Rubenerd

Email is one of those things that we’ve been using for decades, yet companies that exist to notify us of issues continue to get the basics wrong. I’m not judging them for this; I still burn toast despite using toasters for my entire adult life. But like people who see the mess on my vintage computer table, or my fashion choices, it’s an area for improvement.

Here’s the subject line for an email sent by an upstream network provider:

Provider service $SERVICE-NAME (or one of its comp…)

What do you make of that?

I saw that flash up on my work phone while I was on-call, so I swiped to open it. It was a good thing I did; the rest of the gigantic subject line notified us of reduced redundancy on a circuit. That’s something we need to know.

Alert emails these days will almost certainly be read on a phone first, so it’s important to have a succinct subject that doesn’t throw critical details to the Beast of Truncation. Here are some examples of what I’d rather see:

(NOTICE/ALERT/CRITICAL/OFFLINE): $SERVICE

I’m sure it also strikes many of you as ironic that someone as verbose and nonsensical as me would chide someone for not being succinct in an email subject line. To which I have two retorts: first, I’m not a network operator imparting important and critical information; and second, I want some toast.

I don’t monitor this site’s Twitter feed, but I saw a few retweets from people I follow about my recent critique about FreeBSD not being PC-native. I loved these!

Vermaden:

You may as well say that #Linux is native to #Finland so it works better there - as well as #BSD is native to #USA so it works better there :)

And Trix Farrar:

Linux is for people that want their PC to run *NIX. FreeBSD is for people that want *NIX to run on their PC.

I feel for the people who work at VMware.

The hypervisor company has spent so much of its history being moved around the plate like that proverbial brussels sprout; something thought to be nutritious and tasty only to be regretted and shifted to the next person, or washed up into the disposal. It’s been bought, its owner bought, merged, spun off, divested entirely, and bought again, with all the expected layoffs and uncertainty.

But even with all that, being bought by Broadcom wasn’t on my bingo card, despite having excellent alliteration. It didn’t think it made much sense, though Patrick Kennedy added some context at Serve The Home:

The company purchased CA Technologies and Symantec’s enterprise security business now building a software unit that VMware will fit into.

I hope the remaining people there finally get some job security, but for how long this phase of VMware’s life will last is anyone’s guess.

(Full disclosure: I work at a company that produces a hypervisor stack that somewhat competes with VMware, though we also run it internally for certain clients).

Last week Clara’s and my stick-mounted Miele Swing H1 vacuum cleaner ran out of bags. We tossed up ordering some more in, or using it as an excuse to buy a replacement. My family always had big Miele machines that worked well, but this smaller unit was loud and awkward to use, with mediocre suction power. As a result, we didn’t use it much, as became evident based on the amount of dust trapped in our air purifiers.

We had a Dyson V8 Pet in our last share house which worked well, so I did some research into similar stick vacuums. A few stores here have demo units, and I was most impressed with a few Samsung and LG models. Clara and I adore our new LG fridge, so we ended up with the handsome red A9.

The A9 sits at the budget end of LG’s stick vacuum range, which places it in Dyson price territory. But the build quality is noticeably better; the tolerances between parts is much tighter, with more rigidity when held at weird angles, such as cleaning an air vent. The nozzles also pivot and move smoother than any I’ve used before, and the red colour means it runs faster than grey units (cough).

Pulling all the parts out of the box felt a bit overwhelming, but everything fits together without looking at the instructions… much. Make sure you triple check the mountain of cardboard lest you throw away an attachment. I was happy to see it even came with spare battery pack.

Even on the Normal setting, the suction power feels stronger than the Dyson, and an order of magnitude better than the traditional Miele. Turbo mode lifts our rugs clean off the floor, while still being quieter. The added power means you’re not going over the same spot multiple times, which adds up to save a ton of time.

The A9 comes with two motorized nozzles for hard floors and multi-surface, along with crevice, combination, mattress, and hard dirt nozzles. The first two attach to the freestanding charging dock which doesn’t need to be attached to the wall, which is great for renters. It even supports charging both batteries concurrently and… AND… at the same time. My dad would be proud that I’m invoking one of his lines, I’m sure.

Even with technical features aside, I love the convenience of using this thing. I’m not a fan of fitted carpet on account of it hiding and trapping so much crud, but our current rental has it everywhere. This picks up stuff I can’t even see, including on a patch of floor I went over with the Miele. But most importantly, I can whip it out to clean up a spill and have it back in the dock faster than you can shake a stick [vacuum cleaner] at.

My only quibbles are needing to empty the canister, though that will save us on bags in the long run. I think I also preferred the trigger on the Dyson over the LG’s static power button, because I could have it spin down while walking between rooms. It could go even faster if the handle was also red (cough).

