from:"Dave Collier\-Brown via talk"

Re: [GTALUG] Securely wiping SSDs

2024-03-24 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


From academic papers: dd was found to work on local devices in article 1,  
remote wiping of phones was found to be immature/buggy in 2.



 1.  Secure State Deletion: Testing the efficacy and integrity of secure 
deletion tools on Solid State Drives, M Freeman, A Woodward -

ro.ecu.edu.au

Secure State Deletion: Testing the efficacy and integrity of secure deletion 
tools onSolid State Drives

The research aimed to determine the efficacy and integrity of several 
hard-drive disk deletion tools on solid state drives (SSDs). SSDs contain new 
technologies such as wear-levelling and device under provisioning to provide 
efficient functionality and speed for data management, but the same 
technologies may also provide obstacles to ensuring that all information is 
fully removed from the drive. Furthermore SSDs stores files in 4KB pages, yet 
data can only be deleted in 512KB blocks. This function uses the disk 
controller to remove all the pages from the block a file is being deleted from, 
storing the pages in a disk controlled cache. Once the whole block has been 
reset, the valid data is retrieved from the cache and replaced on an available 
block. The reset block is added to the SSDs free space. The specific purpose of 
this paper was to discover if any data was recovered, especially from the disk 
controlled cache while testing various tools and methods for their 
effectiveness of securely wiping data off SSDs. All tools except the GNU core 
utility DD left some file information which was recovered, though none of the 
recovered files was loadable. Additionally, the paper introduces the concept of 
the TRIM functionality and provides a baseline further research into this 
feature. Finally, a comparison of methods for securely deleting Solid State 
Drives is provided.

 https://ro.ecu.edu.au/adf/65/


 2.  Remote wiping and secure deletion on mobile devices: A review, MD Leom, 
KKR Choo, R Hunt - Journal of forensic sciences, 2016 
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10./1556-4029.13203




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dave.collier-br...@indexexchange.com
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Re: [GTALUG] Securely wiping SSDs

2024-03-24 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk



On 2024-03-23 22:25, James Knott via talk wrote:
On 3/23/24 22:02, Anthony de Boer via talk wrote:

And on disposal, the golden standard has always been physical destruction.

I don't know if it's been mentioned, but what about the shred command?

Quite good for rotating magnetic drives that aren't log-structured.

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] Securely wiping SSDs

2024-03-23 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


We used to have a simple wipe and an enhanced wipe on SunOS. The first
one overwrote the disk with a fixed bit pattern, the latter wrote and
rewrote it with different patterns. The idea was to make it hard to
detect residual magnetism from some older data. Definitely spinning-rust
stuff.

For anything from Confidential and up, we used the "large grinder"
approach (:-))

--dave

On 2024-03-23 10:50, Giles Orr via talk wrote:

I have, for many years, used "Darik's Boot and Nuke" on a USB stick to
securely wipe spinning hard disks.  It takes a long time, but I mostly
understand and trust the process.

I'm now at the point that I have to wipe and dispose of SSDs, and I'm
feeling a bit shaky on the methodology.  Here's what I did:

 # hdparm -I /dev/sdX

Looked for enabled/locked/frozen in the output ... I won't go into
making sure those are toggled correctly, but that appears to be
needed.  This also lists what appears to be info about doing a wipe on
the drive:

 6min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT, 60min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT

Then, set a password (why? but seems to be needed):

 # hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass foobar /dev/sdX

Last, run the wipe:

 # hdparm --user-master u --security-erase-enhanced foobar /dev/sdX

Doing something like `dd if=/dev/sdX bs=5M count=5 | strings` (or
sending it to `less`) definitely shows that it's changed from
something organized to something full of identical characters.  But
I've never seen this wipe process take more than 60 seconds, which
makes me wonder about the `hdparm` declaration about the time required
for a secure wipe.

So I guess the big question is: should I trust this process?  Do we
really think it's securely wiped?  Or should I be taking a hammer to
the chips on the SSD because that's the only way to ensure it's fully
wiped?


--
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System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
dave.collier-br...@indexexchange.com |  -- Mark Twain


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Re: [GTALUG] Ongoing war story (currently issues of user trust)

2024-01-20 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 2024-01-20 10:14, Peter King via talk wrote:


Just recently I was told that the University would not allow me to ssh
in to my office computer "because ssh had to be protected from the
internet" (!), and instead I was supposed to use some binary blob to
create a VPN into the UofT network -- and how having one point of
entry into the whole system, trusted internally, "improves" security
over a single ssh connection to a single computer, I could not tell
you (and neither can they). But it's policy, so that ends discussion.


In a customer long long ago, we had a similar rule imposed.

It turned out the right person to talk to was in-house counsel, as by
pure happenstance my concern was that I would be blamed when (not if)
the known-buggy product let someone pretend to be me. That was right up
his ally, and about a year later, we settled on ssh with certificates.

--dave

--
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System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
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Re: [GTALUG] AI - Llama 2 an open source AI that can run on a Raspberry PI

2024-01-12 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


A Smarter Colleague pointed out to me the answer you get isn't to the question asked, but 
to "what would an answer to this question sound like".

It's a language model, not a model of logic, science or law.

--dave



On 2024-01-12 12:58, Colin McGregor via talk wrote:

On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 11:41 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk
 wrote:



| From: Colin McGregor via talk 

Interesting report!

Some nit picking of the answers.  Just from my memory -- there are
surely other bugs.  Summary: don't trust these models!  They don't do very
basic fact-checking.



Very true. I can offer several other examples beyond the ones I noted here.



| > Who was Canada's best Prime Minister?

Why are all the answer Liberal prime ministers (except for John A.)?



PART of that would be that the Liberal Party has been in power for
more of Canada's history than the Progressive Conservative /
Conservative Party.



| 1. Sir John A. Macdonald (1867-1873, 1878-1880):

|  and he also negotiated the
| Northwest Passage Agreement with the United States, securing Canada's
| western border.

Google finds no "Northwest Passage Agreement".

| 2. William Lyon Mackenzie King (1921-1930, 1935-1948):

Not exactly.  He lost power in 1926 June and regained it in 1926
September.  Remember the King-Byng constitutional crisis?

| King was a
| skilled diplomat and leader who guided Canada through two major
| crises: World War I

Really?  He wasn't even a member of parliament doring the Great War.

| 5. Jean Chrétien (1993-2003): Chrétien is credited with helping to
| stabilize Canada's economy and promote international trade. He also
| played a key role in the Belfast Agreement, which brought an end to
| the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Additionally, he implemented
| policies that helped to promote diversity and inclusion within
| Canadian society.

I don't remember Cretien being part of Belfast Agreement (better known
as the Good Friday Agreement).  Retired General John de Chastelain was
one of the three commissioners of the Independed International
Commission on Decommissioning.

Off the top of my head, there are a couple of high points in Cretien's years:
avoiding the Iraq War and imposing election financing limits (a poison pill
for Martin, but still a Very Good Thing; contrast with US!).

Cretien and Martin are jointly credited with drastically and painfully
improving Canada's finances in the 1990's

| -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
| 13b
| -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
| > Who was Canada's best Prime Minister?

| 5. Jean Chrétien (1993-2003): Chrétien's tenure saw significant
| economic growth, the repayment of Canada's national debt, and the
| negotiation of several major international agreements, including the
| Free Trade Agreement with the United States.

No: the FTA was Brian Mulroney.---
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Re: [GTALUG] AI Alliance

2023-12-06 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


We have, and have had, successful subcommittees before where there was 
sufficient interest.

I mildly recommend it, and if we launch such a thing, will communicate its 
existence to my team, Machine Learning and Optimization at Index Exchange.

Do you want me to raise it now at work, to see if there is interest? If so, 
I'll send you a draft announcement.

--dave

On 2023-12-06 07:26, Scott Allen via talk wrote:

I asked https://huggingface.co/chat/ the question:
"Should the Greater Toronto Area Linux User Group join the AI Alliance?"
and got this answer:

I cannot make a decision for the Greater Toronto Area Linux User Group
(GTA LUG) regarding joining the AI Alliance. However, I can provide
some information and considerations that may help inform their
decision.

The AI Alliance is an organization that aims to promote the
development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) in various
industries, including technology, healthcare, finance, and more. By
joining the AI Alliance, members can access resources, networking
opportunities, and collaborative projects that can help them stay
up-to-date with the latest developments in AI and expand their
expertise.

Here are some potential benefits of GTA LUG joining the AI Alliance:

1. Access to resources: The AI Alliance offers its members access to a
wealth of resources, including research papers, webinars, case
studies, and tutorials on AI-related topics. These resources could be
valuable for GTA LUG members who want to learn more about AI and its
applications.

2. Networking opportunities: Joining the AI Alliance would give GTA
LUG members the chance to connect with other professionals and
organizations interested in AI, potentially leading to new
partnerships, collaborations, or business opportunities.

3. Collaborative projects: As a member of the AI Alliance, GTA LUG
could participate in collaborative projects with other member
organizations, startups, and research institutions. This could lead to
innovative solutions and advancements in areas like open-source AI
software, AI-powered tools for developers, or AI applications for
social good.

4. Advocacy: The AI Alliance advocates for policies and regulations
that support the responsible development and deployment of AI. By
joining the alliance, GTA LUG could contribute to shaping the
conversation around AI ethics, privacy, and security.

5. Brand visibility: Participating in the AI Alliance could enhance
GTA LUG's reputation as a forward-thinking and innovative community
group, dedicated to exploring emerging technologies like AI.

6. Potential sponsorship opportunities: The AI Alliance might offer
sponsorship opportunities for events, conferences, or hackathons,
which could help GTA LUG secure funding for their activities.

7. Discounts and special offers: Members of the AI Alliance may
receive discounts or special offers on AI-related products, services,
or events, which could benefit GTA LUG members.

8. Educational opportunities: The AI Alliance provides educational
resources and workshops on AI-related topics, which could help GTA LUG
members improve their skills and knowledge.

9. Community engagement: By joining the AI Alliance, GTA LUG could
demonstrate its commitment to engaging with the broader tech community
and contributing to the growth of the AI ecosystem.

However, there are also potential drawbacks to consider:

1. Cost: There may be membership fees associated with joining the AI
Alliance, which could be a financial burden for GTA LUG.

2. Time commitment: Participating in the AI Alliance might require a
significant time investment from GTA LUG members, particularly if they
choose to take on leadership roles or participate in collaborative
projects.

3. Focus shift: Joining the AI Alliance might shift GTA LUG's focus
away from its core mission and objectives, potentially diluting its
efforts in promoting Linux and open-source technologies.

4. Overlap with existing initiatives: Some of the AI Alliance's goals
and activities might overlap with those of other organizations or
initiatives that GTA LUG is already involved with. It's essential to
evaluate whether joining the AI Alliance would complement or conflict
with these existing commitments.

5. Governance: GTA LUG should assess the AI Alliance's governance
structure, decision-making processes, and values to ensure alignment
with their own principles and goals.

Ultimately, the decision to join the AI Alliance should be based on
careful consideration of how it aligns with GTA LUG's strategic
objectives, available resources, and member interests. If the benefits
outweigh the costs and the alliance aligns with GTA LUG's goals,
joining could provide valuable opportunities for growth,
collaboration, and contributions to the larger tech community.



--
David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify
System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest

Re: [GTALUG] [GTALUG-Announce] GTALUG General Meeting Reminder

2023-11-15 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


The references from my talk are:

 *The article at ACM Queue, https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3595862
 *Everything from Neil Gunther,  http://www.perfdynamics.com.
 *Teamquest Predictor, formerly Teamquest Model, 
https://community.fortra.com/kb-nav/?id=ba1ca40f-4a6d-e711-80e1-0050568473e2s

--dave


On 11/13/23 08:53, Alan Heighway wrote:
AGM, then ‘You Don’t know Jack about Application 
Performance’ with Dave 
Collier-Brown

14 November, 2023 at 07:30 PM

We will start with the AGM, then we will have a talk by Dave Collier-Brown

We're going to use Big BLue Button for this meeting: 
https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl

Time: November 14th, 2023 7:30 PM Eastern Time

Join us on Big Blue Button: https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl.

Hopt to see everyone there!

Alan Heighway
   heighway.ca
  VA3WAH / VA3YKZ

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Re: [GTALUG] (very off topic) torque spec of impact wrench

2023-11-03 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

OH!

Go back to the dealership with your wheel wrench, and tell them they
overtightened your wheels, so you can't fix a flat when you have one. Get them
to break the nuts loose, and you tighten them.

And if they say no, take their names and complain to their manager.

--dave

On 11/3/23 11:02, William Park via talk wrote:
This is what happened after getting 4 new brakes and 2 new calipers at the
dealership. They over-tightened it!

- I tried 12in pipe (it's all I have). It slips, and I don't want to step
on that. Maybe longer pipe will work.

- I've been told (by YouTube, Google) that you shouldn't apply any oil or
anti-seize grease.

- VW uses 17mm bolt, instead of lug nut. So, cutting them off is not an
option. :-)

1. I'll try to find 2-4ft pipe at reasonable price.

2. If not, Canadian Tire has sale on "air wrench"
-
https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/maximum-impact-wrench-with-built-in-regulator-3-8-in-0581968p.0581968.html
Web says "3/8", manual says "1/2", and I'll see what the box says.

Thanks guys. I wish I paid more attention to "shop class" in high school. "If I
knew then, what I know now...".

On 2023-11-03 09:32, Don Tai wrote:
Can you drive your car to a mechanic? It might be cheaper to have them loosen
it with their air powered impact wrench. Other options I've used
1. penetrating oil (as mentioned)
2. breaker bar (long pipe)
3. propane torch (also mentioned)

Once loosened then add some anti-seize compound so that this does not happen
again in the future.

On Fri, 3 Nov 2023 at 03:07, William Park via talk mailto:talk@gtalug.org>
> wrote:

Hi (another very off topic),

Wheel bolts on my VW are seized pretty hard. Standing on 24in breaker
bar doesn't help, and that's 300ft-lb torque. So, I'm thinking about
getting an impact wrench. Those with greater than 300ft-lb are very
expensive. I found one with 250ft-lb spec at my price range.

Question is, is there difference between static torque vs impact
torque?
In other words, will 250ft-lb impact wrench loosen 300ft-lb bolt?

Browsing YouTube, I learned that torque specs are always misleading and
inflated. This means, I have to find 600ft-lb or greater, and that's
serious money.
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System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
dave.collier-br...@indexexchange.com
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[GTALUG] Fwd: [GTALUG-Announce] November Meeting Notice

2023-10-22 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


For people using ScurvyBank who have forgotten how to e-transfer money to 
GTALUG, this (deliberately partial) snippit of the screen shows where they hid 
it (;-))

[cid:part1.hUazArQI.otUEs2Dw@indexexchange.com]


 Forwarded Message 
Subject:[GTALUG-Announce] November Meeting Notice
Date:   Sat, 21 Oct 2023 14:31:18 -0400
From:   Alan Heighway 
Reply-To:   talk@gtalug.org
To: annou...@gtalug.org, GTALUG Talk 
, GTALUG Operations 
, bo...@gtalug.org


Hello GTALUG,

Due to a misunderstanding we were unable to hold the AGM in October as planned.  However 
we are on track to do so at our November meeting, followed by a talk by our own Dave 
Collier-Brown titled "You Don’t know Jack about Application Performance."

