Tag: tech

The return of the FreeBSD desktop

I have a confession to make: I haven’t used FreeBSD as a desktop OS for years. The reason is twofold:

  1. Since 2005, my work has required me to run Linux (Debian and Ubuntu at Linpro, RedHat at the University of Oslo) and, briefly, Windows at Kongsberg Maritime. I eventually stopped using stationary computers, resorting instead to a (company-provided) laptop running either Ubuntu, or Windows with Ubuntu in VirtualBox.
  2. More importantly, around the time I started at Linpro, it became increasingly difficult to maintain a FreeBSD desktop. The modularization of X.org and the increasing complexity of desktop environments mean that the number of packages required for a complete desktop system has grown from a bit over 100 to well over 600 (in addition to the kernel and base operating system, which is monolithic in FreeBSD). The FreeBSD ports system does not scale well, and the lack of a proper binary update procedure makes it almost impossible to keep that many packages up-to-date.

This is about to change. Continue reading “The return of the FreeBSD desktop”

An old Planet bug resurfaces

So, I see that Planet still hasn’t fixed the bug I pointed out (and provided a patch for) in 2008. Specifically, it sorts entries by “updated” rather “published”. As a consequence, some years-old blog posts I recently re-tagged showed up as new on Planet NUUG.

Here’s the patch, although I have no idea whether it still applies:

--- __init__.py.orig    2006-07-27 02:01:54.000000000 +0200
+++ __init__.py 2008-01-28 11:38:02.000000000 +0100
@@ -924,7 +924,7 @@
         added in previous updates and don't creep into the next one.
         """
 
-        for other_key in ("updated", "modified", "published", "issued", "created"):
+        for other_key in ("published", "issued", "created", "updated", "modified"):
             if self.has_key(other_key):
                 date = self.get_as_date(other_key)
                 break

Bensinpriser

Petter Reinholdtsen skrev nylig om Bitfactorys bensinpris-app (iOS, Android) og mangelen på dokumentasjon av protokollen den bruker for å laste ned priser fra databasen deres.

Jeg har lenge lurt på hvorfor ikke Forbrukerombudet pålegger stasjoner å rapportere inn prisene slik at forbrukere kan sammenligne før de velger hvor de skal fylle. Det kan hende at de mener at det er nok konkurranse i markedet, eller at det ville være en urimelig kostnad. Sistnevnte er imidlertid ikke et holdbart argument iom. at alt er automatisert; det ville aldri være snakk om manuell innrapportering. Continue reading “Bensinpriser”

You are always the product

I just discovered that Amazon allows anyone to “follow” a Kindle user, and there is no way to turn that feature off or to block followers. They say your followers can only see notes that you explicitly make public, but they don’t say anything about whether they can see your book list, which is the union of books you’ve bought, books you’ve reviewed and books on your wish lists—and not just eBooks, but paper books as well. Wish lists can be made private, but the FAQ doesn’t say whether that means they don’t appear in my book list on kindle.amazon.com.

This makes me extremely uncomfortable. Continue reading “You are always the product”