I won’t pretend that an AU $800 appliance is an essential, but if you’ve got the savings to plonk down for it, you could buy something far more frivolous. This is the best vacuum cleaner I’ve ever owned and used.

The Register ran a story about FreeBSD 13.1, which contained a thought-provoking section about the practical differences between Linux and FreeBSD. Rather than distilling each into a set of features, or treating it like another Linux distro, the author Liam Proven makes a broader case based on their history:

The other thing to point out is a more subtle difference, and one we’ve found that BSD types don’t really get. Linux is a native PC OS: it was first developed on x86 PCs, and only later ported to other architectures. It feels at home on a PC. It uses standard PC partition types, it happily co-exists with other OSes, it uses native screen resolutions and control keys and other things as a matter of course.

FreeBSD, like the other BSDs, is different. It is not native to the PC, and while it runs fine, it expects a substantial primary partition to itself, inside which it builds its own partitioning system. Its console runs in plain VGA mode, and simple things like Ctrl-left and Ctrl-right don’t work to edit the command line.

I see where he’s coming from, though it’s worth pointing out:

• FreeBSD and NetBSD also first started on the PC via 386BSD, as he writes later. Like Linux, it runs natively on i386/amd64, ARM, and other architectures. I think he means that BSD was ported, as opposed to having been written on the PC. I’m willing to chalk this up to semantics.

• It’s reasonable to expect a primary OS to use an entire drive, unless you want to dual-boot. FreeBSD also “happily co-exists with other OSs” with a boot loader (it’s how I started using it). FreeBSD also has kernel PV drivers for running in Xen guests, and can run as a Xen and bhyve hypervisor.

• FreeBSD also installs to a standard PC partition, or it couldn’t boot. Primary partitions can also replace BSD slices if you prefer, though the former limit you just as they do with Linux and DOS. Linux equally has LUKS, btrfs, and OpenZFS (ne. ZFS on Linux) that have their own datasets in lieu of standard partitions. These distinctions are moot in the world of UEFI and GPT.

• FreeBSD booted with EFI usually uses the full screen resolution. VESA can be configured for other systems, otherwise it falls back to PC native VGA. As another example, Solaris usually booted with full screen resolution by default, and that OS definitely didn’t start on Intel!

But let’s get to the good stuff. Niggling technical issues aside, does Linux feel like you’re using a PC OS, and does FreeBSD make your machine feel more like a big iron UNIX box from back in the day? Liam writes:

When you run Linux on a non-PC machine, such as a Raspberry Pi, it makes the computer act a bit like a PC. When you run FreeBSD on a PC, it makes a PC act a bit more like a Sun workstation or a DEC minicomputer.

I’ll admit, I hadn’t thought about it that explicitly before. I’ve written before about how I think BSD is more Unix-like than Linux, which certain Hacker News readers lambasted me for in the past. But it’s true; as Linux moves further away (with systemd the prototypical example), the BSDs have remained closer to the “Unix Philosophy”. It’s up to you whether you think that makes them inflexible, or if they’ve avoided reinventing Unix poorly, as Henry Spencer warned.

FreeBSD itself answered this question many years ago on its art page, with banners like the one below. Why settle for a PC OS like Linux, when you can have a workstation?

I take the point that Linux, being written for and tightly coupled to the PC, has the potential to be more PC-like in general usage. But I don’t think I’ve encountered any user-facing examples after using both OSs for many years. I’d be keen to hear if your experience differs, because there might still be something to this.

That said, I do think it’s awesome that I can have a little DEC-like machine humming away in the corner of my room delivering my Plex, bhyve VMs, file shares, Minecraft server, and VPN gateway. Nobody my age during the minicomputer era could have afforded one! Things will really come around full circle when I finally buy a PiDP-11 panel kit that’s powered by a Raspberry Pi, upon which I install FreeBSD.

I appreciate Liam giving me food for thought about this. As Michael Dexter pointed out on The Bird Site, it’s far better to have sites talking about this than wrapping release announcements with ads and calling it a day.

Bruce Schneier shared some great news via a recent United States Department of Justice act:

The policy for the first time directs that good-faith security research should not be charged. Good faith security research means accessing a computer solely for purposes of good-faith testing, investigation, and/or correction of a security flaw or vulnerability, where such activity is carried out in a manner designed to avoid any harm to individuals or the public, and where the information derived from the activity is used primarily to promote the security or safety of the class of devices, machines, or online services to which the accessed computer belongs, or those who use such devices, machines, or online services.

This is important for many reasons, but two concern me the most:

• Often where the US legislates, other parts of the world follow. It’s easier to say that we shouldn’t be doing something here, if even the US has codified against it.

