Linux fréttir

A new take on the age-old question: Should you rewrite your application from scratch, or is that "the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make"? Turns out there are more than two options for dealing with a mature codebase. Herb Caudill: Almost two decades ago, Joel Spolsky excoriated Netscape for rewriting their codebase in his landmark essay Things You Should Never Do . He concluded that a functioning application should never, ever be rewritten from the ground up. His argument turned on two points: The crufty-looking parts of the application's codebase often embed hard-earned knowledge about corner cases and weird bugs. A rewrite is a lengthy undertaking that keeps you from improving on your existing product, during which time the competition is gaining on you. For many, Joel's conclusion became an article of faith; I know it had a big effect on my thinking at the time. In the following years, I read a few contrarian takes arguing that, under certain circumstances, it made a lot of sense to rewrite from scratch. For example: Sometimes the legacy codebase really is messed up beyond repair, such that even simple changes require a cascade of changes to other parts of the code. The original technology choices might be preventing you from making necessary improvements. Or, the original technology might be obsolete, making it hard (or expensive) to recruit quality developers. The correct answer, of course, is that it depends a lot on the circumstances. Yes, sometimes it makes more sense to gradually refactor your legacy code. And yes, sometimes it makes sense to throw it all out and start over. But those aren't the only choices. Let's take a quick look at six stories, and see what lessons we can draw.

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Asteroid bits collected. Next step, to hadouken a crater

Japan's Hayabusa 2 probe has successfully collected a sample from the surface of asteroid Ryugu following a careful descent last night.…

A blog post from developer turned writer Marty Jacobs caught my attention earlier this morning. In the post, Jacobs has listed some of the programming books he says he had discovered and read much sooner. He writes, "There are so many programming books out there, sometimes it's hard to know what books are best. Programming itself is so broad and there are so many concepts to learn." You can check out his list here. I was curious what books would you include if you were to make a similar list?

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Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps. Unbeknown to most people, in many cases that data is being shared with someone else: Facebook. [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; an alternative source was not immediately available.] The Wall Street Journal reports: The social-media giant collects intensely personal information from many popular smartphone apps just seconds after users enter it, even if the user has no connection to Facebook, according to testing done by The Wall Street Journal. The apps often send the data without any prominent or specific disclosure, the testing showed. [...] In the case of apps, the Journal's testing showed that Facebook software collects data from many apps even if no Facebook account is used to log in and if the end user isn't a Facebook member. In the Journal's testing, Instant Heart Rate: HR Monitor, the most popular heart-rate app on Apple's iOS, made by California-based Azumio, sent a user's heart rate to Facebook immediately after it was recorded. Flo Health's Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker, which claims 25 million active users, told Facebook when a user was having her period or informed the app of an intention to get pregnant, the tests showed. Real-estate app Realtor.com, owned by Move, a subsidiary of Wall Street Journal parent News Corp, sent the social network the location and price of listings that a user viewed, noting which ones were marked as favorites, the tests showed. None of those apps provided users any apparent way to stop that information from being sent to Facebook.

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Speak up and you might recover some of that £513k

People who paid for one of the infamous ZX Spectrum Vega+ handheld game consoles are being urged to register themselves as creditors of the company before a liquidator is appointed.…

Enterprise+: One toolkit to deliver them all

DevOps darling JFrog has snapped up cloud-based Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) outfit Shippable.…

pgmrdlm writes: Cooking a Sunday roast can drive indoor air pollution far above the levels found in the most polluted cities on Earth, scientists have said. Researchers found that roasting meat and vegetables, and using a gas hob, released a surge of fine particles that could make household air dirtier than that in Delhi. Fine soot and tiny organic particles from gas flames, vegetables, oils and fat combined to send harmful PM2.5 particulates in the house to levels 13 times higher than those measured in the air in central London. Peak indoor pollution lasted for about an hour. "We were all surprised at the overall levels of particulate matter in the house," said Marina Vance, who led the research at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She advised people to open windows and use extractor hoods if possible to ventilate the home while cooking. PM2.5s are particles that are smaller than 2.5 micrometres across. They are small enough to be inhaled deep into the lungs where they exacerbate respiratory disorders and cardiovascular disease. Smaller particles can spread from the lungs into the bloodstream where they build up in the liver, heart and even the brain, where they may contribute to depression and other mental health issues.

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NVMe drives speed VMs, but be warned – it ain't persistent

AWS and Google Cloud virtual machine instances – and as of this month, Azure's – have NVMe flash drive performance, but user be warned: drive contents are wiped when the VMs are killed.…

For some reason, Apple's website where you can manage your Apple ID (appleid.apple.com) is blocking users of Linux browsers from accessing it. From a report: Having access to the website is important to manage things such as payment information, two-factor authentication, and other account details. Even though the number of Linux users accessing the website must be relatively small compared to other operating systems, some iPhone users who use Linux on the desktop noticed the issue. This behavior was first explained by user Alexander Martin on Mastodon. He discovered that when the browser reports itself as being a Linux browser, Apple's website will block the access by throwing a "Bad Gateway" error.

