Hacking for fun and profit

bye bye twitter: for x in `./twitter_backup.py -U tabo -P ‘*******************’ | cut -d’ ‘ -f 1 | sort -r`; do ./twixer -D “$x”; done;

A new version of Feedjack has been released: Feedjack 0.9.12.

Changes:

• Feedjack is now django-unicode compliant
• Using max_length instead of maxlength in models.py to prevent warnings in syncdb
• Patched fjlib to use the new django refactored database backends
• Disabling autoscaping for post contents in the included templates
• Handling of feedparser returning an empty etag
• Fixing encoding related problems in tag urls
• Non-integer page parameters should be handled correctly

This is a make-feedjack-work-with-django-trunk release. Apologies if you had to hack through the code to use it, and thanks to everybody that published guides on how to make everything work, like this ticket from Paul Bissex, this full guide from Alex Kuo and this patch to make unicode tags work.

Share and enjoy.

We interrupt these wonderful 6 months without posting in this blog to share the joy, directly from Django’s BFDLs, my christmas present to myself:

The Django Book! I bought it in Amazon and it was only 3 days late to Peru, not bad for christmas season.

I can’t wait to read this book. I did read the chapter previews in the site and they were very good. I’ll write a review of the book as soon as I finish reading it.

(btw, I’m sick of wordpress, it’s a buggy piece of ^*($#, is there a decent django powered blog with an import-from-wordpress feature?).

Nobody else cares, but still:

Newsgroups: alt.sysadmin.recovery
Subject: ADMINSPOTTING
Message-ID: <5cl3le$q24@infoserv.aber.ac.uk>
From: gkb@aber.ac.uk (Gary Barnes)
Date: 28 Jan 1997 14:49:18 -0000
Organization: Ripoffs R Us
X-No-Archive: Yes

Choose no life. Choose sysadminning. Choose no career.        *****
Choose no family. Choose a fucking big computer, choose hard  *   *
disks the size of washing machines, old cars, CD ROM writers  * A *
and electrical coffee makers. Choose no sleep, high caffeine  * D *
and mental insurance. Choose fixed interest car loans. Choose * M *
a rented shoebox. Choose no friends. Choose black jeans and   * I *
matching combat boots. Choose a swivel chair for your office  * N *
in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose NNTP and wondering why  * S *
the fuck you're logged on on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting * P *
in that chair looking at mind-numbing, spirit-crushing web    * O *
sites, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose     * T *
rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last on some  * T *
miserable newsgroup, nothing more than an embarrassment to    * I *
the selfish, fucked up lusers Gates spawned to replace the    * N *
computer-literate.                                            * G *
Choose your future.                                           *   *
Choose sysadmining[1].                                        *****