• The deck is increasingly stacked against us, so any additional white hat hackers and researchers, the better for all of us. It’s ridiculous to disincentivise honest people from reporting issues with threats of legal action.

I found this photo by Mbrickn while looking at coffee shops on Wikimedia Commons. I love it! If I have any American readers in Findlay, Ohio, is it any good?

Update: I found their site. I love everything about this place.

Remember the adage that if you work at what you love, you never work a day again? Or those pseudo-science Venn diagrams that say you achieve life purpose if your work is what you love, you’re good at it, it pays well, and is meaningful?

These are all important, but as I also used to say, no love of computers will make you enjoy being woken up to fix one. Unless that’s your kick, which I can respect if not understand!

Victoria Pearson nails it:

Perhaps it is my age (31, millennial), or the ever-rising cost of living, or the omnipresent role of social media in my life, but the last decade has often felt like an unending pursuit to monetise my every waking hour.

You see this in hustle culture everywhere, and it’s not be all that it’s cracked up to be. She quotes:

“As soon as something is commodified, we can view it in more transactional terms,” says Australian Psychological Society president Tamara Cavenett. That can “erode the strong and positive emotional attachment we had previously”.

“It really changes the ‘why’ that underlies the hobby, and can mean it now incorporates deadlines, production and need to service customer wishes, rather than creativity or fun.”

A large part of my hobbies and work life will continue to overlap, but I think it’s also useful to establish distance sometimes. Hobbies shouldn’t cause burnout.

Everyone’s favourite manifestation of Azusa from K-On! tweeted about a humerous categorisation of anime figures on a large online retailer, which reminded me that I never did past two of my Pop Up Parade Quintuplets.

I’ve now seen Ichika (below left) and Nino, who are captured equally well. I can only imagine the sinister plot Ichika has concocted behind that smile, and the biting rhetort Nino delivered with that smug expression!

Naturally though, and not surprising Clara in the least, I was most excited to see Nakano (left), pictured again with my other favourite Yotsuba! Oh you say you’re a history buff… humu humu?!

Pop Up Parade have done such a great job making this hobby accessible with affordable prices and decent quality. Even what I’d consider “game prize” companies have been lifting their game. Don’t get me wrong, I resent all of this, because I have no space.

For what it’s worth, I’ve also been tearing through the Quintessential Quintuplets manga on my iPad. I’ll save a proper review for when I’m finished, but it’s been so much fun. I’ve laughed out loud so many times I think I made Clara worry. It makes me appreciate what a difference good translations make; it would have been a lot of work to maintain the same level of wit in their devastating put-downs.

What happens when a website or service gets purchased by a larger company, with assurances and promises that it’ll remain operational? We all know the drill! The effort the original owners put into claiming a site will remain online scales linearly with the chances of it vanishing as soon as the ink has dried on their new contracts. This sounds cynical, but it’s a modern web reality, and very human.

This can happen for a few reasons; some more truthful than others.

Often times the teams that build and operate such sites are bought more for their talent, in what the industry refers to as an “aqui-hire” (for acquisition and hiring). The team have proven themselves, and the new owners might need their expertise and experience to deploy something else. It’s easier to bring in a team that’s known to work well together than to assemble a new one from scratch; though whether everyone will stay around after the acquisition isn’t guaranteed. Either way, the original site may no longer have the resources or priority to remain a going concern internally within the business.

There could be differences in expectations. Depending on the acquisition arrangements, the new owners might want to take the site in a new direction that the original owners didn’t want or envisage. The original owners might have also expected to retain more control than they end up having, either through naïvety, assumptions, or vague settlement terms. It’s hard to remain motivated to contribute to something that has changed beyond your initial idea, or when you’re being pulled in multiple directions. New businesses bring new interpersonal dynamics, procedures, and structure which someone brought up in a startup culture or small business might not gel with.

On the other side, the biggest issue I hear about is the original owners misrepresenting the state of a site’s backend, or have different or more lax standards than the purchasing business. I’ve heard friends lament horror codebases, servers held together with tape, and a disregard for security or basic processes. The new business might otherwise have wanted to keep operating the site, but think the technical debt is insurmountable, or not worth investing time into to bring up to code. It could be a simple case of management deciding they don’t want to take on the liability!

But let’s not kid ourselves either. The owners may have sought a buyout in the first place to stave off their own issues, in which case the original site may not have survived anyway. No business is perfect, and all the glossy PR in the world can’t change an intractable situation, or make tough choices simple.

Sites are built and run by humans who, when moved in with other humans, have a whole new dynamic. None of this is unusual behaviour; though it should remind us to have a healthy scepticism in the lead up to an acquisition. If someone is writing a long post explaining why something is going to remain the same, it might be worth asking who they’re trying to convince.