GoLUG meeting: Google's Material Design - an Implementation in React

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

https://meet.jit.si/golug

Right now, 10/2/2024 at 7PM Eastern Daylight time, Ron from BCLUG
demonstrates how to use open-source tools to get a modern and
consistent website design that is engaging, responsive, and
feature-rich.

He will show a mock-up conversion of an existing site written purely in 
HTML and CSS.

All work done in a text editor only, with imported MUI (Material UI) 
components generously implemented.

Even though I'm busier than a 1 legged man in a butt kicking contest,
I'm going to be there to see if there's a better and faster way to
implement web pages that will work for me. Hope to see you all there.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator
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Re: ChatGPT ...

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Snyder, Alexander J via PLUG-discuss said on Sun, 29 Sep 2024 08:32:23
-0700

>Yeah, I use the paid version (4o) all the time for code. It gives you
>wrong stuff all the time, but I've found that it's about 80%-90%
>correct, but it's the little stuff. Like yesterday I was writing some
>Ansible automation and it gave me a suggestion on a module, but it
>included an option that didn't exist. I wouldn't have known it if
>VSCode hadn't refused to highlight it like the other code. That forced
>me to go RTFM and I was able to eventually figure it out.
>
>I think A.I. and coding will get you *almost* there, but it takes your
>own knowledge and human intuition to get you over the finish line.

Another thing Chatgpt is good for is discovering and defining terms. A
lot of times the hardest thing about technology is learning what the
terms represent, and their relationship to each other.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

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Re: Quickbooks

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Fri, 20 Sep 2024 12:32:20 -0700

>3) I learned about the Hedgehog concept at almost 50.  I wish I would 
>have learned about it earlier.

If you're like me and didn't know what the Hedgehog concept is, see
this:

https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/the-hedgehog-concept.html

On the Venn diagram, "best in the world" is a gross oversimplification.
I *might* be the best in the world at describing the mindset and
process of troubleshooting, but there are probably 100 competitors
right there up with me. I might have even taught some of them. I'm
nowhere near the world's best at anything else, and have a hunch few
other people are the world's best at anything. I wish he'd said "damn
good" instead of "best in the world".

Other than that, the concept is right on target. I'll bet Jim Collins'
book tells you *how* to find such a profession, because unlike the
concept itself, how to achieve the concept isn't at all obvious.

True story: I loved bicycles, especially Schwinn bicycles, riding
bicyles, all things bicycles, and thought bicycles were the key to
improving the world. In a lot of ways, I still do. Anyway, in 1974
after graduating college, I called the Schwinn company, telling them
about my passion for bicycles and my engineering degree. The guy on the
phone, probably some underpaid HR dweeb, said "you sound like a jobless
BSEE who's desperate".

Schwinn really blew it. I would have been a real asset to them.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

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Re: Elastic as FLOSS again?

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

der.hans via PLUG-discuss said on Tue, 3 Sep 2024 20:12:22 + (UTC)

>moin moin,
>
>Shay reportedly says Elastic is going to add AGPL to ES, so will be
>Open Source again.
>
>https://devclass.com/2024/09/02/elasticsearch-will-be-open-source-again-as-cto-declares-changed-landscape/

Affero? Euu!

Hey, here's a serious question from a webmaster, not a criticism. On
this website they have a graphic of hands wielding poker chips on
some kind of gambling table. Is this meant to convey that Elastic is
gambling by this move, does it have some other meaning, or is it just a
good looking graphic thrown in?

During the past few months I've been reevaluating my thoughts on
graphics on web pages I create.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 

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CSS Lifeboat and Speedboat at GoLUG, 9/4/2024 7PM Eastern Daylight Time

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

The Wednesday, 9/4/2024 GoLUG meeting commences at 7pm 
Eastern Daylight Time online at meet.jit.si/golug [1].


Who: Steve Litt, presenter.

What: CSS Lifeboat and Speedboat.

Where: Online GoLUG meeting at meet.jit.si/golug [1].

When: Wednesday 9/4/2024 at 7pm Eastern Daylight Time


If you haven't seen one of Steve's Lifeboat and Speedboat
presentations, strap in. The Lifeboat portion gets everybody up to
speed enough to do basic CSS tasks and formulate Internet questions
quickly. The Speedboat portion is a rapid moving demonstration of some
advanced CSS. The Lifeboat portion, which comes first, includes:

* Why CSS?
* Why not platforms (Node/React/Rails/PHP/Wordpress/Bootstrap/etc)?
* CSS Hello World.
* CSS basic syntax.
* Centering.
* Responsive techniques (to fit different width screens).
* Foldunder columns.
* Responsive images.
* Responsive source code text.
* Media queries.
* Optimal text layout.
* Header menu.
* Grid layout.

The Speedboat portion, well, you'll just have to see, but here's a
hint: It's something you probably thought couldn't be easily done
without platforms or helpers. And cooler still, it passes W3C
validation no errors, no warnings (except for warnings about closing
slashes on elements, which are harmless).

It's going to be good, so we all hope to see you there.

SteveT

[1] Online via Jitsi: https://meet.jit.si/golug
Mobile app: https://jitsi.org/downloads/
Desktop app: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases

-- 

Steve Litt
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator

Originally founded in Orlando, Florida, United States, GoLUG now
welcomes an international audience for online presentations and
discussions on Linux and adjacent technologies.

http://golug.org

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Constructing Your Own Linux and FreeBSD Packages at GoLUG, 8/7/2024 7PM Eastern Daylight Time

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

The Wednesday, 8/7/2024 GoLUG meeting commences at 7pm 
Eastern Daylight Time online at meet.jit.si/golug [1].


Who: David Billsbrough, presenter.

What: Constructing Your Own Linux and FreeBSD Packages.

Where: Online GoLUG meeting at meet.jit.si/golug [1].

When: Wednesday 8/7/2024 at 7pm Eastern Daylight Time


Admin/Developer David Billsbrough will demonstrate how to make your own
software packages in Devuan (.deb), Void Linux (xbps), and FreeBSD
(.pkg) with easy to understand examples.

He'll demonstrate some simple, easy to understand examples of utility
programs proving and demonstrating the build processes.

You'll learn techniques to make package making easier, faster, and more
reliable, as well as learning where the landmines lie, how to avoid
them, and what to do if you get caught by a landmine.

Some online docs on building your own packager are less than helpful
because some details are older and not always clear.  David will show
you how to to sort though some of these building issues.

It's going to be good, so we all hope to see you there.

SteveT

[1] Online via Jitsi: https://meet.jit.si/golug
Mobile app: https://jitsi.org/downloads/
Desktop app: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases

-- 

Steve Litt
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator

Originally founded in Orlando, Florida, United States, GoLUG now
welcomes an international audience for online presentations and
discussions on Linux and adjacent technologies.

http://golug.org

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Void Linux Presentation at Phoenix LUG, 7/11/2024 7PM Mountain Standard Time

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

The Thursday, 7/11/2024 Phoenix Linux User Group (PLUG) meeting
commences at 7pm Mountain Standard Time (NOT daylight savings time)
online at https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/plu-yuk-7xx . This will
be a repeat of my 7/3/2024 Void presentation, but at a time more
convenient to North Americans west of the Mississippi River.

The past few months the Void Linux distribution has become the
subject of curiosity and questions from folks wanting something closer
to the metal, folks wanting to shed their training wheels, folks who
want a rolling release that doesn't mess you up every few updates,
folks curious about the runit init system, for folks looking for a
smaller, cleaner musl based Linux, and from folks who just wonder what
all the hype is about. 

I'm often the recipient of these questions because I've used Void
since March 2015. I'll answer all these questions at this online PLUG
meeting. If people want to ask me questions about the runit init system,
that's also on topic.

During the meeting I'll demonstrate a Void Linux Virtual Machine
installation.

It's important to remember that Void Linux isn't for everyone. Not even
for the majority. For some, this presentation helps by showing what
Void Linux can do and how to achieve it. For others, it's an early clue
that Void's not right for them, so they can spend the time looking at
other distros.

I'll save plenty of time to answer questions posed by attendees, so
this presentation can serve as a first step in evaluating Void Linux.
Hope to see you there.

SteveT



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Repeat of my Void Linux presentation at PLUG 7/11

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

I'll announce it again later, but at the 7/11/2024 PLUG meeting I'll be
both "running the room" and re-giving the Void Linux presentation I
gave at GoLUG meeting last Wednesday. That presentation was very
well received.

So if you missed it then (It started when Phoenix first
shift workers were still at work), you can come see it at 7pm your time
Thursday 9/11. 

I'll demonstrate the entire installation of a Void Virtual Machine
guest during the presentation and answer all questions.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 
http://444domains.com
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Re: sudo in general, and not requiring password in particular (was Re: trouble adding my user to sudoers list)

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Wed, 03 Jul 2024 06:21:25 -0700

>
>
>On 2024-07-02 18:20, George Toft via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>> I work for a bank, and you would be amazed at how much security is 
>> baked into the connecting your browser to their web servers. Makes
>> the NSA look like freshmen. And no, I'm not telling you who I work
>> for.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> George Toft  
>
>I'd like to hear more.  The world is a hostile place.  I recently went 
>old school.  I asked the bank to disarm my online banking.  I now deal 
>with paper statements and everything gets paid by check.  Not as 
>convenient as on-line banking, however I am hoping it makes my world a 
>little bit more secure.

I did the exact same thing decades ago.

SteveT

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Void Linux Presentation at GoLUG, 7/3/2024 7PM Eastern Daylight Time

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

The Wednesday, 7/3/2024 GoLUG meeting commences at 7pm Eastern Daylight
Time online at meet.jit.si/golug [1].

The past few months the Void Linux distribution has become the
subject of curiosity and questions from folks wanting something closer
to the metal, folks wanting to shed their training wheels, folks who
want a rolling release that doesn't mess you up every few updates,
folks curious about the runit init system, for folks looking for a
smaller, cleaner musl based Linux, and from folks who just wonder what
all the hype is about. 

I'm often the recipient of these questions because I've used Void
since March 2015. I'll answer all these questions at this online GoLUG
meeting. If people want to ask me questions about the runit init system,
that's also on topic.

It's important to remember that Void Linux isn't for everyone. Not even
for the majority. For some, this presentation helps by showing what
Void Linux can do and how to achieve it. For others, it's an early clue
that Void's not right for them, so they can spend the time looking at
other distros.

I'll save plenty of time to answer questions posed by attendees, so
this presentation can serve as a first step in evaluating Void Linux.
Hope to see you there.

SteveT



[1]

Online via Jitsi:
https://meet.jit.si/golug

Mobile app:
https://jitsi.org/downloads/

Desktop app:
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases

-- 

Steve Litt
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator

Originally founded in Orlando, Florida, United States, GoLUG now
welcomes an international audience for online presentations and
discussions on Linux and adjacent technologies.

http://golug.org

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Re: OT Humidity, was time off

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Thomas Scott via PLUG-discuss said on Sat, 22 Jun 2024 09:05:35 -0400

>Long term - I don't think the growth curve AZ is on is sustainable
>without burying the water transport (converting canals to pipes) to
>avoid evaporation from the exposed surface, but that has it's own set
>of issues as well.
>
>Short term - it scares me. The situation is tenable, but it's on a
>razor's edge, and if there are issues with the dams/reservoirs, and
>the supply, it's going to hurt. A lot.

Ugh! Long term every place on earth is in danger. I live in Florida,
where because of increasing frequency of category 3 through 5
hurricanes, house insurance will soon be unavailable. On moving to
Orlando in 1998, summer bicycle riding was uncomfortable but doable.
With a hotter climate and developers cutting down solar energy
absorbing trees, in June through September you can ride only the first
2 hours after sunrise and the last 2 hours before sunset.

California is burning up, literally. Fires all over the place.

When I lived in Chicago 1949-1980, a window fan would suffice. Now
Chicagoans die in heat events because their homes and apartments were
(understandably at the time) built without air conditioning.

At various parts of the midwest, farmers suffer because alternating
floods and droughts raise their crop insurance to the point of
non-profitability. Food will become less and less available to the
non-rich. 

Small islands are getting drowned by higher water levels.
China, India and Mexico City have horrible pollution, and people are
dying from respiratory problems.

As development encroaches on formerly uninhabited areas,
oxygen-supplying trees disappear and new-to-human microbes are let
loose.

There will be a worldwide population decline. I hope it's done with
birth control, but fear it will be from heat, floods, disease, and
scarcity.

