Recent content on 13brane
The path to complete digital sovereignty is lonely, long and difficult. Sometimes, it is also fraught with improper signage. Exhibit A, shown above, is a screenshot. It was taken on my recently degoogled 2017 Samsung A5. A decent device at a decent price, acquired from a refurbisher to replace my old and worn S5 Mini Duos. The only shortcoming that cannot be overlooked on the A5 is the lack of a…
Or, how healthy and sane distributed organisms reject the transplantation of stupid . You’ve heard of EEE: “embrace, extend, extinguish”. Today we’re going to look at some of its lesser known variations, starting with “embrace, smother, repurpose”. This is what happened to CentOS. RedHat takes it under its wing, and all goes well for a while. More resources for…
Hello again, braneswalkers . It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’m sorry to have kept you all deprived of large braned rantiness for such a long time. I know how absolutely crucial this is for your general well being. 1 I promise more brany nastiness in the very near future, but this one rant will be shorter than usual. It’s only purpose is to draw attention to the fact that…
(Full source code for the entire series will be progressively published here , and the other days of the cavalcade are here: day 0 , 1-8 , 9-16 ) Welcome back to the last instalment of the cavalcade. This week we are going to do something evil. Something forbidden. Something so egregiously deranged it might cause uproar with religious leaders. Lo and behold, object oriented fizzbuzzing. Day 17 New…
(Full source code for the entire series will be progressively published here , and the other days of the cavalcade are here: day 0 , 1-8 , 17-24 ) FizzBuzz is a problem that maps rather well into functional programming (at least as long as you don’t try to overcomplicate things), so it is completely appropriate that we forego all state manipulations and refuse to do anything with variables…
(Full source code for the entire series will be progressively published here , and the other days of the cavalcade are here: day 0 , 9-16 , 17-24 ) The FizzBuzz cavalcade started with eight procedural solutions to the problem. In none of these does the code make use of anything you wouldn’t be able to code with relative ease in C or even Assembly. Simple, “straight out of…
(Full source code for the entire series will be progressively published here , and the other days of the cavalcade are here: 1-8 , 9-16 , 17-24 ) Hello intertubes! It’s that time of the year again. The time of ugly sweaters, sun washed decorations you forgot to remove last year (after February 1st there is no excuse, really), and that awkward hibernation HR departments and LinkedIn…
For someone who has been a strong supporter of FOSS for a very long time, watching what has been happening to the various FOSS communities over the past half decade or so is kind of depressing (with some exceptions, of course). Let us consider one of the latest episodes in the saga of the industry that has no idea what it is doing as a whole: Hey everyone - this is not just a one off thing, there…
The branes have worm-holled to a new hosting environment, to benefit from Let’s Encrypt’s cybersecurity powers. But that’s not all. They have also received a bit of CSS makeup, so that the site does not hurt anyone’s retinae, especially at night. Plus, it helps to conserve energy, and we’ll need as much of it as we can find for the 2020 cryptocurrency rush. /s
A few months ago I wrote about this subject . It turns out I was very, very wrong. Not because EME is a good idea. It is not. It is in the same stupidity class as putting a hornet’s nest inside your car as you are about to start a 2h summer drive. Bryan Lunduke brilliantly explains why . No, I was wrong because I thought nobody would care enough to support Encrypted Media Extensions as a…
By now you probably heard about #Equifux . Err, I mean Equifax. For those outside North America, that’s a consumer credit reporting agency. What’s that, you ask? It’s a private entity that collects, maintains and provides information about consumer credit to other entities (individuals, but also public and private institutions). See, my European friends, here in the Great White…
(First part of this rant here .) If there was ever a time to be skeptical about what software is doing in your machine, this would be it. As referenced in our previous instalment, this happened. Now, before anything else, it might be a good idea to untwist our panties. And prune the misinformation that has been circulating a little bit. Only after that can we try to really sort this mess out.…
I had planned a different type of rant for today, but a couple of pressing issues have taken precedence. So long story short, this and this happened. (For the second part of this rant, about Wikileaks being in the process of releasing Vault7, a massive leak detailing the power and scope of CIA’s computer hacking operations, see here .) For those who have not yet taken the course on link…
The branes have been busy. Very busy. They twisted, turned, collided, melded, unmelded, worm-holed, and folded in pretty much every possible combination. The hyperdrives are nearly ready to activate. And best of all: the rant canon is charged and armed, ready to fire rage quantum in all its 13-dimensional prowess. Brace for impact.