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setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

I can use all of those today or develop a new implementation if I want.

setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

He who controls the spice....

setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

Vendors come and go. Standards don't.

setqon Wikileaks reveals CIA's Elsa: a geo-location malware for WiFi / Windows

Isn't this the same principle google uses for their location services?

setqon Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

This sums it up nicely.

Also, if it's easy and you've done it a million times, charge an inflated fixed price. If it's new territory, charge by the hour.

Edit: before I forget, if you let them know how it's done then you need to charge for the several times they won't come back again afterwards.

setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

One doesn't win a game of chess by moving all the pieces at the same time.

setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

Excellent. Downloading now :)

I ran NetBSD and OpenBSD on old sun kit in the late 1990s and early 2000's followed by Debian and then CentOS. FreeBSD got a look in persistently on the side. I'd rather like a step back to the sensibility of times past when you chucked something out and it just did its job until something blew up :)

setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

This is interesting and lines up with the time zone offset on my last rant a couple of years back. Peak in upvotes UK afternoon followed by downvote pummelling at around 4pm UK time. Without wishing to don the tinfoil hat too much, actively squashing critical discussion on your product is a dick move if it's true.

This has got so bad on some parts of reddit they removed the voting buttons.

setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

Interesting. I haven't used slackware for many years, so far back in fact that it had to come on CDs because I had a dial up. Will take a look in that direction this evening.

setqon Sorting 2 Tons of Lego, Many Questions, Results

That's really interesting actually. In the distant past I spent more time sorting the cards than playing the game so there is probably a good trade off on automating it.

I went and bought a duel deck the other day to play with the wife so this is going to become another issue in the future again.

setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

There's a good implementation of systemd here: https://github.com/bluerise/openbsd/tree/master/sbin/init

setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

Well no not really. Vulnerabilities exist outside the realms of the language implementations. There are poorly designed protocols and access controls to contend with as well. I'd argue there are a lot more of those classes of problems out there. The ones enabled by programming languages are merely easier to find as you don't have to understand the precise problem domain of the application for each one found.

setqon How Not to Encrypt a File – Courtesy of Microsoft

It's not. There's a content about 11 screens down, not that you'd find it easily.

setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

This is why we need standards and APIs which are immutable. It doesn't matter what the implementation is then.

The whole of systemd is a comedic fuck you to POSIX and the mentality of a system which is standardised.

setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

I apologise. This is the first time I've criticised systemd on HN. I had a massive rant on another site a couple of years ago when CentOS 7 dropped about the catalogue of failures I had been through with systemd, completely backed up with evidence and bug reports and it was hammered by downvotes instantly.

setqon How Not to Encrypt a File – Courtesy of Microsoft

To be fair Win32 isn't terrible. Have you looked at the .Net docs?

http://imgur.com/a/iK4uG

setqon How Not to Encrypt a File – Courtesy of Microsoft

Most of the documentation is boilerplate. There's very little real content now and most of it is filler.

setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

Indeed. Merely "loud" programmers with corporate backing.

setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

Yes. I've burned hours on systemd related problems that just didn't exist before. From DBus message delivery failures, debugging things that haven't broken for 20 years (which has incidentally got MUCH harder) to the whole shit crock that is NTP and locale management. That and the whole desktop buggery that has been going on for the best part of 8 years now has really put me off. To be honest you haven't really experienced systemd's fuckery until you have a hosed box. It's like negotiating a boot with a pigeon. Any other platform is ZERO hassle and that includes windows, OSX, freebsd, openbsd etc.

And you can't criticise it anywhere (watch the downvotes).

The problem is it lacks the mysterious as in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance class "quality". Merely glitter around a turd.

However we're stuck with it so it's suck it up or move on.

On the subject of moving on, you could run FreeBSD to run your servers. Much lower resource overheads, native ZFS, simple service management, some documentation worth more than toilet paper and the best thing of all, more sleep at night. Now there are binary updates and packages it's pretty easy. No more make world of any of that stuff.

setqon Ubuntu Systemd Vulnerability

Indeed. It's not just init, it's Windows service manager, COM, MSMQ, task scheduler and event log and all the associated problems in one convenient package for Linux!

setqon Show HN: GreenPiThumb – A Raspberry Pi Gardening Bot

http://www.edn.com/Pdf/ViewPdf?contentItemId=4433411

Details above. Looks like you can get 3.5ps resolution with an off the shelf PIC after calibration which is pretty impressive!

setqon Show HN: GreenPiThumb – A Raspberry Pi Gardening Bot

This is a really cool idea actually. However you're likely talking sub nanosecond rise times which makes things a little difficult in the signal processing space. For example my scope (knackered old 1971 Tek 475) can barely manage 1.8ns on a properly terminated transmission line which this will likely not be.

setqon Facebook Hits 2 Billion Users

I get shamed occasionally for never having a Facebook account. It's amazing how mindshare drives market share really and gets people to react like this.

Genuinely I couldn't work out how it improved my life in any way. Everyone I know who uses it shows signs of addiction. It's like a cigarette. Perhaps that's it!

setqon Show HN: GreenPiThumb – A Raspberry Pi Gardening Bot

Yes this is a favourite bit of reddit for me. Highly recommended :)

setqon Show HN: GreenPiThumb – A Raspberry Pi Gardening Bot

I don't think many people read the data sheets to be honest even some of the professional engineers. It's mainly gluing canned circuits together and see if they work or not. This is a little difficult if you didn't start with analogue and work up.

setqon Show HN: GreenPiThumb – A Raspberry Pi Gardening Bot

You plated your plant! :)

setqon Show HN: GreenPiThumb – A Raspberry Pi Gardening Bot

Take a look at the output switching on different variants of 555s (there are about 6). This isn't always the case. Not only that if you pull lots of current through them, and 100mA is a lot, then the Pd of the sink transistor is pushed a bit hard. I've let the smoke out of a few over the years working on that assumption.

Good tip: measure voltage between the output pin and gnd or Vcc in both states and then have a think.

Plus when you're not an idiot like I was, a MOSFET is cheaper.

setqon Show HN: GreenPiThumb – A Raspberry Pi Gardening Bot

Yeah the Tektronix HV probes used to come with an aerosol can and you had to fill them up.

Technically frequency compensation is required across all voltage dividers for scopes so not to accidentally create a low pass filter with the parasitic capacitance in the cables and input circuits. It's all quite fun.

Disclaimer: was an obsessive compulsive scope collector for a while.

setqon Show HN: GreenPiThumb – A Raspberry Pi Gardening Bot

Indeed. This was on the kitchen window sill with sunlight 50% of the day. We got there in the end unaided by technology but it was so much fun trying with it.

Ones that worked eventually: http://imgur.com/a/EDdwR - note cable ties :)

setqon Show HN: GreenPiThumb – A Raspberry Pi Gardening Bot

Relay has a considerably lower drive impedance than a MOSFET for switching so you end up having to drive the relay with something anyway because the 555 will probably die. Might as well skip the middle man and use a MOSFET which has a crazy high source impedance.

(you need to stick a transistor between the 555 and the relay anyway so you might as well just use a MOSFET)