How's that for OT :_)

SteveT

Steve Litt 

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Re: OT Just in time: Was Humidity

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Fri, 21 Jun 2024 06:20:06 -0700


>And what about those supply chain issues?  I studied Just-in-Time in 
>1989 or so.  We have the Just-in-Time so tightly rapped that the
>supply chain is very fragile.  There is hope.  I've read the
>capitalists are figuring out how to fix the problem.  Shipping
>containers are being built in China so the container does not have to
>be shipped back empty.

Just-in-time delivery was, is and always be a source of trouble. Anyone
who has read Eliahu Goldratt's book "The Goal" knows this. This "you
must deliver between 3:15 and 4:15 PM Thursday' stuff removes all
resilience against variation. I'm not talking just about black swan
variation like the 2020 Pandemic, I'm talking about weekly stuff like
weather events, traffic crashes, power outages, strikes, theft,
inventory miscalculation and the like.

I'm not saying companies should build huge warehouses to hold six
months worth of goods to be sold. But neither should they be one day
away from completely running out. Because stuff happens.

Every English speaker worldwide should read "The Goal".
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-goal-eliyahu-m-goldratt/1103443759

SteveT

Steve Litt 

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OT Humidity, was time off

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Ryan Petris via PLUG-discuss said on Thu, 20 Jun 2024 04:05:30 -0700

>I lived in Florida for ~10 years myself, in the Ft. Walton
>Beach/Navarre/Pensacola areas, and got my degree there at UWF.
>Sometimes I wish I were still there but I'm enjoying the non-humidity
>of Arizona for now.

How do you like the 115 degree days? :-) And what are you guys going to
do about the coming lack of water?

One thing I love about hot dry climates (I used to live in the San
Fernando Valley just outside LA) is that you can use evaporative
coolers. That can save you a bundle of money. Here in Orlando Florida
where I live, if you tried that, you'd just sweat even more and you'd
melt the wallpaper right off the walls :-)

Keep hydrated!

SteveT

Steve Litt 

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Ignore him, correct him offlist, or killfile him and move on

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

There's been a long thread of people mocking somebody who asked a
stupid question. Yeah, the guy's annoying; annoying enough that I piped
all his posts to /dev/null starting two or three years ago. This thread
worsens the list's signal to noise, and personally, it constantly
reminds me of the annoying person I killfiled years ago.

I have a suggestion. If the guy annoys you, either ignore him, correct
him offlist, or killfile him and move on. There's no need to mess up
the list with mockery. Whether you believe, as I do, that he's an
attention seeking troll who thinks his stupidity is cute, or whether
you believe his behavior is entirely caused by some sort of brain
injury, either way, the on-list mockery does no good for anybody.

Ignore him, correct him offlist, or killfile him and move on.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: is there any way to fix this drive?

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Please, I beg of you, if you're going to top-post over long threads,
don't use words like "this", or "it" or "his" or "him" or "her" or
"they" or "that" or "I agree" (with what?) so that we need to parse the
big long thread to know the subject or object of your sentence. And
sometimes, with multiple references in multiple posts, "this" could be
any one of three or four things.

Please use the noun if you're going to top post.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21


Stephen Partington via PLUG-discuss said on Mon, 10 Jun 2024 15:08:34
-0400

>If you have the disk space, this has been my Go-to disk filesystem
>repair and recovery. handily enough it runs via multiple platforms.
>
>On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 9:41 PM Michael via PLUG-discuss <
>plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>
>> thank you so much. I have a problem with the request though. I only
>> have windows now running ubuntu through wsl and I am not well versed
>> through the command line. Could you give me some further direction?
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 7:50 PM Arun Khan via PLUG-discuss <
>> plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>  
>>>
>>> On Tue, May 28, 2024 at 9:58 AM Michael via PLUG-discuss <
>>> plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>>  
 [image: image.png]
  
>>>
>>> Prima facie, it looks like a corrupted file system v/s bad hardware.
>>> Do you know what kind of filesystem it has?
>>>
>>> Also, as rusty has suggested, run *smarctl* on the disk and share
>>> its output.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Arun Khan
>>>
>>>
>>> ---
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>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>>> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>>>  
>>
>>
>> --
>> :-)~MIKE~(-:
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>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
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>>  
>
>
>-- 
>A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
>rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
>
>Stephen

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Show and Tell at GoLUG, 5/1/2024

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

The Wednesday, 5/1/2024 GoLUG meeting commences at 7pm Eastern Daylight
Time online at meet.jit.si/golug .

I'll be late because of my kids' birthday (this happens every May), but
when I get there I'll show a simple no Javascript, CSS-only web-menu and
a 100% CSS, no graphics knockoff of the logo from TV show Law & Order.
This gives plenty of time for others to show off various interesting
tricks they've created.

Hope to see you there.

SteveT



[1]

Online via Jitsi:
https://meet.jit.si/golug

Mobile app:
https://jitsi.org/downloads/

Desktop app:
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases

-- 

Steve Litt
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator

Originally founded in Orlando, Florida, United States, GoLUG now
welcomes an international audience for online presentations and
discussions on Linux and adjacent technologies.

http://golug.org

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Re: AZ Developer Wages, per Feds

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Ryan Petris via PLUG-discuss said on Thu, 25 Apr 2024 14:58:18 -0700

>I'm pretty certain that anyone directly involved with that was
>prosecuted in some way, including developers that knowingly helped.

LOL, I boycotted VW for 50 years because of the Holocaust. Then, just
as I was getting ready to consider them again, I had to boycott them
again for deliberately spewing smog in my country. What's next VW?

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: AZ Developer Wages, per Feds

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss said on Thu, 25 Apr 2024 11:26:13 -0700


>I assure you, people are not moving to AZ chasing after our amazing
>pay scale!

Wouldn't this also depend on AZ cost of living? If in place A I make
$50K and have $40K in expenses, while in place B I make $100K and have
expenses of $80K, I'd favor place A because I'd pay a lower percentage
of my income on federal income taxes, and also because in general a
lower cost of living translates into a simpler, less stressful life.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: WordPress moving away from PHP to JavaScript

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss said on Sat, 20 Apr 2024 13:43:39 -0700


>So I turned back to Delphi and didn’t look back. 

Hi David,

Would you like to give a Lazarus demo/presentation at a future online
GoLUG meeting?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: WordPress moving away from PHP to JavaScript

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Sat, 20 Apr 2024 07:32:10 -0700

>Hi,
>
>This article says WordPress is moving away from PHP to JavaScript.  I 
>think WordPress is shooting itself in the foot.  My main question has
>to do with resources given the shift from server side processing to
>browser based processing.
>
>https://thenewstack.io/why-php-usage-has-declined-by-40-in-just-over-2-years/
>
>Your thoughts are much appreciated.

Ten years ago PHP was a massive security risk, but from what I
understand now it's as safe as anything else. I'd sure as hell rather
write a Wordpress like thing in PHP than in any variant of Javascript.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Linux Campfire Tales at GoLUG, 4/3/2024

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

GoLUG meeting where anyone who wants to can share their Linux or BSD
story.

==
What: Online: Linux Campfire Tales
Who: Anyone wanting to tell a Linux story
When: Wednesday 4/3/2024 at 7PM Eastern Daylight Time
Where: Jitsi online presentation, https://meet.jit.si/golug [1]
==

Everybody has a Linux or BSD story they'd like to tell. Now's your
chance. It can be from 1992 or from yesterday, or anywhere in between,
your choice. Has Linux ever saved your bacon? Slapped you in the face?
How did you transition into Linux? These stories can be first person or
third person or just something you heard about.

I imagine more than one of us will relay our experience with the recent
xz Utils backdoor: I know that mess made my heart skip a few beats
before realizing my distro wasn't affected.

Hope to see you all there.

SteveT



[1]

Online via Jitsi:
https://meet.jit.si/golug

Mobile app:
https://jitsi.org/downloads/

Desktop app:
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases

-- 

Steve Litt
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator

Originally founded in Orlando, Florida, United States, GoLUG now
welcomes an international audience for online presentations and
discussions on Linux and adjacent technologies.

http://golug.org

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Re: security: check xc-utils versions

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

der.hans via PLUG-discuss said on Sun, 31 Mar 2024 07:19:43 + (UTC)

>Am 30. Mar, 2024 schwätzte Matthew Crews via PLUG-discuss so:
>
>> This, ladies and gentlemen, is what a Supply Chain Attack looks like.
>>
>> While I'm not sure that this specific vulnerability led to much harm
>> (who knows yet?), we're going to be feeling the after-shocks in the
>> open source and security industries for a long time.
>>
>> Among the many questions that need to be asked:
>>
>> 1. How can we trust source tarballs / archive files to be 100%
>> correct versus source code?  
>
>Reproducible builds help with that.
>
>> 2. Without looking at the source code line-by-line, how do we detect
>> supply chain attacks before they are propagated to end users?  
>
>Maybe peer review and audits as the code goes in. That'll take a lot of
>effort, especially for small projects.
>
>> 3. How do we properly vet source code contributors to make sure they
>> aren't going to perform supply chain attacks?  
>
>It's going to be a rough Summer for some of us.

A couple Niklaus Wirth quotes from
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/02/28/metro/niklaus-wirth-software-developer-who-saw-power-simplicity-dies-89/
:


“The art in engineering is not so much to make something very
complicated, The art is to make a complicated problem simpler.”

“When you develop a program, it’s much harder to devise a simple
solution than complicated ones. Unfortunately, our computers
are terribly uncritical. They swallow anything.”


Yes, it's easier to incorporate yet another library that's really a
tree of dependencies, and the computer will swallow it. For the last
several years, the problems caused by the complexification caused by
willy-nilly use of Other People's Code (OPC) is on full display.

We can audit. We can peer-review. We can crack the whip on source code
providers, but as long as we increasingly complexificate our software
with ever more layers of abstraction, auditing, peer-review and
cracking the whip are just kicking the can down the road.

KISS!

SteveT

Note: I'm copying the Devuan project mailing list on this post.
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Re: security: check xc-utils versions

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Matthew Crews via PLUG-discuss said on Sat, 30 Mar 2024 09:35:28 -0700

>Among the many questions that need to be asked:
>
>1. How can we trust source tarballs / archive files to be 100% correct 
>versus source code?
>2. Without looking at the source code line-by-line, how do we detect 
>supply chain attacks before they are propagated to end users?
>3. How do we properly vet source code contributors to make sure they 
>aren't going to perform supply chain attacks?

A huge step in the right direction is not willy-nilly using other
peoples' libraries in your software. I've been preaching this for
years, and people keep telling me to grow up. "Don't reinvent the
wheel!"

Well, when the OPC (Other Peoples Code) wheel contains spokes from one
place, rims from another, hubs from a third, ball bearings from a
fourth, cones from a fifth, and an axle from the sixth, the axle nuts
from a seventh, and all that was needed in the first place was the hub
and an axle nut, I'd rather reinvent the wheel. 

When I write Python code, if it can't be done with the standard
library, I usually write it myself or do it in another language.

I know, I know, today's software is too complex to do it yourself.
Well, that's another thing that's wrong.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: security: check xc-utils versions

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

der.hans via PLUG-discuss said on Fri, 29 Mar 2024 20:18:58 + (UTC)

>moin moin,
>
>someone patched a potential remote exploit into xz-utils. It seems it
>can compromise sshd.

Void Linux downgraded xz to 5.4.6 to avoid the problem until the dust
settled.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: Wayland on Kubuntu 22.04

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Matthew Crews via PLUG-discuss said on Sun, 24 Mar 2024 10:38:47 -0700

>It's also going to matter what graphic card you have. If you are using 
>an Nvidia card, then Wayland support is poor all around even with new 
>cards and updated drivers, no matter what. If you are using Intel or
>AMD graphics, you will be fine,

It's not just Kubuntu/KDE. Nvidia is unreliable on many Linux setups
because Nvidia won't share details of their interface with Free
Software developers, so Linux drivers must be reverse engineered with
guesswork and prayer.

I can tell you a hair raising story about this, but I want to keep this
email short.

Linus was right. Nvidia, f**k you!!!

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Online presentation, System Transparency, 3/6/2024

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

GoLUG meeting discussing the costs and benefits of transparent systems
on 3/6:

==
What: Online presentation: System Transparency, Costs and Benefits
Who: Steve Litt
When: Wednesday 3/6/2024 at 7PM Eastern Standard Time
Where: Jitsi online presentation, https://meet.jit.si/golug [1]
==

FEATURING:
* Quick demo of my new email pager system
* Definition of System Transparency:
- Many accessible test points
- Internal workings are partially to completely visible
- Opposite of black box
* Two examples from my new email pager system:
- Fetchmail enhanced with a shellscript
- Procmail enhanced with a Python program
* Costs and Benefits:
- Benefits
- Costs
- Making the choice
* Contrived test points

System transparency yields huge debugging benefits, but
paradoxically can also add to complexity. Whether you're creating a
new system or using a pre-made system for new or unusual purposes,
you need to make your system or subsystem at least transparent
enough that you can sanely debug it, in order to save yourself hours or
days of frustrating and needless debugging. This is true of hardware
and software, although this presentation will showcase software. I hope
to see you there.

