@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

Geoff

@Geoff@mastodon.cloud

Will probably annoy you, but it (almost certainly) won't be intentional.

In past lives, violinist, chorister, pianist, Sam Coupe (demos, KEDisk) RiscPC (Xenakis16).

Career history: early web CMS and e-commerce, networking at a small ISP in '00s, hacking amavisd/sendmail, then a rather abortive attempt at a career in EU project management. Since 2007 telco revenue assurance.

DJ stuff mixcloud.com/defgeoff

Linux user since 1995.

Owned by 4 dogs.

Currently fighting Tasmota for RF controller

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

djstreethawk, to random

I changed mobile provider last month and forgot to disable the until today.
Had a msg from Tuesday "hi it's (store), can you call us back please" but no name or number given. So begins my chase in speaking to the right person...
That's why i have to disable VM. It'd be useful, but too many stupid haven't worked out how to communicate effectively and it always becomes yet another job i have to sort out.

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@djstreethawk @revk or the support ticketing systems where the agent responds with "thanks for your ticket, we will look into it" at which point the ticket status automatically changes to "waiting on input from customer". WHAT INPUT??? YOU'VE LITERALLY ASKED ME NOTHING.

Geoff, to zxspectrum
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

Oh now this I like. Using just the attribute bytes crossed with a 4x8 grid to display a medium-res screen that scrolls at very high-speed is pretty cool. I've seen similar ideas before but never quite this slick.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=X5T3QWbFdPg&si=Tqd5uv6gLT7Wmrq5

slashdot, to random
@slashdot@mastodon.cloud avatar

Russian Court Sentences Meta Spokesperson To Six Years in Absentia, Calls Meta 'Extremist Organisation' https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/04/22/158257/russian-court-sentences-meta-spokesperson-to-six-years-in-absentia-calls-meta-extremist-organisation?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@slashdot I quite fancy a trip to absentia. Seems like it could be pretty cool.

tomw, to random
@tomw@mastodon.social avatar

Pop quiz: can you spot the problem in this PHP snippet? I just got tripped up by it and it was very Not Fun. (This is rewritten to be a minimal example.)

if ( $coolness > 10 ) {
define('COOL_MODE', true);
}

if ( COOL_MODE == true) {
echo 'You are cool.';
}

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@tomw @datarama @abucci yes. Php was successful because it was a horrible mess that worked if idiots used it. They are now trying to make it a proper language, but all the code that the idiots wrote is still running on live servers everywhere.

It's our own fault: we should have pushed back when they forcibly removed register_globals. Once they got away with that absolute catastrophuck, we were doomed.

otheorange_tag, to random
@otheorange_tag@mstdn.social avatar

You guys know you can do this right?
date +"%Y-%0m-%0d" --date="5 years ago"
date +"%Y-%0m-%0d" --date="tomorrow"

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@otheorange_tag you can also do -I for ISO date format...

garius, to Futurology
@garius@mastodon.me.uk avatar

DELIGHTED to say that my latest tech history column is live on Every and they've made this one free-to-read.

Because it covers one of the most overlooked founders of the golden age of computing: Lore Harp McGovern, founder of Vector Graphic who pioneered small/medium business computing.

She deserves to be better known. Certainly deserves more than a single paragraph on Wikipedia. Read and spread the word https://every.to/the-crazy-ones/the-woman-that-tech-history-forgot

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@garius great story, brilliant and insightful.

I'm inclined to differ on your description as Jobs as one of the winners of the era - Apple in the late 80s was pretty much crippled, only saved by a tiny minority of obsessive users and enough finance to limp through the 90s and make it to the iPod boom, which IMO was what made Apple the company it is now.

timbray, to random
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

I think the incident is teaching us that our infrastructure is dangerously fragile in the face of well-organized/funded attackers. The response isn’t “try harder” or “donate to your OSS project”, it needs to be institutional, professional, and at scale.

So, here’s my proposal, called “OSQI”, aimed at starting a how-to discussion: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2024/04/01/OSQI

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@timbray @bagder @Di4na that does sound a bit weasely though. The overall impression you're left with is that you think cmake/meson are better, albeit they may not be good enough.

Geoff, to random
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

It was DNS.

CatherineFlick, to random
@CatherineFlick@mastodon.me.uk avatar

How incredible is the @emf theme guide this time around! Hats off to the design team for this. https://www.emfcamp.org/static/2024/theme-guide.pdf

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@CatherineFlick @emf tempted to say it's "unbelievable".

slashdot, to random
@slashdot@mastodon.cloud avatar

Motorola Spoiled a Good Budget Phone With Bloatware https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/03/21/1830255/motorola-spoiled-a-good-budget-phone-with-bloatware?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@slashdot how about, just don't run the shitty apps?

Get the impression the "reviews" I've seen so far of these phones have been seeded by Samsung shills.

revk, (edited ) to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

Change to SMS API at @aaisp :-

Later this week.

Basically we are no longer handling or reporting the invalid UTF-8 byte sequence 0xC0 0x80 for a NULL (used for 8 bit coding SMS).

We are now treating U+2400 (i.e. ␀) as a NULL, i.e. 0x00 in 8 bit coding, so a UTF-8 sequence using only U+0001 to U+00FF and U+2400 is treated as 8 bit coding for values 0x01 to 0xFF and 0x00.