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There's a PhD position in it too, if you want to get involved

NCC Group and the University of Surrey have set up a "Space Cyber Security Research Partnership" to investigate the security issues faced by satellites.…

More than a third of all Google Chrome extensions ask users for permission to access and read all their data on any website, a recent survey conducted by US cyber-security firm Duo Labs of over 120,000 Chrome extensions has revealed. From a report: The same survey also found that roughly 85 percent of the 120,000 Chrome extensions listed on the Chrome Web Store don't have a privacy policy listed, meaning there's no legally-binding document describing how extension developers are committing to handling user data. Additional survey findings include the fact that 77 percent of the tested Chrome extensions didn't list a support site, 32 percent used third-party JavaScript libraries that contained publicly known vulnerabilities, and nine percent could access and read cookie files, some of which are used for authentication operations.

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Ad giant plans reshuffle to focus on privacy, anti-trust – reports

Facing down an increased interest in tech regulation, Google is said to be rejigging its global lobbying efforts and upping its focus on privacy and competition.…

Last May, Facebook promised to launch a "Clear History" feature that it said would give users more control over their data. 9 months later it's nowhere to be found and now a report claims that it's a key example of the company's "reactionary" way of dealing with privacy concerns. From a report: Thus far, Facebook's public discussions of Clear History appear to have been more about communications strategy than charting a new course. In a Facebook post looking back on 2018, Zuckerberg pointed to the tool as one that would "give people more transparency" while Sandberg highlighted it to show Facebook's willingness to change during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month. Still, nine months after its initial announcement, Clear History is nowhere to be found. "We want to make sure this works the way it should for everyone on Facebook, which is taking longer than expected," the company said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. It's unclear if new high-profile hires, like Nate Cardozo (formerly of EFF) and Robyn Greene (formerly of New America's Open Technology Institute), will work with Facebook's new privacy unit or if they will be involved with Clear History. It has reached out to groups like Access Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), as well as academics. Sources confirmed that CDT and EFF were advising Facebook on its Clear History tool, but could not disclose specifics of their meetings due to nondisclosure agreements. Access Now's Masse confirmed Facebook had reached out on a number of issues, including Clear History, in the last few months, but called the conversations "punctual and limited." "Despite repeated statements and apologies from the company, we are not seeing a shift in Facebook data practices or an attitude that would suggest that they take data protection seriously," she said.

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Rest of the portfolio couldn't keep up with Nimble

HPE storage revenues – like NetApp's – grew just 2 per cent year-on-year in the firm's first 2019 quarter, with Nimble all-flash arrays leading the charge amble.…

The iceberg has begun to change course

Stinging from British criticism over its slow pace, Huawei has promised to start addressing security fears from the country's spy agency, GCHQ, by June.…

Search giant lifts ban on out-of-court talks, class-action suits

Google has said it will end forced arbitration next month and lift a ban on class-action suits after intense pressure from staffers.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Facebook will end its unpaid market research programs and proactively take its Onavo VPN app off the Google Play store in the wake of backlash following TechCrunch's investigation about Onavo code being used in a Facebook Research app the sucked up data about teens. The Onavo Protect app will eventually shut down, and will immediately cease pulling in data from users for market research though it will continue operating as a Virtual Private Network in the short-term to allow users to find a replacement. Facebook has also ceased to recruit new users for the Facebook Research app that still runs on Android but was forced off of iOS by Apple after we reported on how it violated Apple's Enterprise Certificate program for employee-only apps. Existing Facebook Research app studies will continue to run, though. Onavo billed itself as a way to "limit apps from using background data and use a secure VPN network for your personal info" but also noted it would collect the "Time you spend using apps, mobile and Wi-Fi data you use per app, the websites you visit, and your country, device and network type." A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the change and provided this statement: "Market research helps companies build better products for people. We are shifting our focus to reward-based market research which means we're going to end the Onavo program."

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If it works. Comms sat also along for ride, but there are loads already so...

SpaceX has sent the first privately funded lunar lander on its way to the Moon following an evening launch from Canaveral Air Force station.…

It's not big and it's not clever. Well, not clever, anyway

Something for the Weekend, Sir? "Where's the intelligence?" cried a voice from the back.…

'The perils of wrist-based motion sensors'

Ah the perils of a connected society were evidenced once again this week when some techies we know took on a pimply faced, smartwatch clad youth as an apprentice.…