SteveT



[1]

Online via Jitsi:
https://meet.jit.si/golug

Mobile app:
https://jitsi.org/downloads/

Desktop app:
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases

-- 

Steve Litt
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator

Originally founded in Orlando, Florida, United States, GoLUG now
welcomes an international audience for online presentations and
discussions on Linux and adjacent technologies.

http://golug.org

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Online presentation, HTML/CSS: Hard Core Examples, 2/7/2024

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

GoLUG meeting showcasing several HTML/CSS hard core examples coming 2/7:

==
What: Online presentation: HTML/CSS: Hard Core Examples
Who: Steve Litt
When: Wednesday 2/7/2024 at 7PM Eastern Standard Time
Where: Jitsi online presentation, https://meet.jit.si/golug [1]
==

FEATURING:
* Two Centering Techniques
* Responsive (fits all screen sizes) web pages without @media:
- Foldunder columns
- Size limited source code boxes that don't walk off the screen
- Scalable images that don't walk off the screen
* Practical slide presentation via HTML/CSS
* Properly placed headers and footers

HTML and CSS are the foundational technology behind all web work,
including Javascript and its derivatives (via the Document Object Model
(DOM)), and language scaffolding such as Rails and Django and even PHP
and old school LAMP. Detailed knowledge of HTML and CSS is valued by
employers and admired by your peers, because learning these
surprisingly easy technologies makes you a web designing and debugging
ninja, regardless of the actual tools you use. Hope to see you there.

SteveT



[1]

Online via Jitsi:
https://meet.jit.si/golug

Mobile app:
https://jitsi.org/downloads/

Desktop app:
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases

-- 

Steve Litt
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator

Originally founded in Orlando, Florida, United States, GoLUG now
welcomes an international audience for online presentations and
discussions on Linux and adjacent technologies.

http://golug.org

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Re: Looking for opinions on email providers

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss said on Wed, 31 Jan 2024 01:31:52 -0700


>Now, every *nix web host already has an STMP host built-in because as
>I understand things, Linux won’t work without an MTA since it uses it
>to send stuff between different parts of itself.
>
>Sendmail, mailman, and exit are three commonly used MTAs. 

You can do send stuff between different parts with nullmailer, which is
really just an SMTP on-ramp. I occasionally use nullmailer to enable
software messages to get sent to root's email queue, and to (legally)
mass mail books to a paying customer who needs and has paid for many PDF
books.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: Looking for opinions on email providers

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Mon, 29 Jan 2024 05:48:53 -0700

>You have a website which makes me think you have email with that 
>account?  Any reason not to use your hosting provider's email?

Ex-actly!

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: Linux friendly audio/video devices

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Phil Waclawski via PLUG-discuss said on Thu, 18 Jan 2024 23:25:22 -0700

>the logitech webcams work very well with Linux
>Phil W

Yes they do. I've been using one for about a decade, and it's better
than my daughter's laptop's builtin webcam. Those of you who have seen
me at GoLUG meetings have seen me on my Logitech Webcam.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: Why put Data Centers in HOT Phoenix?

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Sun, 31 Dec 2023 06:54:08 -0700

>I get the labor pool is probably a draw.
>
>I've always wondered why companies want to build data centers in
>Phoenix given the extreme heat.
>
>Last year we had a month with daily highs of 116 degrees.  That means 
>lots of A/C to cool down all that heat.

:-)

See my recent post on Fusion Energy. Imagine having dirt cheap
electricity to run your air conditioning. Dirt cheap electricity to
transport water from the Pacific and run de-salinization plants to
allow Phoenix to continue its survival as a net water-consumer.

And with rising sea levels, the ocean will have plenty of water.

Solar cells and batteries are getting better and better. The day will
come when roofing shingles are integral solar cells that power your air
conditioning and most of your other power needs. 2/3 of every joule of
solar energy falling on your roof doesn't heat your house because it's
instead converted to electricity.

NOTE: I don't have solar panels because currently if you have solar
panels and your roof starts to leak, you need to remove the solar
panels just to diagnose the problem. Once we have solar cells
integrated with the shingles, this stops being a problem.


>I wonder why someplace cool like Flagstaff is not more attractive.
>I've been there twice.  Once in October and it was freezing and once
>in May and the high of the day was 60 degrees.

Personally I don't want to live somewhere that never gets beyond 70 any
more than I want to live somewhere that stays above 95 all summer long.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: Tesla robot ATTACKS an engineer

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Jim via PLUG-discuss said on Sat, 30 Dec 2023 20:50:59 -0700

>I don't like electric cars.
>IMHO they're not ready to replace the internal combustion engine.
>They don't have the range of a car with a gas tank and it  takes hours
>to charge one. 

I like the idea of hybrids that charge the battery with a gas engine or
by plugging in at night. My neighbor gets something like 50MPG with his.

I'm for the most part a California Liberal. Because I have kids who
might have kids, future weather is a huge concern for me. I very much
want to quit spewing junk into the air, both the kind that lets the sun
come in but not let infrared back out, and the kind that just takes five
years off our life expectancy. So you'd think I'd be a fan of
all-electric cars.

Well, I will be, just as soon as we don't use coal, oil, jet fuel and
the like to produce that electricity. And before you talk about nuclear
*fission*, that would be a good temporary bridge, but it has gone on
too long, and we're accumulating too much radioactive waste that's going
to be hot for thousands of years.

I said it in 1973 when the Oil Cartel sought to change the US foreign
policy by withholding oil, and I've been saying it ever since: Nuclear
*fusion*. It's clean, the fuel is fairly well available to the US
(Tritium type hydrogen from heavy water). And for every one of those
fifty years since I first said it, my oh-so-wise friends have chirped
"grow up Steve, fusion is thirty years in the future!". That's been
said for fifty years. And during that whole time, OPEC, Putin, and
various oil and coal tycoons have gotten filthy rich while we choked on
our air and climate change has skyrocketed insurance rates from
fire-prone west coast to drought and flood cycle plagued middle America
to hurricane-ravaged east coast. Who is spreading FUD about nuclear
fusion? Follow the money.

Now, for the first time, that 30 years could be down to 15 or 20. Read
these:

https://www.inverse.com/science/best-innovation-2023-nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-ignition-gain-of-1

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/12/26/inside-the-worlds-first-reactor-that-will-power-earth-using-the-same-nuclear-reaction-as-t

https://www.world-energy.org/article/39280.html

Imagine a world 40 years from now when every apartment parking space
and every home has 220 volt or 440 volt 3 phase energy coming in, to
charge your car. Or perhaps by that time all that cheap energy can be
used to produce compressed hydrogen to use in our cars. 2H2 + O2 = 2H2O
plus energy. Water as a byproduct. No need for an expensive catalytic
converter, or all the other pollution devices we now use on cars.
Cars might even be cheaper. 400 MPH mag-lev trains to replace the
horrible airline industry. Flown lately?

The old energy interests will fight like hell to prevent this, because
their wallets are more important to them than their nation, their
world, or their descendants. But short of nuclear war they can't stop
it, it's coming. I don't know whether I'll live long enough to see it,
which is a shame because I've been looking forward to it since the age
of 24, but it's coming.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Online presentation, Making compilers with recursive-descent parse, 1/3/2024

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

GoLUG meeting with compiler construction presentation this coming
Wednesday:

==
What: Online presentation, Making compilers with recursive-descent parse
Who: Hendrik Boom
When: Wednesday 1/3/2024 at 7PM Eastern Standard Time
Where: Jitsi online presentation, https://meet.jit.si/golug [1]
==

At last month's GoLUG meeting we discussed Flex/Bison compiler
construction. Trouble is, debugging Flex/Bison can be difficult. So
at GoLUG's January 3, 2024 online meeting, Hendrik Boom shows us how to
make a recursive-descent parser to create a compiler or converter for a
given language.

Hendrik has made several recursive-descent parser solutions, and says
it's quite easy to hand-code a recursive-descent parser. Wednesday night
he'll show us how to do it for ourselves.

I'm really looking forward to this, and hope to see you there.

SteveT



[1]

Online via Jitsi:
https://meet.jit.si/golug

Mobile app:
https://jitsi.org/downloads/

Desktop app:
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases

-- 

Steve Litt
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator

Originally founded in Orlando, Florida, United States, GoLUG now
welcomes an international audience for online presentations and
discussions on Linux and adjacent technologies.

http://golug.org

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Re: AWS S3 Backups - User Cron - Should I create a backup User?

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Tue, 19 Dec 2023 12:21:35 -0700

>Hi,
>
>I have been using the AWS S3 PHP SDK to backup my web content for
>maybe 12 years.  I'm revisiting it.
>
>I'm thinking that it might be more secure to create a backup user for 
>just this process.  The credentials would be stored in the backup
>user's home directory, the script would be owned by the backup user,
>and the cron would be that backup user's cron.
>
>Am I on the right path and is there something else I should be looking 
>at?

Hi Keith,

I'm not quite sure what your preceding two paragraphs mean, but I have
a home-brew backup script that backs my box up to a USB3 interfaced
spinning rust drive. I have several such drives, some of which are in a
bank vault at any given time.

This system has been working well for me.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: PLUG tonight Stammtisch Tuesday

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

der.hans via PLUG-discuss said on Fri, 15 Dec 2023 00:22:46 + (UTC)

>moin moin,
>
>PLUG is in BigBlueButton at 19:00 tonight. Traditionally we do an end
>of year pot luck in December, so we'll just be hanging out tonight. No
>presentations.
>
>https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/plu-yuk-7xx

Is that 19:00 Mountain Standard Time?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Reminder: GoLUG compiler theory presentations Wednesday, 12/6/2023

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

This email is both a reminder of the meeting's who, what, where
and when, and a progress report on my presentation and David's.
First the meeting details:

==
What: Online presentation, Computer language and compiler construction
Who: GoLUG's Steve Litt and David Billsbrough
When: Wednesday 12/6/2023 at 7PM Eastern Standard Time
NOTE: We will start PROMPTLY at 7:00PM EXACTLY!
Where: Jitsi online presentation, https://meet.jit.si/golug [1]
==

David and I have both made astonishing progress. David's ready to give
you the nuts and bolts understandings about the compiler creation
process, including Parse Trees and other stuff way above my pay grade.

As for my presentation on Backus-Naur Format (BNF) and Flex/Bison
compilers and converters, over a week ago I realized that online docs
for Flex and Bison were usually contradictory, incomplete and/or
ambiguous. They were all written by very smart people who forgot what
it was like to know nothing, not even the key understandings necessary
for newbies.

The "Flex & Bison" book I ordered has not arrived, but judging from the
first four chapters, which are are available online, this book is too
ambiguous for a newbie and it doesn't give enough emphasis to the fact
that, for a real compiler, converter or Domain Specific Language (DSL),
Flex and Bison are a package deal, and that Bison-only and Lex-only
examples are so contrived and misleading as to be learning
disadvantages.

ChatGPT is somewhat helpful, but can take you down dead end rabbit
holes because it frames its guesses as facts, and even responds to the
same question differently depending on which websites it scrapes first.
I found ChatGPT to be a great resource for hearing relevant
terminology, which I can then look up with web searches or queries on
mailing lists. Speaking of mailing lists, they're great, but only when
you know what question you want to ask and how to frame the question,
and until you have several key understandings and know a little
vocabulary, you just can't gain the benefits of mailing lists.

At the meeting I'll showcase a Lex/Bison "Hello World" (proof of
concept) that actually serves as a first step to learning how to build
compilers, converters and DSLs. This Hello World can be used to
incrementally learn and build more complex compilers, converters and
DSLs. Also, while you see and listen to my presentation, you'll acquire
the key understandings necessary to learn in a straightforward manner,
without gratuitous dead ends and inability to frame a question. While
you see and listen to my presentation, you'll also understand using BNF
to define a grammar. A grammar is a set of rules determining valid
syntax. This is a good thing because when David gives his presentation,
you'll need these key understandings to benefit from his nuts and bolts
description of compiler construction. 

If you've wondered how people build new computer languages, compilers,
interpreters, markup languages with converters, or even Domain Specific
Languages (DSLs), this introductory presentation will de-mystify the
topic.

