Oh bloody hell. I just checked, and you're right. They used to have a perfectly good USB keyboard but they've gotten rid of it. Wireless-only now.:(
Very frustrating. I work in an area with extremely bad RF interference, so bluetooth peripherals are extremely hit or miss depending on where you're sitting. I avoid wireless keyboards now cause it's just not worth the hassle.
That depends. If all they did was make an app store available, then they did _not_ replicate said ecosystems.
Apple and Google both have some form of curation process to help keep malicious applications out. (I'm not going to get into who does it better cause that's beside the point).
If Ubuntu, or anyone else, wants to maintain snap repos, then they are going to have to maintain the same protection infrastructure. A perfect example is the Cydia ecosystem. It's a god forsaken mess, and at this point it's virtually abandoned. I gave up on it a long time ago because there were 10s of thousands of bullshit packages, but only about 5 that were genuinely useful. And of those 5, none of them were being maintained and updated for newer versions of iOS.
Similarly, I'd sooner trust free pills from Bill Cosby than trust one of the myriad generic android repos. Especially the Chinese ones.
The single greatest value add of an app store/repo is trust. Having people behind the scenes maintaining the thing so that people can feel safe using that repo is critical to that. If you can't provide that, then why even bother?
That's because when you give people that kind of explanation, they will look at you as if you've grown an extra head, and for good reason.
Honestly, why is this so hard for die-hard Linux people to understand? Linux is *not* a viable option for a significant number of people for a variety of reasons: 1. The OS is only tangentially important. Concern #1 are the applications, and a lot of those applications just arn't on linux. 2. There is a learning curve which some people arn't prepared for, ESPECIALLY if it's not work-related. 3. People complain about Apple's walled garden. Linux has an even worse walled garden, because if you have to so much as stick your pinky toe out from the carefully cultivated experience Linux distros provide you, you are effectively screwed unless you are a techy. And even if you are a techy, you have to ask yourself "is it worth my time to screw with this?". Just because I know how to edit an xorg.conf file doesn't mean I want to waste time doing so. 4. For the overwhelming majority of computer users, CLI is *not* an option. Period.
Linux is the single best server OS currently available and if given the choice, I would pick it 100% of the time when setting up a server or a development workstation. The power, flexibility and control are second-to-none.
Linux is also second-to-none in the embedded space, because you can slice and dice it to an absurd degree, making it behave exactly as you want it to.
But all those benefits turn into flaws on the user desktop side, and until linux fans realize that, Linux will *never* succeed on the desktop. And it's not about dumbing everything down either. It's about making features as accessible as possible. And that's just to start. I won't list all the things that need to be done cause no one will listen to me anyway.
Well, if this was Apple instead of Microsoft, the answer would be, "Yeah, and? We updated the OS. It's not our fault if you can't keep up." They do it all the time, the most recent one being the whole DisplayLink fiasco.
Microsoft, however, goes out of it's way to maintain backward compatibility. To the point that they will even recreate bugs in older versions of the OS that applications happen (rightly or wrongly) to depend on. So when something like this happens, it's reasonable for eyebrows to be raised.
We use 1Password. It's expensive, but IMO it's the most polished product of the lot. The most important part is that the the data is synced to a local application, which in turn syncs with the server. The browser plugins link securely to the local app, so there's no concern about MITM attacks if the browser gets compromised.
Also, unlike Enpass, it has been independently audited and supports multiple vaults.
I personally haven't seen much in the way of hostile responses. It's certainly a lot better than, say, slashdot, where it often seems like the reasonable posters are outnumbered by the MRAs, Incels and other political extremists that care more about grinding their axe than furthering insightful discussion.
And this has been a complaint by many knowledgable people right from day 1 when USB-C was announced. Until USB-C, virtually every cable ever made was tied to the protocol it carried. There was simply no question.
There were a couple cases where people tried to double up... most notably, 25-pin SCSI that used the same port as the parallel/printer port. Or the 15-pin joystick/midi port.