Our AGM proceedings will start with a treasurer's report, then a vote on the 
merger CLUE, and conclude with filling vacant board positions (with an election 
if required).  Only paid GTALUG members can participate in the voting.

This is a perfect time to sign up or renew your membership.  To do so send an Interac 
e-transfer to members...@gtalug.org for $20 with 
your Name and email address.  That's it, you are a voting member!

Thank you, and I hope to see you at our next meeting.

Alan.
Alan Heighway
   heighway.ca
  VA3WAH / VA3YKZ

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Re: [GTALUG] why I like shared libraries -- no longer a popular position

2023-09-25 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 9/25/23 10:19, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:


| From: David Collier-Brown via talk 

In this case, a simple bug needs to be fixed.  No interface change.  The
number of packages to update is the number with copies of this buggy code.
Copies count, references (shred libraries) are free.


The workaround for the hard problem was to use static linking, which
makes distributing bug-fixes painfully difficult. That was one of the
major motivations for shared libraries in the first place.


I guess that I've been spoiled by C's maturity.  The core libraries tend
to mutate slowly and the Committee has as a base that revisions should not
break programs (but they may break implementations).


At Sun, we committed a 5-person team under a founder (David J. Brown) to
beating immature changes into the ground.  It was too dangerous to leave
to a volunteer community, although numerous volunteer efforts helped us
greatly.

--dave

--
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System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
dave.collier-br...@indexexchange.com |  -- Mark Twain


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Re: [GTALUG] brands matter; Lenovo's brands

2023-09-16 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


I think both Hugh and I have associated Lenovo's name with the T series: I have 
a T440p that replaced a previous T-series thinkpad and did superior service. 
I'll either replace it with a Framework, or another T.

--dave

On 9/16/23 02:51, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:

Disclaimer: I have an MBA in marketing. I studied this stuff at length.

On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 12:01 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:

Brands matter.

More to the point: SOME brands matter. And they matter to varying degrees.

Search for anything on Aliexpress and you'll find hundreds of brands, most of 
which will be totally irrelevant to your choice.
A memorable brand requires LOTS of investment. And different companies treat 
their brands with diverse strategy;
Compare Nestlé (which has its name on top of every product in its family) with 
Mondeléz (whose ownership of most of its brands is buried in the small print).

They are meant to telegraph certain things to the customer.  Of course the 
brand's meaning can be changed: it isn't a contract.

Sometimes that change is unintentional. 

The perception of a brand in the potential customer base takes a long time to 
develop.  It is cultivated by marketing, but not just marketing.

Companies will go to great lengths to define their various brands; what they 
are supposed to mean, who is their target audience, etc. When was the last time 
a beer or car ad actually talked about the product?
The next step is actually executing that strategy based on quality, price, 
distribution (who can sell it) and promotion.

Think of how Loblaws, over the last 40 years, has elevated the house brand 
"President's Choice" to actually have a premium connotation.

More successfully, it has established its other house brand, the black-and-yellow 
"no name", as its lower-cost option (sometimes with the same contents as 
President's Choice ).
It's even segmented its many store brands (No Frills, Loblaws, Zehrs, Fortinos, 
Superstore) by audience and local economy.

In the computer field, IBM's and then Lenovo's Think* brands have commanded 
tremendous loyalty, only occasionally misplaced.

Brands are assets with value that can be bought and sold. IBM, which established the 
"Think{}" brand, sold it along with its whole PC business to Lenovo in 2005. 
Lenovo simply acquired that which IBM had built up over decades.

A large part of that is that the Think* devices have mostly lived up to their 
implicit promise.

Some have.

Traditionally models beginning with T were IBM's powerhouse Thinkpads, X were 
the ultralights, i were multimedia, and all were made in Japan. Then Lenovo 
started coming out with cheaper lines to be able to compete with low-end units 
while maintaining the brand identity, and manufactured in Indian Mexico and 
China. Before the Lenovo purchase the only lower-cost models were in the R line.

Lenovo's Think* brands are mostly solid conservative business machines.

That's the brand IBM built, and that Lenovo maintained for some models. For others, they 
"diluted the brand", something that happens far too often. But hey, their 
marketing worked on you.

Most Think* systems that support Windows also support Linux.  (There are Think* 
things that don't: non-computers and Android or ChromeOS computers.)  The 
markups are high and the discounts can be large.

IIRC IBM (and later Lenovo) have had generally two separate lines, for business 
and consumer models. The former were more expensive (but generally higher build 
quality and specs) and the latter aggressively priced to compete with HP, Dell 
and others.

 + part of that is that thin and light is something a majority of customers 
want but it has to come at the cost of serviceability. ThinkPads were known to 
be rugged as tanks but tanks are heavy

Some. The X series I had was an ultralight.

 + part of that is users don't like change.

That's not universal, especially in the field of tech where things can change 
so fast (like whether a laptop needs a built-in CD/DVD player). Sometimes the 
users demand change, and conservative approaches don't survive.

 + some features (wired ethernet port, serial port, VGA port) are really niche 
now but those who want them really want them

I'm quite certain that Lenovo does market research to tell them what features 
are needed in new models, and sales figures to tell them what features are no 
longer desirable.

- the ThinkBook line really seems to be exploiting the brand without matching 
the values

Different brand. Different audience. Different expectations. There are indirect 
ties (the use of Think, the black color and styling), but it's not a Thinkpad, 
it's something else.

- ThinkPad displays are often mediocre.  Not bright enough (nits), not great 
colour gamut.  Inexcusable in an expensive notebook.

"Thinkpad" now includes a massive diversity of quality, cost, features, 
tradeoffs and target audience. Not sure that such a sweeping statement can be useful

Re: [GTALUG] motorcycle exhaust systems [was slide rules; was Re: Chromebook death dates]

2023-06-02 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


In a racing two-stroke, the exhaust starts out as a simple pipe, bells out at a 
certain rate, continues as a a much larger pipe, then narrows again to quit a 
small diameter, somewhat like this illustration

[cid:part1.7eRQwO40.k4xp302Y@indexexchange.com]

The diffuser cone should actually be a catenoid, with a diameter and length 
based on the RPM range you're after.

I used to make them in three parts, a long shallow cone, a short steeper cone and a quite 
short cone taking me to the full size of the main "expansion" chamber. I fed 
the rpm in and calculated the endpoint of the first cone, rolled it out of cardboard and 
did the rest by eye with a pair of scissors and tape, so as to fit on the bike without 
burning the rider. I usually had to wiggle the pipes a lot on trail and motocross bikes, 
so I was always recalculating what RPM I would peak at if I made it a little shorter or 
longer.

There  actually were a bunch of calculations, and they were in the front pages of a 
workbook where I recorded my various experiments and how well they worked. Only one got 
used constantly, and got scratched into my "calculator".

--dave


On 6/2/23 10:32, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

| From: Dave Collier-Brown via talk <mailto:talk@gtalug.org>

| When I was a motorcycle mechanic I had a circular slide rule, with a
| permanent mark at the coefficient for computing a catenoid, as I did a
| lot of 2-stroke exhaust systems. Some hilariously wrong, some which got
| me a reputation as a wizard.

I know what a catenary curve is.  The standard example is of a chain
hanging between two posts (that's where the name comes from).  Or a hydro wire.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenary><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenary>

I understand that a catenoid is a surface of revolution of a catenary
curve:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenary><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenary>

I don't know what the coefficient for computing it would be.  I don't
even know what the inputs to this computation would be.

How is this applied to 2-stroke engine exhaust systems?
Is this related to back pressure or resonance?

Maybe you are a wizard.

[I hate 2-stroke engines because they pollute so much.  I'm only
exposed to them running lawn maintenance equipment.]
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Re: [GTALUG] Chromebook death dates

2023-06-01 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


When I was a motorcycle mechanic I had a circular slide rule, with a
permanent mark at the coefficient for computing a catenoid, as I did a
lot of 2-stroke exhaust systems. Some hilariously wrong, some which got
me a reputation as a wizard.

--dave

On 6/1/23 18:08, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

| From: Scott Allen via talk 

| I thought the circular ones were an interesting idea but I only had a
| cheap plastic straight one.
| https://www.sliderule.tokyo/products/detail.php?product_id=8

Yeah, I had a cheap one from Coles Book Store discount bin.

With a regular slide rule, you had to realize when to wrap around:
5 x 5 would go off the right end so you had to go left to 2.5 (and
to increment the in your head expoent).  With the circular slide rule, the
wrapping was automatic but you still had to increment the exponent.

One of our classrooms had a very large demo slide rule.  7'?  It was
yellow so I think that it was a Pickett

That should have given 4 digits of accuracy

A colleague in the Computing Centre at Waterloo showed me a helical slide
rule.  It must have been something like this:
http://retrocalculators.com/otis-king.htm
The result is an extra digit of accuracy without being too large

| The year after I learned "slide rule" in high school, training was
| dropped because calculators were becoming the norm.

Every new techology begets grumbles about what was lost.

- analogue leads to elegant, precise, timeless devices

- a slide rule forces you to have a feel for the answer.  At a minimum,
   the power of 10.

- a 10-digit answer from a calculator makes you think you have the 10
   digit answer.  Almost nothing you measure (as opposed to count) has that
   much accuracy.

Me?  I like discrete problems.  Perect for digital computers.  I have
calculated precise and accurate numbers that are thousands of digits long.

Of course some have calculated millions of digits of the decimal
representation of Pi.  Not with a slide rule.
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Re: [GTALUG] Fedora 38 is out

2023-04-22 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


F and fgrep are historical accidents. IMHO, the only reason they still
exist is bad practice from the v6 era, when we only had a 16-bit address
space.  The interface could be preserved forever: the implementation?
Less so.

--dave



On 4/22/23 16:34, William Park via talk wrote:

I don't know what's the issue.  [ef]grep already is symlinked or shell
scripts (exec grep -[EF] "$@"), and warning message is to stderr not
stdout.

On 2023-04-22 11:51, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

| From: Stewart C. Russell via talk 

| I hear that it ships with the latest GNU grep, which removes fgrep
and egrep.
| This could be considered a bad idea:
| https://mastodon.social/@cks/110232377928840323

Ouch.  Thanks for the heads-up.

I hope that it gets fixed.  Unlikely to be fixed by GNU, I guess.

That mastodon thread has a number of UNIX notables.
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Re: [GTALUG] Canadian hosting?

2023-04-14 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


Microsoft owned an Irish firm, and the US government made MS provide
data from there, over Ireland's objections.

If MS hadn't owned it, the US would have had to ask the Irish government
to seize it,  which apparently is more work that telling MS to surrender it.

--dave

On 4/14/23 06:54, o1bigtenor via talk wrote:

On Fri, Apr 14, 2023 at 1:01 AM Kevin Cozens via talk  wrote:

On 2023-04-11 09:13, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:

US ownership is fine:

There was a big fuss some years ago about the US government being able to
force ISPs to provide access to users accounts, or something like that. I
don't remember the specifics but it was enough that I went with a Canadian
owned company. The situation may have changed since then and they may not
have as easy access to peoples data as they did back then.




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Re: [GTALUG] New WiFi router?

2023-03-08 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 3/8/23 12:08, Alvin Starr via talk wrote:

As I like to point out the Carriers all manipulate traffic to speed test sites 
to make performance look better.

Download an ISO image for your favorite OS and use that as your benchmark.

Try using the newest test, at any given time.  From bufferbloat.net, the newest 
is from waveform.  My most recent results are as follows.

[https://bufferbloat.waveform.com/og_graphics/og-graphic-a+.png]

www.waveform.com

Bufferbloat Test Result: A+

Is bufferbloat causing issues with your internet connection? Want to measure 
your Internet speed? Run this test

 
https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=3f9d1f94-a5c8-49fb-9926-2921b80bec85

It's possible to detect a test, of course, by watching to see who has a test 
and collecting all their IP address ranges ranges, but then you have to have 
the excess capacity to give them better service than anyone else. All of them!

I prefer to use flent, but that's for serious stuff (;-))

--dave


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Re: [GTALUG] New WiFi router?

2023-03-08 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


The differences in Bell vs Rogers are mostly in the hardware used. They
both use off-the-shelf good routers in the middle, and the cheapest
possible routers to rent to their customers at the edge.

The differences I was looking at are from software: I use descendants of
OpenWRT. They use whatever was cheap at the time. I expect them both to
be horrible in varying degrees (;-))

--dave

On 3/8/23 10:51, James Knott via talk wrote:

On 2023-03-08 10:38, Dave Collier-Brown via talk wrote:

They can deliver lots of bandwidth, but pretty horrid service under
load.  The lat time I ran a load test, the latency to downtown was what
I would expect for latency to Instambul ...


I wonder how things compare with fibre.

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Re: [GTALUG] New WiFi router?

2023-03-08 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


They can deliver lots of bandwidth, but pretty horrid service under
load.  The lat time I ran a load test, the latency to downtown was what
I would expect for latency to Instambul ...

Thus my interest in the bufferbloat project, and fair queuing. Rogers'
is unfair (;-))

--dave

On 3/8/23 10:24, James Knott via talk wrote:

On 2023-03-08 10:20, Don Tai via talk wrote:

Do you need more than 85M/30M? The DVP is probably capable of 200kph
on the straight parts, but we don't need to go that fast..


I don't know about elsewhere but, on Rogers, bandwidth has increased
dramatically over the past few years.  I currently get over 900 Mb
down.  Fibre on Bell will also deliver similar or more.  Rogers even
offers 8 Gb!

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Re: [GTALUG] New WiFi router?

2023-03-08 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


There are a smallish number with software that's been debloated. I
recommend

https://evenroute.com/

They have been supporting the "bufferbloat" efforts I spoke about at
GTALUG years ago: see

https://evenroute.com/bufferbloat

--dave



On 3/8/23 01:09, William Park via talk wrote:

Hi all,

I was upgraded (by my ISP) from Cable 75 (75M/10M) to Cable 100
(100M/30M).  It turns out my router (Asus RT-N66U) maxes out at
85M/30M.  Connecting directly to the modem, I get full 100M/30M.

So, it's time for a new router.  It's been long time since I shopped
for a router.  Which one do you recommend?
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Re: [GTALUG] ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 Intel (14”) -- good deal?

2023-03-01 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

On 3/1/23 13:27, William Park via talk wrote:
A new machine makes more sense, now. Up to now, I've always built one myself.
Maybe, I should try brand name, this time...

You might look at a Framework laptop, as it's not all glued and soldered
together

[https://images.prismic.io/frameworkmarketplace/21ea7901-d013-472c-a2f8-cde8f96f4f4a_PR2204+-+ADL+Press1.jpg?auto=compress,format]

frame.work

Introducing the new and upgraded Framework Laptop

Framework Laptop: A thin, light, high-performance notebook that's upgradeable,
repairable, and 100% yours. Order today with the latest configuration options.

 https://frame.work/

--dave

On 2023-03-01 12:43, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
...
What do you imagine that you might expand?
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Re: [GTALUG] ppp inside private network, but no DNS returned?