I think David's and my presentations will be valued and remembered
fondly by anyone who has ever been curious about how computer languages
and compilers are made. I hope to see you there.



[1]

Online via Jitsi:
https://meet.jit.si/golug

Mobile app:
https://jitsi.org/downloads/

Desktop app:
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases

-- 

Steve Litt
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator

Originally founded in Orlando, Florida, United States, GoLUG now
welcomes an international audience for online presentations and
discussions on Linux and adjacent technologies.

http://golug.org

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Re: Firefox and VM

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

der.hans via PLUG-discuss said on Tue, 5 Dec 2023 18:48:33 + (UTC)

>Am 29. Nov, 2023 schwätzte Steve B via PLUG-discuss so:
>
>moin moin Steve,
>
>I use debian lxc containers on a debian desktop for my containerized
>Firefox profiles.
>
>Mostly I just use many Firefox profiles ( usually have several Firefox
>instances running at a time ) on my desktop and make heave use of
>Firefox containers.
>
>I run unprivileged lxc containers as another user, then use ssh -Y to
>bring them up on my desktop. I'm probably causing a lot of overhead
>this way :).
>
>At Stammtisch a couple weeks ago Victor talked to me about Qubes. I've
>looked at Qubes a few times, but never played with it. He said it does
>a great job of isolating processes in VMs, even the desktop is a VMs.
>He got me interested in checking the project out again.
>
>https://www.qubes-os.org/intro/

moin moin der.hans,

I'm going to have to let Qubes slide until I get all my Flex/Bison
material finished, and until I get my HTML5/CSS course on a paying
basis. If Qubes gets generally accepted as an alternative, I'll invite
you to give a Qubes presentation at a GoLUG meeting, so I (and everyone
else) can learn the easy way.

Speaking of Flex/Bison, you wouldn't believe the progress both David
Billsbrough and I have made on the subject. I've assembled tens of key
understandings that are necessary to even start learning Flex/Bison,
such that at tomorrow's GoLUG meeting, anybody who listens to my
presentation will be in a position to learn Flex/Bison and Backus-Knaur
Format (BNF) in a straightforward manner with a minimum of frustration.
David Billsbrough's presentation (also tomorrow night right after mine)
gives the audience foundational truths about the nuts and bolts of
compiler making. It will be a night to remember.

Once again, the meeting is Wednesday, 12/6/2023, 7PM Eastern Standard
Time, at https://meet.jit.si/golug 

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Computer language and compiler construction presentation, 12/6/2023, 7PM Eastern Standard Time

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

GoLUG meeting with compiler construction presentation this coming
Wednesday:

==
What: Online presentation, Computer language and compiler construction
Who: GoLUG's Steve Litt and David Billsbrough
When: Wednesday 12/6/2023 at 7PM Eastern Standard Time
Where: Jitsi online presentation, https://meet.jit.si/golug [1]
==

If you've wondered how people build new computer languages, compilers,
interpreters, markup languages with converters, or even Domain Specific
Languages (DSLs), this introductory presentation will de-mystify the
topic.

I (Steve Litt), will start off by showcasing the basics of Backus-Naur
Format (BNF), a notation format that aids greatly in compiler and
sophisticated markup converter program. Next, I'll briefly go over the
scanner>parser compiler/converter methodology, Using Flex (Fast Lexx)
for the scanner and Bison (yacc superset) for the parser. The
scanner reads the source code or markup, converting it to tokens and
strings for the parser. The parser reads the source and outputs the
converts the tokens and strings into a program (if compiler) or a
different kind of markup (if a converter).

 NOTE: The preceding is a slight oversimplification because Flex and
 Bison actually create C code that compiles into the scanner and parser,
 but from a conceptual standpoint my preceding description is good
 enough.

I'll then show you a trivial Flex/Bison converter that takes a text
file whose paragraphs are separated by one or more blank lines, and
turns the file into HTML. This would have been much easier to do with a
20 line Python program, but it's a very simple way to demonstrate the
Bison/Flex scanner/parser method, and when things get complicated,
trying to do the compiler or converter with Python becomes a real mess.
I know, I've tried three times to write a Python converter program
as a straightforward Python program, while attempting to make my Stylz
authoring language. I tried it 3 times, and could never even complete a
subset of Stylz conversion..

My part of the presentation takes about an hour and I'll start right at
7PM.

Next comes David Billsbrough, who is working to create a compiler for a
Pascal subset. He'll also discuss not only Flex>Bison, but doing
it straight from Python or C or whatever, thus showcasing the
real theory behind compilation. David's presentation shows some heavy
theory and non-trivial constructions. I'm sure you'll have plenty of
questions for David.

If you ever wondered how people make computer languages and then
compilers, interpreters or converters for that language, this
presentation will shed plenty of light on the subject. And if you're
already a compiler making ninja, I think you'll enjoy David's part of
the presentation. A good time will be had by all.


[1]

Online via Jitsi:
https://meet.jit.si/golug

Mobile app:
https://jitsi.org/downloads/

Desktop app:
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases

-- 

Steve Litt
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator

Originally founded in Orlando, Florida, United States, GoLUG now
welcomes an international audience for online presentations and
discussions on Linux and adjacent technologies.

http://golug.org

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Re: Stammtisch Tuesday

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

der.hans via PLUG-discuss said on Wed, 22 Nov 2023 00:24:11 + (UTC)

>Am 21. Nov, 2023 schwätzte Vikriti D'Vita via PLUG-discuss so:
>
>moin moin Vikriti,
>
>Boulders has been a great host for us for years.
>
>I have been in several times each year since the pandemic started. I
>have worn a mask each and every time and it hasn't been an issue.
>
>Up until we started back for Stammtisch all of my visits were for take
>out. When I asked about Stammtisch returning they were happy to have us
>return.
>
>For Stammtisch I wear a mask until my food shows up. I demask to eat
>and ( once I remember to ) remask after I'm done eating.

Personally, I think the preceding is the perfect policy for 2023.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: Stammtisch Tuesday

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Tue, 21 Nov 2023 10:56:23 -0700

>Ok,
>
>I get it.  However I have also read that some medical professionals
>say the mask is only 2% effective while adding other issues.

Cmon Keith. I've read that Hillary was dating an alien from outer space
and Bill Clinton's girlfriend had three breasts. If you read from the
right sources, you can read any crazy viewpoint. On the Debian-User
mailing list, I once read that people who don't like systemd beat their
wives.

>
>Basically Covid is the Flu 

The preceding statement is biologically wrong, and from a practical
viewpoint, except in 1918 flu never killed the more than 1 million
Americans and more than 100 million worldwide that Covid did.

And speaking of the 1918 flu, people voluntarily donned masks because
they didn't have emergency rooms and ventilators. They were in charge
of their own health, so they made sure they paid for or created their
own masks.

>and has become a political issue.  

Exactly! If it were merely a health issue, there would be no pushback
on masking for an event with more than 10 people in the room.

>I could 
>write a book about all the stuff I've read.

Exactly. Start the book by explaining logic, math, biology, chemistry
and physics. Let people know how to compare what they read with the
principles of science. Help them understand the scientific method, and
how studies are done and validated, the importance of peer review. Tell
them a little about hoaxes, snake oil salesmen, and conflicts of
interest.

Oh, by the way, PHP was created by the devil to entice men to marry
three breasted alien women from the moon in order to sabotage pizza
with psychiatric pills.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: Trouble logging in after cloning ssd

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Jim via PLUG-discuss said on Sun, 12 Nov 2023 21:21:50 -0700

>Thanks Steve.  I tried dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sde status=progress.  It 
>finished.  I used Gparted to expand the 240GB  from the original sd to 
>fill the 1TB ssd it was copied to. I replaced the original ssd with
>the 1TB ssd, booted and it worked perfectly first time.  Thanks.  From
>now on I'll use dd to backup the ssd this beast boots from.

Nice!!!

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Parsing/compiler/interpreter discussions now on the GoLUG mailing list

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

The GoLUG mailing list is currently featuring a discussion of parsing,
compiler building, interpreter building, etc, with explorations into
Backus-Naur form, flex, bison, and a Python approach. Our next meeting
will be about these topics.

The GoLUG mailing list is available at
http://golug.org/mailman/listinfo/golug_golug.org

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Re: Trouble logging in after cloning ssd

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Jim via PLUG-discuss said on Sun, 12 Nov 2023 16:52:04 -0700

>I have a Dell Optiplex 7010 with 32GB RAM and kubuntu 22.04 installed
>on it.  I used clonezilla to make a copy of a 240 GB SSD onto a 1TB
>SSD. When I tried to boot from the copy, I got to the gui login
>screen.  I gave it my password and pressed enter. Nothing happened.  I
>tried ctrl alt f2 to get to the console and was able to log in there.
>I went back to the gui, but the screen was black with a mouse pointer
>which moved with the mouse.  I pressed ctrl alt backspace which took
>me back to the login screen.  I gave it my password and the gui screen
>stopped.  Like the first time, the mouse pointer moved as I moved the
>mouse.  I replaced the new ssd with the old one and everything booted
>normally.
>
>
>Does anyone have any idea what's going on?

I'm skeptical of Clonezilla. I would have used dd, rebooted, and if it
worked, use a rescue CD and enlarge the partition to accommodate the
whole of the SSD.

Unfortunately you're using a Ubuntu derived OS, which makes it like
pulling teeth to boot straight to CLI, and then run startx, which would
be my suggestion for getting more data about the problem. As a matter
of fact, the difficulty of doing this is what made me move from Ubuntu
to Debian. Of course within a few months Debian inserted systemd and I
moved to Void Linux :-)

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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GoLUG: Ten Lesser Known HTML Elements You Might Find Handy, 9/6/2023

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

On Wednesday, 9/6/2023, at 7:00 PM Eastern Daylight time, GoLUG's
monthly online meeting features ten lesser known HTML elements you
might find handy.

As you know, many HTML elements were added with HTML Version 5 (HTML5),
and many are handy either because they make the HTML more readable and
semantic, they make the HTML less wordy, they add new features, or
combinations of the above.

At this GoLUG meeting, Steve Litt will detail ten very handy less used
elements, as well as revealing some elements he considers useless
clunkers. Also discussed will be some handy element.class combinations.
Examples of styling of such combinations and elements in CSS

The presentation will begin with a very short discussion on Styles
Based Authoring: What is it, what is it good for, and how do you do it.
We'll then move into the elements themselves.

What: GoLUG: Ten Lesser Known HTML Elements You Might Find Handy
When: Wednesday, 9/6/2023 at 7:00 PM Eastern time
Where: https://meet.jit.si/golug
Duration: Ends at 9PM, with optional general bull session after.

GoLUG is Greater Orlando Linux User Group. It's been around since 2004,
and just before the Pandemic we switched from being a local LUG to
being a worldwide LUG with online Jitsi meetings.

If you'd like to join GoLUG's mailing list, just go to
http://golug.org/mailman/listinfo/golug_golug.org and fill out the
standard mailman form.

I hope to see you at the meeting and on our mailing list.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Publicity Coordinator
Greater Orlando Linux User Group (GOLUG)
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Rules of the road for HTML for the visually impaired

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

I'm writing this to Eric Oyen and anybody else interested in this...

How much does having  in the proper place help a blind
person? 

Same question for  and .

Does using  instead of  with a special class help
those using screen readers and/or Braille machines?

Same question with .

Eric, the reason I'm asking these questions is because in a 10/23/2015
PLUG email you mentioned that screen readers operate in a serial
fashion, and although there are some keyboard tricks to be able to skim
a page of information, its still serial. I'm hoping that in the 8 years
since you wrote this, screen readers have improved to the point where
they can read HTML code, parse into DOM, and be able to skip to 
or  or , etc. Has there been such and improvement? 

Also, do Braille machines, which *can* be scanned rather than addressed
serially, still cost $6,000.00?

The reason I'm asking all of this is I'm formulating an HTML course
for technologists, and naturally there's a section on HTML techniques
to help people with disabilities read the material. It seems to me that
many of the new HTML5 elements' main benefits are for those with screen
readers or Braille machines. Before I recommend use of these new tags,
I'd like to verify that they're really helpful to blind people or
people with other disabilities.

If there's anyone reading this email who has either Red/Green color
blindness, Monochrome color blindness, or some other kind of color
blindness, please clue me in on the rules of the road beyond not using
color solely to distinguish between types of text.