Every time people doubled-up, confusion reigned. In particular with the SCSI port, there were more than a few incidents of people shorting out and destroying their hardware cause they plugged into the wrong port. That mistake wasn't made again.
Until some Einstein-wannabe thought USB-C would make a great cable to handle *everything*, but without any guarantees about *anything*. So now _every_. _single_. USB C device and cable now needs to have a spec sheet kept with them because you have no way of knowing just by looking at it, what features it supports. Does it do thunderbolt passthrough? Does it support video pass through? Power pass through?
It's a god-forsaken nightmare that screams "designed by committee".
So far it hasn't been that big of a deal because the only people using it have been mobile devices (used only for charging) and apple users (to connect dongles). But as the port gets more pervasive, it's going to get a whole lot messier.
What is commonly used today as 'hacker' used to be referred to as 'cracker', because they crack security open. Hackers hacked stuff together.
But as usual, words brought into the public theatre gets multilated beyond recognition because people can't be bothered to use the correct terminology for things, (assuming they don't completely reinvent words to suit their purposes, eg: fake news).
But almost nobody uses "Cracker" anymore, and I'm betting a lot of people had never even heard of the word due to disuse.
I've personally given up on trying to use the correct terminology in casual conversation, cause people will get outright angry with you if you point out they are wrong.
New terminology. Alexa won the personal surveillance device wars, so it gets to define the playing field going forward.
When you say "Give me the weather", or "Play ACDC" or "Fling that Kumquat" that's a "skill".
And now people can make their own. This is actually a defining feature that will solidify their hold on the product concept and will set the bar for all other devices to meet.
It's actually mixed up all over the place, at all levels. Doesn't matter if it's at the database level, or the file level, physically. Logically, it doesn't matter if it's at the system level or the content level. Data and code is mixed at every possible level.
Because absolutely zero thought was given to enforcing any kind of formal structure, the entire architecture of the systems guarantee that you will run into a whole whackton of issues, such as: -A giant honking attack surface to work with. It's physically impossible to lock anything down as a preventative measure, because the data needs to be able to change. -Maintenance is an absolute nightmare because code and data can be literally anywhere, so being able to export and import records is very challenging, or basically trying to do anything that vaguely resembles formal development/approval processes.
The best you can do is try to impose some kind of rigidity through various methods such as judicious use of carefully curated plugins or specifically avoid using features that make the problem worse. For example, if you don't permit article comments, forums, or anything that requires write-access, then you can treat the entire site as one fixed object. You can then have one instance of it that is writeable for making your updates on, then when you're happy you move the entire site to it's "production" instance and make the entire thing read-only to prevent malicious actors from making changes to it.
Seeing the usual canned non-responses always makes me wonder what the real story is. Is Terry responsible for the idiotic strategy that made Windows 10 the most hated version of windows ever?
Their software is just such horrific shitshows that tons of money can be made from offering consulting and maintenance services.
These systems are prime examples of exactly how not to write code. The biggest being: Don't mix code with data. They should be kept completely separate from one another.
Why would you use nightlies? I can't think of a single reason why I would want to do that apart from specifically needing to test a plugin against the latest code.
Or the more likely scenario.. people will stop using youtube for passive music listening.
I myself never relied on youtube for such things because there were already enough ads to make the experience more than a little irritating. So now they're going to add MORE ads?
For people who didn't see why they should care about who uses thier data or how it's used, thinking they had noting to hide and it wouldn't affect them, I hope you learned a lesson.
Pffft. That's awfully optimistic, now isn't it? They'll just find someone else to blame, or do basically anything that absolves them of any kind of self-responsibility, like always.
Browsers are the front line application that is the first to be hit by any malicious software out there. That means it should be considered the LEAST secure, and treated accordingly.
Having a password manager is good, but it HAS to be kept external to the browser, so if the browser is compromised (or it does something moronic like autofilling fake login forms), then it can't compromise sensitive data along with it.
