I'm a big fan of unlocked phones myself, and over the years, I've looked at the Lineage project more than once. If you google the official website, you will land on a fancy and modern page with all whistles and bells about the core values and the mission of the organization, and the links to download their software.
I did it again, today, and the outcome is still the same: I I have no idea about how this custom OS looks like, what offers, and what are the limitations (if any).
The About link shows a page with the vocabulary definition of the name of the OS, and a not-so-obvious link to Wikipedia.
I'm sure there are a bunch of smart people out there that are willing and able to send me a link full of screenshots and the features of LineageOS, but the fact that a reasonably tech savvy person can't find any of these from their own website (and not using Google, thank you) is disappointing, to say the least.
I'm thankful for all the volunteers that spend time supporting a large number of phones, etc... but I'm still disappointed.
(Apologies if it might look like I'm trying to turn this place into a venue for having useful conversations) Isn't that a bit of an overkill? I can think of a number of alternative options:
- running multiple profiles for different activities, i.e., Firefox/mail profile and Firefox/browsing profile
- running different browsers for different activities, i.e., Firefox for the email, Chromium for incognito browsing
- running different browsers/activities as different users, i.e. "sudo -u mail_only firefox www.gmail.com"
They would all have much less overhead, but I'm not sure if I'm missing something obvious here.
To be fair, I found a more detailed changelog that mentions a few more bugs, but it's just lot of papercut fixes: tons of warnings removed, Unicode quircks corrected, UI changes... but nothing about high CPU usage, instability, and other major issues.
It's still possible to see the desktop and all the windows on it every time the system resumes on a laptop, before the KScreenLocker kicks asking for the password... but, hey, now it compiles with "strict" compile flags, and finally exports the install location for DBUS interfaces via CMake.
I usually don't care much about these discussions, but I feel there might be some room for clarification.
I'm not sure if Python is really the future of programming language, but it definitely provided a glimpse of what a possible future might look like. Whether people like it or not, this programming language lowered significantly the access barrier required to start writing useful and powerful code, without sacrificing functionalities.
It's not C/C++, it's not incredibly memory efficient, and performance is significantly lower than compiled languages, but...
There are professional programmers using it for the most obvious thing (prototyping new code) as well as writing complex programs that were not worth the time investment of writing in C++.
Although, the big difference is the democratization of programming for people like me that don't have the time and the resources to build serious programming skills. The lower access barrier allowed many people to implement their ideas, make them work, and spread them around... sure, in a high-level, slow, and memory inefficient language, but do we really care? There are many places where the idea is far more important than the implementation like often in the scientific world, notoriously famous for providing crappy code.
Tons of people have benefited from countless programs doing very complex operations, or just simply scratching long standing itches (matrices operations, 3D operations, data sanitization, etc.).
If your Python code is really useful and needs to be made faster, you can hire a programmer to re-write it in C++, but in the meantime it might have reached a significant critical mass of interest/users that make it possible (getting funding, etc...).
Python is likely how an everyday programming language might look when most of the people will write a program at some time in their lives.
On the other hand, if Python is the only reason to define yourself as a professional programmer, then it's obviously a problem.
Double the amount of hardware required to run the mill.
Frantically restore the original setup from the backups.
Come up with a new name, like StandPoint.
Deploy a brand new interface with lots and lots of unused space... poor responsiveness... cumbersome workflows... automatic error correction... Clippy integration ("I see you are coding in Python. Do you want to try C#?")...
Never owned an Apple device, and yet, I found myself envying anyone with an iThing, right now. Excellent phones like the Nexus 5/6x series (disclaimer: which I own) are going to be dropped by the new OS. Why? Probably, because they lack the newest AI chip to process buzzword at unprecedented speed. In the end, it really sucks to have only two choices: either being owned by the big, flaming Eye of Sauron that all sees, or being locked in the Golden Orchard.
