@bert_hubert@fosstodon.org
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bert_hubert

@bert_hubert@fosstodon.org

Software developer, entrepreneur, former government regulator, current government advisor, amateur scientist. https://berthub.eu/

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bert_hubert, to random
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Recently places like @SIDN (Dutch national operator of .NL) have been claiming that nobody in Europe can deliver their computer needs, and that they are therefore forced to outsource operations to American cloud providers. Meanwhile our own IT industry denies this. Here I delve into what's going on, and how Europe is being Cloud Naïve instead of Cloud Native.

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/cloud-naive-europe-and-the-megascaler/

bert_hubert,
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@jornfranke @SIDN nevertheless people I trust tell me managed kuberenetes works for their usecase. It is in any case not great to offer an unnecessarily poor kubernetes experience.

bert_hubert,
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@jornfranke @huitema @SIDN I wrote the piece very carefully and in consultation with users of such services. I note in the article the many limitations of these services.

bert_hubert,
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@jornfranke @huitema @SIDN ovh for example offers 99.9% availability.

bert_hubert,
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@huitema so this is indeed a thing, hence my suggestion that companies at least flesh out a minimal and reliable set of cloud native services. This would allow them to at least get government tenders and appreciable revenues. From that point on the weakness of 'big cloud' is currently their complexity and surprise billing, which is also something new entrants to the market could address. But it will be very hard work.

bert_hubert,
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@huitema meanwhile the incentives for European providers up to now have been rather simple it appears, cost cutting and delivering rock bottom pricing on simple server services. I can't blame them, there is money to be made there. But then don't complain if you don't get business for more advanced services which they've neglected.

bert_hubert, to random
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Embarrassingly for Europe, they had to turn to SpaceX to launch two new Galileo satellites (EU GPS). This happened yesterday but they gave this exactly 0 publicity. I had missed the launch entirely. https://www.gsc-europa.eu/notice-advisory-to-galileo-users-nagu-2024020 - eventually these two new satellites will appear on https://galmon.eu/ - but might be a while.

bert_hubert, to random
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Is @syncthing as good as it definitely appears to be? Quite impressed. Tried to get it to fail today and it didn't fall for any of my stunts. I'm especially impressed by the extensive versioning features.

bert_hubert, to random
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Regarding previous post, ponder also this "WiFi Cable" sign:

bert_hubert, to random
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Fun thing I learned today. To normal people "ethernet" sounds like some kind of wireless network. And they will tell you that the wifi isn't working after selecting ethernet in the Windows 11 installer (since they don't know ethernet needs a cable). I can't even blame them, "ethernet" does sound like some kind of radio thing ("in the ether").

bert_hubert, to random
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Writing blog posts on a 128GB tricked out Xeon feels kind of like sacrilege. I should be doing science on this thing!

bert_hubert,
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@jpmens that's why I run emacs on the 128GB xeon ;-)

bert_hubert, to random
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After the recent publicity I have updated the Google beeper / googerteller somewhat, including new Google IP addresses. I've browsed the web a bit with it and things are as terrible as ever. Lots of noise. I've also reinstated the bpftrace based per-process capability. https://github.com/berthubert/googerteller

larsmb, to microsoft
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I just tried to help a friend and found this - wait what, Save As a PDF in MS Office on your local computer, it ... funnels your local document through their cloud service? 🤯

Sure, no data leak at all.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/office-for-mac-saving-as-pdf-requires-internet/a14c45c6-c524-4e77-9f01-5fc62ded14cb

bert_hubert,
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@larsmb this is a 2016 page though, might no longer be true. But it could be!

bert_hubert, to random
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Just upgraded from PostgreSQL 13 to 15 and the process was so smooth that at first I worried nothing had happened. But turns out PostgreSQL is just that good. Deeply impressed.

bert_hubert, to random
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I can't tell you how exhausting it is to see governments go out there time and time again to argue for more human rights violations (see ECHR CASE OF PODCHASOV v. RUSSIA). https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/22/europol_becomes_latest_cop_shop/

bert_hubert, to random
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New post: A very practical introduction to Parsing Expression Grammars (PEGs), in which we build a non-trivial parser (for Prometheus metrics) using the most excellent cpp-peglib single-include C++ library. So easy you won't ever want to parse a string by hand anymore. Post includes links to PEG libraries for Go, Rust and Python, and a ready to run GitHub repository of all examples: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/practical-peg-parsing/

bert_hubert, to random
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European police chiefs are again asking the world to break end to end encryption, something the European Court of Human Rights very recently ruled against explicitly. In 2020 I spoke at an event at the European Parliament on why breaking end to end encryption is fraught with difficulties, and why you should try nearly everything else first:
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/end-to-end-encryption-european-internet-forum/

bert_hubert, to random
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If you want to ruin your day, go read up on "quiet NaNs". If you had any faith left in computers this should clear that right up. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/QuietNaN.html

bert_hubert, to random
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Over the past 8 years I've held a trilogy of presentations over at @NLNOG on the working life of technical people, and how we could improve it. The talk also covers if you should become a contractor of launch your own company. Here are links to two hours of video & slides of the trilogy, plus some context: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/technical-job-presentations/

stshank, to random
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I have learned I can compensate for gradually degrading vision (nothing dramatic, just age) and small laptop / tablet / phone screens by increasing the screen brightness and burning through its battery faster.

bert_hubert,
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@stshank I have a 16" laptop now for serious work.I used to be able to do work on any screen, but that time is long gone..

bert_hubert,
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@stshank I hope the fusion people one day supply you with better stuff! Good luck with the new job!

bert_hubert, to random
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Oracle announces 441 security issues, which is rather stunning. And then slaps a 'Contact Sales' button on that page, which tells you all you need to know. https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/cpuapr2024.html

bert_hubert, to random
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Recently I found out that RIPE has a very interesting series of podcasts. Recommended. And also keep an eye open for the next episode ;-) https://labs.ripe.net/category/podcasts/

bert_hubert, to random
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I need to share a rare story with you. My main development computer just died on me. And turns out I have no way this evening to access the SATA SSD in that computer. But! I HAD WORKING BACKUPS! AND THEY WERE FRESH AND THEY WORKED! Note that my backup script includes a sentinel file that my script checks that it can actually find that file in the backup & that it contains today's date. Thank you @restic !

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