There are plenty of them out there, from 1Password to LastPass, it's just a matter of education and encouraging people to use these tools.
Technically, nobody gives a shit. It's an Android phone. Google controls android. Google has a specific certification process that, if manufacturers want to enjoy things like the App store, etc, they have to comply with. Google could have added updates as part of that contract, but they didn't. It's not like they don't have the clout.
The lack of updates is the single biggest reason why I've stayed with iOS. Yes, Apple are douchebags, but it all turns into a question of "In what manner do I want to be screwed over?" and when all is said and done, Apple screws me in less ways than Android manufacturers do with their lack of updates, their non-removable bloatware, their shitty ecosystem, etc.
Also, this IS Google's fault for not having a proper HAL baked into the OS from day one, like Windows has. I have very high hopes with Project Treble. If it works out, then maybe I'll finally be able to jump off the increasingly broken iOS ship. Unfortunately, I'll have probably wait a couple years before I can, because I am going to wait and see how things actually work out, rather than taking some mouthpiece at face value. I've been burned by that kind of thing before.
Instead of all this idiotic updates, how about returning to the original release cycle?
It's bad enough that Microsoft foists updates on us uncategorically, but then they also use these updates as a way of moving the support goalposts, so a computer that worked fine before is suddenly "no longer supported".
Windows 10 may be technologically great, but Microsoft gross mismanagement of it has turned it into the single worst version of Windows in Microsoft history, easily trumping even Windows ME.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh bloody hell. I just checked, and you're right. They used to have a perfectly good USB keyboard but they've gotten rid of it. Wireless-only now. :(
Very frustrating. I work in an area with extremely bad RF interference, so bluetooth peripherals are extremely hit or miss depending on where you're sitting. I avoid wireless keyboards now cause it's just not worth the hassle.
That depends. If all they did was make an app store available, then they did _not_ replicate said ecosystems.
Apple and Google both have some form of curation process to help keep malicious applications out. (I'm not going to get into who does it better cause that's beside the point).
If Ubuntu, or anyone else, wants to maintain snap repos, then they are going to have to maintain the same protection infrastructure. A perfect example is the Cydia ecosystem. It's a god forsaken mess, and at this point it's virtually abandoned. I gave up on it a long time ago because there were 10s of thousands of bullshit packages, but only about 5 that were genuinely useful. And of those 5, none of them were being maintained and updated for newer versions of iOS.
Similarly, I'd sooner trust free pills from Bill Cosby than trust one of the myriad generic android repos. Especially the Chinese ones.
The single greatest value add of an app store/repo is trust. Having people behind the scenes maintaining the thing so that people can feel safe using that repo is critical to that. If you can't provide that, then why even bother?
That's because when you give people that kind of explanation, they will look at you as if you've grown an extra head, and for good reason.
Honestly, why is this so hard for die-hard Linux people to understand? Linux is *not* a viable option for a significant number of people for a variety of reasons:
1. The OS is only tangentially important. Concern #1 are the applications, and a lot of those applications just arn't on linux.
2. There is a learning curve which some people arn't prepared for, ESPECIALLY if it's not work-related.
3. People complain about Apple's walled garden. Linux has an even worse walled garden, because if you have to so much as stick your pinky toe out from the carefully cultivated experience Linux distros provide you, you are effectively screwed unless you are a techy. And even if you are a techy, you have to ask yourself "is it worth my time to screw with this?". Just because I know how to edit an xorg.conf file doesn't mean I want to waste time doing so.
4. For the overwhelming majority of computer users, CLI is *not* an option. Period.
Linux is the single best server OS currently available and if given the choice, I would pick it 100% of the time when setting up a server or a development workstation. The power, flexibility and control are second-to-none.
Linux is also second-to-none in the embedded space, because you can slice and dice it to an absurd degree, making it behave exactly as you want it to.
