DLG was founded in 1885 by Max Eyth, has over 23,000 members as of 2011 and is headquartered in Frankfurt am Main. Its main purpose is to promote technical progress and scientific advances in the food and agricultural industry, including setting standards.
DLG
After the sudden death of a hard drive in one of the house’ storage arrays (after 55997 hours of service) beginning of this month it has happened again:
With less than half the runtime of the previously dead disk this one is an early failure. Well within the warranty. Therefore the disk is already en route to be replaced by an RMA (Western Digital RMA process so far is spotless!)
Anyhow: This was a 4 TB drive. It’s in an array with 2-disk redundancy and 8 other drives. So the array still is operating with redundancy right now. Additionally a full backup exists as well as a hot-standby (but slower) offsite mirror.
I am quite confident to not loose data. But this raid-sync is going to take a bit longer. As drives get bigger, syncs get longer.
Sweetmorn 5 Confusion: The Apostle Sri Syadasti’s Holyday. An Indian Pundit and Prince, born of the Peyotl Tribe, son of Gentle Chief Sun Flower Seed and the squaw Merry Jane. Living embodiment of the Discordian Affirmation. Patron to psychedelic type Discordians.
Syaday
Labenz, das
https://labenz.neutsch.org/index.php
Ein allgemein bekannter Gegenstand oder eine vertraute Erfahrung, für den oder die bisher noch keine Bezeichnung existiert.
Douglas Adams, John Lloyd & Sven Böttcher: Der tiefere Sinn des Labenz
Im Leben gibt es unzählige Dinge, Gefühle, Menschentypen und Situationen, die jeder aus dem Alltag kennt, denen man aber bisher versäumt hat, einen Namen zu geben. Wer kennt das nicht: Man steht gedankenverloren in der Küche und fragt sich, was man dort eigentlich wollte. Oder wie heißt eigentlich dieser halblose Plastikrand unten an Kunststoffflaschenschraubdeckeln?
As for the english speaking audience: Douglas Adams, The meaning of Liff
The CPU/hardware related bugs surfacing the last couple of years have mostly been fixed by adjusting the software that is run. Sometimes only by disabling certain features of a CPU or patching the microcode in the CPU itself.
The issue with this is that by fixing these issues features got disabled and workarounds had been introduced that lowered performance. Dramatically so for some use-cases.
By how much? Well it really depends on your CPU and use-cases. But maybe you want to try yourself. If you want to know the most current parameters to pass to your kernel on boot-up to disable all the performance impacting fixes, go here:
It is not recommended to have this in productive use – as you can imagine. Those bugs where fixed for a reason.
Programs written in legit are defined entirely by the graph of commits in a Git repository. The content of the repository is ignored.
legit is designed so that all relevant information is visible when runninggit log --graph --oneline.
For example, here is “hello world”:
You can find implementations of legit, as well as some example programs, on GitHub: https://github.com/blinry/legit. The entry in the Esolang wiki is at https://esolangs.org/wiki/Legit.
The beginning of the decade saw the continuation of the clothing styles of the late 1970s and evolved into heavy metal fashion by the end. However, it had a lot of changes considering that, this fashion became more and more extravagant during the 80s.
The 80s included things like teased hair, ripped jeans, neon clothing and lots of colours and different designs which at first weren’t accepted for a lot of people.
Popular Culture in the 80s
Do you remember that endless summer back in ’84? Cruising down the ocean-highway with the top down, the wind in our hair and heads buzzing with neon dreams?
Synthwave’84 theme
No, I don’t remember it either, but with this experimental theme we can go there.
Pungenday 70 Discord, 2784 YOLD (May 23, 1618 AD) Prague: a few royal officials were thrown out a window of Hradcany Castle by some noblemen, but survived the fall by landing in a cart full of manure. The date for this event falls on an extremely Illuminated day of the Gregorian Calendar, 5/23.
shared calendar
Sweetmorn 68 Discord: Celebrating the Birth of Malaclypse the Younger on this day in 3107 YOLD (1941 AD).
Many of us are happy when they can accomplish the most simple tasks with Excel without pulling their own hair out.
And then there are these people who do something entirely different with Excel:
Finding engineering work quite unchallenging lately I decided to start this blog in which to share cool ways of solving engineering problems or just interesting modeling of natural phenomena in MS Excel 2003. I use mainly cell formulas with minimum of VBA in order to take advantage of the ease of “programming” and the native speed of the Excel spreadsheet.
http://www.excelunusual.com/
I ran a VVV job to catalog a storage array I have. To my surprise at least one file had a very very strange timestamp:
Apparently the file in question was generated on an action cam which had lost its correct date and time setting at the time of recording…
The tool I am using to catalogue the storages is also worth a mention:
VVV is an application that catalogs the content of removable volumes like CD and DVD disks for off-line searching. Folders and files can also be arranged in a single, virtual file system. Each folder of this virtual file system can contain files from many disks so you can arrange your data in a simple and logical way.
about VVV
VVV also stores metadata information from audio files: author, title, album and so on. Most audio formats are supported.
First: I am not at all interested or knowledgeable in football / soccer. But…
Several times a year I am for multiple weeks in the area of Musashikosugi ((武蔵小杉) which is part of the greater Tokyo area in Japan.
And because of these stays – I’ve probably been there for the accumulated time of 1 year – I’ve got attached to this area / community over time.
This includes all those things the community shares on various places on the internet so to a small degree I can stay informed.
For example: There is a fantastic blog (as for many other communities in Tokyo) that specifically shares community related information about Musashikosugi.
