wow 8 level of pipe with cat/grep/awk : unix.stackexchange.com/questions/596947/awks-substr-replacement !!

@Archemar relevant: geek-and-poke.com/geekandpoke/2016/11/27/good-questions

Somehow Vietnam hasn't had any deaths due to the virus. I'm not sure how that is poissible. I though it was (still) a poor country.

I think we have (or had) at least one Vietnamese high rep user.

@FaheemMitha people at risk : diabetic, obesitic (?) and aged > 60 might be few in Vietnam. I think same goes for some african country. This virus is clever, it target "rich" countries.

@Archemar That's a good point, but I thought it kills even people without pre-existing conditions.

But I'm not a doctor, and haven't been reading the medical literature about the virus.

Though I'm now imagining on a daily basis that I have a fever.

As an adult I've very rarely if ever had a fever, so that would be extremely unusual for me. But I guess my neuroses are not the topic here.

Currently writing an email to a bunch of online news outlets here in India, pointing out that not giving people their Covid19 test results should be news. Let's see if anyone responds.

If I BCC a bunch of email addresses, how does this look at the recipient end?

Does it look like it was normally addressed to them?

@FaheemMitha as far as the envelope goes, yes; but their address won’t appear in the recipient headers

don’t you have two email addresses you could use to try it out?

@StephenKitt Yes, I do. But one of them is my main email address, which is what I am sending it from.

So I thought that might make a difference.

@StephenKitt Are the headers normally visible within the MUA?

BCC do not appear in To and CC recipient, it was built this way.

@FaheemMitha depends on the MUA, but you usually see To and Cc, yes

@StephenKitt And those would look the same as usual?

some MUAs will fake a Cc when the recipient was bcc'ed (Lotus Notes...) but that’s just confusing

@FaheemMitha define usual

if you send an email with only Bccs, then To and Cc will be empty

IIRC BCC recipients are striped before actual mail submission.

@StephenKitt The From and To would look normal.

@Archemar yes, they’re converted into envelope recipients locally

@StephenKitt Oh, the To would be empty? That's not good.

@FaheemMitha define normal

@FaheemMitha why not?

It could be tossed out as spam.

@StephenKitt From: email address To: email address

Hmm, I get To: undisclosed-recipients: here, with Alpine.

I seem to be hearing more and more about Slack recently.

Yet another proprietary platform. Hurray.

@FaheemMitha similar to North Korea. Nudhe nudge wink wink

@AndrasDeak You think they're just not reporting it?

Yes

Communist government

@FaheemMitha you could send it to yourself... that shouldn't affect reasonable spam filters though (or so I imagine)

@FaheemMitha it's been around for years. It's alright, though the UX can be terrible at times. Step-on-a-lego severity.

@AndrasDeak Anything's possible, I suppose. But China, for example, didn't attempt to declare zero deaths.

@AndrasDeak Step-on-a-lego severity?

It's one if not the only app I have that has custom changelog excerpts with each update. That should count as something.

@AndrasDeak I'll probably just send one email per message. No biggie.

@AndrasDeak You mean, actual changelogs?

@FaheemMitha bit too large and developed for that. Still grossly falsified numbers, probably. Look up news about crematories being overwhelmed.

@FaheemMitha i.e. annoying but nothing major

@AndrasDeak Agreed, the numbers are almost certainly too low.

But that's the case with India too.

@AndrasDeak Ah.

@FaheemMitha paraphrased, but yes. "Thing is supposed to do other thing. It didn't do it. Now it does."

Usually written in good humour

In contrast most apps have boilerplate description for updates across years, and firefox leaves it blank (which I don't like)

@AndrasDeak Lots of programs have actual changelogs.

But some boilerplate crap isn't better than nothing

The proprietary ones are usually much worse about it, though. E.g. Skype, which apparently cannot be bothered.

@FaheemMitha that you see in google play when an update is offered?

@AndrasDeak Not in Google Play, no. I was talking about actual free software.

I do use non-free software, but mostly kicking and screaming.

I suppose Google Play might have some free software in there.

@FaheemMitha I was talking about google play

@AndrasDeak Ok. That wasn't clear. You just said app.

Yeah, I'm old school. Apps are only on mobile and mobile means google play or equivalent :P

Using a samsung phone I'd be fooling myself trying to only use free software

@AndrasDeak One day maybe there will be a phone one can use (without going to enormous effort) that runs only (or mainly) free software. One can dream.

@FaheemMitha by the way some email clients support form-based bulk emails. Replaces the addressee and adjusts the body, etc.

We were taught this exactly once in elementary or high school, probably for outlook. Forgot it instantly.

with thunderbird you might need a potentially sketchy add-on as per bettertechtips.com/how-to/…

@AndrasDeak Thanks for the suggestion, but it's not worth experimenting for such a small thing.

probably :)

@AndrasDeak Why on earth were you taught how to send bulk email in school? Preparation for your future careers as spammers? :-)

some of our "IT" curriculum was MS office basics...

to be honest I still count as a Word expert based on that, looking at documents I see

too bad I didn't say in administration and decided to be a physicist instead :P

@AndrasDeak That's a very depressing sentence.