UCS16 also now treats 0x0000 as U+2400 each way, but we don't know of 0x0000 USC16 use cases that this would impact.

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@revk @aaisp wasn't aware 8-bit coding supported utf8. Is that an aaisp-specific enhancement or is there a 3gpp spec somewhere?

revk, to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

Anyone else with me on this?

https://www.revk.uk/2024/03/missing-unux-file-open-option.html

@torvalds

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@phlash @penguin42 @revk @torvalds there have been several discussions about a replace flag for linkat, not sure how far they got tho.

Eg https://lwn.net/Articles/810848/

NormanDunbar, to random
@NormanDunbar@mastodon.scot avatar

Good morning fellow Mastos and hello to a snowy Thursday. Ok, I lied! There's no snow, here. As the weather forecast said, snow over the high ground, so of course, everyone panicked. Again! Sigh

I get the impression that people don't listen. They hear the word "snow" and anything else is lost. 😟

MrsD and I are off to the Dales with Wesley today. We are meeting friends down from Scotland for a walk and lunch. Enjoy your day, whatever you are doing. Have a laugh.

Today's photo... See ALT Text.

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@NormanDunbar we thought the same this morning and ended up with an inch of this...

And the roads hadn't been gritted cos everyone assumed it was going to miss us: it was really quite chaotic about lunchtime.

EposVox, to random
@EposVox@glitch.lgbt avatar

Anyone have a better recommendation for a program that can recover photos & videos from HDDs aside, better than Recuva? Paid is OK.

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@EposVox I've had good experience with photorec and testdisk on Linux in the past.

Geoff, to random
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

Had a phone call from Mandy claiming to be from EDF. Apparently my "smart" meter has stopped transmitting data, and they would like to send out an engineer to fix it. Excellent! Proactive and helpful. Of course I'm happy for you to send an engineer.

Could I just confirm my name, address and account number?

"Why?" I ask

"For security"

"But you're not going to divulge any information on the call, just send an engineer"

"That's not how it works"

"That's ridiculous"

click

slashdot, to random
@slashdot@mastodon.cloud avatar

Brace Yourself, IPv6 is Coming https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/01/17/116235/brace-yourself-ipv6-is-coming?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@slashdot just after nuclear fusion and self-driving cars.

georgetakei, to random

Where do you stand on this? 🤔 https://www.comicsands.com/kaley-cuoco-flight-confrontation-baby-2666949648.html?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=infeed&utm_campaign=linkprogram

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@georgetakei anything that stands a chance of stopping the baby screaming throughout the flight would be a net + for me.

revk, (edited ) to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

Important information…
And I am really impressed with what I assume is AI making the alt text!
Would “or” be better than “and” here?

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@mansr @revk given that the sign is in the UK the Oxford comma would generally be considered incorrect.

bread80, to random
@bread80@mstdn.social avatar

Addition is commutative: a + b equals b + a.

Concatenating strings is not commutative: ‘a’ + ‘b’ does not equal ‘b’ + ‘a’ so it shouldn’t be using the add operator.

Strings are a special class of array. Should […] + […] concatenate the arrays or add the array elements to each other?

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@bread80 addition of_numbers is commutative because numbers represent a count of things with no position information.

Adding a string to another string is a perfectly valid action and there's no reason it must be commutative just because adding numbers is.

slashdot, to random
@slashdot@mastodon.cloud avatar

Can AI-Generated Proofs Bring Bug-Free Software One Step Closer? https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/01/06/238237/can-ai-generated-proofs-bring-bug-free-software-one-step-closer?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@slashdot no.

NormanDunbar, to random
@NormanDunbar@mastodon.scot avatar

Not many people can spell diarrhoea.

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@NormanDunbar a great aide memoire:
Doesn't
It
Always
Run
Really
Horribly
Over
Each
Ankle

dmoser, to random
@dmoser@mastodon.social avatar

Quite the progress since 1979

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@dmoser mainly because we exported the majority of our manufacturing (and thus the bulk of our co2 production) to the far east.

Geoff, to random
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

Noting some reportage claiming Disney's Mickey as the world's favourite cartoon character... Does anyone actually like Mickey Mouse? My recollection is that the cartoons were dreary, dull affairs. I remember a definite preference for Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny by a long chalk. Even Donald Duck was better.

amoroso, to retrocomputing
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

As many others, I always wondered why Steve Jobs went with the 68K for NeXT workstations instead of the 386.

The possible reasons discussed here are interesting. The product positioning and business ones make sense as much as the technical reasons.

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/28131/why-did-steve-jobs-choose-the-motorola-6803025-mhz-for-the-first-next-computer

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@amoroso I'd be inclined to say that if you've programmed assembly language with both there wouldn't be any question.

Stephenleet, to random

A link to the electoral reform society's petition against Liz Trusses honours list. Please sign and share.

https://action.electoral-reform.org.uk/page/133708/petition/2

Geoff,
@Geoff@mastodon.cloud avatar

@ottocrat @Stephenleet @ArtBear I would sign a petition against truss's list, but I won't sign anything calling for an elected second chamber. With all its faults the Lords does at least act as a bastion against kneejerk popularism.

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