Gaz
[1] It might fuck you up a little less than heroin[2].
[2] ObFootnote.
–
 /\./\   gkb@aber.ac.uk (Gary “Wolf” Barnes)
( - - ) “Do not ask any lady to take wine, until you
 \ ” /   see she has finished her fish or soup.”
  ~~~                - Hints on Etiquette and the Usages of Society

Have a nice sysadmin day!

Thanks to Jaime Wong:

The “Chicha Simpsons” by Jaime Wong, featuring Antonio Ognio, Miguel Rabi, Cesar Villegas, Homer Simpson drinking chicha morada and yours truly (with a friendly Python).

Thanks a lot Jaime! I’m already using this as my avatar in pownce and in IM.

(ǝʇısqǝʍ dılɟ ǝpoɔıun ǝɥʇ ɟo dlǝɥ ǝɥʇ ɥʇıʍ ǝlqıssod uǝǝq sɐɥ ʇsod sıɥʇ)

˙ʇı ɥʇıʍ sɯǝlqoɹd ǝʌɐɥ noʎ ɟı ʍouʞ ǝɯ ʇǝl ˙ǝʇıs oƃuɐɾp ǝɥʇ uı ʇsılʞɔǝɥɔ ƃuıʇɹod ǝɥʇ ɥʇıʍ ʎsɐǝ ʎɹǝʌ sɐʍ ʇı ˙ʇı ʇɹoddns oʇ ǝƃuɐɥɔ ǝlqıʇɐdɯoɔuı spɹɐʍʞɔɐq ʇsɹıɟ (ʞuıɥʇ ı) ǝɥʇ ƃuıʇıɯɯoɔ ɯɐ ı os ‘ʞɔɐɾpǝǝɟ ɟo uoısɹǝʌ ʇsǝʇɐl ǝɥʇ ǝʞoɹq ǝpɐɹƃdn sıɥʇ

˙(ʇıɯɯoɔ ʇɐɥʇ ɟo ǝzıs ǝɥʇ ʇɐ ʞool ʇsnɾ) ɥɔuɐɹq sıɥʇ uı ʞɹoʍ ƃuızɐɯɐ sıɥ ɹoɟ ʞɔıuuıpǝɹʇ ɯloɔlɐɯ oʇ sopnʞ ˙ʇɹoddns ǝpoɔıun ʇɐǝɹƃ sɐɥ ‘sǝƃɐnƃuɐl ɹǝɥʇo ǝʞılun ‘uoɥʇʎd ǝsnɐɔǝq ǝlqıssod ƃuıɥʇǝɯos ‘ǝɹɐʍɐ ǝpoɔıun ʎlʇǝldɯoɔ ʇoƃ oƃuɐɾp oƃɐ sʎɐp ǝɯos

Some days ago Django got completly Unicode aware, something possible because Python, unlike other languages, has great Unicode support. Kudos to Malcolm Tredinnick for his amazing work in this branch (just look at the size of that commit).

This upgrade broke the latest version of Feedjack, so I am commiting the (I think) first backwards incompatible change to support it. It was very easy with the Porting Checklist in the Django site. Let me know if you have problems with it.

(this post has been possible with the help of the Unicode Flip website)

A new version of Feedjack has been released: Feedjack 0.9.10.

Changes:

• Fixing CSS tags for styles 4 and 5
• feedjack_update now strip()s tags before storing them
• feedjack_update shows the feed number being processed
• We no longer cache the tags in feedjack_update, it had encoding problems
  and makes the script safe to run more than one instance at the same time

I said that 0.9.9 would be the last release in the 0.9 branch. I lied. 0.9.10 is a maintenance/bugfix release. The 0.10 branch of feedjack is on the works.

Share and enjoy.

Our friend and notorious chichero (or chicha as he used to say), toggg, has just passed away. He colaborated to several open source projects, like SPIP, jQuery, Tikiwiki and PEAR.

Taken from a Python up, Ruby down discussion in programming.reddit:

Ruby takes all the elegance and simplicity of Perl, and mixes it with the library support of Lisp…

- foonly

Previously…

A new version of Feedjack has been released: Feedjack 0.9.9.

Changes:

• Fixed i18n related bugs in the templates
• Fixed a bug related to the –settings option in feedjack_update.py
• The feeds per user, tag and user/tag are working again
• You can choose between rss2 and atom in the feeds for user, tag and
  user/tag
• The default /feed/ url now redirects to /feed/atom/ instead of
  /feed/rss/

You are encouraged to update to this version, it has all the acumulated bug fixes known at this moment (thanks Petar).

This will also be the last version of the 0.9 branch. The 0.10 branch (currently trunk) will have several modifications in the data model, so please be careful if you update your site via subversion. Just follow the right branch or install only official releases and you will be safe.

Also, if you are running a Feedjack site, please update your links to our new site: www.feedjack.org. You can also announce your site in the Feedjack mailing list so we can add a link in the project site.

Share and enjoy.

James Allchin, co-president of Microsoft’s Platforms & Services Division:

I’m not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers, both business and home, the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are.

(source)

We already knew that Mr. Allchin, please continue.

I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that does not translate into great products.

Well at least you have great marketing.

I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft.

Why not? Just use the best tool for the job (hint: not Microsoft). After all you are still using Linux servers in portions of your site (via Akamai). And you used Linux for your main site a couple of years ago after worm and virus attacks (Microsoft hides behind Linux for protection). Microsoft just doesn’t get security but hey, you already said that :)

And I’m sure you still remember how your own techies admitted that FreeBSD was superior to Win2k for massive server installs when they migrated the frontend of Hotmail? Oh, and I think the Hotmail backend is still running Solaris?