2023-02-28 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

If the externally-reachable network is intended for the IOT devices to connect to, they may well be
using IP addresses only. Call it the "DMZ network" or "external network".

They probably have a "management network" that goes to different interfaces,
and which has DNS services for their own convenience. I've seen setups like this

internet --> DMZ network --> host <- management network <- firewall <- office
network

--dave

On 2/28/23 15:28, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
Thanks, all. Yes, there has to be a DNS, but there's a chance that

1. we haven't been told what it is;
2. our connection/hardware hasn't been authorized to connect to it or know
what it is
(yes, it's that kind of place)

There is no other internet connection. We've been given a host name, not an
internal IP address to connect to. We're also hearing that we're the first
folks connecting via this ultra-locked down LTE network for IOT devices, so
maybe they forgot to provision some services

On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 3:11 PM Alvin Starr via talk
mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:
PPP does not require a dns server address to be provided.
But most folks do provide one because it would make for LOTS of support
calls to not hand out your DNS servers.

Is there a DNS on the network that your connecting to at all?
If not then you wll likely be forecd to use the /etc/hosts file to add
in the IP addresses of the target systems.

On 2023-02-28 14:50, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:

Hey - we've got a fun little problem happening right now.

We're connecting a Linux box via LTE to a client's private network.
They want us to connect to a host on that network and upload files via
sftp. We've demonstrated that all of this works with every other LTE
network, but in their walled garden LTE network, they're not returning
any DNS server, so we can't find the host at all. This network does
not have access to public DNS.

Does one usually have to poke a ppp connection a little more to get
useful routing information, or should we have "just got" all the
gateway and DNS details on first connection?

Stewart
(as you can tell, I'm not a network person, but we might appreciate
finding one and paying for support)

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Re: [GTALUG] ppp inside private network, but no DNS returned?

2023-02-28 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


I wonder if

 1.  they decided to not use DNS, in which case they would have given you an IP 
address, or
 2.  they decided to not tell outsiders where the DNS server was, so that the 
outsider would have to be given an IP address, or
 3.  they didn't tell outsiders where the DNS server was because they didn't 
know they needed to, and just took the default (;-))

--dave


On 2/28/23 14:58, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:


On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 2:55 PM James Knott via talk 
mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:



Doesn't the PPP server normally provide the DNS address?
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1877.html#section-1.1

I'd have expected so, but that RFC says "By default, no primary DNS address is 
provided."

thanks




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Re: [GTALUG] Weird pivot from the Linux Foundation: Overture Maps Foundation

2022-12-16 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


What's odd is that Open Street Map has commercial licensees. I can see
multiple competing companies, but competing open source groups usually
is an indication of a problem...

--dave

On 12/16/22 15:34, BCLUG via talk wrote:

Stewart Russell via talk wrote on 2022-12-15 07:01:


Membership in the Overture foundation is also very costly: $3000
US/year to contribute, $3M US/year to be on the steering committee.


From the Ars story, that's cheap to these companies:


If Overture Maps succeeds, it could lower costs for everyone.
Overture member companies are expected to pay an annual membership
fee to the foundation, with members on the "Steering" tier paying $3
million per year and dedicating 20 engineers to the project (sign-ups
are currently open). That's nothing compared to what a big company
will pay for access to the Google Maps API. When Uber held its IPO in
2019, the company reportedly paid $58 million for Google Maps API
access over the previous three years, and that was mostly before the
Google Maps price hike. $3 million a year is a bargain compared to
that.



$3,000,000 *plus* 20 engineers - that kind of resources can get things
done.

Also, "Qualified Nonprofits / Government" tier of membership is $0:

https://overturemaps.org/become-a-member/


Also, a Polish "find a pharmacy with medicine I require" site was priced
out of Google Maps and investigated the alternatives (interesting
comparison images of different mapping products), and made this claim:


Some options we could reject quickly for various reasons.
OpenStreetMap is not supposed to be directly used by commercial sites


https://www.inderapotheke.de/blog/farewell-google-maps



So, I can see the case for Overture Maps if they compete with Google (or
can't afford them), and OSM licensing means OSM is unavailable.



The partners in Overture are not particularly well known for their
open-source friendliness.


Ars again:


The code to "help developers process and effectively use Overture map
data and the global entity reference system" will eventually be on
GitHub. Initially, the foundation aims to release "basic layers
including building, road, and administrative information," with later
plans to introduce "new layers such as places, routing or 3D building
data."


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Re: [GTALUG] Weird pivot from the Linux Foundation: Overture Maps Foundation

2022-12-15 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk




On 12/15/22 14:59, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
On Thu, Dec 15, 2022 at 12:28 PM Evan Leibovitch via talk 
mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:

From the FAQ:


Data contributed to ODbL licensed datasets will be contributed under both the 
ODbL and CDLA permissive v2. Contributions to CDLA permissive v2 datasets will 
be contributed under the CDLA permissive v2.

I don't know these licenses. Are they open enough such this project's data can 
be used by OSM?

ODbL is the licence used by OSM. Its background is more from European database copyright 
than open source. It's a share-alike licence with required attribution. CDLA I'd never 
heard of, but it seems like a "let's make the MIT license, but for data". Many 
VC-funded startups balk at the share-alike and attribution requirements of OSM, because 
they just want the free data and earn money from contributors' work.

This looks like Overture can consume OSM data, but OSM can't use Overture's 
data easily. What a surprise.

Stewart



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Re: [GTALUG] Weird pivot from the Linux Foundation: Overture Maps Foundation

2022-12-15 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk



On 12/15/22 12:14, Kevin Cozens via talk wrote:

On 2022-12-15 10:01, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:

announced the formation of the Overture Maps Foundation
, a new collaborative effort to develop
interoperable open map data

[snip]>  The thing is, we already have a mature global map database with

interoperable data and services: OpenStreetMap


The founding members of the organization probably couldn't think of
how they could monetize OSM so they needed to create their own system.
You can get a good idea that it is probably about having another
revenue stream when you read about how much money they want so you can
contribute or be on the committee. It is fairly safe to say there will
be another "standard" generated for the map data that will not be
directly compatible with any existing map system.


Hmmn, that sounds a bit like Linux Foundation has suffered "regulatory
capture".

Unless they're astroturf to begin with (:-()

--dave


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Re: [GTALUG] Weird pivot from the Linux Foundation: Overture Maps Foundation

2022-12-15 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


That seems odd: OSM is used legally in Garmin products, as per 
https://support.garmin.com/en-CA/?faq=mSWyDE91q874qY0e9JkL1A

It sounds like AWS and friends are starting up a commerce-friendly service and 
trying to suck people in...

--dave



On 12/15/22 10:01, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
I was surprised and disappointed to read this today:

The Linux Foundation, a global nonprofit organization enabling innovation through 
open source, today announced the formation of the Overture Maps 
Foundation, a new collaborative effort to develop 
interoperable open map data as a shared asset that can strengthen mapping services 
worldwide. The initiative was founded by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Meta, Microsoft, 
and TomTom and is open to all communities with a common interest in building open map 
data.
— 
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-announces-overture-maps-foundation-to-build-interoperable-open-map-data

The thing is, we already have a mature global map database with interoperable 
data and services: OpenStreetMap — https://www.openstreetmap.org/ . OSM is 
managed by the democratic OpenStreetMap Foundation. The partners in Overture 
are not particularly well known for their open-source friendliness. Membership 
in the Overture foundation is also very costly: $3000 US/year to contribute, 
$3M US/year to be on the steering committee.

I know that the Linux Foundation is hyper-corporate, but to try to compete with 
OSM is mystifying.

Stewart





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Re: [GTALUG] war story: CMOS battery AKA Real Time Clock (RTC) battery in a notebook

2022-10-20 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


As Honda once said in an owner's manual, "engine does not contain any service 
parts".

I think you were supposed to throw the bike away when the oil got dirty (;-)

--dave

On 10/19/22 21:10, Don Tai via talk wrote:
That is such terrible design. They could have put the CMOS battery anywhere, 
like somewhere serviceable.

On Wed, 19 Oct 2022 at 19:58, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:
Almost all PCs have settings that they want to keep while the computer is
off or even unplugged.  Ones that they don't want to keep on disk.  Things
you set up from the firmware setup screen.

Furthermore, they have a realtime clock that runs when the machine is
turned off or unplugged.

These are all powered by a lithium coin cell.

Eventually, that battery runs down and you have to replace it.  Five or
ten years of lifetime seems normal.

When it runs down, the computer will forget the date, time, and all its
setting when it is turned off.  This is annoying: every time you start up
you have to fill in the time and other settings.

Luckily, for most computers it is easy to replace: it is in a socket in
the motherboard.  The battery can be sourced from Dollarama or Amazon for
a buck or two.  Just get the size right.

For (some? all?) notebooks the coin cell battery isn't used if there is a
charge in the main battery.  So you may not notice that the coin cell
battery is failing.

I flattened my notebook's main battery somehow (left it sleeping for a
week?).  When I powered it on, it had no idea of the time nor what to
boot.

Upon investigation, I find that I have to completely disassemble my
computer to replace the battery!  They placed it on the top of the main
board whereas access is to the bottom.  If you care, you can read page 50
of


It looks as if I will need some new thermal grease since I have to remove
the heat sink from the processor.  And the coin cell assembly is not
generic -- no Dollarama battery.

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Re: [GTALUG] Removing snapd from Ubuntu

2022-05-11 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


In a life long ago, we'd have made /usr/bin/python a shell script, containing

echo "please run /usr/bin/python3"

--dave

On 5/11/22 18:04, Giles Orr via talk wrote:

On Wed, 11 May 2022 at 14:54, Lennart Sorensen via talk 
 wrote:



On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 09:30:41AM -0400, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:


I just did the 22.04 upgrade thing, and it seems that Firefox will be held
at v 99 if you don't have snapd. So beware of old/held packages as you
update.

Another delightful thing I found is that Ubuntu took its very own special
path in the "Sensible things to do in the Python 2 / Python 3" debacle:
remove Python 2, but don't link python3 to python. Move fast and break
stuff is very tiring when you're constantly getting beaten up like this.



Upstream python says not to call python3 as python.  So Unbuntu did
it correctly.

Python 3 code calls /usr/bin/python3 (or probably better yet /usr/bin/env
python3) and legacy python 2 code calls /usr/bin/python.



That actually makes sense.  Then the next one can be 'python4' without
causing problems.  But many distros - and many system administrators
will probably just make it 'python'.  

Yup.  Here's Fedora 35:

$ which python
/usr/bin/python
$ python --version
Python 3.10.4

Debian is guilty of the same thing - which is interesting, because
Ubuntu is based on Debian and would have had to take a detour to "do
the right thing."

Debian and Fedora both also have /usr/bin/python3.



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Re: [GTALUG] Removing snapd from Ubuntu

2022-05-11 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 5/11/22 11:39, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

Another downside of snaps: any bugs, including security bugs, in
shared libraries requires the distro to update the library AND the
snap publisher to rebuild the snap.  What are the chances of that
working out well?

Almost certainly a problem, and it doesn't scale. The repo and all the snap 
owners has to repeat the same analysis and repair work. Or blindly update the 
library and leave diagnosing any failures up to the users.

In the FreeS/Wan project, we changed the config file semantics.  At
the same time, we added a declaration to the config file to specify
which version the config file conformed to.  Good future-proofing, I
thought.

A successor project ripped that declaration out.  So changes in config
file semantics (rare or small) require manual intervention by the user,
with no automatic warning.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George 
Santayana

If you remove things because you don't understand them, as opposed to because 
they cause you problems, that may be A Bad Thing.

--dave




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[GTALUG] Off-topic: snaps (was: Ubuntu review on Distrowatch)

2022-05-02 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


Snaps are a kludge to solve a solved problem in computer science. 
Unfortunately, it's one that people keep thinking is new and unique to their OS 
or language or package.

Solved in Multics, Solaris and Linux glibc. Notably unsolved in the rest of 
Linux, Javascript, Python and Go.  I suspect due to a bad case of Not Invented 
Here.

If someone ships you a mess, try not to run it.  If you have the time to spare, 
run it in a container. If you can't avoid it, run it in a snap, flatpack or 
appimage.

--dave

On 5/2/22 16:53, Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
On 2022-05-02 04:36, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
Thanks. Ugh.

Your timing is perfect, because I'm just about to do a fresh install and this 
would be the time to decide on something else.

I'm looking for an alternative that will offer support for a KDE version as 
well as Steam and my fairly-new AMD graphics card (RX 6500 XT). I'd also prefer 
to live snap-free.

Mint and Pop don't support KDE, SuSE has problems with Steam and I'm exhausted 
enough that I don't want one more learning curve wrt the Arch way of doing 
things. Right now my best choices appear to be MX, KDE Neon (if I install the 
32-bit libraries for Steam) and (if I want to go back to an RPM-based system 
for the first time since Mandriva ceased,) Fedora KDE.

Any suggestions, either from these choices or something else? Thanks again.

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56

I have had very good luck with Fedora.
I am extremely happy with YUM/dnf and RPMs.

Mixed feelings about snaps.
They are kind of like docker containers but seem to have a bunch of extra stuff 
with them.
I have found great utility in containers to solve all kinds of problems with 
otherwise unresolvable software dependencies.

YMMV.
I run Gnome.
I tend to do bunches of software testing and installation.
I never run games ( The last one I tried was a Sikorsky LHX helicopter 
simulator and nothing yet has come close ).



Alvin Starr   ||   land:  (647)478-6285
Netvel Inc.   ||   Cell:  (416)806-0133
al...@netvel.net  ||





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Re: [GTALUG] Ubuntu review on Distrowatch

2022-05-02 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


I've been using Fedora for something like 8 years, with no functionality loss 
in that time during updates.

--dave

On 5/2/22 11:21, gs via talk wrote:
I think Fedora is on its way to becoming the replacement for Ubuntu as the 
default recommended desktop distro based on the opinions of various linux 
podcasts, youtubers and linux reddit communities.

I'm happy with Manjaro but if I were choosing a new distro to move to, it would 
be Fedora.

--- Original Message ---
On Monday, May 2nd, 2022 at 4:36 AM, Evan Leibovitch via talk 
 wrote:

Thanks. Ugh.

Your timing is perfect, because I'm just about to do a fresh install and this 
would be the time to decide on something else.

I'm looking for an alternative that will offer support for a KDE version as 
well as Steam and my fairly-new AMD graphics card (RX 6500 XT). I'd also prefer 
to live snap-free.

Mint and Pop don't support KDE, SuSE has problems with Steam and I'm exhausted 
enough that I don't want one more learning curve wrt the Arch way of doing 
things. Right now my best choices appear to be MX, KDE Neon (if I install the 
32-bit libraries for Steam) and (if I want to go back to an RPM-based system 
for the first time since Mandriva ceased,) Fedora KDE.

