Back in the day (MySQL 5.0-5.5 era, when I was working at MySQL/Sun/Oracle in the MySQL support team) the MySQL documentation team was truly amazing and sets the standard for me even today compared to many other docs teams I see.
They had a very long and comprehensive manual. The manual on each page inter-linked easily to switch between the relevant page for different major versions with a dropdown version selector (3.x, 4.x, 5.0, 5.1, 5.5..etc).. and if a page had moved or didn't exist it always accurately redirect to the correct page as you did that switch.
And almost every single engineering change that ever mattered to me made it into the changelog and also had relevant docs. I could largely rely on it and didn't need "git log" like I mostly need today to figure out what changed in a version.
Partly this was process, every closed bug/change went to the docs team to process.. but the team was also fantastic and converting that into relevant docs and writing great docs.
A shame if that has been lost, they did have a stack of layoffs recently in MySQL.. apparently the developer team is also heavily down from where it was. I am sure this writing is a little biased but interesting reading never the less:
https://mariadb.org/reading-the-room-what-europes-mysql-comm...
The manual is still quite comprehensive, but their doc updates seemingly went off the rails during the switch to quarterly "Innovation" releases starting with MySQL 8.1, and never really recovered. They keep forgetting to update various pages at release time, for example the keywords reference or error code reference. Or sometimes omitting major changes from the release notes (which now appear to be AI generated), and then they update it retroactively, days or weeks after the release.
I used to submit doc bugs for these as I found them, and I must say the documentation team has always been very responsive and fast at fixing them, even quite recently. But I've mostly stopped submitting new doc bugs, as I can't keep spending unpaid time on this every quarter, it just isn't sustainable. They really need to have a better internal process or checklist for quarterly release doc updates.
Combined with their "closed" development process and no-longer-public worklogs (nothing under development is visible at all until the release), it becomes impossible to predict what is going to change in the next release, or what has already changed in the most recent release.
MariaDB is a lot better about everything being open/public, but they also tend to have similar delays on doc updates, occasional missing release notes items, etc. It's really strange. I mean, writing docs isn't fun, but why spend time developing a feature but then fail to mention it anywhere?
I still have one of the early green OLPC laptops kicking around that I got at linux.conf.au 2005, in part because they were (or were thinking of) making use of avahi as part of the mesh stuff. They are quite fun to look at.
The project was quite interesting and exciting, and I really miss the era of custom linux desktops, phones, tablets etc being viable projects, it's a shame the project never really directly worked out.
Linux-based phones and tablets are more viable than ever, though. We even have entirely new device classes today, such as e-paper devices that may turn out to be especially useful in an educational context.
It definitely has the Voltaire/Onion like snark and cynicism with biting accuracy that really gets me going. We need more well informed rants disguised in heavy sarcasm
I would argue that iPadOS (built on iPhone's coat tails) moved the field forward significantly in terms of isolation and user security.
While this has left a long tail of inconveniences, many resolved and some not, I am very confident that using 1 app on my iPhone/iPad will not leak data to another in any case that I am likely to care about as a non-significantly interesting person (political figure, etc).
... and for those people Apple even makes lockdown mode to move the bar, while acknowledging it adds extra inconvenience: https://support.apple.com/en-au/105120
I have no such confidence about macOS, Linux or Windows, in fact the reverse. macOS has done the best at trying to bolt on some sandboxing (and linux has it too) but that's still very holey and not all-in like iOS/iPadOS has ended up.
Yes, I know there have been many bugs and leaks in iOS but the security level is far and above the desktops currently, and designed that way from the ground up. So when they finally make something work like copy and paste or sharing between apps, etc... it's by and large done very well.
It's been very difficult to add that kind of thing to Linux because you're trying to do the reverse and lock things down and it breaks everything... making it very challenging.. as opposed to Apple where basically nothing useful worked at the start (no copy/paste, one app at a time, no meaningful filesystem, etc).. but managed to get the product successful in the limited state and has slowly unlocked that stuff over time. Admittedly very slowly.
I cannot speak for Android as I just have never used it or surrounded myself in info about it's design, security, etc.. it may well be very similar although they from my casual observation seemed to do a much worse job at granular privacy permissions (e.g. for the longest time permissions were all granted at install time, and so many apps want so many most people are blind to it.. as opposed to Apple's model where even if notarised for something on the app store in most cases you have to agree to it when the app first uses it.. I know they fixed that a while back but I have no idea how well things have transitioned to that now). As a very techy person deeply knowledge in many things, and using desktop Linux since 2002, it's kindof a hilarious personal failing that I have never used Android.. I really should try and resolve that at some point.
> While this has left a long tail of inconveniences, many resolved and some not, I am very confident that using 1 app on my iPhone/iPad will not leak data to another in any case that I am likely to care about as a non-significantly interesting person (political figure, etc).
Log in to YouTube with one Google account. Log in to Google Drive with a different one.
Google knows that both accounts are owned by the same person, because Apple lets Google's apps access the data of the others on the same system.
Android permissions began to ask for individual confirmation on first use in Android 6.0 (released in 2015) so the grant-all-on-install model hasn't been how it works in a very long time.
Also your narrative about iOS moving from locked down to opening things up over time isn't entirely accurate, when iOS (iPhoneOS) was first released, it didn't have any concept of permissions at all! Apps could use whatever API the OS offered with the user none the wiser. At that time Android Market forcing developers to disclose which permissions were required was seen as unusually transparent and secure. Random iPhone apps scanning contacts deceptively pushed Apple to adopt a permissions model several years after the iPhone was first released.
The two platforms have historically leap frogged each other in various ways but at this point have started to converge as mobile settled into a boring appliance instead of groundbreaking new computing paradigm. Apart from sideloading, notifications and some minor annoyances here and there I can almost forget which OS I'm using as I switch between iOS and Android (thanks to gestures removing the trademark home/back navigation distinctions).
It wouldn't surprise if Apple had fixed this, it's the sortof thing they would fix, but it may be worth trying with 2 devices not from the same iCloud account. Wouldn't surprise me if the code paths were subtly different in that case.
They would seem to contain identifiers as law enforcement have been able to follow up on instances where there has been airdropping of perverse images, but as noted by others the files don't include names.
The problem with airdrop (and likely why the 10 minute setting now exists) is that it includes a preview image as part of the notification request.
So other than being able to subject someone to perverse images, preview images have also been used in state-sponsored zero-click attacks to infect the phones of their targets. While that vector seems to be muted for now, the 10 minute setting provides a layer of defence against both potential future zero-clicks and receiving unsolicited previews images.
I've found QEMUs microvm to be faster at boot while having nicer tooling and a cleaner upgrade path if needing more features. Aside from hype I'm actually not sure why anyone would still use firecracker.
They had a very long and comprehensive manual. The manual on each page inter-linked easily to switch between the relevant page for different major versions with a dropdown version selector (3.x, 4.x, 5.0, 5.1, 5.5..etc).. and if a page had moved or didn't exist it always accurately redirect to the correct page as you did that switch.
And almost every single engineering change that ever mattered to me made it into the changelog and also had relevant docs. I could largely rely on it and didn't need "git log" like I mostly need today to figure out what changed in a version.
Partly this was process, every closed bug/change went to the docs team to process.. but the team was also fantastic and converting that into relevant docs and writing great docs.
A shame if that has been lost, they did have a stack of layoffs recently in MySQL.. apparently the developer team is also heavily down from where it was. I am sure this writing is a little biased but interesting reading never the less: https://mariadb.org/reading-the-room-what-europes-mysql-comm...
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