To understand the context you need to know that I’ve worked for Rakuten. The number one eCommerce company in Japan. This surely kick-started my interest in Japan overall.
I know from my time at Rakuten that the company engaged in a couple of sport sponsorships. One of them was the J1 League football club “Vissel Kobe“.
Kawasaki, the area of which Musashikosugi is part of, also has such a football team called “Kawasaki Frontale“.
Through said blog it came to my attention that there was a game between those two football teams and…
Kawasaki won the game!
So despite me not being particularly interested in sports this news was quite exciting to see. It almost feels like some local patriotism feelings come up. And with the direct connection to my past employment it get’s even more exciting.
Go Kawasaki, go!
Kombinose [kɔmbi̯noːzə], die
Zusammengesetztes Substantiv aus den Worten “Kombination” und “Symbiose”.
Verstärktes Zusammenwirken von mehreren Faktoren in Kombination, die sich vielfach gegenseitig begünstigen.
Commemorating the Ordination of the Universe by passing out as many Authorized and Authentic All-Purpose Discordian Society Ordination Certificates as possible.
Discordian Wiki
Upon completing 52 years and 11 days of studying the universe, Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst (under his alias of Kerry Wendell Thornley) became an ordained Minister of the Universal Life Church — on Sweetmorn 43 Discord, 3156 (April 26th 1990).
A subtle Buddhist teaching that nobody without the Buddha Mind understands is that when the Buddha was enlightened, the whole universe — with all its sentient beings, inanimate objects and blunt instruments — attained Satori with him.
On April 26th of 1990 the entire cosmos — people, stars, space rubbish and all — became an ordained minister and so anyone or anything is now legally qualified in most states to get drunk at weddings and giggle at funerals, spit holy water, christen puppies and preach salvation by fire and brimstone.
Only an ordained minister, however, can see how this is possible.
So, on Universal Ordination Day we commemorate the Ordination of the Universe by passing out as many Authorized and Authentic All-Purpose Discordian Society Ordination Certificates as possible.
Whoever distributes the most of these becomes Pastor Present of the Permanent Universal Tax Strike Universal Life Church of the Permanent Universal Rent Strike and may fly anywhere in the world, for a whole year, free — if they can figure out how to fly and providing they always first say “Up, up and away!”
“Every Man, Woman and Child is a Pope!”
We are currently visiting Tokyo and car traffic seems not to be the most pressing issue. When you encounter bike parking lots like this one you know why. It also can be done in your city. The streets in the city are owned by pedestrians not cars.
Recently news broke…
…Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi noted in late 2016 that he was “still working on Pope Francis.” GeekWire reports that Partovi was able to cross that one off his bucket list Thursday, as he helped Pope Francis become ‘the first Pope to write a line of code’ at a ‘Programming for Peace’ event…
slashdot
At first I was confused which pope could it be that has not written any code before. But I quickly realized that the news is about the 266th pope of the catholic church.
Of course a lot more popes already had coded before him. Evidently a lot earlier. And to complete the circle, make yourself comfortable: In discordianism you are a pope!
I own some Android devices as I am actively trying out Android every once in a while when a new version arrives.
While doing so the usability was always what eventually put me off and made me not use it.
This is indicative of my experience:
Simple things like the scrolling or tapping never worked for me. Of course it worked after the 2nd or 3rd tap. But not as it “should” feel.
I own Google Nexus devices as well as 3rd party android tablets from Asus. The basics never worked.
Why is that?
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!“
Upton Sinclair
Learning a new language is full of discoveries along the way!
As I am spending more time on learning the Japanese language the more different things seem to unlock. One of those things is the apparent fun Japanese companies have with puns/slight writing mismatches.
Like this one – I think (as I can not be 100% sure yet…learning!):
This is an advertisement in a supermarket for a laundry detergent. It is themed to an Anime called “Attack on Titan” – properly because the detergents name is Attack. So when I tried to make sense of the text I first read it wrong, of course.
Let’s look at it step-by-step:
I first started reading the Hiragana portion and make sense of it. There I made my first mistake which is to misread the first second character. For some reason my brain went for わ (wa) when I should have gone for れ (re).
Then I typed away further and came to the Kanji. I read a 活 (katsu) when it in fact was a 汚 (kitanai).
Given that you’ve typed those into Google Translate you will get very interesting results. I had a good laugh by then:
I am not sure if this is on purpose or not – as I do not yet know if I am just making a mess on this or if this is intentionally done so that, given your level of Japanese reading and attention-spent reading it, you get very different and funny results.
Any Japanese readers that can add some explanations? Am I far off with the thoughts?
When you take a picture with an iPhone these days it does generate haptic feedback – a “kachung” you can feel. And a shutter sound.
Thankfully the shutter sound can be disabled in many countries. I know it can’t be disabled on iPhones sold in Japan. Which kept me from buying mine in Tokyo. Even when you switch the regions to Europe / Germany it’ll still produce the shutter sound.
Anyway: With my iPhone, which was purchased in Germany, I can disable the shutter sound. But it won’t disable the haptic “kachung”.
It’s interesting that Apple added this vibration to the activity of taking a picture. Other camera manufactures go out of their way to decouple as much vibration as possible even to the extend that they will open the shutter and mirror in their DSLRs before actually making the picture – just so that the vibration of the mirror movement and shutter isn’t inducing vibrations to the act of taking the picture.
With mirror less cameras that vibration is gone. But now introduced back again?
Am I the only one finding this strange?