Any suggestions, either from these choices or something else? Thanks again.

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56


On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 2:14 AM William Park via talk 
mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:
https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20220502#ubuntu

[Last paragraph]
I think the launch of Ubuntu 22.04 is a clear sign Canonical is much
more interested in publishing releases on a set schedule than producing
something worthwhile. This version was not ready for release and it's is
probably going to be a costly endeavour to maintain this collection of
mixed versioned software and mixed display server and mixed designs for
a full five years. It's a platform I would recommend avoiding.
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Re: [GTALUG] From Slackware to which distro?

2022-04-27 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


I too try to run as close as possible to what my customer runs in
production.  For a long time, that was Fedora, which is effectively an
upstream for Centos. I'm waiting to see what happens in the centos
switch to quasi-continuous.

--dave

On 4/27/22 09:02, Anthony de Boer via talk wrote:

On 2022-04-27 12:37 a.m., William Park via talk wrote:

Hi All,

I've been running Slackware since forever.  It's time to grow up and
see the world.  Which distro would you recommend that I move to?
Yes, I know it's personal, and reasons will be varied and educational.

- Ubuntu -- OK.  I use it at work in VM and in WSL (Windows Subsystem
for Linux).  For me, Mint is another flavour, just like Kubuntu,
Xubuntu, etc.



It can make a lot of sense to run the same at home that you use at
work, so that you're only tracking one distro's quirks and issues, and
being that much more effective at work and needing that much less time
spent debugging issues at home.

I was running Red Hat back when a past job was on that, up until Red
Hat jumped the shark, then CentOS during a couple of gigs that used
that, then I decided it was time to dig into Debian just months before
a job that used that came over the horizon. So now most of my boxes
run Debian.

Meanwhile I picked up Gentoo back around the time RH was bothering me
too much to touch on my own time anymore, partly as a technical
challenge to myself and partly to have the actual source code to
everything actually downloaded, but that can suck up an awful lot of
time even as it hones your sysadmin skills!

Anthony

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Re: [GTALUG] Sane Email System?

2022-03-04 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


I have the Thunderbird setting for getting pop and imap mail from
microsloth, imap below.

That might help you re-point your existing system

--dave


On 3/4/22 11:17, Kevin Cozens via talk wrote:

On 2022-03-03 20:18, Peter King via talk wrote:

I've just been informed that "legacy authentication" is going to be
disabled at the University of Toronto for my email account. Well, I
suspected something like this was in the works when they adopted MS
Outlook
365+ as the mail server, but it still isn't welcome.

Up to now, I've been able to use mutt and getmail for all my needs;

[snip]

But it looks like that is all going away, since Microsoft only supports
what they call "modern" email clients, and on Linux only Thunderbird.

It would be simpler for you to update your scripts to use the new
authentication method instead of making some radical change(s) to how
you handle email.


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Re: [GTALUG] [GTALUG-Announce] Tonight's Meeting

2022-02-08 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


Alas, neither Rogers nor Google's DNS knows about jitsi.flamy.ca:

$ dig  jitsi.flamy.ca 8.8.8.8

; <<>> DiG 9.16.24-RH <<>> jitsi.flamy.ca 8.8.8.8
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 1745
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1

--dave

On 2/8/22 10:02, Alan Heighway via talk wrote:
When: Feb 8, 2022 7:30PM
Speaker: D. Hugh Redelmeier
Topic:  Gitlab fundamentals followed by Q and Discussion
Date/time: 2022-01-11 T19:30:00
Location: Virtual - Big Blue Button (https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl)

TOPIC:

The GTALUG executive uses several tools.  I hope to introduce those tools
centred around git: git, gitlab (a public host for git trees), and markup
(a simple text markup language for text).

Alan Heighway
   heighway.ca
  VA3WAH / VA3YKZ

[Please consider the environment beforeprinting]



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Re: [GTALUG] Can anyone recommend a source for Laptop batteries..

2022-02-04 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


I bought a low-cost replacement, but have to clean it's contacts every time I 
power up, sometimes several times. I recommend genuine Lenovo replacements

--dave

On 2/4/22 17:12, Michael Galea via talk wrote:
I'm looking for recommendations on replacing my T420's battery pack. Either a 
store, source, particular manufacturer or any experiences
would be welcome.
--
Thanks
Michael Galea
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Re: [GTALUG] help with Rogers SMTP

2021-12-24 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


Ironically, Duck Dodgers just sent me and email saying to switch back to
my regular password, abd smtp and imap now both work!

--dave

On 12/2/21 12:03 PM, Dave Collier-Brown wrote:

I lost contact with Dodgers' SMTP from my Thunderbird some time back,
what do your working settings look like? Mine are attached below

--dave


On 12/2/21 00:04, William Park via talk wrote:

I think Rogers is using Yahoo or Hotmail (Microsoft) behind the
scene. My sendmail/fetchmail/procmail used to work for Yahoo, until
about a year ago.  I gave up.

I'm now using Thunderbird.  You can tell by the way paragraph is
mangled in my post. :-(

--William

On 12/1/21 8:24 PM, Ariel Burton via talk wrote:

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to get outgoing SMTP email to work with Rogers,
and would appreciate any help.

I am not looking for a full solution; all I need is for outgoing
email to work from the command line in my user account.  I don't
need a system-wide solution, or a solution that works with GUI email
readers.  See below for a sample use-case.

I used to have a solution that had lines like this in my $HOME/.mailrc:

BEGINS

set smtp=smtp.nl.rogers.com:587
set smtp-auth-user=MY-ROGERS-EMAIL-ADDRESS
set smtp-auth-password=ROGERS-DEVICE-SPECIFIC-PASSWORD

set replyto="Ariel Burton "

set smtp-use-starttls
set ssl-verify=ignore

ENDS

Something like this worked for many years, but stopped working
a while  ago.
Earlier versions differed slightly, e.g., using "from" or "sender"
in place of "replyto", or different port numbers.

This is a transcript of how it fails:

BEGINS

/home/me> mail MY-OTHER-EMAIL-ADDRESS
Subject: test
test
.
EOT
% smtp-server: 550 Request failed; Mailbox unavailable
"/home/me/dead.letter" 12/365
. . . message not sent.

ENDS

Can anyone see what am I doing wrong, and how to fix it?

Thanks,

Ariel
==
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Re: [GTALUG] Index Exchange is hiring (a lot), and I can recommend it

2021-11-28 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 11/27/21 22:17, William Park via talk wrote:


Just curious... Why was Go chosen?  And, more importantly, what other
languages were considered and rejected?


We were looking for a compiled language that did parallelism without
requiring a PhD in temporal logic. It replaces Perl, where we used lots
of parallel instances of a rather large monolithic application.

There are other language in use: Python for ML, Java for big data and
some I've never heard of, but Go is the major one. Which is cool, as
it's one of my favorites.

--dave


--
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[GTALUG] Index Exchange is hiring (a lot), and I can recommend it

2021-11-27 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


We're an advertising exchange that does real time ad auctions in 120 
milliseconds, growing hugely even through COVID, financially successful and 
moving steadily toward IPO in a few years.

We're interested in Go programmers, sysadmins with a talent for automation, and 
data / machine-learning engineers. Plus co-ops.

There are roughly 60 engineering position we want to fill, nominally in 
downtown Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto and Montreal. In fact, we've mostly been 
working from home world-wide, and turned our old North Toronto office into a 
data centre. We do have a building at King and Spadina for folks who prefer to 
have a desk (which includes me), but it's optional.

This is the best job I've had since Sun Microsystems: come join me.

--dave

--
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Re: [GTALUG] GTALUG board election results (informal)

2021-11-10 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


If you need another person, I'll put my name forward for consideration.

--dave

On 2021-11-10 08:59, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

We have five board positions.
Four were available -- Alex Volkov's term expires next year.
Three people volunteered and were acclaimed:
   Evan Leibovitch
   Alan Heighway
   Warren McPherson

Thanks and congratulations to our new board.

If you are interested in serving, there is still room.  Consider talking
to a board member.

Thanks to everyone who joined or renewed their membership.  You can still
renew if you haven't done so.
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Re: [GTALUG] Hey, the meeting isn't resolvable

2021-11-09 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


I went to the website and used the link _there_ --dave

On 2021-11-09 19:39, Dave Collier-Brown wrote:
https://can01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjitsi.flamy.ca%2FGTALUGdata=04%7C01%7C%7C29794901952742e9f4c608d9a3e28fcf%7Cb07c069022b843668d8d7b845d088e18%7C1%7C0%7C637721015730269113%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000sdata=ejaqJNx14wJwzogMpQC4kBwcVWek9FbR1Tc7kkG609g%3Dreserved=0
 can't be reached from Rogers

https://can01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fflamy.ca%2Fdata=04%7C01%7C%7C29794901952742e9f4c608d9a3e28fcf%7Cb07c069022b843668d8d7b845d088e18%7C1%7C0%7C637721015730269113%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000sdata=wzO7aqnHUhcsM3MEg0aJdPw0uhdqhwXtHSj9wejUog0%3Dreserved=0
 is resolvable, either by Ruck Rogers or 8.8.8.8

--dave


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[GTALUG] Hey, the meeting isn't resolvable

2021-11-09 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


https://jitsi.flamy.ca/GTALUG can't be reached from Rogers

https://flamy.ca/ is resolvable, either by Ruck Rogers or 8.8.8.8

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] Command doesn't work in script but works on command line?

2021-11-06 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

This was a test for command-line vs putting it in a script. Your cases 
both use putting it i n a script, so this won't tell you anything.


--dave

On 2021-11-06 10:29, Jim Ruxton via talk wrote:


I'm not sure I am clear here what you want me to try. I tried putting 
the command in a function in the script as below but it still didn't work.


On 2021-11-06 9:20 a.m., Dave Collier-Brown via talk wrote:


Does it perhaps only apply in the process that issues the command?  
That would make it apply when run from the command-line, and (appear 
to) fail when you run it in a subshell, which is what happens when 
you call a script.


The man page doesn't say, so try making it a shell function,

alsa_me() {
     alsa_out -j secondInterface -d hw:3 -c 6
}

and then call that from the command-line.

The thing is I want to avoid using the command line. I want a user to 
just double click the file to run it.

Jim



On 2021-11-06 08:44, Jim Ruxton via talk wrote:
Ok, just added the path /usr/bin to the command but it didn't help. 
Still a mystery?


Jim

On 2021-11-06 8:37 a.m., James Knott via talk wrote:

On 2021-11-06 8:25 a.m., Jim Ruxton via talk wrote:



I'm having trouble with a simple script. It adds a second 
sounccard. This command works on the command line but not in a 
script. Any ideas why?


Did you specify the full path to the command in the script?
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Re: [GTALUG] Command doesn't work in script but works on command line?

2021-11-06 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


Does it perhaps only apply in the process that issues the command?  That would 
make it apply when run from the command-line, and (appear to) fail when you run 
it in a subshell, which is what happens when you call a script.

The man page doesn't say, so try making it a shell function,

alsa_me() {

   alsa_out -j secondInterface -d hw:3 -c 6


}

and then call that from the command-line.

--dave


On 2021-11-06 08:44, Jim Ruxton via talk wrote:
Ok, just added the path /usr/bin to the command but it didn't help. Still a 
mystery?

Jim

On 2021-11-06 8:37 a.m., James Knott via talk wrote:
On 2021-11-06 8:25 a.m., Jim Ruxton via talk wrote:


I'm having trouble with a simple script. It adds a second sounccard. This 
command works on the command line but not in a script. Any ideas why?

Did you specify the full path to the command in the script?
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Re: [GTALUG] Heads up: Ubuntu 21.10 kills your desktop icons

2021-10-21 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk



On 2021-10-20 19:59, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:

I've just switched to xubuntu. I think it uses XFCE. So far (10
minutes in) it mostly works. It does fail on one thing, though:


Let me alt+tab between the windows.



The Fedora version of XFCE does support alt-tab between windows.

--dave



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Re: [GTALUG] Do people have opinions about the Framework modular laptop

2021-10-19 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 2021-10-18 16:12, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:


I would certainly also like to see an AMD option.

Although for me the main issue is that a 13.5" laptop has zero interest
to me.  Too small.  Come with a 15" or 17" and I will be interested.


My wife has a 15" Mac laptop, and never takes it on trips because it's
so big.

I have a 14" thinkpad and a tiny netbook, and the thinkpad is just a
little large for my backpack. 13.5" sounds about right.  At home and in
the office I have docking stations hooked to quite large screens, so the
laptop screen usually only displays my email (;-))

---dave


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[GTALUG] Do people have opinions about the Framework modular laptop

2021-10-15 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


I see from Slashdot that it has an app store now:

 *   
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/21/10/14/2110258/modular-framework-laptop-gets-marketplace-for-all-those-modules
 *   
https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/14/22725935/framework-laptop-modular-marketplace-launches-spare-parts-upgrades-expansions

and I wonder if anyone has an opinion of it.

--dave

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 |  -- Mark Twain


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Re: [GTALUG] Vaccination Receipts on Linux

2021-09-20 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 2021-09-20 4:36 p.m., Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:

Just because getting it certified is tedious is no excuse for not
designing it with that in mind from the start.  Making a design that is
entirely not suitable is a great way to ensure it will be a lot of work
and expensive when you have to then do it all over after the fact to do
it right.


Alas, there are fads in UX that always break ADA and AODA, and "ooh, shiny" beats 
"you'll get your ass sued off" way too often.

Hiding the scroll-bar unless you position your cursor EXACTLY in the middle of 
the right band of white-space is an excellent example, eh Grafana?

--dave

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[GTALUG] Linux growth (was: Vaccination Receipts on Linux)

2021-09-20 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 2021-09-20 4:11 a.m., Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:

as for the issues with Linux accessibility in general.  Speaking personally?  A 
much better goal would be raising the profile of Linux as a platform widely 
used by the public, so that accessibility related surveys and tests will count 
those who choose Linux over other things.


The rise of chromebooks in school is probably the harbinger of a move of 
quasi-embedded linux from phones to the desktop.

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] Anyone know of a service to see if someone's pretending to be me?

2021-09-12 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


Thanks, folks: passed on to in-house counsel --dave

On 2021-09-12 12:13 p.m., Tim Tisdall via talk wrote:
I just checked and found https://www.google.ca/alerts .  I have 4 alerts set up 
but haven't received anything for several years, so I'm not sure how effective 
it is.  However, it's probably worth putting in your company name and then 
receive an alert when new things are spidered by Google that mention the 
company.

On Sat, 11 Sept 2021 at 09:19, Tim Tisdall 
mailto:tisd...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Is Google Alerts still a thing?

On Tue, 7 Sept 2021 at 15:37, David Collier-Brown via talk 
mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:
My company just found a fake instance of themselves, so I wonder what
folks do to detect them?

I know politicians suffer impersonation a lot, but I don't know who's
out there helping people and companies find and shut down the scammers.

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] Win 11 requirements may be windfall for cheapskate Linux users

2021-08-30 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 2021-08-29 4:14 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:


Certainly the value proposition of replacing old hardware has never
been lower.  System capabilities, performance, and price have not been
improving quickly since Intel Core's 4th generation.