But all those benefits turn into flaws on the user desktop side, and until linux fans realize that, Linux will *never* succeed on the desktop. And it's not about dumbing everything down either. It's about making features as accessible as possible. And that's just to start. I won't list all the things that need to be done cause no one will listen to me anyway.
Cause they didn't have enough gaping wide vulnerabilities with VBA?
Here's hoping they carried over all the lessons learned.
The worst part is that Chrome has now taken the lead in browser market share by a wide margin.
This is IE6 all over again, cause Google is pushing all their proprietary crap (like AMP), which benefits no one but themselves.
Well, if this was Apple instead of Microsoft, the answer would be, "Yeah, and? We updated the OS. It's not our fault if you can't keep up." They do it all the time, the most recent one being the whole DisplayLink fiasco.
Microsoft, however, goes out of it's way to maintain backward compatibility. To the point that they will even recreate bugs in older versions of the OS that applications happen (rightly or wrongly) to depend on. So when something like this happens, it's reasonable for eyebrows to be raised.
We use 1Password. It's expensive, but IMO it's the most polished product of the lot. The most important part is that the the data is synced to a local application, which in turn syncs with the server. The browser plugins link securely to the local app, so there's no concern about MITM attacks if the browser gets compromised.
Also, unlike Enpass, it has been independently audited and supports multiple vaults.
I personally haven't seen much in the way of hostile responses. It's certainly a lot better than, say, slashdot, where it often seems like the reasonable posters are outnumbered by the MRAs, Incels and other political extremists that care more about grinding their axe than furthering insightful discussion.
Not just difficult... Impossible.
And this has been a complaint by many knowledgable people right from day 1 when USB-C was announced. Until USB-C, virtually every cable ever made was tied to the protocol it carried. There was simply no question.
There were a couple cases where people tried to double up... most notably, 25-pin SCSI that used the same port as the parallel/printer port. Or the 15-pin joystick/midi port.
Every time people doubled-up, confusion reigned. In particular with the SCSI port, there were more than a few incidents of people shorting out and destroying their hardware cause they plugged into the wrong port. That mistake wasn't made again.
Until some Einstein-wannabe thought USB-C would make a great cable to handle *everything*, but without any guarantees about *anything*. So now _every_. _single_. USB C device and cable now needs to have a spec sheet kept with them because you have no way of knowing just by looking at it, what features it supports. Does it do thunderbolt passthrough? Does it support video pass through? Power pass through?
It's a god-forsaken nightmare that screams "designed by committee".
So far it hasn't been that big of a deal because the only people using it have been mobile devices (used only for charging) and apple users (to connect dongles). But as the port gets more pervasive, it's going to get a whole lot messier.
What do you mean? We're talking about disembodied comatose pig brains, not.... oh.
What is commonly used today as 'hacker' used to be referred to as 'cracker', because they crack security open. Hackers hacked stuff together.
But as usual, words brought into the public theatre gets multilated beyond recognition because people can't be bothered to use the correct terminology for things, (assuming they don't completely reinvent words to suit their purposes, eg: fake news).
But almost nobody uses "Cracker" anymore, and I'm betting a lot of people had never even heard of the word due to disuse.
I've personally given up on trying to use the correct terminology in casual conversation, cause people will get outright angry with you if you point out they are wrong.
New terminology. Alexa won the personal surveillance device wars, so it gets to define the playing field going forward.
When you say "Give me the weather", or "Play ACDC" or "Fling that Kumquat" that's a "skill".
And now people can make their own. This is actually a defining feature that will solidify their hold on the product concept and will set the bar for all other devices to meet.
*queries facebook to find out exactly how much butter and popcorn you have, and how that relates to your political position and buying habits*
It's actually mixed up all over the place, at all levels.
Doesn't matter if it's at the database level, or the file level, physically. Logically, it doesn't matter if it's at the system level or the content level. Data and code is mixed at every possible level.