Thanks everyone.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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Web host discussion, 8/2/2023

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

Tonight (8/2/2023) at 7:00 Eastern Daylight time, GoLUG's monthly
online meeting features a short presentation by Steve Litt about his
home-grown Python based reminder/calendar system. Sy Ali will facilitate
an audience-wide discussion of the future of Linux and Linux User
Groups. Last but not least, David Billsbrough will give a very short
presentation on his coding philosophy. David has vast experience in
Python, Perl, Lua, Pascal, and several other languages.

If you'd like to join GoLUG's mailing list, just go to
http://golug.org/mailman/listinfo/golug_golug.org and fill out the
standard mailman form.

I hope to see you at the meeting and on our mailing list.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Publicity Coordinator
Greater Orlando Linux User Group (GOLUG)
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Re: Public raspberrypi https/mail/dns... on Cox Cable

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Sun, 09 Jul 2023 12:33:36 -0700

>Hi,
>
>Was looking at the raspberrypi this morning and it brought me to the 
>same place I have come to several times in the post.
>
>I have a business account with Cox Cable which allows me to run 1 or 
>more servers.  Last year I used an old laptop to make a web server
>using Ubuntu, Apache, MySQL, PHP, plus Postfix and dovecot, plus BIND.
> I'm a PHP dev so I felt pretty good about that achievement.
>
>I only have 1 public IP and everything on my network has a private IP.
> I used port forwarding to get the web server to work.
>
>Supposedly I can get multiple IPs from Cox.  On several occasions I've 
>asked the level 1 how I would configure 1 or more servers on the
>public IPs they can provide and they do not know how.

Lots of people have answered your question. If it turns out none of
those answers pans out, you can have a bunch of websites on one IP. You
can have index.html have a small bit of javascript to pull up a
different website depending on the requested URL. If you use nginx,
it's even easier because you simply configure nginx.conf to do that for
you: Much cleaner. I think Apache has something similar, and 20 years
ago I could tell you how to do it, but 20 years is a long time.

Also, if you're speaking of web servers, many shared hosting web
web hosts allow you multiple domain names.

>
>At some point in the future I'm thinking I'd like to create a publicly 
>facing group of PIs to run as a web server (or maybe more)... 1 for 
>HTTPS, 1 for DNS, 1 for mail, and 1 for MySQL (on a private IP ?).

If the public IP addresses are unchanging, you could use the techniques
I mention in my previous piece of response to direct it to the proper
IP address. And if you don't like the user seeing a bare IP address,
you can procure domain names for each IP address.


SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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Re: windows in a virtual machine

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss said on Tue, 4 Jul 2023 08:07:17 -0700

>Agreed, use Virtualbox, 

Why not Qemu?

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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I'm looking for a good shared hosting web host

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

For many years Troubleshooters.Com has been hosted by the spectacular
Futurequest in Orlando Florida. Sadly, because of hurricanes, the
pandemic, inflation, and insanely skyrocketing rents in Orlando,
they're going out of business within a few days, so I need a new web
host.

What I absolutely need:

* Reliability
* ssh access
* Already installed http, smtp, and firewall
* At least 500 MB of space
* Somewhere around 5 GB transfer per month
* A reasonably effective way to get tech support
* Ability to have Javascript in my web pages
* A way to quickly redirect my whole site, such as .htaccess.
I need this ability because I need to shut down before every
hurricane. To see an example of what I'd redirect to, see
http://troubleshooters.com/troubleshooters_during_ian.htm

What I'd also really like:

* A non-distopian Terms of Service
* Ability to run server side scripts (Perl etc)
* Ability to serve https
* Ability to serve multiple domain names with one contract
* Good mailing list software that doesn't throttle too much

I prioritize the preceding over price. Price is a secondary concern.

I used Bluehost in the past, but found them not good enough, so I'm
hoping for somebody better than Bluehost.

If anyone knows of any good web hosts, please let me know.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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Re: Phoenix is emerging as the city of the future

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Thu, 22 Jun 2023 13:52:06 -0700

>Yes water is an issue.  

This was my first thought upon reading the subject of your post. This
is a huge challenge.

> And when I think of data centers in Phoenix 
>during the summer... machines pumping out heat and A/C units needed to 
>cool them down... all that electricity.

I don't see this as a problem. Put solar arrays over every single
square foot of the building. Benefits:

1. Gives you electricity to run your air conditioners and servers.

2. Blocks the roof from the sun, reducing cooling needs.

Arizona has ample sunlight and lacks the hurricanes and tornadoes that
make solar less attractive in Florida and Oklahoma.

>
>I understand there is some movement to solar A/C units, which on it's 
>face seems like a solution...

Yep.

>
>In Chandler there is the Price Road Corridor which is set aside for
>tech companies.  I'd estimate half the area is vacant.  The tax payers
>votes to give tax dollars to companies willing to relocate workers
>here.  The vote took place may 15 years ago so maybe the money is all
>used up.

Personally I wish cities and states would spend money to encourage
home-grown small businesses to expend, instead of squandering it on tax
advantages for big companies that might stick around for a few years
and then jump ship for a state that offers even more tax advantages.

>
>I'm a freelance PHP developer so I called the City and asked about the 
>little guy.  Was not on their radar.

Yes, and that really sux!

>
>With all this chip activity in Phoenix, it makes me wonder about what 
>cottage industries are going to sprout out of all of this.  

I'd sure like to operate a food truck outside the factories.

> Especially 
>since there is resistance to returning to the office. AND I have read 
>there is a trend towards using 1099's because they can be rented for 
>just the period they are needed.

I've worked 1099 for more than half my life, and like it. Once
Obamacare kicked in in 2014, the health-insurance stumbling-block for
the self-employed mostly vanished.

>
>I personally would never want to work W2 with a boss and coworkers.. 

LOL, working self-employed I make half what an employee does, but I
don't have to jump through the hoops of a boss with half my
intelligence. If a customer becomes too argumentative, I just kick them
to the curb.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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Re: Windoze licenses, "Bring us your Poor" edition

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss said on Thu, 15 Jun 2023 18:22:08 -0700

>So interestingly enough, if/when I need windoze, I often buy from a
>place like THIS, as a method of getting Windoze officially licensed,
>flat cheap.
>
>It updates itself, never had a problem, and simply just works.

Are these legitimate licenses, or Far-East knockoffs?

Are the installation discs sufficient to install Win10 on a no-OS
computer (or a Linux computer with some extra space on the root drive)?

Can you install these as Qemu guests on my Linux computer?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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Re: Stammtisch at Boulders Tuesday

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

der.hans via PLUG-discuss said on Fri, 16 Jun 2023 05:37:44 + (UTC)

>moin moin,
>
>the FLOSS Stammtisch will be returning to Boulders on Southern this
>coming Tuesday at 19:00.
>
>Boulders on Southern, 1010 W Southern Ave, Mesa, Arizona

Mn, I sure am going to miss your Jitsi Stammtisches, but I do know
there's something special about meeting in person.

I hope you guys keep coming to GoLUG's Jitsi meetings so I can stay in
touch with you.

SteveT
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Re: General FOSS discussion, 6/7/2023

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi David,

If you're there tonight, please expound on all of this.

Thanks,

SteveT


David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss said on Wed, 7 Jun 2023 01:07:26 -0700

>FPC is being used by TMS Software in combination with pas2js to power
>their WEB Core technology (which is NOT FOSS). 
>
>WEB Core runs inside of the Delphi IDE (not FOSS), as well as Visual
>Studio Code (is FOSS), and allows you to write create some pretty
>stunning web-based applications that run within the web browser as
>client-side web apps.
>
>They’ve extended both pas2js as well as FPC to support some Object
>Pascal features that make a huge difference in simplifying writing
>code for web apps — enhancements that Embarcadero prefers to ignore
>adding to the Delphi platform.
>
>There are still a few features of Object Pascal that FPC does not
>support, including declaring var types anywhere, but that’s not much
>of a show-stopper. 
>
>The main things added to FPC to support web apps were the [async]
>attribute for methods, and the await method; together, they let you
>wait for an asynch process to complete before continuing with the code
>execution instead of having to explicitly write a closure or separate
>call-back method to process the code you want to follow the call.
>
>Embarcadero may have these features in their queue for some unnamed
>release a few years down the road, but because FPC and pas2js are both
>FOSS, TMS was able to update the language and set it up to generate js
>as it’s assembly language output. Then what TMS built on top of this
>is even more amazing.
>
>-David Schwartz
>
>
>
>
>> On Jun 7, 2023, at 12:09 AM, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss
>>  wrote:
>> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> Sorry for the late notice. GoLUG's mailing list is down so I couldn't
>> get input on a topic earlier.
>> 
>> Tonight at 7:00 Eastern Daylight time, 6/7/2023, GoLUG is having an
>> online discussion of anything involving Free and Open Source
>> Software (FOSS). The meeting location is https://meet.jit.si/golug .
>> This meeting is online only.
>> 
>> I'll speak for 5 or 10 minutes on Free Pascal. Others are welcome and
>> encouraged to speak on anything relating to FOSS.
>> 
>> I hope to see you at the meeting.
>> 
>> SteveT
>> 
>> Steve Litt 
>> Publicity Coordinator
>> Greater Orlando Linux User Group (GOLUG)
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>
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Re: The end of programming (not the replacement of programmers)

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

trent shipley via PLUG-discuss said on Tue, 6 Jun 2023 02:03:12 -0700

>*Pointy haired manager to programmer:*  We are thinking of replacing
>programming with AI.
>
>*Programmer:*  Don't you mean you plan to replace programmers with AI.
>
>*PHM:* No, replace programming itself.
>
>*P:*  How?  Why?
>
>*PHM: * Well, the Big, Poorly Understood AI produces really good
>results without actually writing code.
>
>*P:* Go on...
>
>*PHM:*  Plus it's cheap and really, really prolific and efficient.
>
>*P:* Sure, but its quality is awful!!
>
>*PHM:* So is the quality of your software, all software, really.
>
>*P.* Yeah, but the AI's quality is MUCH worse!
>
>*PHM:*  Yes, but the AI is so affordable, efficient, and prolific,
>that the wrongful death lawsuits will be just a cost of doing
>business, and we'll still come out ahead according to the actuaries.

LOL, this same discussion was PHM's excuse to Congress to raise the H1B
visa limits a decade or so ago.


SteveT

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Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
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Re: To Firewall or Not To Firewall

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

AZ Pete via PLUG-discuss said on Wed, 10 May 2023 18:14:30 -0700

>Hi All,

[snip]

>So, I'm asking the PLUG brain-trust, do I need to run a firewall on
>Linux when connecting to public networks (such as a hotel WiFi)?
>
>Any thoughts are appreciated.


A L W A Y S   F I R E W A L L ! ! !


SteveT

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FOSS bull session, 5/3/2023

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

On Wednesday, 5/3/2023 at 7:00 Eastern Daylight time,
GoLUG is having an online meeting which will be a Free and Open Source
Software (FOSS) bull session.. The meeting location is
https://meet.jit.si/golug . This meeting is online only.

Because Sylvia's and my triplets' birthday is May 4 and the kids are
all coming in from out of town, I probably won't be there. This happens
pretty much every May meeting.

Have fun at the meeting.

SteveT

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Greater Orlando Linux User Group (GOLUG)
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Re: GURPS Magic (OT, probably not FOSS)

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

trent shipley via PLUG-discuss said on Sun, 23 Apr 2023 07:48:08 -0700

>Why is Lua better than Julia or Scala (or other best language
>contenders like Haskell or Smalltalk?)

Word is out that Julia doesn't really work. I tried it, it was glitchy
as hell. I have no know knowledge of Scala.


SteveT

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Re: GURPS Magic (OT, probably not FOSS)

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

trent shipley via PLUG-discuss said on Sat, 22 Apr 2023 16:31:13 -0700


>I know I'd rather not work in the dying VB.Net language.  C# would
>therefore be the obvious choice.  I'd rather work in Scala, Python, or
>Java (in that order).  I know just enough Prolog to know it is almost
>directly applicable to this problem's backend, but I would spend
>forever getting competent with Prolog, and then no one else would be
>able to maintain it. F# guts plus a C# outer layer might be a
>reasonable compromise.

One more language to add to your list is Lua. A lot of game addons are
made in Lua because it plays nicer with C than most others. People
often use the Lua for rules and C for implementing those rules.

In my opinion Lua is the best *language* in the world, but because of
Python's spectacularly useful and reliable Standard Library, I use
Python.

SteveT

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Re: Stammtisch tonight

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

OK, I  just got in and will try to stay in.