(As I've said before, my main desktop is almost eight years old and I
don't have a good reason to replace it.  I keep wanting to for some
odd version of fun or adventure, but have so far resisted.)


I've also been using the same machine for some time, one Hugh recommended.

However, recent AMD architecture changes have caused a large step
upwards in number of hardware threads: my production Intels have either
10 or 18, and my two test AMDs have 512 and 1024. And they draw less
current.

This doesn't have as much effect on small machines, but it does greatly
improve price-performance. Expect to see a step-function upwards in
performance and some price improvements as the bottleneck shifts away
from chip price toward capacity per watt.

--dave


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Re: [GTALUG] Index Exchanging is adding some entry-level positions

2021-08-24 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

Other teams have entry-level positions as well:

* Finance & Analysis has a 6-month contract position of an intern

--dave

On 2021-08-24 11:30 a.m., David Collier-Brown wrote:
[EXTERNAL] This email originated from outside the organization. Do not click
links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content
is safe.

We have two new positions in our Network Operation Centre, as folks move
up to line engineering. They're posted at
https://can01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexexchange.com%2Fcareers%2F%23data=04%7C01%7C%7C4480a4d46cfa4d8d346908d9671425da%7Cb07c069022b843668d8d7b845d088e18%7C1%7C0%7C637654158491076130%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000sdata=gorvxgS%2FwuNdjLjbuah82XactvFbeGdbKkHCGYjopYo%3Dreserved=0
and search for NOC.

Right now, we're 100% remote, but some day we'll be back in our offices
near King and Spadina.

I usually say we're a payments processor in the on-line advertising
business. If you have an ad-supported web site (like the Globe and Mail)
we post your page to advertisers, hold an auction to find the highest
bidder, and get you paid for it. Think micropayments: hundredths of a
cent at a time, done in milliseconds.

--dave

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System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
dav...@spamcop.net |
-- Mark Twain

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dave.collier-br...@indexexchange.com
| -- Mark Twain

Re: [GTALUG] IX is hiring

2021-06-03 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

Hmmn, I think that should be considered a bug. It's WordPress, if memory 
serves.


Thanks!

--dave

On 2021-06-02 11:11 p.m., Alvin Starr wrote:


*[EXTERNAL]* This email originated from outside the organization. Do 
not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender 
and know the content is safe.


That 'splains why the site looked so bad with brave.

On 2021-06-02 8:41 p.m., Dave Collier-Brown via talk wrote:


Yes: we're a payments processor, and part of the business that 
delivers annoying ads to websites and gets them paid for them.  It's 
legit to block us as part of the ad business.  Not as part of the 
evilness business, mind you, but he's not doing that (;-))


--dave

On 2021-06-02 7:06 p.m., Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:

On 2021-06-02 11:57 a.m., David Collier-Brown via talk wrote:

Seehttps://www.indexexchange.com/careers, and snoop about us on Linkedin

Note that if you use uBlock Origin, this URL is blocked by Peter Lowe’s
Ad and tracking server list .

cheers,
  Stewart
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Alvin Starr   ||   land:  (647)478-6285
Netvel Inc.   ||   Cell:  (416)806-0133
al...@netvel.net   ||


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Re: [GTALUG] IX is hiring

2021-06-02 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

Yes: we're a payments processor, and part of the business that delivers 
annoying ads to websites and gets them paid for them.  It's legit to 
block us as part of the ad business.  Not as part of the evilness 
business, mind you, but he's not doing that (;-))


--dave

On 2021-06-02 7:06 p.m., Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:

On 2021-06-02 11:57 a.m., David Collier-Brown via talk wrote:

See https://www.indexexchange.com/careers, and snoop about us on Linkedin

Note that if you use uBlock Origin, this URL is blocked by Peter Lowe’s
Ad and tracking server list .

cheers,
  Stewart
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dave.collier-br...@indexexchange.com |  -- Mark Twain

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Re: [GTALUG] You may already have a Windows licence and not know it …

2021-04-14 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


Cool: strings found

MSDMU
LENOVOTP-GL    #
PTEC
X-XX-X-X-

on my Thinkpad.

--dave

On 2021-04-13 7:42 p.m., Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
If the file /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM exists (it's read-only to 
root), there's probably a key embedded in there you can pull out with 
strings


 Stewart



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Re: [GTALUG] interesting article on FreeBSD kernel almost getty dangerous code

2021-03-29 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk



On 2021-03-29 3:31 p.m., Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:

On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 02:21:06PM -0400, James Knott via talk wrote:

When I started using pfsense, about 5 years ago, I was surprised it was
using FreeBSD and not Linux.  I also found BSD to be a bit crude, compared
to Linux.  The only reason I stopped using SUSE for my firewall was it
didn't support DHCPv6-PD, which pfsense did.

OpenWRT seems to handle it fine, whatever program they are using on linux.

OpenWRT has Dave Taht on their side, who is both a friend, a comedian 
and a force of nature (;-))


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeCIbCzGY6k

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] HP Z420 + rx5600 + MSI MAG272CQR ?

2021-02-16 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

Chromium is a */pain/* to build. If you're not being paid to work on it, 
it's a low-value, high cost effort.


This has caused even some folks to reconsider offering it, except as a 
binary blob with less functionality than the Chrome binary blob.


--dave

On 2021-02-15 10:55 p.m., Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:

On 2021-02-15 1:49 p.m., steve--- via talk wrote:

  broke my chrome on 18.04 LTS

Ah, you're really not gonna like Ubuntu now, then. Chrome is *only*
available as a snap. The deb is a stub that reinstalls snapd and the
Chrome snap.
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Re: [GTALUG] Fwd: HISTORIC opportunity for cheaper Internet in Toronto

2021-01-29 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

I definitely agree: NB and Nova Scotis have done some work with fixed 
tariffs for access to public poles... this is a workaround to private 
duopolies.


--dave

On 2021-01-29 6:11 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

| From: David Collier-Brown via talk 

| A proposal for a community broadband, in Toronto!

I actually think that there is a better approach.

The free market is generally a good way to provide services but there are
failure modes in the free market.  The main failure mode is monopoly.  A
second failure mode is not providing services to customers who cost more
than the revenue that they generate.

Problem 1: monopolies.  Ones that are vertically and horizontally
integrated.  Technically, duopolies, but who's counting.

The solution isn't to replace them with another monopoly (a government
body).

The solution:

- recognize that there is a natural monopoly and create a regulated field
   for them.  The obvious natural monopoly is the physical substrate of the
   networks.

   In fact, there are certain parts of the network that could have
   competition.  The last mile isn't one of those parts.

- forbid any integration with the monopoly entity.  For example, if it
   provides physical connectivity, it must not provide services.

- the monopoly must be regulated to behave in "common carrier" mode:
   it must not differentiate in price based upon what the network is
   carrying.  "Network Neutrality"

- a nice competitive market for services should be possible.  New services
   can be freely invented.  Evidence:  the web has a larger set of choices
   and kinds of services that the phone system.


Problem 2: apparently poor folks are not getting enough broadband.

- should we subsidize service for them (us)?  Perhaps they're making a
   rational choice on how to allocate their resources.

- should we subsidize connectivity for everyone?  There are advantages to
   avoiding discontinuities in policies

Years ago, POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) was subsidized, mostly by
charging a lot more for long distance service (considered a luxury).
This worked fine for a long time but broke down.  It isn't clear whether
this was good policy.

As soon as the single-system, single-provider model of phone service broke
down, lots of creativity bloomed.


Consider the road system as a model.  That's a public resource.  I don't
100% know how to analogize this.

- roads are (mostly, best) provided publicly

- vehicles are provided by a variety of actors (private, mostly, but also
   public transit)

- regulation is by many levels of government, for many separate purposes

- a lot of people are killed on the roads.


Problem 3: stupid underbuilding of infrastructure

Require all builders to provide fibre connectivity in each building.

Controversial: that fibre should reach a local, neutral hub where a choice
of connectivity providers have presence.  The building owner should own
this fibre.  If there are tenants, the building owner should provide
equitable access to that fibre.

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Re: [GTALUG] Fwd: HISTORIC opportunity for cheaper Internet in Toronto

2021-01-29 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk



On 2021-01-29 8:05 a.m., Alvin Starr via talk wrote:

On 1/28/21 7:18 PM, James Knott via talk wrote:

On 2021-01-28 5:45 p.m., David Collier-Brown via talk wrote:
A proposal for a community broadband, in Toronto! 


Several years ago, Toronto Hydro had the same idea.  I  believe they 
sold their fibre to Cogeco.  Back when I was with Unitel, working 
with Rogers, we'd use Hydro fibre to reach customers in the downtown 
core.


Not sure of steps in between but Cogeco ended up with Toronto Hydro 
Telecom and bundled it with Peer1 which they recently sold to 
https://www.digitalcolony.com/  and 
its now called Aptum.
https://aptum.com/newsroom/cogeco-peer-1-acquistion-by-digital-colony-closes/ 



So a large chunk of Ontario's telecom infrastructure is in the hands 
of  a bunch of fund managers.
I have a feeling that will not end well for Ontario users of telecom 
services.




Conversely, the US FCC (just) reached out to Vint Cerf, Dave Taht and 
others to advise on the $3.2 billion "Emergency Broadband Benefit 
Program", instead of watching their infrastructure just circle the drain 
(;-))


--dave


--
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System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
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Re: [GTALUG] How do I demonstrate a crappy network?

2021-01-19 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk



On 2021-01-19 4:49 p.m., Giles Orr wrote:

On Tue, 19 Jan 2021 at 16:21, David Collier-Brown via talk
 wrote:

On 2021-01-19 11:15 a.m., David Collier-Brown wrote:

On 2021-01-19 9:56 a.m., Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:


On 2021-01-19 7:19 a.m., David Collier-Brown via talk wrote:

What is something that I can make fail, either audibly or visually?
Showing my grandmother ping statistics isn't going to work (;-))

Video call over 2.4 GHz wifi, then start the microwave. Glitchtastic
every time.

I'm not sure the Linux networking changes help with that (;-))

--dave

Joking aside, is there a famously _bad_ video or audio site, one that
everyone hates?

Or a setting for a service that makes it fail?

Here's an idea - no clue if it's a good one.

Get yourself access to a low bandwidth connection: if the following
table is correct (dubious source and video compression always varies
depending on content) then you can easily saturate a 10Mbps DSL line
with a 4K video:

Resolutions Required   Bandwidth Required
   H264H265
1280×720(HD)  3Mbps1.5Mbps
1920X1080(FHD) 6Mbps 3Mbps
3840×2160 (UHD)   25Mbps   12Mbps
4096×2160 (4K)   32Mbps   15Mbps

(source: https://www.synopi.com/bandwidth-required-for-hd-fhd-4k-video/
in case the table got mangled into unreadability. )

Maybe you have a way to fractionalize your own network connection if
you don't have access to 10/1 DSL.

With YouTube, you can select the resolution (although it's not very
granular at the top end).  If you can toggle CAKE on/off, see if the
saturated line becomes unsaturated.  If not, reduce the video
resolution and repeat.  YouTube's "Stats for Nerds" may also be
helpful?


Aha, their stats aren't something I've looked into. Thanks!

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] Reverse DNS different that DNS server (reverse is a local address)

2020-11-22 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

Depending on what kind of problems you're seeing, you probably want to 
do a traceroutefrom a network where you have good 
performance/reliability to someplace distant (I use slashdot.org (:-)), 
land then again from the doubtful network.


The names you see are sometimes clear...

[davecb@miles Networking]$ traceroute slashdot.org

traceroute to slashdot.org (216.105.38.15), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets

 1  _gateway (192.168.7.1)  0.409 ms  0.402 ms  0.246 ms

 2  10.0.0.1 (10.0.0.1)  2.168 ms  2.784 ms  2.962 ms

 3  99.240.238.1 (99.240.238.1)  19.416 ms  14.751 ms  14.897 ms

 4  8081-dgw01.ym.rmgt.net.rogers.com (67.231.222.137)  19.446 ms  14.282 ms  
14.152 ms

 5  69.63.249.221 (69.63.249.221)  19.653 ms  19.892 ms  19.737 ms

 6  209.148.235.218 (209.148.235.218)  14.454 ms  18.395 ms  18.287 ms

 7  ae58.bar3.Toronto1.Level3.net (4.59.180.41)  34.759 ms  34.188 ms  34.265 ms

 8  ae-2-3611.edge2.NewYork6.Level3.net (4.69.209.82)  40.920 ms  41.218 ms  
41.547 ms

 9  * * *

10  los-edge-08.inet.qwest.net (67.14.22.202)  103.209 ms  96.349 ms  102.989 ms

11  65-126-18-126.dia.static.qwest.net (65.126.18.126)  94.487 ms  94.216 ms  
83.169 ms

12  br05-te0-0-1-6.lwdc.americanis.net (207.158.62.109)  82.873 ms  82.800 ms  
83.479 ms

13  ar07-te13-3.lwdc.americanis.net (209.216.192.66)  83.737 ms * *

14  216.105.38.15 (216.105.38.15)  89.270 ms  83.401 ms  83.303 ms


For example, 8081-dgw01.ym.rmgt.net.rogers.com is Rogers, etc. For 
missing or more obscure names, use command-line whois with the IP address:


[davecb@miles Networking]$  whois 69.63.249.221

[Querying whois.arin.net]

[whois.arin.net]

#

# ARIN WHOIS data and services are subject to the Terms of Use

# available at: https://www.arin.net/resources/registry/whois/tou/

#

# If you see inaccuracies in the results, please report at

# https://www.arin.net/resources/registry/whois/inaccuracy_reporting/

#

# Copyright 1997-2020, American Registry for Internet Numbers, Ltd.

#

NetRange:   69.63.240.0 - 69.63.255.255

CIDR:   69.63.240.0/20

NetName:    ROGERS-COM-INFR

NetHandle:  NET-69-63-240-0-1

Parent: NET69 (NET-69-0-0-0-0)

NetType:    Direct Allocation

OriginAS:   AS812

Organization:   Rogers Communications Canada Inc. (RCC-184)

RegDate:    2008-05-01

Updated:    2017-01-06

Ref:    https://rdap.arin.net/registry/ip/69.63.240.0

You will get two things:

1. Who it passes through, eg, Utopia, Bell or Rodgers
2. How /long it takes /to get to each new network

I have a script that subtracts the lines of three sample times from one 
another, but eyeballs work well, too (;-))


I'd be curious to see which Utopia you get: Mumbai or Utah (;-))

--dave



On 2020-11-22 2:45 p.m., Joseph Rocklin via talk wrote:
Sorry. My wife and I are trying to discern if my BIL's network was a 
problem in the past. It has been the family's network. The kids and 
her computer in the past had routed via utopia.net when we entered in 
addresses or search terms. I am trying to see if there is anything 
wrong with my BIL's network now. I am a bit suspicious based on what I 
read about utopia.net. My wife wants me to find more significant 
findings before she allows herself to question matters. I don't know 
all that much except that utopia.net was noted as a malware site on 
many searches I've done.