Don't worry, this revolution it's going to be affecting mostly countries other than US, or, best case scenario, be limited to the gazillion of colorful and expensive ads from the providers. I've been in EU visiting my family, and I've helped my sister setting up her new Android phone, which, incidentally, is the very same model as mine. Well, using the 4G downloading large apps from the market was blazing faster than I experience even with my WiFi at home or at work. On top of that, she pays way less than a third of what I do. And Japan is even more advanced than EU.
Actually, I just remembered that when I moved to US the terrible state of mobile and internet speeds in general, and the absurd prices were the greatest disappointments.
When I was a kid I was exposed to BASIC (I owned a ZX81 and a C64) at home and Pascal at school, but what really hooked me was what could I do with them that was mostly entertaining, and just minimally useful. With the Commodore, it was a hacking a couple of games typed from a magazine. With Pascal was generating relatively nice graphics with for-loops.
Programming is a tool, and it should be thought as such: teach them how to tackle a problem with an algorithmic approach, e.g., how we can enumerate all possible combinations of who-seats-next-to-who in the classroom, using some constraints (Joe wants to sit next to Eddy)... whatever.
Teach a lazy kid how to make a computer work for him, and you've created a programmer. [Insert Bill Gates' quote here]
You may want to avoid clearly obsolete-wrong patterns ("GOTO is Evil"), but other than that, any language is good.
Eventually, they'll find their language of choice, but they would likely keep the basic set of skills that built back when they learned.
...will be your screen.
In a video call you will be able to look at the other party in his/her eyes and it will not appear like you're reading something else.
I'm almost sure that editors of./ have been replaced with a more effective, high-throughput fashion system which is able to handle large submission traffic with extreme efficiency.
They have a very slick design and a good battery life, but are well known to mount crappy SSD with a proprietary interface. It seems they not last very long (see comments in the link below), and because of the proprietary interface, a replacement SSD is 2-3 times more expensive than disks with comparable size. Mine died a few weeks ago and I found way more convenient to buy a special adapters to mount a cheaper disk, even if it creates a small bulge at the bottom of the laptop.
I would discourage also the Macbook Pro's because of the fair amount of work that's required to have a reasonable percent of the hardware working fine. In particular, with Linux you would lose one of the main advantages they have that's battery life.
I'm going to buy myself an XPS13 Dev edition, even though I don't think it has the absolute best hardware.
Since the vast majority of them are PR stunts, create a Hall of Shame page where the subjects of these edited pages are reported. A good negative reinforcement.(The problem would be avoiding that this mechanism is used to discredit legit pages and edits)
OK, the subject is a bit of a click-bait, but I started thinking about it after I had to fix no less than four different devices within three weeks apart.
I strongly suspect that I'm just strongly biased by my "local" sampling. Nevertheless, the fact that the devices were rather unrelated (an almost new compact flash, an SSD, a spinning 3.5' and a spinning 2.5') made me wonder: did anybody noticed a similar pattern recently? Now, if you excuse me, I have to sign a petition for stopping pool drownings by preventing Nicholas Cage to appear in movies.
Of course, the TV was hacked by a group related to the enemy of the day.
Too bad that most of their passwords were written on post-its clearly shown during their transmissions,
even after the hacking happened.
It seems the "ISIS supporting group" are more likely a bunch of wanna-be hackers that defaced many other websites that shared poorly configured servers and minimal IT resources, such as the Swizerland Boyscout website.
Not sure about the x86 issue.
DosBox runs just fine on Android and RaspberryPi.
Indeed, I've tested several ol'times masterpieces on the former, and it worked all very well (with Genuine Tears(TM)).
It is true that users don't bother much with the granularity of permissions, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't know the reason a given permission is required in the first place. F-Droid tries to address this, for example. For each permission, there is a short explanation that the developer (I presume) has to write on why it is required. Not perfect, but it's better than Google Play, in my opinion.
It's clearly old stuff from few years ago, but it's insightful to see the different software requirements and specifications.