And of course, since you are responsible of Microsoft’s operating systems, you know that your programmers use Perforce instead of Visual Source Safe?

And of course you know that between your own employees, for every MSN search user there are FOUR Google search users?

I think I get the point Mr. Allchin: If Microsoft doesn’t eat its own dog food anymore because it has lost its way, all your costumers should start doing the exact same thing:

USE THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB (Hint: NOT Microsoft).

Taken from the PostgreSQL 8.2 release announcement in Slashdot:

I’ve managed to get my PostgreSQL installation tuned to very high speeds simply by switching the database disk over to /dev/null. It runs fast as hell, and the data integrity is basically the same as MyISAM. - greg1104

Ah slashdot, this is why I love you.

A new version of Feedjack has been released: Feedjack 0.9.8

Changes:

• Internationalization (petar)
• Fixed and infinite loop in feedjack_update.py (do’h!) (petar)
• Added Serbian (Latin) translation (petar)
• Updated the feedparser calls in feedjack_update.py (petar)
• Added Spanish translation (predius)

Thanks to Petar Marić for all his hard work! This release is 90% his work :-)

Dear North American People,

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now please stop the war.

Love.

- The rest of the World.

Update:

The IntarTubes speak (via BoingBoing):

and my favorite:

(explanation of the meme)

We already got a great UNIX, and programming jokes from XKCD, but the new one is about cryptography (funny because I’ve been reading a lot about Cryptography the last 2 weeks).

In case you don’t know, in Cryptography, Alice and Bob are commonly used instead of A and B, as in “Alice delivers a message to Bob”. There are other recurring characters like:

• Eve, the eavesdropper of Alice and Bob’s communication.
• Trent, a trusted third party.
• Mallory, a malicious hacker that can not only intercept Alice and Bob’s communication, but also modify, substitute, delete or introduce new messages, impersonating both Alice and Bob. We know this as Man in the Middle Attack.

By the way, there is also the Alice and Bob rap by “computer science gansta rapper” MC Plus+.

Alice and Bob

Alice is sending her message to Bob
Protecting that transmission is crypto’s job
Without the help of our good friend Trent
It’s hard to get that secret message sent

Work tries to deposit a check of your salary
But with no crypto it’ll be changed by Mallory
You think no one will see what it is you believe
But you should never forget there’s always an Eve

(Chorus)

‘Cause I’m encrypting sh*t like every single day
Sending data across the network in a safe way
Protecting messages to make my pay
If you hack me, you’re guilty under DMCA

DES is wrong if you listen to NIST
Double DES ain’t no better, man, that got dissed
Twofish for AES that was Schneier’s wish
Like a shot from the key, Rijndael made the swish

But Blowfish is still the fastest in the land
And Bruce used its fame to make a few grand
Use ECB and I’ll crack your cipher text
Try CFB mode to keep everyone perplexed

(Chorus)

Random numbers ain’t easy to produce
Do it wrong and your key I’ll deduce
RSA only public cipher in the game
Creating it helped give Rivest his fame

If we could factor large composites in poly time
We’d have enough money to not have to rhyme
Digesting messages with a hashing function
Using SHA-1 or else won’t cause dysfunction

(Chorus)

Nerds.

Yes, after a long week of rumours it has been done. It wasn’t Microsoft. It wasn’t Yahoo. It was the big mighty G telling everybody that they are very serious about the Internet Video business.

Quoting the press release:

When the acquisition is complete, YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity, strengthening and complementing Google’s own fast-growing video business. YouTube will continue to be based in San Bruno, CA, and all YouTube employees will remain with the company. With Google’s technology, advertiser relationships and global reach, YouTube will continue to build on its success as one of the world’s most popular services for video entertainment.

This means that Youtube will coexist with Google Video at least for a while.

The question is: for how long? Will Google move all the user accounts and Videos from Youtube to Google Video? Will they keep using the “Youtube” brand? They dropped the “Urchin” brand after they bought it and renamed it to Google Analytics. Personally I don’t think this will happen with Youtube, since what is really valuable in Youtube is the brand and the community behind it. Look at these graphs from Hitwise Intelligence:

The red line is Youtube and the light blue line is Google Video. Youtube growth has been astronomical.

About the possible legal threats, Scoble hits the nail:

Now, will Google get sued over and over? Probably. But if you think that matters then you are missing the point. Did Microsoft’s legal troubles slow down its cash generation machines? No. Neither will Google’s. Plus, Google has demonstrated it’s fairly adept at working out deals with folks who produce content, or own it. Yeah, they’ll probably lose a few battles in court, but that’s like losing a battle or two but winning the war.

Techcrunch also reports:

Details are also emerging that Yahoo was in the bidding war until very close to the end.

Interesting. Om Malik also lists Yahoo as the biggest loser with this acquisition.

More coverage in Techmeme.

I for one, welcome our new Internet Video overlords, that will become Skynet someday.

Previously.

This is one of my favorite (very) short stories:

Dwar Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.

He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe - ninety-six billion planets - into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.

Dwar reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment’s silence he said, “Now, Dwar Ev.”

Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.

Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. “The honour of asking the first questions is yours, Dwar Reyn.”

“Thank you,” said Dwar Reyn. “It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer.”

He turned to face the machine. “Is there a God ?”

The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.

“Yes, now there is a god.”

Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch. A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

‘Answer’ by Fredric Brown.
©1954, Angels and Spaceships

Hi computer!

Previously.

People that know me personally know that I LOVE my keyboards.

No really, I love them.

I even wrote about them two years ago: IBM Model M - The One True Keyboard.

These keyboards are a triumph of technology. Future generations will talk about Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, the Great Pyramid of Gizah, and the IBM Model M Keyboard. These keyboards are the epitome of human civilization.

Really, they are that good.

I have more than 10 Model M keyboards now, and before you ask: NO, they are not for sale, and NO, I will not give you one. Some day I will die, and my son will inherit the keyboards. Since every single modern keyboard is a piece of utter crap, I want my son to hack with some style.

But now I see another advantage of using a Model-M, you can kill an attacker with it, and it will still work.

Two scientists, Paul Honig and Anne Jan Brouwer, made this discovery replacing an attacker’s head with, well, watermelons.

Not only that, they also discovered that you can defeat an attacker if he uses a lesser keyboard as a weapon.

The IBM Model-M IS mightier than the sword.

Read more in Keyboard Carnage (digg).

Dear Loved One:

By now you probably already know that I am having an affair with the youngest of your daughters. It’s not like I planned this to happen, but I couldn’t help it, she is younger, sexier, prettier and easier. Yes, she is easier than you, and this is a moment in my life when I just want that. I got tired of you playing hard to get. You are just too complicated, with your inner conflicts and your multiple personality disorder trying to be everything to everyone. You just can’t please everybody you know?

Debian: I will always have a place in my heart for you, but I’m with Ubuntu now and we are very happy together. Please stop attacking her. It’s your fault, not hers.

Love.

Gustavo Picon

Some moths ago I wrote about the BDFL considering the use of the Django web framework.

Cronologically it went like this:

Please Teach me Web Frameworks for Python! (2006-01-27)

Literally a cry for help. He didn’t quite like the magic in Django, considering he used a pre magic-removal version.

Web Framework Redux (2006-01-30)

Perhaps WSGI represents the “blank slate” approach; Rails/Django represent the wizard approach; I’m still looking for the ideal mix-and-match solution.

Django vs. Cheetah: 1-0 (2006-01-31)

Guido is beginning to like the Django templates.

Which Part of “No XML” Don’t You Understand?

This one is related to his previous post. Guido just think that the use of XML in a template engine is WRONG. I couldn’t agree more.

