Alright people, I'm gonna be blunt here, which is something not often seen from me. Thankfully this platform is used to it.

I am absolutely sick of people hating Windows/MacOS just because of the fucking practices of the companies. Let's take a look at a pro/con list of each OS type respectively.

Windows:
Pro - Most computers built for it
Pro - Average consumer friendly
Pro - Most games made for it
------------------------------------------
Con - Proprietary
Con - Shady info collection (disableable)
Con - Can take some work to customize
~
Linux:
Pro - Open source
Pro - Hundreds of versions/distros
Pro - Incredibly customizable on all fronts
------------------------------------------
Con - Can have limited modern hardware support
Con - The good stuff has a steep learning curve
Con - Tends to have unoptimized programs or semi-failed copies of Windows programs
~
MacOS:
Pro - Actually quite secure in general
Pro - Optimized to all hell (on Apple devices)
Pro - Usually just works
------------------------------------------
Con - Only (legally) usable on Apple devices
Con - Proprietary
Con - Locked down customization
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

See? None of them are perfect. Fucking get over it already. Maybe I want to use Windows because it works for me, and it actually does what I need it to. I can disable the spying shit through a few nice programs. Just because I work in IT doesn't mean that I HAVE to hate Windows and LOVE Linux! I mean, Linux is absolutely SPECTACULAR for all of my servers, but as a Desktop OS? Not there for me yet. Check one of my other rants: https://devrant.com/rants/928935/... and you'll see a lot of my gripes with Linux that Windows actually executes well. FUCK!

"Pre-Installed Malware Found On 5 Million Popular Android Phones"
"added somewhere along the supply chain"

See below how to check if it's installed

Sources:

- (new) https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/...
- (new) https://research.checkpoint.com/rot...
- (old relevant news) https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/...

---

"Rottensys" a malware which covers devices from: Honor, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, Samsung and GIONEE

---

"According to our findings, the RottenSys malware began propagating in September 2016. By March 12, 2018, 4,964,460 devices were infected by RottenSys," researchers said.

"At this moment, the massive malware campaign pushes an adware component to all infected devices that aggressively displays advertisements on the device’s home screen, as pop-up windows or full-screen ads to generate fraudulent ad-revenues."

---

If you have one of the affected devices, here's how I checked mine:

1. Install ADB (Windows: https://forum.xda-developers.com/sh...)
2. Connect your device in USB-debugging mode
3. execute "adb shell 'pm list packages -f' > output.txt" (On windows navigate to C:\adb and replace "adb" with ".\adb.exe")
4. open the now created output.txt
5. search for any of those:

com.android.yellowcalendarz (每日黄历)
com.changmi.launcher (畅米桌面)
com.android.services.securewifi (系统WIFI服务)
com.system.service.zdsgt

Remember Apple's initiative to scan photos on user's devices to find child pornography?
Today I finally decided to research this.
The evidence is conflicting.
For context, the database of prohibited material is called CSAM (child sexual abuse material).

“If it finds any CSAM, it will report the user to law enforcement.”
— Futurism

“Apple said neither feature would compromise the security of private communications or notify police.”
— NPR

CSAM initiative is dead. It won't scan photos in iCloud. It won't scan photos on your device. It will be a feature that only works in some countries, only on children's devices, and it will be opt-in. It will only work for iMessage attachments.

This is what Apple actually said at https://www.apple.com/child-safety:
- “Features available in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, UK, and U.S.”
- “The Messages app includes tools to warn children when receiving or sending photos that contain nudity. These features are not enabled by default. If parents opt in, these warnings will be turned on for the child accounts in their Family Sharing plan.”

News outlets telling people they will be automatically reported to authorities, and then telling there can be false-positives is a classic example of fearmongering. I hate this. Remember, anger and fear are the most marketable emotions. They make you click. News are and will always be worded to cause these emotions — it brings in money.

When presented with good news, people think they're not being told the truth. When presented with bad news, even when they're made up, people think it's the truth that's being hidden from them. This is how news works.

Now, a HUGE but:
Apple is a multi-billion dollar corporation. There is no such thing as good billionaires. Corporations will always wait for chances to invade privacy. It's like boiling the frog — one tiny measure here, one there, and just like this, step by step, they will eliminate the privacy completely. It's in their interest to have all the data about you. It brings control.
This is not the first time Apple tries to do shit like this, and it definitely won't be the last. You have to keep an eye on your privacy. If you want your privacy in the digital age, it's necessary to fight back. If you live in Europe, take the action and vote for initiatives that oppose corporate tyranny and privacy invasions.

Privacy on the internet is one thing, but scanning people's devices is a whole another thing. This is unacceptable no matter the rationale behind it. Expect more measures like that in the near future.

Research Linux. Find a distro that suits you. The notion that you can't switch because of apps/UI/etc. may be dictated by our brain's tendency to conserve energy and avoid the change.
Take a look at mobile distros like Graphene OS and LineageOS. The former only supports Pixel devices, the latter supports a wide range of devices including OnePlus and Xiaomi. They'll have FAR better privacy than iPhones.

Consider switching. It's easier than you think. Yes, it's me who's saying this. I do and will always protect people/companies from unjust criticism, and I consider myself an Apple fangirl for personal reasons related to my childhood, yet I won't fight blindly. CSAM initiative is a valid criticism, and there's nothing preventing me from saying this is unacceptable, and Apple deserves the backlash they got.

