Category Archives: technology

UnGoogle

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I just uninstalled the Chrome browser, after many years of use; I use Firefox now. Also, I have been using the DuckDuckGo search engine for months. This is my response to Google persecuting non-leftist political voices and acting as a hostile political force. Also, I consistently use adblock, and will do so for as long as they censor and demonetize my favorite youtubers. It is difficult to stop using them completely, for instance I still sync contacts, notes and calendars through google, but it’s a start.

The problem is, the entire Silicon Valley is a leftist cesspool and to really get away from that, one should slowly stop using American services. This would be quite unpleasant to attempt all at once, but honestly, the sooner the better, since everything American you use is just another thing that holds you hostage. Android and Windows were already used as a weapon against Huawei, x86 CPU architecture is a weapon, ARM is a weapon, Internet and GPS are weapons. I get it, everybody got hooked and it will take time to get out of the trap. However, one thing at a time.

Alternatives to Mac OS

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Since Apple seems to be working very hard on alienating their Mac user base by introducing poorly designed “innovative” products with incredibly bad and unreliable keyboards, very breakable display cables, keyboards that rub on the display and abrade coating, and ports that would be excellent if everybody already used them for everything, which is not the case, I think I’m not alone in trying to figure out a plan B in case they just refuse to listen and keep releasing increasingly overpriced unreliable garbage.

Linux would be great on desktop if someone actually worked for real money on making it usable. So far, everybody just spawns distros that aren’t actually fixing the real issues, and I really tried making several of them work for me, but the list of issues is too profound for me to even get into. It’s a steaming pile of garbage designed to look good on screenshots and presentations, but which breaks apart when you try to actually use it. Also, Linux managed to alienate commercial software developers to the point where things don’t seem to have much hope of getting better.

Windows, on the other hand, has another set of flaws: updates are intrusive, frequent and tend to break the system ih a high percentage of cases. Also, it installs stupid games and other software without asking anyone, wasting space and bandwidth and annoying me in the process. Privacy concerns are significant. However, unlike Linux it actually runs all the software I need, and the hardware actually runs much faster under Windows than it does under Linux, no matter what the penguin geeks tell you. Windows 10 actually has the quickest boot out of all 3 desktop OSes, it has greatest hardware compatibility and the only thing it actually misses is the ability to run Unix console and software natively.

Or at least it used to be the case. Enter the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). It’s basically something you turn on in Windows by running the following command in PowerShell (as admin):

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux

Then you reboot the system when prompted, and then go to the Windows store and install one of the WSL “distros”, such as Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSUSE, Kali, Arch, Fedora, or whatever. I’m using Ubuntu because I’m familiar with where stuff is. You install this “package”, open it and follow instructions. When it’s done creating your user account, you can install the service packages, for instance mysql-server, apache2, php, python and the like. Every shell application I tried works, except for nmap.

WSL, despite the name, doesn’t have much to do with Linux, since it doesn’t contain the Linux kernel; instead, it uses a translation matrix which translates Linux system calls to something Windows kernel can understand. It actually reports Windows kernel:

Linux DANIJEL-KANTA 4.4.0-17763-Microsoft #379-Microsoft Wed Mar 06 19:16:00 PST 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Considering how it does its thing, it’s a lesser miracle that it works as well as it does, and it does work well.

All host partitions are mounted in /mnt and are presented as letters, in the usual DOS/Windows fashion.

danijel@DANIJEL-KANTA:~$ ls /mnt 
c  d  e

You can symlink the host directories into your WSL home folder; for instance, Documents, Pictures, Downloads, Dropbox etc., and when you modify them from WSL, the modifications are of course visible from Windows.

danijel@DANIJEL-KANTA:~$ ln -s /mnt/c/Users/danij/Dropbox/ .

Just don’t try to access the WSL directories from Windows because that won’t end well. There are other issues: the terminal in which the WSL runs doesn’t support tabs and has the PowerShell clipboard behavior, which is “standard” only in Windows, and incredibly confusing. Also, the Linux GUI applications don’t run by default. Both those issues can be resolved.

