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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • cmhe@lemmy.worldtoLinux@lemmy.mlRecommend me a scripting language
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    14 days ago

    What about Lua/Luajit?

    In most scripting languages you have the interpreter binary and the (standard) libraries as separate files. But creating self-extracting executables, that clean up after themselves can easily be done by wrapping them in a shell script.

    IMO, if low dependencies and small size is really important, you could also just write your script in a low level compiled language (C, Rust, Zig, …), link it statically (e.g. with musl) and execute that.


  • E2E is just one part of the puzzle, you got to have a open source P2P or federated architecture as well, otherwise you have to trust a nebulous company or person intrinsically. People change and companies can be bought, but you will be stuck with their platform in order to contact your acquaintances, and changing that means loosing your contacts.

    That is why the DMA is important. But you will be even better off just directly choosing a chat platform, where the users are in control.


  • Yeah, the whole article is a bit fishy:

    In addition to generating clean electricity, the new ITO-silver window coating creates a cooling effect by allowing only the visible part of the light spectrum to pass inside. Other parts of the spectrum are reflected outside.

    So how would a room actively cool down, when you let only the visible light spectrum inside? Sure it might not get as hot as if you let all light inside, but it will also not get colder.


  • I started using Fedora Silverblue on a tablet, seems to work fine so far, but requiring a reboot in order to install new system packages is a bit cumbersome and the process itself takes a while, but ordinary Fedora also doesn’t win any races when asked to install a new package

    I think switching to FCOS or Flatcar on servers that just use containers makes sense. Since it lessens the burden of administrating the base system itself. Using butan/ignition might be unusual at first, but it also allows to put the base system configuration into a git repo, and makes initial provisioning using ansible or similar unnecessary. The rest of the system and services can be managed via portainer or similar software.

    I also do not have long term experience with FCOS, but the advertised features of auto-update, rolling-release, focus on security and stability makes it a good fit for container servers, IMO.

    An alternative to Debian on servers might also be Apline Linux. Which also has more a focus on network devices, but some people use it on a desktop as well.

    If you have many different systems, and just want to learn to operate them all, maybe NixOS might be interesting. Using flakes, you can configure multiple machines from just one repo, and share configurations between them. But getting up to speed on NixOS might not be so easy, it has a steep learning curve.




  • cmhe@lemmy.worldtoLinux@lemmy.mlCoreboot: Pros and Cons
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    1 month ago

    So generally the pro of coreboot is that it is open source, but the con is that it is open source.

    What I mean by that, you can fix any issues yourself, however, if you are unable to do it yourself, you have to wait until someone does it for you and often what features are available and stable are a hit and miss.

    Compared to proprietary bioses, the company has some kind of standardized process for developing the bios. So you often get want you would expect. However, if the money flow from the pc vendor to the bios vendor drys up, you, or the community of owners. will not be able to fix any issues.

    Linux support should be the same, regardless if you choose proprietary or open source bios. But that depends on how well the coreboot was ported to the platform. So officially supported coreboot bioses are likely better than others.

    Personally, if all other attributes are equal, would go with coreboot, because I like to support vendors that offer that choice, and IMO a open source solution, that you can review and build yourself is intrinsically more secure than a binary blob, where you have to blindly trust some corporation. But other security minded people might disagree, which is fine.


  • IT guys will stop using it…

    No, they will not, if they didn’t already. Because convenience it key.

    The browser war is over, and humans lost, corporations won. Google and other huge corporations control the biggest websites and most of the access to content on the internet.

    They just need to make it inconvenient to use ad-blocking browsers.

    They built their business on advertiser gambling, which seem to be flawed concept, because they keep on squeezing that tube for every penny more and more, in a race to the bottom.

    But they are still in control of both browers and content so they have options to keep squeezing more.

    So you want to use a ad blocker? Well, the browser that supports them might not be white listed (anymore) by the bot detector, and you have to solve captchas on every site you visit, until you come to your senses and use a browser, where ad blocking is no longer possible.

    Oh, and all that is ok, because of “security”. Because letting the users be in control of their devices and applications is “in-secure”. They are just doing that to protect you from spam and scams, just trust them! Trust them, because they don’t trust you!



  • But to install from local storage, you first download or fetch a storage medium from a remote location with the file on it. There isn’t that much of a difference IMO.

    I would not call it side-loading when I download a file and then install it on the same device. Because that is how it has always worked. I never before heard people describing downloading and executing a setup.exe as “side-loading”.


  • Until some time ago, I always though that “side-loading” is something different. Since I first saw “side-loading” used in ADB, so I thought that it means using another system on the side to load and install software onto a target system.

    So to me that seems fitting, but now it seems to be used differently. How is installing software using just one device “side-loading”. What side do they mean?


  • I don’t agree with the generalization here. Sure, it is generally advisable not to rely on security through obscurity, but depending on the use-cases and purpose it can be effective.

    I dislike DRM systems with a passion, but they, especially those for video games like denuvo, can be quite effective, if the purpose is to protect against copying something for a short time until it gets cracked.

    Otherwise I agree that software developed in the open is intrinsically more secure, because it can be verified by everyone.

    However, many business and governments like to have support contracts so want to be able to sue and blame someone else than themselves if something goes wrong. This is in most cases easier with closed source products with a specific legal entity behind it, not a vague and loose developer community or even just a single developer.



  • Protects against what?

    What I read here is just a vague critic from him of the relation between hard- and software developer. Which will not change just because the ISA is open source. It will take some iterations until this is figured out, this is inevevable.

    Soft- and hardware developers are experts in their individual fields, there are not many with enough know-how of both fields to be effective.

    Linus also points out, that because of ARM before, RISC-V might have a easier time, on the software side, but mistakes will still happen.

    IMO, this article doesn’t go into enough depths of the RISC-V specific issues, that it warrants RISC-V in the title, it would apply to any up and coming new ISA.


  • My point is there never will be enough people to leave. Consumer boycotts do not work.

    Between thousands of different factors to consider wherever to buy a product from a certain producer or not, child labor, environmental waste, political attitude of the CEO, etc… it isn’t possible to make any decision on what product to consume.

    It isn’t about 'unless enough people leave" it is about “unless enough people protest to the government for market regulation” and “unless enough law makers care”.

    The free market is not self regulating, at least not with a long term positive effect.


  • This is the “consumer choice” argument.

    The problem is that consumers likely don’t have that choice. The “free market” is really bad in incentivising good long term behavior, they favor short term gains for their stockholders. Thus they likely all switch to practices that seemingly lower cost or raise short term profits. If they can fire employees and replace them with AI, they will do so.

    If they would think long term, they would prefer to hire humans instead of AI, because that way they would give their future customers money to buy their stuff. AI will not be their customer. They would pay them enough money to be a happy and good consumer.

    Customer choice doesn’t matter here, they either just have to buy whatever is cheapest, or die, because their employers (if they even have one) don’t pay they enough for them to have choice, because short term profits.