SteveT


Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss said on Tue, 18 Apr 2023 21:24:21 -0400

>der.hans via PLUG-discuss said on Tue, 18 Apr 2023 18:30:17 + (UTC)
>
>>moin moin,
>>
>>Stammtisch is in BigBlueButton at 19:00 tonight.
>>
>>Can someone be there to open it up? I likely can't be there until
>>19:30 due to a kidling event.
>>
>>BBB room: https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/plu-yuk-7xx  
>
>I tried, but the preceding URL did different things on different
>attempts. It seems to want me to sign in with an account, and I don't
>have an account, but I signed into a previous Stammtish a month or so
>ago. One time it didn't ask me to sign in, but not knowing how twitchy
>it was, I signed out and tried with a different browser, and couldn't
>get back in.
>
>SteveT
>
>Steve Litt 
>Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
>http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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Re: Stammtisch tonight

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

der.hans via PLUG-discuss said on Tue, 18 Apr 2023 18:30:17 + (UTC)

>moin moin,
>
>Stammtisch is in BigBlueButton at 19:00 tonight.
>
>Can someone be there to open it up? I likely can't be there until 19:30
>due to a kidling event.
>
>BBB room: https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/plu-yuk-7xx

I tried, but the preceding URL did different things on different
attempts. It seems to want me to sign in with an account, and I don't
have an account, but I signed into a previous Stammtish a month or so
ago. One time it didn't ask me to sign in, but not knowing how twitchy
it was, I signed out and tried with a different browser, and couldn't
get back in.

SteveT

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Lightweight computing discussion tonight, 4/5/2023

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

Sorry for the late notice. Tonight at 7:00 Eastern Daylight time,
4/5/2023, GoLUG is having an online meeting where we'll discuss
lightweight computing. The meeting location is
https://meet.jit.si/golug . This meeting is online only.

Anyone with any lightweight computing practices is welcome to talk
about those practices. I plan on showcasing Openbox, dmenu and perhaps
UMENU. Although I don't plan to, I'm also qualified to speak on IceWM,
LXDE and ctwm. I'm hoping David Billsbrough will speak on WindowMaker.

We REALLY need people to speak on lightweight browsers, because much of
today's bloat is because of browsers. It would also be wonderful to
have some short presentations on some tiling window managers.

In preparation for the meeting, please see the following very short list
of window managers and desktop environments (WMDEs) sorted by RAM usage:

https://l3net.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/cmp-all4.png

If you want a deeper dive, see
http://troubleshooters.com/lpm/201406/201406.htm .

I hope to see you at the meeting.

SteveT

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I'm making Plain TeX documentation

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

I got to Stammtisch exceedingly late, after most of you were gone, so
you didn't hear this...

I'm creating documentation on Plain TeX, the typesetting and
programming system created by Donald Knuth in 1978 and updated through
the years. Plain TeX is the simpler and less popular ancestor of LaTeX,
which everyone's heard of. 

I prefer Plain TeX over LaTeX for all but the most challenging
documents, because it's has less instructions, is easier to understand,
and it's a better fit as the PDF creator format for an XML "write once,
read everywhere" language that I'm still trying to put together after
15 years of trying.

If any of you is interested in a quick and easy to author CLI
documentation language that separates content from styles until the
very last step, please let me know.

SteveT

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Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
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Re: Stammtisch tonight, help w/ coverage?

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

der.hans via PLUG-discuss said on Tue, 21 Mar 2023 19:59:31 + (UTC)

>moin moin,
>
>Stammtisch is tonight at 19:00.
>
>https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/plu-yuk-7xx
>
>I have a kidling activity that will run until at least 18:30, so I will
>probably be late.
>
>Can someone show up on time and make sure we've got someone in the
>room?

It's 8:45pm Eastern Daylight time, and I'm the only one here. 

SteveT

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Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
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Runit init system discussed at GoLUG, Wednesday, 3/1/2023, 7pm Eastern Standard

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

At the Wednesday, 3/1/2023 online GoLUG meeting, Steve Litt will
discuss the ins and outs of the runit init system. He'll cover the
benefits and drawbacks of runit, and how its features compare to
each of the several other Free Software init systems. And of
course, the definition of an init system and how it works will be
discussed.

Time: Wednesday, 3/1/2023 at 7PM Eastern Standard time

Location: https://meet.jit.si/golug

SteveT

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GoLUG Publicity Coordinator
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Re: SCaLE rides, etc

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

der.hans via PLUG-discuss said on Tue, 28 Feb 2023 05:08:01 + (UTC)

>Who else is driving and might have a seat?

I'll be riding shotgun right next to you in spirit der.hans. I lived in
LA 1980-1998, and went to most of the computer shows, computer clubs,
and programming language get-togethers. I was even a salesman at Dexpo
in 1987. The great computer awareness is just one of the things I miss
about LA. But I live almost 3000 miles away now, so I'll be with you
only in spirit.

Have lots of fun!

SteveT

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Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
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Re: How to restart ssh?

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

joe--- via PLUG-discuss said on Mon, 06 Feb 2023 17:05:57 -0700

>When I try to ssh or rsync from one of my
>linux units to another, most of the time it
>works, but sometimes I get this error message:
>
>ssh: connect to host 192.168.0.56 port 22: No route to host

What does ping say immediately after you get that message? Maybe ssh is
just telling the truth. I've had intermittent Internet connections
before.

SteveT

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Online website construction roundtable Wednesday, 2/1/2023, 7pm Eastern Standard

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

Wednesday, 2/1/2023, there will be an online website construction
roundtable. Who's at the roundtable? Everyone at the online meeting:
We're looking for all viewpoints, including but not limited to direct
editing of HTML, zen-coding editors, WYSIWYG editors, web construction
via wordprocessors like Abiword and Libreoffice, Bootstrap, Rails,
Django, Bottle, Flask, PHP, Wordpress, Facebook, Drupal, and all the
others.

This is at the monthly GoLUG meeting, so the URL is:

https://meet.jit.si/golug

Once again, it's a website construction roundtable consisting of all
participants, and it happens Wednesday, 2/1/2023, 7pm Eastern Standard
time. Hope to see you there.

SteveT

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Re: The Precisionists Inc

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

trent shipley via PLUG-discuss said on Wed, 25 Jan 2023 09:29:18 -0700

>(I'm autistic, bipolar, and attention deficit disordered).

When they gave my son a 12 question test for ADD, I (mentally) answered
8 of the 12 such that I'd have been diagnosed ADD if the test had been
given to me. A lot of people have said I have a short and glitchy
attention span.

I compensate by using outlines and todo lists for everything. I don't
read boring stuff unless it's absolutely necessary. I never read
textbooks because textbooks are designed specifically to be confusing,
thereby justifying the requirement of a teacher. For Dummies books and
Khan Academy are excellent learning resources that don't require an
undue amount of attention.

I have no idea whether the compensations I use would be helpful for
you, but just in case, I've mentioned them.

This paragraph is my opinion. Homo Sapiens is about 300,000 years old,
and for all but the last 10,000 years, ADD was a pro-survival trait. If
you're hunting an antelope and so is a lion, and a different tribe of
Homo Sapiens is in the area, you'd better be able to pay attention to
all three or you'd be somebody's lunch. Focusing on one thing at a time
was a bad idea until 10K years ago. I went to grade school in the
1950's, before they had drugs for ADD, and at least half the boys in
the class had behavior consistent with ADD. Teachers back then used
teaching and discipline techniques to compensate, and over the years
most of those boys found ways to compensate. This widespread modern
idea that ADD is some sort of horrible thing really pisses me off and I
take it personally.

Like I said, what I've said in this email might not apply to you, but
then again, it might be something to consider.

SteveT

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Proxmox, was TDD w/ Python, ch 9

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

trent shipley via PLUG-discuss said on Wed, 25 Jan 2023 09:21:46 -0700


>> I recently configured Proxmox on a old piece hardware and am glad I
>> did.
>>
>> Keith

Hi Keith,

How would you like to give a proxmox presentation at GoLUG?

Thanks,

SteveT

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Re: formatted USB to ext4

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Harold Hartley via PLUG-discuss said on Fri, 20 Jan 2023 20:55:17 -0700

>I don’t see how any type of format can make any usb stick last any
>longer than another type of format. 

Just speaking for myself, subjectively after quite a bit of experience,
formatting Ext4 makes the *data* last longer than the windows format. I
have no data or even suspicions regarding Ext4 extending the life of
the *hardware*.

SteveT

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Re: usb marked as read-only

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Eric Oyen via PLUG-discuss said on Mon, 16 Jan 2023 16:38:57 -0700

>For most things, I use USB sticks in
>a write once, read many configuration scenario.

Another thing I've found anecdotally that helps lengthen the USB stick
life, whether write once or write a bunch, is to format it as Ext4. I
don't think I ever had one go bad as Ext4, but I have with the windows
format they're shipped with. Of course, if you have to interact with
windows computers or devices expecting windows formated USB sticks, my
trick becomes useless.

SteveT

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GoLUG FOSS bull session Wednesday night 1/4/2023

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

Wednesday night, 1/4/2023, GoLUG is having a Free Software Bull
Session (FSBS) starting 7PM Eastern STANDARD time. A good time will be
had by all. Join us at https://meet.jit.si/golug Wednesday night.

Thanks,

SteveT
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator
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Re: McDonald's unveils first automated location

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

techli...@phpcoderusa.com said on Sat, 31 Dec 2022 18:40:37 -0700

>Steve,
>
>Why is our education system what it is today?

3 decades of cheaping out public education. Constant drumbeat of
anti-teacher assertions. Drugs and crime you'd expect from a lot
of (but not all) children of uneducated parents.

>
>Who moved all the businesses off shore?

The corporations.

>
>Why are illegal aliens able to take jobs away from American Citizens?

Because we de-facto permit it.

>Who is responsible for our immigration?

The government.

>Who is responsible for H1B visas?

Corporations pay politicians to get cheap labor, so the politicians
allow obscene numbers of H1-Bs, while older technologists find new work
as Walmart greeters. It's disgusting.

>
>How many trust fund babies are there in America?

According to
https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2021/10/27/3-common-misconceptions-about-trust-fund-kids/?sh=71909c447b64
, 1.3% of the population receives money in a trust fund, so that would
be about 4.3 million Americans. However, the article makes it clear
that only some of them receive big bucks.

I was really speaking of the ultra-rich. According to
https://www.thekickassentrepreneur.com/millionaires-in-america/#:~:text=And%20about%2034%2C507%20households%20have,or%20100%20million%20net%20worth.
there are 34,507 households with a net worth of $100 million. 

>Does every person need to graduate college?

No.

>I have been reading and hearing the trades are going unfilled, why is 
>that?

According to my next door neighbor who is a plumbing contractor, "kids
these days" don't want to get their hands dirty with physical work. And
he was offering $20/hr to start in Orlando, Florida, which is pretty
good. And as soon as they got the hang of it, he'd give them $25. But
nobody bit.

>
>Why does it cost upwards of $10k a semester to go to a AZ state 
>university?

Because college in most cases is a racket and is class warfare.

SteveT

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Re: McDonald's unveils first automated location

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

techli...@phpcoderusa.com said on Sat, 31 Dec 2022 10:54:21 -0700

>Here are my thoughts.  Nothing is free.. had an econ prof that used to 
>say there are no free lunches... it might be free to you but someone 
>paid for it.

True. But schooling for the citizenry is an investment. Educated people
pay more taxes and use less welfare, WIC and food stamps. An educated
citizenry means we can quickly ramp up production if a war or boycott
cuts our supply of foreign goods. A lot of our social and political
strife is due to the fact that a large swath of our citizenry is
constantly running uphill financially, and they're getting tired.

>
>I'm a high school dropout that dropped back in.
>
>Life is not easy.  Don't have money for school?  Go to work for a 
>college or university that gives free tuition for their employees or 
>maybe you can be like me and join the military and get the GI Bill.

We've been cheaping out K-12 for the last 3 or 4 decades. A huge
portion of our young people are completely unprepared for either
college or a modern job. We now have uneducated parents raising
uneducated kids. What could *possibly* go wrong?

>I'm glad our forefathers were willing to endure and did not quietly 
>quit.  There are stories they were out in the freezing cold fighting
>for our freedom while only having rags on their feet because some or
>maybe many did no have shoes.  Some lost their lives and some lost
>their fortunes.

And when they did that, I doubt they were fighting for future
generations to work in our current sweatshops that aren't a lot better
than the sweatshops of 1910.

[snip]

>I think as a society we have gotten soft.

You know who's gotten soft? The trust fund babies. The Fortune 500 CEOs
with their multimillion/year compensation. Those living on investments.

Believe me, the guys who nailed the roof onto my house in the burning
Florida sun are not soft. Nor are the homeless people who work 40 and
still can't find housing, or those who get laid off through no fault of
their own and are instantly homeless because the middle class is
constantly on the ragged edge of financial ruin.