In order to run Linux GUI apps, you need an X11 server. This needs to be installed in Windows. People usually recommend XMing, but I advise against it because of the unreliable clipboard behavior. There is a version of XMing compiled in Visual C++ called VcXsrv, which solves this problem, however LibreOffice hangs when attempting to run in it, so I ended up purchasing X410 app from Microsoft store; it’s commercial and seems to work the best (edit: I had stability issues with it, it just seems to hang for no reason). Also, once you are able to run Linux GUI apps, you can install and run your Linux terminal emulator of choice, such as gnome-terminal, mate-terminal, or whatever. This solves the lack of a multi-tab terminal and gives you the expected Linux keyboard shortcuts.

sudo apt-get install gnome-terminal gedit galculator geeqie

Another problem is that the processes you start don’t detach from the terminal, which would be the preferred behavior. This can be fixed by writing the following /usr/local/bin/run script:

#!/bin/bash 
$1 $2 $3 </dev/null &>/dev/null &

Make it executable with

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/run

and you’re set. Of course, in order for Linux to know where to send the GUI apps, you will need to append the ~/.bashrc file with the following lines:

DISPLAY=:0.0 
export DISPLAY

Also, you will need to apply the dbus fix in order for things to work properly:

sudo apt-get install dbus-x11

You should also cat /etc/machine-id to verify that it’s a valid UUID with no dashes, and if it is, you can now run your Linux GUI apps:

You start them by invoking the “run” script we wrote before:

run gnome-terminal

This works great for almost everything, but I did write a few scripts that make things quicker, such as “edit”:

danijel@DANIJEL-KANTA:~$ cat /usr/local/bin/edit 
#!/bin/bash
run gedit $1

Essentially, such scripts invoke the “run” command with pre-defined parameters: gnome editor and filename in this case. You can make similar scripts for terminal, or LibreOffice writer:

danijel@DANIJEL-KANTA:~$ cat /usr/local/bin/writer  
#!/bin/bash 
run libreoffice --writer $1

The way to open documents is with xdg-open, but of course it doesn’t detach from terminal so you would need to write a /usr/local/bin/open script invoking run:

#!/bin/bash 
run xdg-open $1 $2

As an example, this will open a PDF:

open price_list.pdf

It’s actually awesome that the application you run from WSL doesn’t have to be a Linux app, it can also be a native Windows one, and you can design your run-scripts accordingly. For instance, this version of /usr/local/bin/edit runs the Notepad++ which is Windows-native:

#!/bin/bash 
/mnt/c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Notepad++/notepad++.exe $1

Unfortunately, you would actually need to write such run-scripts unless you want to manually add every Windows application to PATH, because manually typing this shit every time you want to edit something is not an option.

Good news which might eliminate the need for most of these hacks is that Microsoft seems to be working on a new and improved terminal for both WSL and PowerShell, and also on WSL2 which will actually include a Linux kernel.

So, with all those hacks included, is Windows 10 a good replacement for Mac OS? I guess it depends. First of all, Mac is not really a hack-free solution if you want a usable terminal environment. It’s missing almost all useful GNU shell tools out of the box, and those need to be installed via Homebrew or Macports. Also, its terminal needs a bit of tweaking in order to look good and work well. And I still have a Linux virtual machine on my Macbook pro, just in case. And there’s occasionally that odd piece of software that happens to run only on Windows. So, whichever way you decide to go you are unlikely to avoid workarounds and tweaks. Also, Time Machine on a Mac is a lifesaver: if your Mac happens to die without a warning, you can buy a new one and simply restore it from backup, and in a few hours you’ll have a carbon copy of your old machine, fully working. With Windows, 3rd party solutions exist and work well, but the built-in backup system was trash the last time I was unfortunate enough to attempt it, and it failed to do anything useful, forcing me to do a full system rebuild from ground up, taking days to get everything right. This sounds like a little thing, but I assure you it isn’t, especially when you have work to do and your main machine is FUBARed. It’s such a big deal I’d gladly pay a bit more money for a Mac, but if a Mac is built like shit and also overpriced, I might just get annoyed enough to look for alternatives, even if they require 3rd party solutions and hacks. I do use Windows on my desktop machine, and WSL with the aforementioned tweaks works really well, but the real question is what I would do if my Macbook pro suddenly died. I guess I would still wait for Apple to fix their present SNAFU, but I’m preparing just in case they don’t.

Linux: what it intended, and what it did

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There’s been lots of talk about the recent development where the SJW cult apparently took over the Linux kernel development team, forcing Linus Torvalds to sign some LBGTASDFGHJKL manifesto, where meritocracy is decried as a great evil, equality of outcome is praised and white heterosexual men need to be removed in order for the world to be awesome.