Though I find the acronym IT depressing too.

It wasn't a terrible idea, to be honest. They don't call it IT, they call it "informatics". And traditionally the workshop/arts-and-crafts (are these the right name?) teachers were also the informatics teachers... you can imagine the typical efficacy

but the basic idea of teaching word and excel to a young cross-section of society is not a bad idea

and the whole country runs on windows, hopefully not all on XP, so anything other than MS office is unrealistic as an expectation

I've done this in C but not in Python: How do you execute a bash command and store its (string) output in a variable?

@JohnnyApplesauce that's not a bash question, that's a python question

and probably with the subprocess module, go look it up

yeye thank you

@AndrasDeak Standardizing on proprietary software is always a bad idea. And using crippled notions like word processors and spreadsheets, what's more.

Better than counting on ones fingers, or using an abacus, I suppose.

way more people end up using word than tex, alas

@JohnnyApplesauce Yes, subprocess is the right place to look.

@AndrasDeak I'm aware of that. Though in an ideal world there would be additional alternatives.

The coronavirus cases in India make a nice exponential curve. But I think I've said that already.

Come on folks, be reasonable. For your average, non-geeky user TeX isn't even in the same category of things as a word processor. You can't expect people to learn TeX just to write a document.

And spreadsheets are great if you use them as they were designed and don't abuse them to solve any problem you can think of. Spreadsheets are perfectly decent hammers, it's just that some people seem to think everything is a nail.

yup

@terdon Using LaTeX, which isn't exactly the same thing as learning TeX, isn't that hard to learn. At all. Office staff in places like Germany use it quite happy. Apparently the trick is not to suggest they are learning anything difficult.

And I wouldn't call TeX itself hard, exactly. Just weird. Which might actually be an advantage for non-programmers.

@terdon I've used spreadsheets a fair amount, but I have never learned to love them.

Anyway, we were talking about MS's flavors. Proprietary and a word processor. Ugh.

Is anybody willing to read/critique my email about people not being allowed to see their virus test reports? I realise this isn't remotely relevant here, but I don't exactly have a large pool of people to ask. And people here are at least literate, which is considerably better than par for the course. Perhaps in another room or forum, though I can't think where.

I can take a look sometime, although I'm not a native so I can only help with semantic stuff

@FaheemMitha Oh, come on. It is incredibly hard: it's a language! And I say this as someone who defaults to LaTeX for any new document. But anything that requires you to learn arcane syntax is hard. Especially compared to a WYSIWIG editor.

@terdon yup, there are a number of reflexes to acquire beyond even learning the language too. I’ve found it much easier to get users hooked on LyX (and even then, it’s not that easy).

@AndrasDeak Define "sometime". :-)

@terdon LaTeX is barely a language. It's just a bunch of small rules. I used to use it in the 1990s (granted, not very successfully), while having little or no idea what was actually going on underneath.

Since I didn't know what I was doing, it was not very comfortable, but still much better than a word processor.

But I'm not suggesting that the TeX family be the only available option.

@AndrasDeak I'll be sending it out this evening. Any longer, and I'll have forgotten about it. I'm working it over a little bit now.

@FaheemMitha what do you mean? Of course it's a language, the thing is turing complete for crying out loud!

And you are hardly your average user. You know how to program and you're a mathematician by training! You're used to this sort of thing.

But expecting "normal", non-geeky folks to find LaTeX easy just shows you need to talk to more non-computery people ;)

@terdon I was talking about LaTeX. It's a set of TeX macros.

@FaheemMitha Yes, so am I.

Not a language.

Ah, fine, TeX then. Same difference.

Point is, you don't write what you want to write, you write code that is translated into what you want to write. Ergo: a language.

@FaheemMitha a lot of people can't program. Missing skill. Their brain works differently.

The whole point of LaTeX (or much of the point, at any rate), is that you don't need to know what is underneath. This doesn't actually work very well, because it's a rather leaky abstraction, but points for trying, at any rate.

@AndrasDeak I wrote quite a lot of LaTeX before I ever learned any programming.

Yes, a lot of that "code" is just the content you are writing and markup to make it look good, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a complete paradigm shift and will have a very steep learning curve. Not something you can plonk an 18 year old intern in front of and expect them to have your memo written by lunch time.

@FaheemMitha I've got all sorts of errands today. Might or might not be able to read it, but probably might

And I only learned basic TeX quite recently. My knowledge is still rather sketchy, as the people on TeX SE would be happy to tell you.

@FaheemMitha So did I. And HTML too. But not because they're easy or intuitive, simply because I'm into that sort of thing.

@terdon There might be some effort involved, but it's really not that terrible.

@FaheemMitha You just don't remember what it was like not to know these things.