Django Gaining Steam (2006-5-4)

Guido talks about Jacob’s Django talk in the Bay Area and Jeff Croft’s Django for non-programmers (a great article).

Months after that, Guido got interviewed in FLOSS weekly (2006-08-04) and he declared:

Leo La Porte (LL): Python doesn’t have a native GUI, there is TCL/tk… is that an issue?

Guido van Rossum (GvR): It seems to be coming less and less of an issue because more and more people are doing everything over the web

LL: The web is an interface, yeah

GvR: So of course that doesn’t really solves the problem because then you have, as I say, more web frameworks than keywords in the language. My personal favorite and I expect that will remain personal favorite for a long time is something named Django.

LL: I was going to ask you about Django. There was just a … just somebody published some article, interesting I think it was in the Rails website testing Django, Rails and a Perl framework and Django was by far the fastest.

GvR: Interesting! I didn’t hear about that.

Chris di Bona (CdB): How do you measure something like a web framework?

LL: Well they set a simple site and they used web testing applications to create lots of transactions and measure transactions and Django was like significally faster. So tell us about Django.

GvR: I am a very satisfied user of a very small part of Django. Django is sort of, I would call it probably a second generation web framework in Python where first generation would be things like Zope and Twisted. Django was originally started I think two guys who work for, believe it or not, a newspaper in Kansas. Not a very glorious location.

CdB: Well, it’s funny because Zope and Plone came out of the (??) newspaper.

LL: Well you know why, they have to streamline production workflows, that’s a big deal for a newspaper

GvR: Maybe that’s the case. This paper in Kansas decided that they wanted to set a local website with information for people in their town that was very responsive to the audience. They wanted to publish things very quickly but also not just add new articles to the site which everybody can do, but change the site completly, add new ideas, new features to the site, add new applications. They came up with endless number of examples, for example publish the sports, like the local sports results of the little league complete with hyperlinks to the teams and photos and all sort of interesting stuff. And they wanted to be able to roll that out very quickly and so I think they did that for maybe two years, and the two guys who did it and working with a bunch of editor who where providing the content, as they were doing that they realized that they needed a framework and they sort of grew a framework out of their first application. As they (??) what kind of things their editors were constantly asking them to them change to the site, they developed more flexibility in all those areas. And at some point they said let’s open source it and they got support from the newspaper. And then a very interesting thing hapenned. I suppose the newspaper is still using Django in some form (they are, and in fact they are selling the CMS they build). I think both of the original developers are no longer working there and they started Django the Open Source Project and what I found really great about that is I talked to those guys a couple of times and see them give presententations and I’ve seen how they work, and they really get open source. And they have a good license, but in my view even more important is the whole process, the way they work with the user community, the way they answer, they find a ballance between chaos and democracy and anarchy and sort of between Cathedral and Bazaar. They let lots of users add new features and provide ideas without losing the original thought and flexibility of the framework and I can think they are really doing a fantastic job at making Django a better product that goes way beyond what that original Kansas newspaper needed.

(now they talk about the Django vs Rails benchmark and how Django is an order of magnitude faster than Rails…)

LL: I will have to take a look at Django, because that’s pretty impressive.

GvR: Absolutely, I highly recommend it.

And yesterday (2006-08-17), at least two sources (Titus Brown and The Third Bit) are talking about what the BDFL said in SciPy 2006:

• Django is the web framework.
• It won’t be included in the standard library because of different development cycles, but will (should?) be as “standard” as PIL or NumPy
• He hopes that Django and TurboGears will converge

There is a discussion about this on reddit.

What do you guys think?