To this, my answer is that communism, as usual, is eating its children, and this is nothing new. Linux was originally a communist project and a leftist cesspool, and since the SJW fraction already took over the modern communist movement elsewhere, it would not have been realistic to expect Linux to remain separate from this trend.

To this, I got a reply that Linux did some good things, and it’s not a failure: it powers the server-side, most of the mobile platform, and there are great companies making money with Linux and supporting its development. To this, I wrote an answer I’m quoting below:

Yes, there are companies that made a huge fortune using Linux – mostly those that just sell their services implemented on top of Linux, like Google with Android, but also some involved with Linux itself. If you look at it this way, Linux created both jobs and money. However, there’s an alternative perspective: Linux, by being good enough and free, destroyed the competition. SCO, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX went the way of the Dodo. All the people working on those were presumably fired, and because the competition is Linux, there were no alternative paying jobs waiting for them. Android destroyed the possibility of anyone developing a commercially sold OS for a mobile platform, other than Apple, whose position seems to be safe for now. If Android competed fairly and the cost of development was actually charged to the customer instead of being absorbed by Google and the open source community, with the goal of turning the devices into data-gathering and ad-delivery platform, competition could actually enter the marketplace and interesting things could happen, but this way, the only market pressure is on Apple, the only player who actually plays fairly, by charging money for things that cost money.
When Linux geekboys spout their hate fountains towards Microsoft and Bill Gates, and I’ve been watching that for actual decades, their complaint is that it costs money, and the users of Windows are stupid because Windows are easy to use. The argument against Apple today is the same recycled thing: the devices are expensive so the buyers are idiots and the company is greedy, and the devices are simple to use so the users must be idiots. This looks like all the bad shades of jealousy, hatred, spite and malice blended into a very nasty combination of mortal sins; essentially, they want to destroy companies that are financially successful by sacrificing their time and effort in order to provide a decent but completely free product in order to put the commercial products out of the market, because they hate that someone is rich, and something needs to be done about it.
Basically, Linux is a cancer that destroys the potentially profitable things by competing unfairly on the market, because it pays its developers in ego trip, hatred and envy instead of money, and its goal is essentially to make everything it touches inherently unprofitable. True, some managed to profit off of that, like Google who used the modified Linux to power its ad-delivery platform, as well as its server farms, but that was done by means of taking power away from the customer, because you’re not really the customer if you’re getting a heavily subsidised product, by turning the former customers into a product that is sold to the real customers: those that buy ads.
So, essentially, what Linux did was provide leverage that manages to pump wealth away from the software developers and into the pockets of ad sellers, making the customers less influential and less empowered in the process.
Also, what needs to be looked into is how much of the cloud computing boom is due to Linux, because it’s easy to have a supercluster if your OS is free; try paying Oracle per CPU for a Google or Facebook farm and you’ll get a head-spinning number that would probably make the entire thing financially unfeasible. This way, it’s another lever for centralising power over the Internet and over the end-users, essentially replacing the distributed nature of Internet itself with large corporations that, essentially, are the Internet for most people, and which, of course, are now starting to assert political and societal influence and controlling what people are allowed to think and say.
And in the meantime, the Linux crowd still hates Microsoft and dreams of a world where they’ll finally show it to Bill Gates who dared to charge money for Windows.

My desktop computer

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Since I already started talking about computers, I’ll tell you what I’m using.

This is my desktop PC:

I built it myself, as I always do; I optimized it for silence first and power second. Silence wise, it’s built in Fractal Define C case, with Seasonic FX 850 Gold PSU in hybrid mode (which means the fan is off until it is really needed), there’s a huge CoolerMaster 612 v2 CPU cooler which is massive enough that the fan doesn’t really need to spin fast unless I’m pushing it. The GPU is Asus ROG Strix 1080ti, which is silence-optimized so the fans don’t spin at all in normal use, and even under full load all you hear is a whisper.

The CPU is a i7-6700K with 32GB RAM, SSD drives and a HDD. In normal use, the HDD’s whisper is everything I hear; the fans are tuned to work below audible threshold. Under full load, the fans are set up to get rid of heat as quickly as possible, silence be damned, and the top of the case is a dust filter, so hot air can rise up via convection, and since this is an effective method, the fans are never really that loud.

