alyandon's comments

On: "Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker

[alyandon]

As long as there is a financial benefit to lying, there will always be people willing to do so.

I personally believe that many of these "influencers" do not believe any of the stuff they spew into the public space.

On: Zulip.com Values

[alyandon]

  It instead is a chat where a thousand group chats are open, and no once wants to read any of them.

I really wanted to like Zulip and use it as a personal chat service for a small group and it was exactly that feature that made it basically unsuitable. Forcing everything into titled threads did not make any sense for lots of user to user interactions that are ad-hoc in nature.

I didn't think it was terrible software by any stretch of the imagination - just not really suitable for informal communication.

On: Can Ozempic Cure Addiction?

[alyandon]

It does seem like a lot of doctors prescribe GLP-1s without any corresponding education on the dietary changes one should make while on them. A friend of mine's mother was hospitalized briefly because she was basically starving herself of proper nutrition while on GLP-1s.

Since I already knew that rapid weight loss is very unhealthy, I intentionally eat very nutrient dense foods in order to keep my weight loss in a reasonable range.

On: Can Ozempic Cure Addiction?

[alyandon]

Another N=1, I've noticed zero impact on my desire to engage in my normal obsessions while on GLP-1.

What GLP-1 did (initially) was give me horrible insomnia that peaked a couple of days after taking the injection so I had to time my dosage so that I suffered through that on the weekend. That got better over time and eventually went away after about 6 weeks.

Regardless, as another poster mentioned, it's a weekly injection and if you don't like the effects you can stop taking it.

On: When internal hostnames are leaked to the clown

[alyandon]

Same here too. Ironically, the blog is accessible over TOR for me.

On: We X-Rayed a Suspicious FTDI USB Cable

[alyandon]

Exactly - the FTDI drivers refusing to work would have been reasonable and emitting a log or error message that my device was counterfeit would have actually been helpful. Instead, they vandalized end user equipment by permanently bricking the devices which is arguably illegal.

I am not nearly sophisticated enough as an end user to spot a counterfeit FTDI usb-to-serial device so I am not going to risk buying that brand and end up with their drivers intentionally bricking the device.

On: 200 MB RAM FreeBSD desktop

[alyandon]

It's the web browser and electron based apps that are the primary consumers of ram on my desktops with the DE and OS ram usage being minimal by comparison.

I have an ancient laptop from 2008 with 4GB of ram that runs a modern KDE desktop and related applications just fine that I use for troubleshooting stuff. However, the moment I open a web browser it basically falls to pieces.

I hate everything about this. :-/

[ValdikSS → alyandon]

That's easy to fix:

    Step 1:

    sudo tee /etc/tmpfiles.d/mglru.conf <<EOF
    w-      /sys/kernel/mm/lru_gen/enabled          -       -       -       -       y
    w-      /sys/kernel/mm/lru_gen/min_ttl_ms       -       -       -       -       300
    EOF
    
    Step 2:
    
    
    apt install zram-tools
    sed -i 's/#PERCENT=.*/PERCENT=130/' /etc/default/zramswap

[alyandon → ValdikSS]

I'm on an older LTS kernel so no support for lru_gen but I will definitely check out zramswap - thanks.

[ValdikSS → alyandon]

Then also do this:

    echo vm.page-cluster=0 >> /etc/sysctl.d/85-swappiness.conf

[lproven → alyandon]

> I have an ancient laptop from 2008 with 4GB of ram that runs a modern KDE desktop

Try Alpine Linux, with Xfce which can do most of the same things. Then enable swap compression -- add this to the end of the kernel line in your bootloader:

zswap.enabled=1

This compresses everything going to swap, and decompresses it coming back: less disk reads and writes, and less space used.

Everything gets quicker.

[whatevaa → alyandon]

People are saying that 8GB for Android phone is too small. All of those applications are not electron either.

There is bloat everywhere.

[dTal → alyandon]

4GB still seems excessive, by at least one and probably several orders of magnitude, for what vanilla KDE actually does: browse files, manage windows, and edit text. And KDE is one of the best modern options.

[alyandon → dTal]

KDE doesn't need 4 GB of ram - that's just what my laptop happens to have which is more than ample to run the OS + KDE + native applications.

On: Go 1.26 Interactive Tour

[alyandon]

  https://antonz.org/go-1-26/#httptest-example

> To fix this issue, the HTTP client returned by httptest.Server.Client now redirects requests for example.com and its subdomains to the test server

I'm really conflicted about the idea that the https client should silently hijack requests to example.com in order to make a dummy certificate work... or am I just really misunderstanding?

On: Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11

[alyandon]

Yeah, it's one of the reasons I use a Microsoft account to collect the PC entitlements and then create a local user account that has a sane profile name and never touch the online account again.

On: Yep, Passkeys Still Have Problems

[alyandon]

I'm a bit of a curmudgeon about this.

Until service providers are no longer allowed to:

  1) force the type of passkey stores used (e.g. hardware vs software) when I am providing the passkey store
  2) force me to MFA (e.g. forcing touch ID, entering pin or unlock password, etc) when attempting to use a passkey

I'll continue to stick to plain old boring password + TOTP. I fully understand the security trade-offs like phishing resistance but password + TOTP is secure enough for me.

[Groxx → alyandon]

Many/all? also need to have some form of manual input as a backup, so you're not forced to sync all your passwords to e.g. a library's computer just to log in, if your house burns down or something.

Which probably looks a lot like a password.

[jesseendahl → alyandon]

(1) is already true today. There is no way for services to enforce whether a passkey is stored in software or hardware.

(2) I understand you don't like the user experience. But to make a technical clarification: requiring a user action to prove there's a human involved in the login action (e.g. by clicking a button in UI or requiring Touch ID) does not necessarily mean there's another factor involved at all (MFA). What you are describing is more of a "liveness check" than a separate factor/separate credential.

[alyandon → jesseendahl]

  (1) is already true today. There is no way for services to enforce whether a passkey is stored in software or hardware.

Challenge: Go and try to register a non-blessed passkey type with PayPal and come back and share your experience.

  (2) I understand you don't like the user experience

Pretty much my complaint. Passkeys allow for service providers to do dumb things that result in terrible UX. With Password + TOTP, I don't get asked to touch a sensor, enter a PIN, enter an unlock password, etc.

[spencerflem → alyandon]

I actually kinda like the enter-a-pin flow, it makes me feel a lot safer about letting someone hold my phone. I just hate the lock-in it adds

[spencerflem → jesseendahl]

Liveness check is fine, but I’ve always seen it as requiring Microsoft Hello or equivalent explicitly, and not whatever check I would prefer to use