Tomo in Saigon @tomosaigon@fosstodon.org

I guess a side effect of open source software is encouraging personal responsibility in times of crisis. Your software will be broken and you alone can fix it by poring over the code. Closed source software encourages people to only rely on others.

There are multiple clients for each platform & the official ones aren't necessarily the best.

By default, it only creates a server-client tunnel w/o packet forwarding (routed instead of bridged isn't sufficient alone), unlike a consumer VPN client. The OpenVPN company (yes, it's commercial) does sell a personal VPN product.

Servers can specify various options but clients don't implement them. Getting DNS config changes applied requires hacks (like custom shell scripts in Linux).

Some other things to note:

While being popular with many implementations, the clients aren't standardized and even the official clients for Linux vs Android vs macOS work very differently, like completely unrelated projects.

There's a popular .ovpn file format used to config clients but it's not standard. Some clients require it. It's basically just a client config file concatenated with 3 certificates which are each inside XML-ish tags.

OpenVPN may have similar naming to other open source network security software like OpenSSH, and it does use OpenSSL and does run on OpenBSD (upcoming WireGuard is depends on Linux's kernel), but they're not related.

(US) State governments are urgently hiring COBOL programmers due to their unemployment systems breaking with the surge in new jobless claims. Imagine 50 years from now (even 10) trying to salvage a Node.js/npm/babel/webpack/etc build relying on specific versions of various packages.

Why does /proc/acpi/wakeup show device names that aren't at all related to actual Linux devices?

PEG0 S4 *enabled pci:0000:00:01.0
RP13 S4 *enabled pci:0000:00:1d.4
RP01 S4 *enabled pci:0000:00:1c.0
RP05 S4 *enabled pci:0000:00:1c.4
XHC S0 *enabled pci:0000:00:14.0
LID0 S3 *enabled platform:PNP0C0D:00
PBTN S3 *enabled platform:PNP0C0C:00

Hey #fediverse cat people, SARS-CoV-2 (the virus which causes COVID-19) can infect cats who can then shed the virus further. Dogs apparently don't carry the virus much. So maybe keep your cats indoors or wearing N95s.

Whew, at least we don't have to worry about the worst stock performance ever anymore and can begin looking forward to things like most preventable loss of human lives

Factoid: More than 1% of suburban Detroiters (Oakland County) speak Neo Aramaic, oldschool Aramaic being the language Jesus is thought to have spoken

Looking for COVID-safe activities? How about landscaping a Japanese garden in the bed of a mini truck (Americans have probably never seen such small trucks) https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2018/06/japanese-mini-truck-gardens/

Could one make Bash: save stdout+stderr to unique temp files on each line of interactive command but still display output in the terminal, w/o manually rewriting each command 🤔

If you still have a job, hold onto it tight. Crowdsourced list of companies that are in a hiring freeze now (growing fast): https://candor.co/hiring-freezes/

I had been using Apple products for too long.

I just realized there's a Fn-lock key (or meta-key) on keyboards, not a software setting.

Having physical PgUp/PgDn is another bonus I'm getting reaccustomed to.

Ever run a script on a remote server that might break its network connection and you don't have an out-of-band console? Do this as one line:

1. start a sub-shell and stash its $BASHPID
2. w/in another sub-shell: sleep then kill that PID to stop this whole process, but backgrounded with &
3. exec your command (replaces shell with given command)

Ex:
`( pid=$BASHPID ; (sleep 5 ; kill $pid) & exec top )`

Note: only 1x <;> and exec is needed.
Or, if you have it, just run: timeout 5 top

fuuuu.... Linux kernel locking up desktop with BUG: unable to handle page fault for address. How to begin debugging this.

How do you all feel about every free OS and Linux distro having their own package management system, and then every language (python, nodejs, golang) also having their own package management?

Link to download Cronopete package (because it's probably not in your repos) - https://rastersoft.com/programas/cronopete.html

Cronopete is being bandied about as a TimeMachine (macOS) clone. TimeShift definitely is no TimeMachine (it's meant for system files not /home). And BackInTime (for home, not system) kills a desktop while it's running (despite nice and ionice).