Because absolutely zero thought was given to enforcing any kind of formal structure, the entire architecture of the systems guarantee that you will run into a whole whackton of issues, such as:
-A giant honking attack surface to work with. It's physically impossible to lock anything down as a preventative measure, because the data needs to be able to change.
-Maintenance is an absolute nightmare because code and data can be literally anywhere, so being able to export and import records is very challenging, or basically trying to do anything that vaguely resembles formal development/approval processes.
The best you can do is try to impose some kind of rigidity through various methods such as judicious use of carefully curated plugins or specifically avoid using features that make the problem worse. For example, if you don't permit article comments, forums, or anything that requires write-access, then you can treat the entire site as one fixed object. You can then have one instance of it that is writeable for making your updates on, then when you're happy you move the entire site to it's "production" instance and make the entire thing read-only to prevent malicious actors from making changes to it.
Seeing the usual canned non-responses always makes me wonder what the real story is. Is Terry responsible for the idiotic strategy that made Windows 10 the most hated version of windows ever?
Their software is just such horrific shitshows that tons of money can be made from offering consulting and maintenance services.
These systems are prime examples of exactly how not to write code. The biggest being: Don't mix code with data. They should be kept completely separate from one another.
Why would you use nightlies? I can't think of a single reason why I would want to do that apart from specifically needing to test a plugin against the latest code.
Or the more likely scenario.. people will stop using youtube for passive music listening.
I myself never relied on youtube for such things because there were already enough ads to make the experience more than a little irritating. So now they're going to add MORE ads?
They really didn't think this through, did they?
It also works if you're using an old Apple Powerbook. Then your virus can infect *anything*, even computers based on completely alien technology.
Think of the exposure you're getting!
For people who didn't see why they should care about who uses thier data or how it's used, thinking they had noting to hide and it wouldn't affect them, I hope you learned a lesson.
Pffft. That's awfully optimistic, now isn't it? They'll just find someone else to blame, or do basically anything that absolves them of any kind of self-responsibility, like always.
Browsers are the front line application that is the first to be hit by any malicious software out there. That means it should be considered the LEAST secure, and treated accordingly.
Having a password manager is good, but it HAS to be kept external to the browser, so if the browser is compromised (or it does something moronic like autofilling fake login forms), then it can't compromise sensitive data along with it.
There are plenty of them out there, from 1Password to LastPass, it's just a matter of education and encouraging people to use these tools.
Technically, nobody gives a shit. It's an Android phone. Google controls android. Google has a specific certification process that, if manufacturers want to enjoy things like the App store, etc, they have to comply with. Google could have added updates as part of that contract, but they didn't. It's not like they don't have the clout.
The lack of updates is the single biggest reason why I've stayed with iOS. Yes, Apple are douchebags, but it all turns into a question of "In what manner do I want to be screwed over?" and when all is said and done, Apple screws me in less ways than Android manufacturers do with their lack of updates, their non-removable bloatware, their shitty ecosystem, etc.
Also, this IS Google's fault for not having a proper HAL baked into the OS from day one, like Windows has. I have very high hopes with Project Treble. If it works out, then maybe I'll finally be able to jump off the increasingly broken iOS ship. Unfortunately, I'll have probably wait a couple years before I can, because I am going to wait and see how things actually work out, rather than taking some mouthpiece at face value. I've been burned by that kind of thing before.
What serious business would seriously consider an always on surveillance device that eavesdrops on every conversation around them?
You may as well put up a big sign in your window that says, "Trade Secrets available to anyone who will listen!"
I have an idea...
Instead of all this idiotic updates, how about returning to the original release cycle?
It's bad enough that Microsoft foists updates on us uncategorically, but then they also use these updates as a way of moving the support goalposts, so a computer that worked fine before is suddenly "no longer supported".
Windows 10 may be technologically great, but Microsoft gross mismanagement of it has turned it into the single worst version of Windows in Microsoft history, easily trumping even Windows ME.