For example, the NIGHTSTAND Wireless Exploitation/Injection Tool has a
standalone tool currently runnuing on a x86 laptop loaded with Linux Fedora Core 3
while exploitable targets include:
Win2k, WinXP, WinXPSP1, WinXPSP2 running Internet Explorer versions 5.0-6.0
The GINSU software application to control the hardware implant BULLDOZER or the software one KONGUR:
supports any desktop PC system that contains at least one PCI connector (for BULLDOZER installation) and Microsoft Windows 9x, 2000, 2003, XP, or Vista.[...] If KONGUR is removed from the system as a result of an operating system upgrade or reinstall, GINSU can be set to trigger one the next reboot of the system to restore the software implant.
So after all, Microsoft is not really helping them, if they have to protect themselves from system updates:)
Nothing absolutely special about the two, but definitely special in combination.
Let's say that water and rocks are very good ingredients on their own, assuming we're interested in variations of 'chemically based' life:
- water has interesting physical properties (you mentioned most of them), but one of them is its dielectric constant, very important for facilitating catalytic conditions (self-replicating molecules?)
- these physical properties allows it to solubilize minerals and a fair range of organic molecules at the same time, useful for catalyzing chemical reactions.
- it is somehow reactive either in reversible ways (hydrogen bonds) or by directly participating in chemical reactions (i.e. oxydation of energetic molecules = generating chemical energy)
- rocks could catalyze the spontaneous formation of chemical precursors or building blocks of life...well, as we know it? yes, but it means it happened at least once.
Now, the important key is obviously the catalysis, i.e. making chemical reactions easier and quicker. Doing that in a low-energy context (i.e. the temperatures found on modern or archaic Earth), makes it much easier for randomly created molecules to survive long enough to have a chance to self replicate.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently, you're one of them
I'm a big fan of unlocked phones myself, and over the years, I've looked at the Lineage project more than once. If you google the official website, you will land on a fancy and modern page with all whistles and bells about the core values and the mission of the organization, and the links to download their software.
I did it again, today, and the outcome is still the same: I I have no idea about how this custom OS looks like, what offers, and what are the limitations (if any).
The About link shows a page with the vocabulary definition of the name of the OS, and a not-so-obvious link to Wikipedia.
I'm sure there are a bunch of smart people out there that are willing and able to send me a link full of screenshots and the features of LineageOS, but the fact that a reasonably tech savvy person can't find any of these from their own website (and not using Google, thank you) is disappointing, to say the least.
I'm thankful for all the volunteers that spend time supporting a large number of phones, etc... but I'm still disappointed.
(Apologies if it might look like I'm trying to turn this place into a venue for having useful conversations)
Isn't that a bit of an overkill? I can think of a number of alternative options:
- running multiple profiles for different activities, i.e., Firefox/mail profile and Firefox/browsing profile
- running different browsers for different activities, i.e., Firefox for the email, Chromium for incognito browsing
- running different browsers/activities as different users, i.e. "sudo -u mail_only firefox www.gmail.com"
They would all have much less overhead, but I'm not sure if I'm missing something obvious here.
To be fair, I found a more detailed changelog that mentions a few more bugs, but it's just lot of papercut fixes: tons of warnings removed, Unicode quircks corrected, UI changes... but nothing about high CPU usage, instability, and other major issues.
It's still possible to see the desktop and all the windows on it every time the system resumes on a laptop, before the KScreenLocker kicks asking for the password... but, hey, now it compiles with "strict" compile flags, and finally exports the install location for DBUS interfaces via CMake.
"Shake it, baby!"
I'm not even picky, you guys can choose them from any of these lists:
KWin
Plasma Frameworks
PlasmaShell
But what TFA has to say about?
Yeah!.... I guess?
[DISCLAIMER: I am indeed a KDE user]
I usually don't care much about these discussions, but I feel there might be some room for clarification.
I'm not sure if Python is really the future of programming language, but it definitely provided a glimpse of what a possible future might look like. Whether people like it or not, this programming language lowered significantly the access barrier required to start writing useful and powerful code, without sacrificing functionalities.
It's not C/C++, it's not incredibly memory efficient, and performance is significantly lower than compiled languages, but...