>For me, in my youth, I was grateful for the minimum wage jobs I was
>able to work at.

Back then, a minimum wage job kept a roof over your head, and in many
cases your company gave you health insurance. And back then it was easy
to get a job exceeding the minimum wage. In a big city, you could find
factory row, knock on every door, and come home with a job that night.
A job whose only educational requirement was to be able to speak, read
and write, if that.

>My opinion is a job at McDonalds is not a career job and if you think
>it is your selling yourself short.  These are starter jobs and if one
>does not like minimum wage then go build some skills.

How? Today's construction trade pay is pulled down by the steady inflow
of immigrants, legal and illegal. Today's sales jobs are minimum wage,
so unless you're in the top 10 percent of sales people, that's where
you stay. You could be a server in a high class restaurant if you can
get the job, but you better stay young and good looking, especially if
you're female.

>If things become too east people will not rise to their potential.

Tell that to the trust fund babies.

>Again as a country we have become soft.

But a lot harder than in the 60's and early 70's, when a guy with an IQ
of 85 could get a factory job and feed his family. In the 60's, one of
my buddies lived in a rich suburb, and his father paid for him and his
brother to go to college. His father was a garbage collector.

I'll say it again: Our nation needs to invest in its citizens'
education if we don't want to become a third world country.

SteveT

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Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
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Re: McDonald's unveils first automated location

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Jim via PLUG-discuss said on Fri, 30 Dec 2022 18:14:49 -0700

>This doesn't surprise me a bit.  30 years ago I worked in some fast
>food places and I saw the unreliability of many people who work there.
>  The trend is toward more of the 'I don't have to work. Everybody
>owes me.' attitude. 

As opposed to corporations 'I don't have to pay, workers owe me.'

It's hard to take seriously a job that won't pay the rent.

On the other hand, my personal philosophy has always been "If I have to
spend my time here, I might as well be productive."

But there's a limit to my personal philosophy. In Atlanta one time I
stopped at a Checkers fast food place. The employer was so cheap there
were only two employes to make and sell the food, and they were so
rushed the dropped food, screwed up orders, and screwed up dollar
amounts. If my employer put that kind of pressure on me, I'd work at a
leisurely pace. Like a fellow Karate student said to me in 1974, "no
job is worth getting an ulcer over."

All these employers bitching about nobody willing to work would have
qualified prospects knocking down their doors if they paid a few bucks
more.

SteveT

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Re: Python project ideas

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

trent shipley via PLUG-discuss said on Fri, 30 Dec 2022 13:37:28 -0700

>/home/user/Projects/flask-tutorial
>├── flaskr/
>│   ├── __init__.py
>│   ├── db.py
>│   ├── schema.sql
>│   ├── auth.py
>│   ├── blog.py
>│   ├── templates/
>│   │   ├── base.html
>│   │   ├── auth/
>│   │   │   ├── login.html
>│   │   │   └── register.html
>│   │   └── blog/
>│   │   ├── create.html
>│   │   ├── index.html
>│   │   └── update.html
>│   └── static/
>│   └── style.css
>├── tests/
>│   ├── conftest.py
>│   ├── data.sql
>│   ├── test_factory.py
>│   ├── test_db.py
>│   ├── test_auth.py
>│   └── test_blog.py
>├── venv/
>├── setup.py
>└── MANIFEST.in

What a mess!

SteveT

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Re: McDonald's unveils first automated location

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Fri, 30 Dec 2022 07:31:06 -0700

>About 20 years ago I posted to a tech list that I thought H1B was a
>bad thing and I got roasted.

Self-hating programmers.

SteveT

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Re: dBase

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

George Toft via PLUG-discuss said on Thu, 29 Dec 2022 20:03:14 -0700

>I made a mistake in an application by using SQLite3.  I read about 
>SQLite's advantages over MySQL in that it has no network stack, so
>it's faster.  My testing showed that was kinda true - it was faster
>mostly, until multiple tasks started accessing the database
>concurrently.  

I think the original recommendation for SQLite was for applications
either local to the computer, or accessed by only a few and not every
few seconds. It was a way to gain the advantages of dBase when
using other languages. Obviously a heavily hit application should use a
real database.

SteveT

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Re: McDonald's unveils first automated location

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

George Toft via PLUG-discuss said on Thu, 29 Dec 2022 19:40:34 -0700

>You won't be replaced by a machine.  You will be replaced by someone 
>willing to do your job for $20-25 per hour.
>
>I've seen postings in a large company that stated they were paying
>Tata Consultancy $66K for H1B DBA's.  Tata takes 33%, which means the
>H1B Visa worker gets $44K, or $22/hr.

Yes. This really sucks.

SteveT

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Re: McDonald's unveils first automated location

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Harold Hartley via PLUG-discuss said on Wed, 28 Dec 2022 20:56:25 -0700

>The technology has been available for almost a decade and with the use
>of AI we will start seeing businesses starting to spend the money on
>it as a lot of businesses have openings for jobs but no one seems
>interested. 

You're right. People aren't interested in jobs that won't even put a
roof over their heads. And they're tired of working 80 hours for 40
hours pay.

SteveT

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Re: McDonald's unveils first automated location

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Wed, 28 Dec 2022 18:43:04 -0700


>Not sure anyone is suggesting they work for free.  I assume they will
>be highly paid as they are today.

A full time job that doesn't put a roof over your head, pay for basic
food, and if the job requires a car, pay for purchase and upkeep of the
car, isn't a job at all. It's basically working for free.

A minimum wage that guarantees homelessness unless one is financially
supported by somebody else is obscene. This is why I don't have a
problem with robots handling the orders: The jobs that are lost aren't
jobs at all.

For three or four decades now our nation has been cheaping out the
public education system, which is all most people can afford. We need
to improve public education so our citizens can justify a $15.00/hr or
$20/hr wage. We also need to give, for free, specialized education to
make them valuable workers.

SteveT

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Re: McDonald's unveils first automated location

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Wed, 28 Dec 2022 07:22:37 -0700

>Thought you might find this interesting.
>
>https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/mcdonalds-unveils-first-automated-location-social-media-worried-will-cut-millions-jobs

Sounds like a good idea, but I pay with cash, and I don't like putting
my twenty dollar bill in a machine, with no witnesses, and taking the
chance that the machine will simply eat my bill, with no audit trail.

SteveT

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Re: Lazarus

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

On Mon, 2022-12-26 at 00:13 +, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> 
> There are two popular Delphi clones: Lazarus and FreePascal. 

Lazarus is the equivalent of Delphi. FreePascal is the equivalent of Turbo 
Pascal.

SteveT



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Screen painter

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Offlist, Keith Smith and I discussed creating a Rapid Application
Development (RAD) system. The most needed thing, and the lowest hanging
fruit in a RAD system is a screen painter.

I personally don't have the skills to create a drag, drop and move
screen painter, but I *do* have the skills to create a system to
convert a data file with field locations, types, lengths, and
table/column meanings into source code to create a subrouting to
operate a screen.

I had suggested defining the array of fields in JSON, but on further
thought that's a bad idea, because no human should be forced to write
JSON.

While re-programming my reminder program, I came up with an excellent
definition format easily written and read by a human. Here's an example
from my reminder program reminder definition file:

===
key=medicare_open_enrollment_ends
str=Medicare Enrollment ends 12/7/year
dom_due=7
m_due=12
displaydays=0,1,2,3,4,5,7,10,15

key=medicare_open_enrollment_start
str=Start Medicare Enrollment 10/15/year
dom_due=17
m_due=10
displaydays=0,1,2,3,4
===

It's nothing but a series of key/value pairs, separated by an equal
sign, to define events needing reminding. All keys must be lower case to
make everything easier to remember. Lines beginning with a pound sign,
or spaces then a pound sign, are ignored, as are blank lines, so you can
have all the comments and whitespace you want.

The trick is this: It's a 2 level structure, with the first level being
an array of events (each event is specified by key 'key'), with the
second level being information about an event. A very simple program
parses this into in-memory data structures: Basically, you just make
your break logic happen every time the key of a line is 'key'.

The same thing could be done with a screen painter, where the first
level key is 'field', and second level keys are things like 'x', 'y',
'enabled', 'type', 'dbtable', 'dbfield', 'onenter', 'onchange',
'onexit', 'bgcolor', 'fgcolor', etc. A well curated set of defaults
could make it quick and easy to whip out a screen in 20 minutes, while
retaining the option to refine that screen later.

Similarly, one could create a menu painter, a report painter, and a
database painter.

This wouldn't be as sexy as Delphi, Visual Studio, Clarion or
Powerbuilder, but it could be accomplished by mere mortals in a timely,
bug-free manner. And it would almost instantly be quicker and easier
for its users than Python bottle/flask/django or PyTk apps.

SteveT

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Re: 4-year Programing and Analytics degree from Mesa CC

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss said on Sun, 25 Dec 2022 07:20:47 +
(UTC)

> Steve does a nice job of defending the status quo, 

Thank you!

> but I’m eager to
> move beyond that.

[snip]

> First, let me say that I’ve made the majority of my income since 1997
> as a Delphi developer. It did get quite a bit of traction between 1999
> and 2007. I happen to think it’s the most productive coding platform
> on the market today, 

I think Clarion might give Delphi a run for the money, but I've dabbled
in Delphi and Lazarus enough to agree that they're very productive,
ESPECIALLY after you've really gotten to know them, which I haven't.

However, like Unix and Clarion before it, IMHO Delphi shot itself in
the foot by charging too much. IIRC Delphi started out being affordable
for the average kitchen table programmer, resulting in a lot of people
knowing how to do it. But like Unix and Clarion, they raised their
prices to the point where a kitchen table programmer couldn't afford
it, and it became strictly glass house. Which meant a scarcity of
people who could do Delphi, which inhibited its growth.

The first Lazarus free software Delphi Clone came in 2001, a little too
late.

Nothing in my preceding three paragraphs should be inferred to mean
that Delphi isn't super productive. Those paragraphs are merely a
possible explanation why Delphi became an also-ran, while C, C++, Java
and Python continue to be often used languages.


> The problem is that hardly anybody is using Dephi for NEW product
> development.

This isn't surprising given the acquisition price and annual
subscription. A developer can experiment with Python, Node, React, Vue,
and PHP for free, and after gaining prowess get right into a high
paying job. If the language doesn't work out for him or her, it's just
a few hours lost. Contrast this with Delphi, whose least sophisticated
offering is $1279 first year, $399 every year after. If it continued to
be priced the way Philippe Kahn priced things, Delphi just might
have ruled the world.

> https://bestkeywordmixer.com/ 
> 
> I wonder how long it would take to build that in any “full-stack” web
> programming platform. Less than an hour?
> 
> I used Delphi + WebCore and I didn’t write a single line of javascript
> — just ObjectPacal. And it’s not much code. 

A real benefit to this type of thing is quickly coding up a prototype
that can actually evolve into the real thing after forming a basis for
discussion about specifications.

> (BTW, WebCore also runs
> within the free VS Code IDE, so you don’t even need Delphi. But it
> still uses ObjectPascal.)

Will it work with FreePascal?

> I’m tired of writing lines of code to describe what I want my software
> to do. I want somthing more visual and less prone to error, that
> requires less tacit knowledge of dozens of libraries and the latest
> functions and calling parameters, and is easier to test. I just want
> to be able to draw a diagram and say, “do this…” and it knows how. 

Me too.

How would you like to give a Lazarus presentation at one of online
GoLUG meetings?

SteveT

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Re: 4-year Programing and Analytics degree from Mesa CC

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss said on Sat, 24 Dec 2022 17:51:44 +
(UTC)


>But what have we done for ourselves? We
>still use imperative languages to write code line-by-line, they are
>subject to the same types of errors, debugging works the same way
>(well, we didn’t have debuggers until the late 80’s), automated
>testing is almost non-existent. 
>
>It’s just insane to me how LITTLE we’ve done to improve the ability to
>do this thing we call “programming”. Maybe it’s just … job security? :o
>
>-David Schwartz

There's a different way to look at the phenomenon you mention. Maybe we
still use imperative languages because they've stood the test of time.
Declarative language Prolog was available since the 1980's, but it
gained no traction, perhaps because it just didn't easily do what
needed to be done. The functional languages are just now re-emerging
after decades of being ignored, perhaps because the imperative
languages did a better job in more use cases. And now Object Oriented
Programming has mostly replaced structural programming, although I'm
not sure that's a good thing in the majority of cases.