Nov 22, 2020, 2:29 PM by talk@gtalug.org:

On 2020-11-22 2:13 p.m., Joseph Rocklin via talk wrote:

Hi all,

I just tried a reverse dns lookup on whoismydns.com for my
wife's  computer on a family-member's network.

Result:
DNS Server: 67.231.208.167
Reverse DNS: pub-cdns3-wlfdle-eth1.rpub.net.rogers.com
IP Owner: Rogers

Does this seem correct? I have my dns settings set on my
machine and I get my expected DNS results on my machine on
this family member's network. Is there any reason to be
concerned here?

I had noticed a while back, before upgrades on this family
member's network, that utopia.net was being used as the DNS
server. It was on more than one machine that used that
network. Now I'm wondering if somehow this network was
routing, in a still-problematic way, but just via a local address?

I may have confused some concepts as I am just getting my feet
wet with this topic of DNS servers.

If anyone has suggestions to confirm if the network is
properly setup, please let me know.


Why are you looking up the DNS, when you want to look up your
wife's computer?  Look up her WAN address.
Her host name should be something like cpe-cm.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com.  Host name changed to protect the
guilty. ;-)

She should also have IPv6 addresses.

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Re: [GTALUG] security threats of Open Source

2020-11-21 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

I've seen better coverage but less depth from commercial entities. I 
just referred a Kobo bug to the in-house counsel, as the assigned 
support creature could neither understand the problem /nor/ the process.


I used to work with their lawyer at Lexis Nexis: that's *not* a common 
kind of situation (;-))


in the open source world, one arguably only needs to convince a peer 
that something is wrong, not a legal representative of the company that 
they're at risk.


--dave


On 2020-11-21 12:06 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

| From: David Thornton via talk 
| Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2020 15:25:42 -0500

Thanks for reviving this thread 10 months later.  What prompted you to do
that?  Note: this is not a complaint.  I continue to think that this is an
important and unresolved topic.

| As administrators we have a responsibility to vet. Even if it's to
| "deligate" the vetting, we have to vet the deligate.

"have to" means "responsibility to".  Unfortunately, responsibility without
capability is a recipe for disaster.

Clearly you've thought about this in a setting with customers.  How do you
discharge this responsibility?

The GPL says: you get what we offer but we accept no responsibility.

Many commercial software contract and EULAs disclaim responsibility
and forbid using the software in safety-critical settings.  They then
often fall back on saying at most you can get back the purchase cost.

So a responsible decision-maker cannot delegate the responsibility yet has
no practical or even theoretical tools to discharge the
responsibility.  Except bankruptcy law.

- you can ask your customer / client / employer that "here are the risks
   that I can imagine, are you willing to accept them?"

- you can make sure that there are no assets available that can be lost
   when and if problems arise

- you can work to reduce risks.  This quickly hits the law of diminishing
   returns, long before the risks are eliminated.  But I'm sure we can
   do better than the industry norms, as long as customers
   understand that they must and should pay for the up-front cost.

Customers / clients often think that they are safer with large
corporations.  In that role, I've found the help from large companies (eg.
Microsoft, Sun Microsystems (back in the day), ...) to inferior
to help from small companies.  Both are eclipsed by support from FLOSS
communities.  But support only deals with problems in the future, not
damage that has happened.

In the area of security, the worst breaches are the ones you never learn
about.

| Npm is a hot mess, and most people get that now.
|
| Galaxy / puppetforge / helm stuff ? Take a number.
|
| It sprouts faster than you can get on it sometimes.
|
| Pays the mortgage :)

You can't live with them and you can't live without them?
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Re: [GTALUG] The truth is paywalled (was Re: Looks like IBM is planning to eliminate RHEL)

2020-08-07 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

Hmmn, Reuters and Associated Press are middlemen, while NPR, ABC, CBS and the Conversation
are "leaf" sites, as are the highly opinionated sites like NYT, WaPo, G,
NatPo and Toronto Sta.

I wonder if there is a relationship to the "paywallness"?

--dave

On 2020-08-07 12:48 a.m., Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:

As someone much smarter than me recently wrote, "The Truth is Paywalled but the Lies
are Free".

I call absolute bullshit on this assertion, which I have seen in meme form at a
number of locations.

It's provably wrong.

--
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System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
dave.collier-br...@indexexchange.com
| -- Mark Twain

Re: [GTALUG] OpenWRT Upgrade

2020-07-09 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


It's mechanically breakable. I get UFO mac addresses back about an hour
after changing the password.

Mind you, if I really wanted to block then I'd list my devices as the
only ones allowed.

--dave

On 2020-07-09 9:06 a.m., James Knott via talk wrote:

On 2020-07-09 07:57 AM, David Collier-Brown via talk wrote:

I have an apparent neighbor who uses my connection. The use I don't
mind much, the degree to which my work is public I do  mind.


They can get through WPA2?  Did the key somehow slip out?  One thing
you might try is a VPN.  I used to use one back in the WEP days, as it
was known to be insecure.  To reach my network, you needed both the
WEP key and VPN key.

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Re: [GTALUG] YouTube Page

2020-06-16 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


The golang meetups often have remote speakers, at a guess about 1/3. They tend to be 
short talks, on the order of 30 minutes, and I did see one "poster session" 
with a single graph.

--dave

On 2020-06-16 1:37 p.m., Alex Volkov via talk wrote:
Hey Ansar,

I'm Alex, I'm working with the videos.


Short answer is  -- We're not meeting in person right now and it's been a lot 
harder to get speakers for full talks, so it is unlikely in the near future.

The slightly longer answer is -- we still have one video in the pipleline 
waiting to be released, also we're going to try to record our next meeting if  
we manage to get a few short talks.


Alex.

On 2020-06-16 1:27 p.m., Ansar Mohammed via talk wrote:
I was checking out the GTALUG youtube site and was very impressed with the 
quality and quantity of videos on some very relevant topics. Is there a plan 
for more of these videos?


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM4tvQ_GLEJiJ1OKzW81Bew





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Re: [GTALUG] Continuing Printer Woes

2020-05-31 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk



On 2020-05-31 6:23 p.m., Peter King via talk wrote:

Eric S. Raymond was right about CUPS some fourteen years ago, in his essay
"The Luxury of Ignorance" (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html),
and things really haven't gotten any better.  Here's an update since I last
posted about six weeks ago.

I had an HP LaserJet 1100a, which worked reasonably well until its internal
memory went bad.  These things happen.  So I got a more recent HP Pro 1102w
which is no end of trouble;

Ah yes, the "modem testing problem" redux.
I've had good luck with an HP "Color LaserJetPro MFP M177fw", but I don't enjoy 
a system where you buy a printer and only then find out if you have to return it or not.

--dave




I could print to it a bit, irregularly, but now
not at all -- everything seems to be configured properly but CUPS reports
"Waiting for printer to become available" and nothing I do, from writing
udev rules to rebooting, makes it available.  So I bought another printer, a
Lexmark MS415dn, in part for its three-penguin rating [ = "works perfectly
with Linux"] on openprinting.org, but it does not work perfectly, spitting
out endless pages of gibberish when I sent it PDFs or PostScript files, to
the point where it prints only once out of every two or three attempts.  I
won't go through all the details of what I've tried, but I have tried, and
tried, and tried.

More or less at my wit's end -- actually, I can see my wit's end receding
in the distance in the rear-view mirror -- and proving that I cannot learn
from experience, I'm considering buying something that should just work,
that is, of getting a monochrome single-function laser printer with embedded
PostScript to handle my needs, which, you'd think, would be a sufficiently
humble set of requirements.  You'd think.  If anyone on this list can recommend
such a beast, which can run reliably under Linux (specifically arch linux), I
would be almost shamefully greatful.  Nearly as good would be cautions about
what to avoid.  Thanks.





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Re: [GTALUG] I’m obviously way behind in my reading: IBM owns Redhat

2020-05-29 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk



On 2020-05-28 6:32 p.m., Russell Reiter via talk wrote:


On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 4:53 PM Lennart Sorensen 
mailto:lsore...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca>> wrote:
On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 09:27:09AM -0400, Russell Reiter via talk wrote:

Streetcars in Toronto use narrow gauge rails and trucks on the city streets
in order to provide for and blend two lanes of vehicular traffic each way.
Speed and reliability is limited by those environmental factors.


Toronto streetcars run TTC gauge which is 60mm wider than standard gauge.
It sure isn't narrow.

Your right it is labeled as broad gauge.  TTC gauge rails @ 4'10 1/2in are 
narrower than legacy broad gauge rails @ 5'6in, which were eventually replaced 
with standard gauge @ 4'8 1/2 in.

Apparently TTC gauge was implemented to allow the set of wheels on one side of 
a horse drawn wagon to ride in one track to stay reasonably centred in the 
roadway without the other side slipping into the track on that side.

At the time, there was also a real concern that future "street railway" 
operators would allow normal freight cars and switch engines onto the trolley-car lines, 
and they declared that they would adopt a gauge that prevented that misuse.


LRT's use dedicated surface access and Toronto's first dedicated LRT was
planned and enacted a few short years ago.


Well they are working on it.  Those are standard gauge, so slightly
narrower than the streetcars and subways.

Those cars would be able to connect with the existing higher speed rail 
corridors. Everything seems to have a pantograph now, so it looks like the tech 
is heading that way. I did hear that they are going to have to raise the height 
of the Dufferin bridge going over the tracks to the CNE grounds. They're doing 
this in order to make way for the overhead wiring, but I'm not sure when that 
is going to start.

Probably on the very back burner now, all things considered.

I suspect that this may deliberately funded, like road repair, to inject money 
into the economy.

--dave




--
Len Sorensen


--
Russell



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Re: [GTALUG] There is a Time Machine Clone for Linux

2020-05-13 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk



On 2020-05-12 9:41 p.m., Ivan Avery Frey via talk wrote:

https://www.rastersoft.com/programas/cronopete.html


I'm happily using "Back in Time", described at
https://backintime.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] [GTALUG-Announce] Meeting Tomorrow

2020-05-12 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


It is easy to install, and trivial to use one of their hosted instances, but 
the default install is for a small number of users, and if you want to scale 
out, you need to install a more server-y configuration.

--dave

On 2020-05-12 11:36 a.m., David Mason via talk wrote:
You might want to consider Jitsi in the future… it’s open source and seems to 
work very well (I was an attendee to a Jitsi meeting last night) and looks like 
easy to install https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQRwtUamHQU

../Dave
On May 11, 2020, 1:38 PM -0400, hi--- via talk 
, wrote:


# Lightning talks and Round Table

This is GTALUG's version of an un-conference, a loosely structured short talks 
emphasizing the informal exchange of information and ideas between 
participants, rather than following a conventionally structured GTALUG meetings.

If you already have a topic in mind please send an email 
speak...@gtalug.org to be added to the list of 
scheduled talks.

A Round Table Q Session is where we take questions from the audience, and the 
audience discusses and attempts to answer those questions from their own knowledge. 
It's a great way to meet fellow members of our community and discover the skill 
sets we each bring to the table.

Zoom meeting URL: 
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82232483670?pwd=SEp6eU1FWUNCTDJncllqWFYzN292dz09
Meeting ID: 822 3248 3670
Password: 093063

One tap mobile:

* tel:+14388097799,,82232483670
* tel:+15873281099,,82232483670

Dial by your location(Canada):

* tel:+1-438-809-7799
* tel:+1-587-328-1099
* tel:+1-647-374-4685
* tel:+1-647-558-0588
* tel:+1-778-907-2071


Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/acqLA3Cd7V


## Schedule

* 7:30 pm - Meeting and presentation.

# Code of Conduct

We want a productive happy community that can welcome new ideas, improve every
process every year, and foster collaboration between individuals with differing
needs, interests and skills.

We gain strength from diversity, and actively seek participation from those who
enhance it. This code of conduct exists to ensure that diverse groups
collaborate to mutual advantage and enjoyment. We will challenge prejudice that
could jeopardise the participation of any person in the community.

The Code of Conduct governs how we behave in public or in private whenever the
Linux community will be judged by our actions. We expect it to be honoured by
everyone who represents the community officially or informally, claims
affiliation or participates directly. It applies to activities online or
offline.

We invite anybody to participate. Our community is open.

Please read more about the GTALUG Code of Conduct here:
.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the GTALUG Code of
Conduct please contact the GTALUG Board @ 
.
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Re: [GTALUG] AMD releases 3100 and 3300x

2020-05-09 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk



On 2020-05-09 5:41 p.m., Nicholas Krause via talk wrote:
Its nice to see 4 cores become mainstream.  A lot of programs don't take 
advantage of the
extra threads if you look into it. Actually most desktop programs don't scale 
pass 2 fast
cores including video games. With 4 cores being mainstream and at a low price 
it will
be nice to see software especially for the desktop start to be written more 
with 4 and more
cores in mind. Hopefully this does happen but I'm assuming it will take a few 
years or so.

In an earlier life, we noticed a huge increase in usability going from a single 
core to a dual-core processor in desktop SPARCs. Having two processors 
available to respond to a request means way more that you'd expect in 
responsiveness. Somewhat underpowered workstations felt as if they were big 
multiprocessors.

Joyce noticed, and bought me a "Tadpole" UltraSPARC-1c laptop for a birthday 
present.

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] AMD releases 3100 and 3300x

2020-05-09 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 2020-05-09 3:17 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:


| From: William Park via talk 
|
| On Sat, May 09, 2020 at 08:00:33AM -0400, Dave Collier-Brown via talk wrote:
| > I suspect the new low-cost chip is a simplified version of one of the
| > four processor cores, and might cost about 1/5 of what the server
| > chips cost to make.
|
| Or rather, ones that failed QA. :-)

Why simplified?  Why Failed?

Each Zen 2 package is made from a group of "chiplets".  Each processor
chiplet (CCX) has 4 cores, with each providing 2 SMT units:  4c 8t in
current notation.  AMD uses a 7nm TSMC process to make them.

Then they have a chiplet or several to do I/O.  Density doesn't matter
as much here so they are made using something like a 14nm process.

So: a low-end Zen 2 package has fewer chiplets.  It probably has a
lower clock speed.


That's what I was thinking of when I said "simplified".

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] AMD releases 3100 and 3300x

2020-05-09 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


AMD did a major re-architecture, with the server "chips" having four 120-thread 
actual chips communicating through a system controller, just like an old parallel 
mainframe.  This all fit in one chip carrier: I'd have loved to see how the interconnects 
worked, but they were pretty closed-mouth about that

They did admit the first generation gave up about 15% when you made two of 
these coordinate with one another via a cache-consistency chip. I'm waiting to 
hear about the second generation

I suspect the new low-cost chip is a simplified version of one of the four 
processor cores, and might cost about 1/5 of what the server chips cost to make.

--dave

On 2020-05-08 10:55 p.m., Nicholas Krause via talk wrote:
Seems AMD is launching around low end processor line:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-3-3100-and-3300x-review,1.html

Its 120 dollars US for 4 cores/8 threads. According to my research seems to be
equal to a i7700K and those go used for around 300 US. May be a interesting
option for a budget system if your workloads aren't thread heavy.