There are professional programmers using it for the most obvious thing (prototyping new code) as well as writing complex programs that were not worth the time investment of writing in C++. Although, the big difference is the democratization of programming for people like me that don't have the time and the resources to build serious programming skills. The lower access barrier allowed many people to implement their ideas, make them work, and spread them around... sure, in a high-level, slow, and memory inefficient language, but do we really care? There are many places where the idea is far more important than the implementation like often in the scientific world, notoriously famous for providing crappy code.
Tons of people have benefited from countless programs doing very complex operations, or just simply scratching long standing itches (matrices operations, 3D operations, data sanitization, etc.).
If your Python code is really useful and needs to be made faster, you can hire a programmer to re-write it in C++, but in the meantime it might have reached a significant critical mass of interest/users that make it possible (getting funding, etc...).
Python is likely how an everyday programming language might look when most of the people will write a program at some time in their lives. On the other hand, if Python is the only reason to define yourself as a professional programmer, then it's obviously a problem.
...or on the equivalent, current version of it.
Double the amount of hardware required to run the mill.
Frantically restore the original setup from the backups.
Come up with a new name, like StandPoint.
Deploy a brand new interface with lots and lots of unused space... poor responsiveness... cumbersome workflows... automatic error correction... Clippy integration ("I see you are coding in Python. Do you want to try C#?")...
Time to update the list of pro's of GitLab.
Never owned an Apple device, and yet, I found myself envying anyone with an iThing, right now. Excellent phones like the Nexus 5/6x series (disclaimer: which I own) are going to be dropped by the new OS. Why? Probably, because they lack the newest AI chip to process buzzword at unprecedented speed. In the end, it really sucks to have only two choices: either being owned by the big, flaming Eye of Sauron that all sees, or being locked in the Golden Orchard.
Don't worry, this revolution it's going to be affecting mostly countries other than US, or, best case scenario, be limited to the gazillion of colorful and expensive ads from the providers. I've been in EU visiting my family, and I've helped my sister setting up her new Android phone, which, incidentally, is the very same model as mine. Well, using the 4G downloading large apps from the market was blazing faster than I experience even with my WiFi at home or at work. On top of that, she pays way less than a third of what I do. And Japan is even more advanced than EU.
Actually, I just remembered that when I moved to US the terrible state of mobile and internet speeds in general, and the absurd prices were the greatest disappointments.
When I was a kid I was exposed to BASIC (I owned a ZX81 and a C64) at home and Pascal at school, but what really hooked me was what could I do with them that was mostly entertaining, and just minimally useful. With the Commodore, it was a hacking a couple of games typed from a magazine. With Pascal was generating relatively nice graphics with for-loops.
Programming is a tool, and it should be thought as such: teach them how to tackle a problem with an algorithmic approach, e.g., how we can enumerate all possible combinations of who-seats-next-to-who in the classroom, using some constraints (Joe wants to sit next to Eddy)... whatever.
Teach a lazy kid how to make a computer work for him, and you've created a programmer. [Insert Bill Gates' quote here]
You may want to avoid clearly obsolete-wrong patterns ("GOTO is Evil"), but other than that, any language is good. Eventually, they'll find their language of choice, but they would likely keep the basic set of skills that built back when they learned.
...will be your screen. In a video call you will be able to look at the other party in his/her eyes and it will not appear like you're reading something else.
I'm almost sure that editors of ./ have been replaced with a more effective, high-throughput fashion system which is able to handle large submission traffic with extreme efficiency.
Oh, and it scales very well too!
Avoid Zenbooks.
They have a very slick design and a good battery life, but are well known to mount crappy SSD with a proprietary interface. It seems they not last very long (see comments in the link below), and because of the proprietary interface, a replacement SSD is 2-3 times more expensive than disks with comparable size. Mine died a few weeks ago and I found way more convenient to buy a special adapters to mount a cheaper disk, even if it creates a small bulge at the bottom of the laptop.