This is my desk. The monitor is LG 43UD79-B, the 108cm 4K IPS unit, which is the reason why I had to upgrade the GPU; Lightroom was rendering previews very slowly in this resolution, and since this operation is GPU-driven, I got the overkill GPU, and once I did that, I said what the hell and got the Logitech steering wheel so I can use it as a racing sim. The keyboard is Roccat Suora FX mechanical RGB, the mouse is Logitech G602. The microphone is Rode NT USB unit, which I use for skype. You can see the 15″ Macbook pro on the left, and misc gadgets and remotes on the right.

The machine runs Windows 10 as host, and several virtual machines with different configurations; the main one is Ubuntu Trusty Mate which I use for writing scripts and all the Unix work. The main reason why I got such a big monitor is so that I can always have one eye on the work-related chat on the right, while I do other things on the left. Also, I like the way my photos look on a really big screen, which approximates print size of a meter in diagonal. The entire rig is hooked to a UPS, so I don’t have to worry about losing work due to power outages or spikes, which, fortunately, happen only once or twice a year on average.

Essentially, this is a rig that “just works”, and it’s where I spend most of the day.

The era of a super-desktop PC

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I read something interesting in a computer magazine, I don’t know exactly when, late 1980s, early 1990s perhaps, that the concept of a “home computer” is going to become obsolete, not because there won’t be any home computers, but because there will be too many for the term to make any sense – like, which one, the one in the microwave, in the TV, in the HVAC thermostat, in the networking router… and it actually went farther, so now we have not only the computerized appliances, but also computers in many shapes and user-interface paradigms; voice-controlled watches, phones, tablets, tablet-laptop hybrids, laptops, all-in-one desktops and conventional desktops, gaming consoles, and also the super-desktops, also known as either workstations or gaming PCs.

The super-desktop is an interesting category, because it’s usually called just the “PC”, the same as an ordinary unit found in businesses, the word/excel machine, but it’s a wholly different beast, of the kind that was known in the past as either a supercomputer, or a desktop minicomputer, also called graphical workstation. You see, when something can drive several TV-sized 4K displays, run multiple virtual machines at once with no lag, render movies, or process terabytes of other kinds of data, it’s no longer in the same category of things as a machine that is of nominally the same shape, running the same OS, but is weaker than one of its virtual machines.

So, what is a super-desktop, or a “gaming PC”, as they are euphemistically called? What is a machine that can drive an Oculus Rift VR system? The most honest description is that it is an alternative reality creation device. It creates simulated universes you can interact with and join. If you run a car racing simulation and you wear Oculus VR goggles, and especially if you have one of those seats that re-create mechanical shocks, you are essentially joining an alternate reality where you participate in a very convincing and physical activity, much more so than a dream, for instance.

So, what is the main difference between this and an ordinary computer that can play immersive games? Only quantity, but the thing is, if you increase quantity far enough, it becomes a quality of its own. If you increase the mass of an asteroid enough, it becomes a planet. If you increase the mass of a planet enough, it becomes a star. If you increase the mass of a star enough, it becomes a black hole. It’s the same thing as with human brain – add more neurons and suddenly completely new phenomena start taking place. Have only a few, you have a worm. Add more, you have a fish. Add more, you have a frog. Add more, you have a lizard. Add more, you have a rat. Add more, you have a monkey. Add more, and you get a man, and suddenly it’s no longer just the mass-equivalent of many worm ganglia together, it’s the phenomenon that can launch robots on Mars, fly cameras near Pluto, observe the beginnings of the Universe, break matter in ways in which only supernovae do, and even know God.
A super-desktop computer is not just a PC, and a PC is not just a glorified Commodore 64. It’s a machine of such power, it can add another dimension to human experience. It can immerse you in a realistic alternate reality where you drive supercars on race tracks, fly fighter jets, or fight dragons. It can literally provide you with a dynamically generated, interactive sensory input, which is a definition of an alternative reality. But there is a danger to that. Alternative reality is another name for illusion, and having such powerful illusion-creating devices at your disposal can allow you to add another layer of indirection between your consciousness and reality.

If it allows you to escape from issues that you are supposed to face and solve, it can also allow you to waste your life. There’s only one tool at our disposal that can do that, and it’s called drugs. Drugs can allow you to escape real issues and bury yourself in a world where there is reward without necessity for achievement. Powerful computers can become a drug-equivalent, a wish fulfillment tool which removes the necessity of achievement from the equation. As all powerful tools, they can really fuck your life up. Also, as all powerful tools, they can allow you to do more and better things.