Most modern Linux distros package Lazarus, a semi-clone of the ancient
Borland Delphi, a primarily drag-and-drop GUI/Database programming
method. For whatever reason, neither Delphi nor Lazarus ever gained
critical mass. Others in this same genre were Powerbuilder and Clarion,
both significant in the 1990's but faded into obscurity for some
reason. Meanwhile, C keeps rolling on, as does Python. They stood the
test of time. What Python can't do, C can, and what's too much work in
C, Python with its standard libraries can easily accomplish.

Another thing: Imperative programming *has* progressed, starting with
DBASE and its built in database connectivity, its clones Clipper and
Fox. Then PHP, with built-in web-dev. In 1995 we did web with CGI
programming, today not.

Then there's this: The "easier" programming paradigms got pushed onto
the (intelligent) user. Anybody with the right software can create a
dashboard today. Wordpress and Facebook enable completely non-technical
people to make their own web page. These don't require programmers, so
programmers spend their time with the declarative languages the
non-techs can't do.

One final thing: With the exception of the spectacular Clarion, most of
the "better ways to program" created more problems than they solved.
Powerbuilder GPFed/Bluescreened at the drop of a hat and often was
intermittent. Delphi was nice but required almost as much knowledge as
learning a programming language, plus it used Pascal long after C had
eclipsed Pascal. Inclusion of GTk in a program means tens of warnings
while running the program, and it's extremely complicated. Qt isn't
much better. Tcl/Tk was billed as the easiest way to make GUI, but Tcl
is a trash language not having any sort of subroutines. Zope was
promised to completely separate logic from content to produce a logical
and complete route to a high quality, consistent website, but it turned
out to have too high a learning curve. Same with Drupal. Node.js was
supposed to be revolutionary. I tried it: Working with any Node.js
application of any complexity resembles turning a 50 foot garden hose
inside out.

About 6 months ago, Keith Smith and I had a detailed offlist discussion
about creating a truly easy way to quickly whip together an
application, but we went on to other things because a truly workable
Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool is incredibly difficult to
design and create. Don't get me wrong: Cobbling together a RAD
requiring an incredibly broad knowledge of the RAD's behavior and API
is easy, but making it easy to use is a monumental task.

Every year five new languages come out, with fanboiz for each gushing
how it's a game changer. I dabbled with GoLang recently, and to do
anything remarkable you need to learn such a broad swath of Go that it
makes Java look as narrow as C. Go, Haskell, Rust, Node, React, Vue, and
dozens more new languages, and yet C, C++, Python and Java continue to
rule the roost. That's very telling. 

SteveT

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Re: 4-year Programing and Analytics degree from Mesa CC

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Fri, 23 Dec 2022 08:33:55 -0700

>In 1978 the UofA was charging $275 a semester.

Was that per credit hour, per class, or for all classes taken in a
semester? If the latter, it was a darned good deal, because in Chicago
at least, rent was about $190/month, so this was a lot less than rent
would have been. In other words, if you could afford rent, you probably
could have afforded $275/semester.

1982-1989 I took classes at Santa Monica Community College (SMC) in
Santa Monica, California. I paid $20/class-semester. Yeah, that's right,
somebody could have given up cigarettes or coffee or booze and afforded
to get educated. Sounds like communism, right? There was a method to
California's madness. At SMC I learned programming and within 2 years
tripled my income, which means I probably paid six times more state
taxes than I had before going to SMC. Both California and I laughed all
the way to the bank. There was a single mother in my Microprocessors
class who was on welfare. She got her 2 year degree, and instead of
being on welfare she made a lot of money, so the state stopped paying
for her and started getting a lot of money from her. She, her child,
and California laughed all the way to the bank.

The beauty of community colleges is the classes are taught be real
professionals who do by day and teach by night. You learn the real
deal, not theory.

This is not to day that 4 year colleges are *completely* useless. For
those few students who want to do a deep dive into theory and can use
such theory to excel. I'd put Trent, who already has a math degree, in
this category of students. Armed with his math knowledge, he could
program things I never could. Also, his math knowledge would make him
great with functional programming.

As for myself, even though I got a 4 year degree in Electrical
Engineering right out of high school, I owe my success to Santa Monica
Community College, that cost me $20/class-semester.

SteveT

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Re: BASH textbook for kids

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

trent shipley via PLUG-discuss said on Thu, 22 Dec 2022 07:26:18 -0700

>Python is a great first language, and there is no shortage of beginning
>Python books aimed at young beginners. I've never read a juvenalia
>programming book, except maybe pre-Visual Basic BASIC with the line
>numbers and goto-s,

In the 21st century, anyone who teaches a child goto-s, or even fails
to strongly criticize them to the child, should be shot at dawn.

The only tolerable uses for goto are:

1) Assembly language, but who uses that today? And modern assemblers
   have JSR (Jump to Subroutine) and RET (Return from subroutine), so
   even that is questionable.

2) Jump to an abort subroutine, but even this is ill advised.

3) Break out of a multiply nested loop, but it's much better to
   construct each loop to do the right thing.

I haven't used a goto since maybe 1992 (assembler), and I'm proud of
that.

SteveT

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Re: Skills for the future

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

techli...@phpcoderusa.com said on Mon, 12 Dec 2022 18:44:10 -0700

>It's funny how some people talk about the no payroll tax states and
>then you find out they make it up with property tax.

Illinois has obscenely high property taxes, a fairly high state income
tax, and very high sales taxes. IMHO it's not a good place for a big
spender to live unless you make a lot of money (which is easier in
Chicago than most places). But it's flat and the cities are fairly
bicycle friendly, so if you want to save $20K/year of post-tax income,
Illinois is a pretty darn economical place to live. The wage scale
there is pretty high, and if you can get in a union, you've got it
made. Of course people our age are too old to get in a union.

I lived in Chicago my first 30 years, which is how I know this stuff.

SteveT

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Re: Skills for the future

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Mon, 12 Dec 2022 17:55:05 -0700

>I agree, with one addition.  In the 70's and 80's my pay lagged 20% to 
>30% behind inflation. What might have been decent pay was mediocre...

I think that's because you were a kid in the 1970's, probably with less
professional jobs because of your age. My memory is I kept up with
inflation both as a corrosion engineer and as an audio technician,
although of course the move to audio technician came with a serious pay
cut (and a much better life and career path).

One thing though: Throughout most of the 1970's I had no car, hence no
gasoline and no purchasing of a car. Gas, oil, maintenance, repairs,
insurance, traffic tickets, and amortized purchase price add up to a
heck of a lot.

If you move to a city with great public transportation like Chicago,
give up your car, and use an old, beat up bicycle for shopping trips, I
think you can save $20K of post-tax income yearly, and do a lot to
shield yourself from the worst of inflation.

Chicago has pretty high rents (and a good job market), so you might
want to move to a less expensive city. In Urbana Illinois you can buy a
decent house for $100-$150K, it's small and flat so you can easily
ride your bicycle all over the place. You're near University of
Illinois, so healthcare is plentiful. Don't pay more than $150K for a
house because Illinois has obscenely high property taxes. 

SteveT

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CORRECTION: GoLUG meeting topic

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

The correct topic for the GoLUG meeting is "Introduction to Go
Language". Sorry for the error in the subject of the initial
announcement.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator
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GoLUG meeting features Python threads and thread discussion

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Hi all,

The Wednesday, December 7, 2022 GoLUG start at 7pm Eastern Standard
time. It will be at https://meet.jit.si/golug. Full information is at
http://golug.info.

Come Join us on December 7th, for an introductory course to Go. No
experience required, we'll cover some of the basics of Go syntax, learn
how to write some very simple basic programs ending with a
demonstration of a fully functional opinionated code base for a RESTFul
service written in Go. If you wish to follow along, please make sure
you have VSCode and Go installed ( https://go.dev/doc/install). Ensure
that you have GOROOT, GOPATH and your $PATH have all been updated in
order to at least be able to run: `go version` from the command line.

NOTE: After installing Go, first try running `go version` because on
some distros it runs without GOROOT or GOPATH. The first ten minutes
will be devoted to setting GOROOT and GOPATH, so please be sure to be
in this Jitsi meeting by 7PM Eastern Standard Time sharp.

SteveT

Steve Litt
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator

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Re: Software Portfolio

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss said on Thu, 01 Dec 2022 19:48:59 +
(UTC)


>I’ve met a few folks who like plaing with open-source projects, but
>none of them ever said they thought it made a difference in terms of
>getting a job. 

This is an anecdote, so take it for what it's worth: A friend of mine
is a developer supreme: He thoroughly understands algorithms, data
structures and protocols at a deep level. He made a free software smart
phone app and maintained it for his users. A couple years later
WhatsApp noticed it, noticed him, invited him to California, hired him,
and when Facebook bought WhatsApp he got a bonus at least if not more
than sufficient for him to buy a Tesla.

SteveT

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Re: Software Portfolio

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

trent shipley via PLUG-discuss said on Tue, 29 Nov 2022 20:50:30 -0700

>(Lead buried in last two or three paragraphs.)

>
>1.  I'm autistic, so I can't interview worth a damn.

[snip]

>2.b.  There is a tremendous shortage of software writers, but no one is
>going to be studpid enough to hire one until they have completed an
>accredited degree, done an internship, done a bootcamp, and maybe
>gotten some certs.

I don't think 2.b is true. I busted into programming without an IT
degree or certs. A lot of others I knew did the same thing. About 6
years ago three successful developers got on stage and described how
they'd made it. In all three cases, it boiled down to "fake it til you
make it." Of course, one needs talent to follow that path. I think of a
degree as a crutch for those who have little talent.

Now if you can't interview worth a damn, that does complicate the
situation. I have no idea what it's like to be autistic. If you're
capable of portraying a cool, calm confidence that of course you can do
what they're asking you to do, then you can follow the "fake it til you
make it" route, assuming you have knowledge and skills.

I'd advise you to seek employment (or contract work) with smaller
companies, where you can speak directly to those who make the final
hiring decision.

I think your idea of a publically accessible software portfolio is an
outstanding idea, given your situation. You say you love Scala. By all
means author your portfolio software in Scala.

One last thing: Be careful using negative words like "studpid enough to
hire".

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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Re: What is a full-stack PHP developer

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Fri, 25 Nov 2022 14:36:34 -0700

>Hi,
>
>I have read that to be qualified as a full-stack developer, one must 
>know how to troubleshoot the entire stack.
>
>Where are the boundaries.  

One man's opinion: "Full-stack developer" is a buzzword with a thousand
different meanings. My advice, call yourself a "full-stack developer"
to baffle em with your buzzwords, and let anyone who disagrees try to
prove you wrong.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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Re: Unable to access Proxmox via browser

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Fri, 18 Nov 2022 18:22:12 -0700

>Hi,
>
>Was able to install Proxmox.
>
>- Can log into Proxmox directly.
>- Can ssh from my desktop into the Proxmox machine.
>- Can Not access via Chrome and FireFox
>
>Firefox says :
>
>Unable to connect
>
>An error occurred during a connection to 192.168.1.5.

Do you have your port right? Is Proxmox really on port 80?

SteveT
SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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Re: How do I take a partial screenshot in KDE?

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Aaron Jones via PLUG-discuss said on Thu, 17 Nov 2022 12:57:27 -0700

>scrot -s

Very, very nice! I wish you'd told me about scrot -s 20 years ago :-)

Anyway, if you're running this command from a terminal but want to
capture something behind the terminal, do the following before
switching to the correct window or workspace:

sleep 3; scrot -s

SteveT
SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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Re: Proxmox

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Wed, 16 Nov 2022 07:55:46 -0700

>
>I am thinking of loading Proxmox on this computer and just moving 
>forward.
>
>I watched a video on Proxmox and it looks simple enough.

Hi Keith,

When you've installed Proxmox, please tell us all about the process,
the landmines, the secrets, and how well it fits our needs. This will
be great information.


SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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Re: VirtualBox Update 11/15/22

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

techli...@phpcoderusa.com said on Wed, 16 Nov 2022 07:23:45 -0700

>any suggestions
>on a distro to try for my desktop for testing VirtualBox only?

Try Void Linux. It's very different from all the Debian-derived distros
you've used so far, so it might produce different results or deliver
different insights.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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Re: VirtualBox Update 11/15/22

[Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss]

Bob Elzer via PLUG-discuss said on Tue, 15 Nov 2022 21:30:14 -0700


>If you're local IP address was 192, where did the 10 address come from?

If VirtualBox is anything like Qemu, the 10 is because the default
behavior is to NAT the VM guest to 10.whatever. In Qemu this behavior
can be changed, as documented at
http://troubleshooters.com/linux/qemu/nobs.htm . I think it's probable
you can do the same thing with VirtualBox.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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