I would discourage also the Macbook Pro's because of the fair amount of work that's required to have a reasonable percent of the hardware working fine. In particular, with Linux you would lose one of the main advantages they have that's battery life.
I'm going to buy myself an XPS13 Dev edition, even though I don't think it has the absolute best hardware.
Since the vast majority of them are PR stunts, create a Hall of Shame page where the subjects of these edited pages are reported. A good negative reinforcement.(The problem would be avoiding that this mechanism is used to discredit legit pages and edits)
Nice to read this news in the proper context.
OK, the subject is a bit of a click-bait, but I started thinking about it after I had to fix no less than four different devices within three weeks apart. I strongly suspect that I'm just strongly biased by my "local" sampling. Nevertheless, the fact that the devices were rather unrelated (an almost new compact flash, an SSD, a spinning 3.5' and a spinning 2.5') made me wonder: did anybody noticed a similar pattern recently? Now, if you excuse me, I have to sign a petition for stopping pool drownings by preventing Nicholas Cage to appear in movies.
Of course, the TV was hacked by a group related to the enemy of the day.
Too bad that most of their passwords were written on post-its clearly shown during their transmissions, even after the hacking happened. It seems the "ISIS supporting group" are more likely a bunch of wanna-be hackers that defaced many other websites that shared poorly configured servers and minimal IT resources, such as the Swizerland Boyscout website.
[Source: Paolo Attivissimo's website (in Italian)]
I didn't see any plans to be integrated in the new Systemd OS, so it's a "dead in the cradle" project for me. Wake me up when they see the light.
Yellow light before green?
In Germany and other countries it works just fine, and I can't understand why it's not used everywhere...
Not sure about the x86 issue.
DosBox runs just fine on Android and RaspberryPi.
Indeed, I've tested several ol'times masterpieces on the former, and it worked all very well (with Genuine Tears(TM)).
It is true that users don't bother much with the granularity of permissions, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't know the reason a given permission is required in the first place.
F-Droid tries to address this, for example. For each permission, there is a short explanation that the developer (I presume) has to write on why it is required.
Not perfect, but it's better than Google Play, in my opinion.
For example, the NIGHTSTAND Wireless Exploitation/Injection Tool has a
standalone tool currently runnuing on a x86 laptop loaded with Linux Fedora Core 3
while exploitable targets include:
Win2k, WinXP, WinXPSP1, WinXPSP2 running Internet Explorer versions 5.0-6.0
The GINSU software application to control the hardware implant BULLDOZER or the software one KONGUR:
supports any desktop PC system that contains at least one PCI connector (for BULLDOZER installation) and Microsoft Windows 9x, 2000, 2003, XP, or Vista.[...] If KONGUR is removed from the system as a result of an operating system upgrade or reinstall, GINSU can be set to trigger one the next reboot of the system to restore the software implant.
So after all, Microsoft is not really helping them, if they have to protect themselves from system updates :)
So no other approximations will be allowed?
And what's next? People modeling the Sun's gravity as a point?
Nothing absolutely special about the two, but definitely special in combination.
Let's say that water and rocks are very good ingredients on their own, assuming we're interested in variations of 'chemically based' life:
- water has interesting physical properties (you mentioned most of them), but one of them is its dielectric constant, very important for facilitating catalytic conditions (self-replicating molecules?)
- these physical properties allows it to solubilize minerals and a fair range of organic molecules at the same time, useful for catalyzing chemical reactions.
- it is somehow reactive either in reversible ways (hydrogen bonds) or by directly participating in chemical reactions (i.e. oxydation of energetic molecules = generating chemical energy)
- rocks could catalyze the spontaneous formation of chemical precursors or building blocks of life...well, as we know it? yes, but it means it happened at least once.
Now, the important key is obviously the catalysis, i.e. making chemical reactions easier and quicker. Doing that in a low-energy context (i.e. the temperatures found on modern or archaic Earth), makes it much easier for randomly created molecules to survive long enough to have a chance to self replicate.
Can't wait for having to remember to recharge my watch every night (instead of every couple of years, as I do now)