Seems Intel was really just sitting around after Sandy Bridge for the most part,

Nick


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Re: [GTALUG] Laptop recommendations?

2020-05-01 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


We did in my undergraduate program: I wrote a 10-card loader that was 11 cards long (;-)) 
winning a prize for "you can;t do that!"

--dave

On 2020-05-01 2:45 p.m., Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:

On Fri, May 01, 2020 at 12:14:11PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:


Yeah.  I only used PDP-8 computers before floppies had been invented.

You didn't have to remember the RIM loader for the PDP-8/I, it was
silk-screened onto the console.



You didn't often need to use it since its only purpose was to load the
BIN loader, and that usually persisted (core memory FTW!).



I wonder if the developers had competitions on who could write the
shortest working loader program.



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Re: [GTALUG] Laptop recommendations?

2020-04-30 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 2020-04-30 11:37 a.m., Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:

I for one prefer to have my laptops with as few moving (and especially 
spinning) parts as possible. In the days of half-terabyte USB sticks, having a 
disk reader inside a laptop is dead space/weight used for archiving/ripping, 
and certainly doesn't need to be as portable as the rest of the computer.

...

My main laptop uses a dongle for wired Ethernet (a reasonable trade-off 
considering how rarely I use it),but I've seen ingeniously-thin RJ45 sockets 
built into some units.

- Evan

I've recently switched back to using docking stations, which give me toms of 
USB ports, multiple screen ports and wired Ethernet. My next machine won't need 
as many and as man kinds of ports onboard.

Colleagues at work use a cute little mac thingie that their screens and 
Ethernets plug into, a really small dock.

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] Data backup recommendations?

2020-04-23 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


I'm using "Back in Time", which is a gui front end to rsync, written to mimic Apple's 
"Time Machine", and can use remote storage via ssh.

--dave

On 2020-04-22 9:02 p.m., Gron Arthur via talk wrote:

I'm looking for an easy way to backup data? What's good software to
use, preferably open-source, better if it had a GUI?

Where is the best place to buy some space, for storing data?

Trying to modernize how I backup files personal files.
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Re: [GTALUG] Laptop recommendations?

2020-04-22 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


I have a thinkpad t440p with 32 GB, socketed. They have some slightly slimmer 
32 and 64 GB models, which I will look at when I need more memory.

--dave

On 2020-04-22 4:29 p.m., Mauro Souza via talk wrote:
My current 2 laptops are Thinkpads, T430 and T460. My previous ones were 
Thinkpads too, and they are heavy like a brick, look like a brick, and sturdy 
as a brick. Never had a problem with them. But I had Dell and HP notebooks and 
all failed from overheating issues, motherboard issues, things like that.

Mauro
http://mauro.limeiratem.com - registered Linux User: 294521
Scripture is both history, and a love letter from God.


Em qua., 22 de abr. de 2020 às 17:07, James Knott via talk 
mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> escreveu:
On 2020-04-22 03:47 PM, William Park via talk wrote:

Microsoft (for new).

Loaded with Linux? ;-)

BTW, I have a Lenovo ThinkPad E520, which has served me well for about
8.5 years.  Previously I had an R51, IIRC.  Prior to that I had access
to lots of ThinkPads, when I worked at IBM.  I used to have a dozen or
so at my desk, in addition to my work computer.

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[GTALUG] What have people been using for remote meetings?

2020-03-26 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

My work has the usual dreck, plus bluejeans which is passible, but do
people have favorites for non-one-to-one work?

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] Adding all users to the "disk" group: bad idea, or terrible idea?

2020-02-21 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

A helpful addition would be to bracket the part of the program that does disk 
IO with setgid(), just like one brackets setuid code. --dave

On 2020-02-20 4:11 p.m., Chris Tyler via talk wrote:
Stewart, I'm having troubles understanding the author's reply to the SGID 
suggestion. What I was proposing was to set things up with a command like this 
(executed just once):

  BINARY=/path/to/binary ; sudo chmod 02711 $BINARY ; sudo chown root:disk 
$BINARY

...Which would mean that the user would have their effective group ID changed 
to 'disk' only while the binary was running. This means that, during program 
execution, it would be have the same level of access as if the user belonged to 
the 'disk' group; however, this would drop back to their previous group 
membership when the binary exited. As a bonus, you don't have to change the 
system group memberships. (The program in question should, of course, guard 
against writing to the wrong device while it's running, and prevent shell-outs).

-Chris

On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 8:27 AM Stewart C. Russell via talk 
mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:
Hey, thanks to all who responded. I'm sticking with merely "bad idea",
as it would also give the user block-level access to everyone's secret
files. I know sudo already does this, but one has to manually clunk into
that mode. Though there are still plenty of Raspberry Pi users who 'sudo
ls', for some reason.

On 2020-02-17 7:23 p.m., Chris Tyler wrote:
> Wouldn't it be better to use SGID to enable access to disk devices only
> for the duration of that program's execution?

Author claims it's not possible. The program was written as a reaction
to finding out that balenaEtcher (https://www.balena.io/etcher/) "phones
home" with usage data. If true, this is unfortunate, because Etcher
fixes all the fiddliness of using dd as root, it's truly cross platform,
and avoids the Windows unzip bug. No-one's yet identified what exactly
Etcher phones home yet, but that hasn't stopped the heat, light and fury
of a Free Software Cause in the making …

The new program's quite usable for now (even if you have to run it sudo)
and appears to be cross-platform too. It's also a lot smaller than
Etcher, which is an Electron app.

Source repo is here: https://gitlab.com/bztsrc/usbimager
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Re: [GTALUG] Hardcore sed foo

2019-11-08 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 2019-11-08 3:13 p.m., Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 08, 2019 at 07:27:47PM +0000, Dave Collier-Brown via talk wrote:
>> On 2019-11-08 11:41 a.m., Giles Orr via talk wrote:
>>
>>> Eyeballing simple regex is hard enough, but mentally parsing out a
>>> complex full line regex that looks like inline garbage without the
>>> benefit of comments isn't something I recommend or appreciate.
>> An early boss described it as "programming in line noise".
> I thought that was perl.
>
No, that was "you can say anything 27 ways",  but you have to use words.

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] Hardcore sed foo

2019-11-08 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

On 2019-11-08 11:41 a.m., Giles Orr via talk wrote:

> Eyeballing simple regex is hard enough, but mentally parsing out a
> complex full line regex that looks like inline garbage without the
> benefit of comments isn't something I recommend or appreciate.

An early boss described it as "programming in line noise".

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] TekSavvy or Rogers blocking apt user agent

2019-11-06 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 2019-11-05 12:13 p.m., Giles Orr via talk wrote:
Teksavvy have done something on their end:

https://twitter.com/TekSavvyCSR/status/1191486635764068355

Wouldn't it be great if they said WHAT had caused it rather than just "we fixed 
it?"  If you told us the how, we might have more faith that you wouldn't do it 
again.  But more and more, technical support departments are hiding these 
outcomes - either to disguise what they think could be regarded as incompetence 
or because they're afraid it might reveal secrets about their processes or 
infrastructure.

Having owned a customer support team in the past (Interleaf), they had a 
mission from management to "make you happy with what you have", and to close 
tickets as soon as possible. Less than good.

Even more extreme was Honeywell, who only allowed staff to file bugs if we had 
our director's written approval.

Tek Savvy is still relatively small and non-stupid, so customers can probably 
escalate and get a response.  I'd call by voice, write down the person's name 
when they answer, and when they say "no", ask to speak to their escalations 
manager (Ie, the equivalent of me, but for Tek). When you're connected, thank 
the manager for the good service that  provided, but ask for the 
thing they couldn't provide. Say why it is to Tek's advantage to provide it and 
make you, their customer, happy with the company.

And they're in Chatham, where I grew up, and Chathamites were and still are 
really nice to one another.  Very Canadian.

--dave






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Re: [GTALUG] Pycon Canada 2019

2019-10-29 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

On 2019-10-28 9:48 p.m., Kevin Cozens via talk wrote:

> On 2019-10-28 3:04 p.m., Alex Volkov via talk wrote:
>> I'm helping to organize Pycon Canada this year and tickets are now
>> available.
>
> I just saw the price for conference tickets. Ouch!


Alas, I've paid more for a vendor conference

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] SPF and Anti Forgery

2019-09-20 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 2019-09-20 8:55 a.m., ac via talk wrote:
>   I have noticed something interesting in
> the email you just sent to the list, so I have started a new thread... :)
>
> Your sent email, came in marked as SPAM, and I wondered why...
>
> yes, it is from Google, who sends a lot of spam, scams etc. but that
> alone should not get it marked as spam... So, I looked and it is so
> interesting... (maybe I need a life :) )
>
> Dave, in the headers you literally have three email addresses:
> Relayed For:  - No SPF / Anti Forgery
> Cc: - Which is currently a ->  ~all
> Reply-To: dav...@spamcop.net and your SpamCop receive only addy,
> also a -> ~all
>
> Which is why your relay is scored additional, as this is also what
> spammers do very frequently (They use (rather abuse) @gmail with a reply
> to of @outlook.com, etc)
>
> It is also interesting, that Google, probably in the interests of
> becoming a better netizen?, has again started including relay headers,
> again, after not including same for a long while...
>
> Anyway, long winded, but here is the question: Do you not find many
> fake sent from and backscatter issues to your @rogers.com? If yes, why
> even still use it in your Thunderbird config?
>
> Andre

That's an artifact of fighting with outgoing mail relays: in principle
it should go out via Rogers Yahoo, but it and Google take turns being
broken. Spamcop was bought by cisco, who dropped their outgoing relay
offering, otherwise that's all Id ever use.

This one may be better or worse, as it's from my work address. Alas,
they use paid-for Microsoft services, which may be broken in different ways.

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] New Rogers offerings and guest access

2019-09-13 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

On 2019-09-12 11:10 p.m., James Knott via talk wrote:

> It has nothing to do with your limit.  It's about you paying for service
> at your home only.  If you check the terms you'll likely find you're not
> allowed to share with others.  This even applies to those who rent out a
> basement apartment.

Good point, I don't think there is Canadian caselaw on that, so I'll
need to scrutinize the contract...

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] New Rogers offerings and guest access

2019-09-12 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

On 2019-09-12 9:15 p.m., James Knott via talk wrote:

> The modems they provide have guest WiFi available.  However, Rogers will
> take a dim view of sharing with your neighbours.

I have some folks with even worse packages than I, who download things
that won't put me over my limit.

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] Unix at 50: How the OS that powered smartphones started from failure | Ars Technica

2019-09-08 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

The Multicians group has commented on this article at length: "puffery
after the fact" is probably a kind characterization.

--dave (drbrown.t...@hi-multics.arpa) c-b

On 2019-09-07 1:53 p.m., James Knott via talk wrote:
> A bit of history...
>
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/08/unix-at-50-it-starts-with-a-mainframe-a-gator-and-three-dedicated-researchers/?utm_medium=email_source=topic+optin_campaign=awareness_content=20190907+prog+nl_tok=eyJpIjoiTjJaa1lqQmlNVFZtT0dKayIsInQiOiJid2Y4M0s5TXlrNzIzWDBhNERIeDg0dXNFd0NBV0pjV2pzVzhlRnorMmR3bXduRjdIV1lzcE4wR3JEOTB2eEtNSlNRY1NsMzhqb3JxT0Z3Nm95RjZkNUZIS2puTUFEalYyNm5JakFOcEFuYnlmbEFOMHlBNEZYM2JkK2lGbFBEciJ9
>
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

2019-08-25 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

On 2019-08-24 10:21 p.m., William Park via talk wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 10:17:36PM -0400, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
>> This is not a place of honour:.
>>
>> https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
>>
>> Go do some damage!
> You know, BASIC may come back to life in IofT and microprocessor boards.
> Because if you look at things you do with those boards, you certainly
> don't need Python (micro or not), those gas-guzzling IDE, or even C
> compilers.

Many of the very small devices are programmed in cross-compiled C.

Karen McMurray, whom some you know, sells compilers and tools to this
day from http://www.bytecraft.com/ in Waterloo

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] Recommendations for useful laptop suitable for Ubuntu

2019-07-15 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

On 2019-07-15 2:21 p.m., Lennart Sorensen wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 06:08:35PM +0000, Dave Collier-Brown via talk wrote:
>> At Hugh's suggestion, I bought a T440 a while ago. It came with all the
>> old connectors (eg, VGA) and the new ones (mini hdmi) and socketed
>> memory, so I could order it with 32GB and not have to futz with anything.
>>
>> The only problem is that it looks old-fashioned (:-()
> And the missing physical buttons for the trackpoint on that unfortunate
> generation.

Yes: I have a Microsoft extra-tiny mouse for travel, and a pair of wired
regular mice for work and home. I use the trackpad only in emergencies.

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] Recommendations for useful laptop suitable for Ubuntu

2019-07-15 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

On 2019-07-15 12:41 p.m., Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:

> What my wife's T430 has gone through is nuts while still working.
>
> Yesterday the (almost) 2 year old was standing on it (it was closed).
> Still working, although it appears the chasis may be slightly bent now.
> I believe he is about 35 pounds.  Poor thinkpad.
>
> Not to mention how many times it has been pushed onto the floor from
> the coffee table, yanked by the power cord, had things stacked on it, etc.

At Hugh's suggestion, I bought a T440 a while ago. It came with all the
old connectors (eg, VGA) and the new ones (mini hdmi) and socketed
memory, so I could order it with 32GB and not have to futz with anything.

The only problem is that it looks old-fashioned (:-()

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] UofT ssh shutdown?

2019-06-28 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

On 2019-06-28 1:41 p.m., Peter King via talk wrote:

Up until 3am on Wednesday, 26 June, I had a solid and reliable way to ssh
into the UofT, talking to my computers (three of them) there; they would
also provide redundant backup for my data every night.  Well, without any
warning, suddenly I can no longer ssh in to those computers -- all attempts
to connect just time out.  They are still running, I just can't get to
them, and since I'm about 1000km away at the moment this is pretty rough.


I talked to the JOG (Joint Operations Group) at the UofT, who had no real
idea about this but pointed out that they had tightened their "security"
recently because of a massive hole in RDP.  I looked at the bug description
and it didn't look like it had anything to do with ssh, and besides they
did that a few weeks ago and everything was working for me perfectly until
the day before yesterday.  On the other hand, someone somewhere might have
just decided it was easier to block all remote access -- though you'd think
there would be a hue and cry were that so, and the JOG didn't know anything
about it.  The problem has been bucked over to the local UofT support group
but the people on this list are far more knowledgeable, and more likely to
have noticed problems, indeed to have solved them too.  So I thought I'd
ask.  Has anyone noticed anything about ssh access to the UofT in the past
few days?


Did they ask you to try

traceroute -4 -T foo.philosophy.utoronto.ca

optionally with -p 22

I tried it, but I don't know any actual philosophy domain names.

