Some early notes on using uMatrix to replace NoScript in Firefox 56
Although people have been suggesting uMatrix ( Github ) to me for a while, it took Aristotle Pagaltzis ' plug for it as hispreferred JavaScript blocker in comments on yesterday's entry to push me into giving it a seriouslook. First, I took it for a spin in the Firefox on my laptop andthen, somewhat impulsively, I decided to try switching from NoScript(and my cookie blocking extension) to it on my home machine. Havingspent a couple of hours with it, I'm sold so
Doing something when a Cinnamon-based laptop suspends or hibernates
I've used encrypted SSH keys for some time .To make this tolerable (and even convenient), I load the keys into ssh-agent . On my desktop, I make this more secure by automaticallyflushing the keys when I lock the screen (details here ). To get a similar effect on my laptop,I want to flush the keys before it suspends (suspending the laptopis roughly the equivalent of locking the screen on a desktop; it'salmost always what I do before I walk away
The addons that I would likely use with Firefox Quantum (57+)
A significant number of my current Firefox addons are not WebExtesions based addonsand so don't work in Firefox 57 and later. Since I'm going to haveto move on from Firefox 56 at some point (although probably notsoon , temptation notwithstanding ), I've been checking in on the state ofWebExtensions addons and putting together a snapshot of the addonsthat I would likely end up using if and when I move over.
(Since Firefox WebExtensions addons are very new at this point andsome
The temptation of Firefox Quantum for me
I'm very down on Firefox 57 and later because of how it breaksalmost all of my existing addons with at best inferior replacements,and my expressed plan is to stick to Firefox56 for as long as possible. But at the same time Firefox Quantumand the addons reset it means is kind of a temptation for me.
One of the consequences of my trick for rapidly starting newFirefox windows combined with howI stay logged on to my desktop all the time is that I naturally keep a single Firefox
I'm one of those people who never log out from their desktop
Only crazy people log out from their desktop every time they stepaway from it for moderate amounts of time. Whether you're leavingto get lunch or to go to a long meeting, sensible people just lockthe screen (something that I've deliberately made very easy in my X setup). But my impression is that a fairnumber of people log out at the end of the day, or at least theend of the week.
I'm not one of those people; not at home and
A recent performance surprise with X on my Fedora Linux desktop
As I discussed yesterday , on Monday I'upgraded' my office workstation by transplanted my system disksand data disks from my old office hardware to my new office hardware . When I turned the newhardware on, my Fedora install booted right up pretty much exactlyas it had been ( some advance planning madenetworking work out), I logged in on the text console , started up X, and didn't think twice about it.Modern X is basically configuration free and anyway, both the oldand the new
Why Go cares about the difference between unsafe.Pointer and uintptr
Go has two things that are more or less the representation of anuntyped pointer; uintptr and unsafe.Pointer (which, contrary to appearances, is a built-in type ). On the surface this is a little bit odd,because unsafe.Pointer and uintptr can be converted back and forthbetween each other. Why not have only one representation of a pointer?What's the difference between the two?
The superficial difference is that you can do arithmetic on an uintptr but not on an unsafe.Pointer
My new Ryzen desktop is causing Linux to hang (and it's frustrating)
Normally I try to stick to a sunny tone here . Today is anunfortunate exception, since it's a problem that I'm very close toand that I have no solution for.
Last Friday, I assembled the hardware for my new office workstation , updated the BIOS , and overthe weekend let it sit turned on with a scratch Fedora install and periodically doing some burnin tests,like mprime . Everything wentfine. Normally I might have probably let the assembled machine sitfor a while and do additional burnin
You could say that Linux is AT&T's fault
Recently on Twitter, I gave in to temptation. It went like this:
@thatcks :Blog post: Linux's glibc monoculture is not a bad thing (tl;dr: it's not a forced monoculture,it's mostly people naturally not needlessly duplicating effort)
@tux0r :Linux is duplicate work (ref.: BSD) and they still don't stop makingnew ones. :(
@oclsc :But their license isn't restrictive enough to be free! We HAVE
Meltdown and the temptation of switching to Ryzen for my new home machine
Back in November, I put together a parts list for my stillhypothetical new home Linux machine . Atthe time I picked an Intel CPU because Intel is still the top in single-core performance , especially whenyou throw in TDP; the i7-8700 is clearly superior to the Ryzen 71700, which is the last (or first) 65W TDP Ryzen. Then two thingshappened. The first is my new office workstation turned out tobe Ryzen-based and