@FaheemMitha the vast majority of users reason visually when they’re writing text, even for a letter; any markup language completely breaks that

@FaheemMitha but you're the kind of person who can program

With a word processor, anyone can sit down and start writing within seconds. That isn't remotely possible with LaTeX

@AndrasDeak Shall I send it to you by email? Or would you prefer something else. You know, one thing this Chat is missing is private messaging mode.

Now that is a feature and not a bug.

That said, you can always click on someone's profile here in chat, and then select the "start a new room with this user" option

@FaheemMitha yeah, can't post my email here. I figure you'd post something public anyway

@terdon I do, actually. I remember trying to write LaTeX in the 1990s with no help, and being completely terrified. A very familiar sensation, unfortunately.

@terdon But that room isn't private, though, right?

No, not private.

@AndrasDeak Fine, I'll paste it. Give me a minute.

But unless you have some sort of sensitive stuff to discuss, then it would be better to use that room instead of this one.

We can still take it elsewhere

Yes.

I just got an email from Github complaining about the access method I used to generate that gist-paste.

how so?

On July 6th, 2020 at 16:15 (UTC) your personal access token ... using gist/5.0.0 (Net::HTTP, ruby 2.5.5p157 (2019-03-15 revision 67260) [x86_64-linux-gnu]) was used as part of a query parameter to access an endpoint through the GitHub API:

api.github.com/gists

Please use the Authorization HTTP header instead, as using the access_token query parameter is deprecated. If this token is being used by an app you don't have control over, be aware that it may stop working as a result of this deprecation.

@FaheemMitha I take it you didn't create it via web?

@AndrasDeak No, gist-paste.

Ah.

HeeeEEeLLLLooooWWw :)

For those who have high profile, how do you feel about the uncounted 200+ rep limit ? ... as i am more and more active i hit that limit today... i can understand it, but it's kind a wasted rep

@intika it's a way to keep the addiction at bay a bit

Most rep farmers are addicts, and badly, and if there were no rep cap they'd probably ruin themselves. Or so the explanation goes.

@intika People rarely hit the limit. I've never hit it, for example.

Oh, for people who have a very high rep. Well, I doubt they do it for the rep, anyway.

@FaheemMitha depends. The ones that get the 100k in 8 years don't. The ones that get 100k in 1 year (happens a lot on Stack Overflow) do.

@FaheemMitha for @intika rarely is 13 : unix.stackexchange.com/users/120919/intika?tab=reputation

@AndrasDeak Well, if they do, they probably shouldn't.

@FaheemMitha I know :) Especially since this usually goes to the detriment of the site's quality (insert usual heated arguments about "elitists gatekeeping" vs "degrading SO into a helpdesk for clueless newbies")

@Archemar what do you mean by rarely is 13 ?

@AndrasDeak yes sure especially "degrading SO into a helpdesk for clueless newbies"

I do use SE sites a wiki note/blog instead of keeping my note offline I share them and usually post question and answer at the same time... it just happen that yesterday I posted one that is getting a

lot of attention... it's not really an addiction, nor degrading the site quality... most of the time it is very unlikely to get a huge attention on a QA... but when it happen it feel like "heeyyyyyyyy I have one of those insane question my self"... "Yaaaay" and looking at the rep going away without being a result of an addition but a result of an article that took more than 4h to write feel like a waste... on

the other hand i was doing the the search/study anyway because i needed the information for myself... let say it took may be 1 or 2h to write it in a clean QA... may be more but what's matter is contributing to Linux...

(unix.stackexchange.com/questions/596894/…)

@intika He means you hit the 200 limit 13 times, I think, though I have not verified that.

@intika I mean precisely that, you hit limit 13 times, and not by a narrow margin. congrat !

And I'll up vote tomorrow :D

hahaha :p

actually 16 times but it was with bounties so did no really matter

at least this can help for the legendary badge if i ever reach 150x lol

actualy a Vote to close "This question doesn’t meet a Unix & Linux Stack Exchange guideline." !?

not in my plan but who know

yes i saw that and answered on the comments

"This QA clarify the global situation of the Linux's display system and is not requesting for links/advice on learning materials, nor it is a copy/past of existing wikis (still based on existing linked documentations)"

that close vote does not make sens (at least for me)... am I wrong here?

doesn't make sense to me, but, when opening question is too broad we might tend to hit VTC before reading answer and realizing it's a self asking question.

like when Gilles asked "why won't people help me on Kali ?"

But I repeat it's OK for me, I've been living with X ever since days of X10 when you have to compile it, and it is quiet hard to find a good writen explanation of todays's X technology and terms.

"why won't people help me on Kali ?" hahahah nice one lol

yeah i had to go through all the documentation for a VNC project...

to understand it

VNC ...oh my ... when I make it work "it broke into order"

I had it work in ubuntu 19.X, update, no longer work :(

yeah sometime for some application it's like you need to become part of the dev team to setup it correctly

I know I am exaggerating... :D