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/20...

TL:DR: US Border Control can detain you, force you to unlock and search all your devices without a warrant, they don't even need a hint of suspicion. Guess I aint travelling to the US in the foreseeable future. This is some North-Korea shit.

In my previous rant about IPv6 (https://devrant.com/rants/2184688 if you're interested) I got a lot of very valuable insights in the comments and I figured that I might as well summarize what I've learned from them.

So, there's 128 bits of IP space to go around in IPv6, where 64 bits are assigned to the internet, and 64 bits to the private network of end users. Private as in, behind a router of some kind, equivalent to the bogon address spaces in IPv4. Which is nice, it ensures that everyone has the same address space to play with.. but it should've been (in my opinion) differently assigned. The internet is orders of magnitude larger than private networks. Most SOHO networks only have a handful of devices in them that need addressing. The internet on the other hand has, well, billions of devices in it. As mentioned before I doubt that this total number will be more than a multiple of the total world population. Not many people or companies use more than a few public IP addresses (again, what's inside the SOHO networks is separate from that). Consider this the equivalent of the amount of public IP's you currently control. In my case that would be 4, one for my home network and 3 for the internet-facing servers I own.

There's various ways in which overall network complexity is reduced in IPv6. This includes IPSec which is now part of the protocol suite and thus no longer an extension. Standardizing this is a good thing, and honestly I'm surprised that this wasn't the case before.

Many people seem to oppose the way IPv6 is presented, hexadecimal is not something many people use every day. Personally I've grown quite fond of the decimal representation of IPv4. Then again, there is a binary conversion involved in classless IPv4. Hexadecimal makes this conversion easier.

There seems to be opposition to memorizing IPv6 addresses, for which DNS can be used. I agree, I use this for my IPv4 network already. Makes life easier when you can just address devices by a domain name. For any developers out there with no experience with administration that think that this is bullshit - imagine having to remember the IP address of Facebook, Google, Stack Overflow and every other website you visit. Add to the list however many devices you want to be present in the imaginary network. For me right now that's between 20 and 30 hosts, and gradually increasing. Scalability can be a bitch.

Any other things.. Oh yeah. The average amount of devices in a SOHO network is not quite 1 anymore - there are currently about half a dozen devices in a home network that need to be addressed. This number increases as more devices become smart devices. That said of course, it's nowhere close to needing 64 bits and will likely never need it. Again, for any devs that think that this is bullshit - prove me wrong. I happen to know in one particular instance that they have centralized all their resources into a single PC. This seems to be common with developers and I think it's normal. But it also reduces the chances to see what networks with many devices in it are like. Again, scalability can be a bitch.

Thanks a lot everyone for your comments on the matter, I've learned a lot and really appreciate it. Do check out the previous rant and particularly the comments on it if you're interested. See ya!

Fuck chromium devs and their hate for linux. Piece of shit

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/...

TL;DR
Screen share with audio is broken under chromium, because some user didn't want the desktop audio appear when asking for input devices, when there's no microphone available.
The thread doesn't mention a specific cause for this besides "for some reason pulseaudio does this"

So what did the gigabrains working on chromium decide to do? Not list monitors (basically recording devices for on desktop audio) at all.

Why?
* UI is hard
* Because we say so
* Fuck standards

And they only do that on linux. Windows, which uses a similar concept works just fine. Mac? Yeah, just hacked it in. Linux? GL won't fix

Meanwhile they decide to add all shits of non standard, bug causing events for shits and giggles, but when you actually want to resolve issues you're met with silence and arrogance.

Once again, what a piece of shit. Chromium devs must love making things worse with every passing version

From the Chromium mailing list:
TL;DR - 32 bit is no more (?)

Hi, chromium devs,

TL:DR;
I will remove following 4 builders next week.
Linux Builder (dbg)(32)
Linux Tests (dbg)(1)(32)
linux_chromium_compile_dbg_32_ng
linux_chromium_dbg_32_ng

More explanation:
For now, chromium does not support 32 bit Linux
https://support.google.com/chrome/...
and all 32 bit x86 devices for chromeos is EOL too.
https://chromium.org/chromium-os/...

Considering that, I was not able to find any reason we have builders for not supported platform now.
If you have any comments about this builder removal, please let me know.
I will start removing process of the builders next week if there is no concern from you.

Note: This removal does not include 32 bit android/windows/libfuzzer or other than chromium builders.

Thanks,
Takuto

--
Takuto Ikuta
Software Engineer in Tokyo
Chrome Ops (goma team)

-- This is my first rant so sorry if it's bad--

We have a nice project that I am working on that needs to store and interact with location data. It is a .NET Core API using Entity Framework Core to interact with the database. All good and well. Until today when I started working on the implementation of storing location data we retrieve from mobile devices.

SQL has a nice data type named: "Geography" which can store a location and do calculations on it with queries. Such as proximity and distance which is what we need.

But then it turns out that EntityFramework Core does not have support for the Spatial data types. even though version 6 did have Spatial support.
Then i found the following issue on GitHub: https://github.com/aspnet/...

Turns out this feature has been requested since 2014 and is even on the "High-priority" list and is still not implemented to this day. Even though in the issue many people are asking to have this implemented.

WHY IS THIS TAKING SO LONG MICROSOFT!!

So now i have to figure out how to work around this. But that is an issue for tomorrow.