All I got was
$ sudo traceroute -4 -T -p 22 philosophy.utoronto.ca
traceroute to philosophy.utoronto.ca (142.1.176.100), 30 hops max, 60 byte 
packets
 1  router (192.168.0.1)  1.599 ms  2.291 ms  3.324 ms
 2  * * *
 3  8081-dgw01.ym.rmgt.net.rogers.com (67.231.222.137)  21.460 ms  21.786 ms  
30.481 ms
 4  0-14-0-11-cgw01.ym.rmgt.net.rogers.com (209.148.235.149)  29.720 ms 
209.148.233.205 (209.148.233.205)  25.956 ms 3033-cgw01.ym.rmgt.net.rogers.com 
(209.148.232.73)  29.857 ms
 5  209.148.235.18 (209.148.235.18)  30.500 ms  30.933 ms  30.738 ms
 6  orion.ip4.torontointernetxchange.net (206.108.34.40)  31.624 ms  30.090 ms  
30.225 ms 7  66.97.16.21 (66.97.16.21)  28.504 ms 66.97.21.21 (66.97.21.21)  
21.920 ms 66.97.16.21 (66.97.16.21)  21.731 ms
 8  66.97.23.58 (66.97.23.58)  20.783 ms  22.078 ms  22.948 ms
 9  utoronto1-ut-hub-if-re.gtanet.ca (205.211.94.234)  22.671 ms  26.360 ms  
26.128 ms
10  128.100.96.20 (128.100.96.20)  25.821 ms  21.075 ms  25.145 ms
11  * * *
12  * * *
13  * * *
14  * * *
15  * * *
16  * * *
17  * * *
18  * * *
19  * * *
20  * * *
21  * * *
22  * * *
23  * * *
24  * * *
25  * * *
26  * * *
27  * * *
28  * * *
29  * * *
30  * * *
No host or network unreachables...

Port 80 (the default) did get farther than 22, so that says something.

$ sudo traceroute -4 -T philosophy.utoronto.ca
traceroute to philosophy.utoronto.ca (142.1.176.100), 30 hops max, 60 byte 
packets
 1  router (192.168.0.1)  1.770 ms  2.432 ms  3.775 ms
 2  * * *
 3  8081-dgw01.ym.rmgt.net.rogers.com (67.231.222.137)  20.456 ms  21.383 ms  
29.671 ms
 4  3033-cgw01.ym.rmgt.net.rogers.com (209.148.232.73)  29.211 ms  29.439 ms  
28.414 ms
 5  209.148.228.218 (209.148.228.218)  27.324 ms  28.236 ms  29.261 ms
 6  21-cgw01.ym.rmgt.net.rogers.com (209.148.228.217)  36.569 ms  35.019 ms  
35.040 ms
 7  209.148.230.10 (209.148.230.10)  34.115 ms  17.087 ms 209.148.235.22 
(209.148.235.22)  21.829 ms
 8  orion.ip4.torontointernetxchange.net (206.108.34.40)  22.905 ms  22.442 ms  
22.065 ms
 9  66.97.16.21 (66.97.16.21)  18.974 ms  19.721 ms 66.97.21.21 (66.97.21.21)  
20.855 ms
10  66.97.23.58 (66.97.23.58)  21.092 ms  18.229 ms  17.258 ms
11  utoronto1-ut-hub-if-re.gtanet.ca (205.211.94.234)  17.942 ms  17.856 ms  
17.582 ms
12  128.100.96.20 (128.100.96.20)  17.657 ms  20.620 ms  18.898 ms
13  myweb.eis.utoronto.ca (142.1.176.100)  29.901 ms  29.365 ms  28.471 ms


I'd pass that on to your contacts: about utoronto1-ut-hub-if-re.gtanet.ca the 
port 22 packetss stop drawing a response.

--dave



(The problem occurs on several different networks, accessing from computers
as far away as Virginia and North Carolina, to one located in Toronto
itself but not on the University network -- all have the same problem.)

I've managed to come up with a workaround to be able to check/read email,
but I would like to be able to ssh in to my other computers -- one runs a
git server, for instance.

All suggestions welcome!  Thanks.





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Re: [GTALUG] overflow checking [was Re: A find alternative: fselect]

2019-06-20 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

Lots of checks are being dropped in hardware to allow uniprocessors running 
sequential programs to run fast. As it happens, we run multiprocessors, mostly 
running sequential programs.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil -- Knuth

Do modern languages like Go and Rust need that particular set of optimizations?

--dave


On 2019-06-20 11:41 a.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

| From: David Mason via talk 

| You can turn the checks on, but see this discussion about the default: 
https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/47739

Thanks.  The issue isn't "resolved" so I guess that the default has
not been changed.

One comment pointed at this which I found fascinating:



Again, I found that being able to declare variables as being within a
range as being very powerful.  I admit that the edges get messy: just
as requiring arrays to have compile-time bounds is constraining,
tight compile-time bounds on integer types is sometimes overly
constraining.

Of course what we have in most languages is compile-time bounds, but
with the hope that they are generous.  And usually they are.

One could argue that if overflow is rare, we should be able to handle
it by falling over to bignums.  Unfortunately that adds overhead to
every operation -- perhaps JIT compiling techniques could fix that.

Maybe a single solution doesn't fit all cases.  But silently yielding
a wrong answer on overflow is just dangerous.  And defining the wrong
answer to be correct is not really better.

My intuition is that range declaration and checking might actually
might be more efficient that simple overflow checking.  The compiler
would have more actionable information to optimize out checks.  After
all, most functions are not "partial": the result is well-defined if
the parameters conform to their constraints.  It's sometimes hard to
express those constraints in the type system.



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Re: [GTALUG] A find alternative: fselect

2019-06-12 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

There are a couple of really odd CLIs in Unix. find(1) is one, and dd(7)
is another.  dd is pure multics, and find is just weird, with the
options and parameters reversed from common practice.

Hysterical accident!

--dave

On 2019-06-12 5:39 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> | From: Christopher Browne via talk 
>
> | $ fselect path, size from ~/Downloads where size gt 30mb order by size desc 
> limit 25
>
> That looks pretty ugly too.
>
> | FYI, fselect is written in Rust, and has a goodly number of ("painfully
> | large number of") dependencies, quasi-self-managed via the Rust-oriented
> | dependency tool, Cargo.
>
> Rust culture and practice doesn't seem to like shared libraries..  I do.
> (Just like I find the update model for persistent containers unfortunate.)
>
> | The output is intended to be human readable moreso than machine readable.
> | (That said, how many of us still use /usr/bin/find to generate input for
> | cpio???)
>
> xargs(1)
>
> It too is useful but ugly.
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Re: [GTALUG] Question Fodder: Bcache Filesystem

2019-05-15 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

I was using bcache at one point at World Gaming, with a borrowed flash card, 
but luckily stopped doing so just before a (possibly different) corruption 
problem.

--dave

On 2019-05-14 5:12 p.m., Christopher Browne via talk wrote:
I just saw a report of corruption problems with bcache in conjunction with GCC 
9, and realized I had never actually heard of bcache before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcache
- a layer in the kernel for using fast storage (e.g. - NAND, SSD) as a cache 
for spinning rust

That's pretty cool; I don't have enough lurking SSD/NAND to have that be of 
*too* much interest.  But wait, they kept working on it, so there's a 
filesystem...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcachefs
- a COW (Copy On Write) filesystem running atop BCache that has the modern 
stuff people seem to like such as snapshotting, encryption, checksums, 
compression (ala ZFS, Btrfs)

Here's the corruption reference: 
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=203573
And some more diagnosis here: 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1708315

Sounds like it may be the wrong moment in time to be adopting BCache-related 
stuff ;-)

Has anyone been poking at this sort of stuff?  A *lng* time ago, I used to 
follow ReiserFS pretty closely, back when that project was a technical matter, 
as opposed to being (rather properly!) overshadowed by a murder investigation 
:-(
--
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"



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Re: [GTALUG] reverse engineering

2019-03-29 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

Zylog still builds z80s, albeit in India --dave

On 2019-03-29 3:51 p.m., Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
On Fri., Mar. 29, 2019, 11:28 Kevin Cozens via talk, 
mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:

It was just something I noticed. I was partly surprised that ghidra included
some older processors in their list of ones for which they can decompile code.

Z80 will still show up in industrial control things. It seems very hard to kill.

At least we might have seen the end of 1802s in real applications. It is still 
popular for some hobbyists, though.

Stewart







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Re: [GTALUG] Boeing India software engineers

2019-03-13 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk


On 2019-03-13 11:22 a.m., Dhaval Giani via talk wrote:
> What is this "good stuff" that is moving offshore? From what I can
> see, stuff that is higher up the value chain is still in North
> America, and is still going to remain here. And for a very simple
> economic reason. It costs the same $ value.
> ---

I see the same, and in some cases (Emerson Electric, for example) the
work that was once outsourced to underpaid people elsewhere is being
brought back into the US and automated.

I used to have an eight-person team in India, and they were perfectly
good. A husband-and-wife team eventually moved to Canada and have been
successful here, with the wife being hired by my company and rising to
take over her department.

--dave

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Re: [GTALUG] Rogers "Anyplace TV" does not support Firefox

2019-03-11 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

Depends on the company. Some (you can guess who) figure they've got you,
and they should minimize their customer support costs by actively
pissing people off in order to drive them away.

Others, including ones of the size of Sun and above, worry about losing
customers.

Many need a clue-stick (;-))

--dave

On 2019-03-11 4:32 p.m., o1bigtenor wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 10:34 AM David Collier-Brown via talk
>  wrote:
>> The help-desk is tasked with making you happy with what you have. In
>> many companies they are forbidden to take bug reports.  You often have
>> to ask for their "escalations manger", and sometimes explain to them
>> what that is (;-))
>>
> Well - - - as one who has totally given up on getting big business to
> understand
> their imminent demise (when you keep pissing off your customer you WILL
> eventually lose them even if there are almost no other games in town at the
> time - - - someone will show up!) I've gotten to where I don't talk much with
> the first level, sometimes to the second and find that the back room boys 
> don't
> like it when their sacred premises are proven to be 'wrong'.
>
> Dee
>
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Re: [GTALUG] optimum swap size

2019-02-27 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

Linux is somewhat unusual in that it dynamically kills large processes when 
it's running out of memory. You used to have to set limits to get that 
behavior.   Because of it, I run a moderately large swap (~8 GB) and can watch 
large jobs drive swap usage up. Then I decide if I want them dead.

--dave

On 2019-02-27 10:38 a.m., Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:

On 2019-02-27 10:02 a.m., Gary via talk wrote:


I have kubuntu 18.04 with 20 gigs ram. Does anyone know what the optimum
size swap area that I should have?



I asked a question about this at a GTALUG Q a few years back.
Basically what I remember was:

* are you frequently running out of memory? If not, don't change anything.

* depending on what applications you're running, there are various
kernel parameters that govern swap behaviour. They're tuned for
"typical" performance.

* The OOM killer (out-of-memory process killer) can sometimes kill a
task that's taking up what it thinks is too much memory. I sometimes get
that with very large (or very badly thought out) OpenSCAD renders, and
it can be annoying to have to work round it. OOM killer exists to keep
the system stable, and doesn't care if your work isn't happening.

Swap is more of a thing on smaller machines such as a Raspberry Pi.
These days, you've always got enough memory + swap until you find that
one job for which you don't. For me, that was trying to build MySQL (for
someone else, I promise!) on a Raspberry Pi.

cheers,
 Stewart


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Re: [GTALUG] Intel Contact Info

2019-02-13 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

I've always found that asking a salesperson is the first step (;-))
They're coin-operated, and so will often refer you to someone helpful, both to 
avoid spending their time  on non-profitable work, and to do things that make 
the company in general richer.

--dave

On 2019-02-12 8:45 p.m., nick via talk wrote:

Greetings All,

I was wondering if anyone knows who to contact at Intel if possible at least in
Toronto, the reason I'm asking is they don't have any email contacts to local
branches on the site at least from my searching.

As for the Hack Labs I have a also new Intel Galileo board if someone wants to
take that off me. It's a gift that hasn't really see much use so it's probably
better someone else has some fun with it. Or someone else can take it off of
me if there interested.

Nick

P.S. I did email Chris and it seems that he does have contacts in Toronto so I 
will
see what happens with that.
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Re: [GTALUG] Software to draw illustrations?

2019-02-10 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

For simple stuff, open office draw suffices. --dave


On 2019-02-10 2:51 a.m., Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:
On Sun, 10 Feb 2019, William Park via talk wrote:

Hi all,

What software do people use to draw illustrations that you'd see in
textbooks or presentations?  Eg. data structure, high school math, block
diagrams, etc.  I mean, I see them, but I don't know how to create them.

I use emacs to write PostScript programs and convert them to JPG or GIF or PNG 
with ImageMagick.

But you might be more comfortable with GIMP.

There are also several other paint programs, such as gpaint, xpaint, rgbpaint.
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Re: [GTALUG] laptop repair in GTA/Markham?

2019-01-09 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

There used to be a good little laptop repair shop at 
https://goo.gl/maps/APtaLkcY4262  Eglington west of the Allan expressway. I see 
two little PC places there, but they aren't familiar...

Google lists lots of places, including one called "laptopwash.ca" (;-))

--dave

On 2019-01-09 10:30 a.m., Alvin Starr via talk wrote:

I second grabbing the torx screwdriver.

I got a cheap(ish) multi-bit screwdriver kit at Princess Auto and it has been 
great for fixing things like that.

It may not be a corroded trace but it may still just be wet inside and the 
coffee and water would happily conduct.

If you take the board out and can a bit of clean water can be used to flush the 
wet parts.

Also things like keyboards don't take kindly to dirty water under the keys.

On 1/9/19 10:22 AM, Don Tai via talk wrote:
I'd try buying the correct torx screwdriver sizes at CanTire and take it apart 
myself. Then clean and put back together.

On Wed, 9 Jan 2019 at 10:20, Tim Tisdall via talk 
mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:
So, my laptop won't turn on today and it's likely due to a coffee spill that 
happened yesterday.  I suspect a trace on the board may have become corroded.  
I took it to the ASUS repair centre on Markham and the absolute minimum cost to 
repair it would probably be $400 and if I want to keep everything on my SSD I 
would need to remove it first (but I don't have the necessary torx bits to do 
that).  I think they only swap parts out and don't attempt to actually repair.

Does anyone know of a good and reputable repair place that would be able to fix 
a corroded trace on the board if that's all it is?  It's an Asus Zenbook UX305C.
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 |  -- Mark Twain



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Re: [GTALUG] Dinner tonight?

2018-11-13 Thread Dave Collier-Brown via talk

If we settle on a trial site, I'll see you there, otherwise the usual (;-))

--dave

On 2018-11-13 8:11 a.m., Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:

On 2018-11-12 3:20 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:



Stewart: could you prune the deadwood from the wiki page?


Others with knowledge could help too.



I did what I could. Rather than moving Tacos 101 and Ethiopiques to the
Closed section, I deleted them as the building is being demolished.

I was in Doner Kebab House a couple of months ago, despite rumours of it
closing early last year.

I won't be out tonight as I'm running around too many places today.

cheers,
 Stewart
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