Posts by Wade Burchette 1222 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Apr 2007
Just change your DNS over HTTPS server to your Pi-Hole IP address and it will work just fine. Unlike Chromium browsers, Firefox allows you to enter only an IP address for your custom DoH server. Chromium browsers require some long website, such as https://security.cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query
Google answer to "privacy" sounds far far worse than third party cookies. Look at some of them:
* Protected Audience for remarketing (showing ads based on past website behavior at other websites) - Deleting cookies are easy and relatively painless. But clearing history ... Often I need my history. Clearing that is not trivial.
* Topics (showing targeted ads without identifying people) - I guarantee that it won't be difficult to identify people.
* Attribution Reporting (measuring ad interaction without third-party cookies) - Why isn't clicking on the ad enough? Nothing and nobody should ever know if my eyes or mouse hovers over or near an ad.
* Shared Storage (sharing data cross sites without sharing identifiers) and Fenced Frames (a related cross-site data mechanism) - Why are two cross-site mechanisms mentioned?
All web ads should be static, non-tracking, and not in-your-face. And no ad should ever have any scripting code so that malvertising can never work. That strategy was quite successful when the internet went from luxury to necessity. If it worked once, it can work again. If Google ever implements this, I am going to loudly tell everyone I know about it and tell them to switch to Firefox or Brave.
What China said:
"In recent years, certain Western countries have increasingly engaged in intelligence activities aimed at stealing confidential information in key areas such as military, defense industry, economy, and finance in order to implement strategies of containment and suppression against China."
What they really mean:
"How dare you do the things we ourselves do! Who gave you the right to do the exact same things we are currently doing?"
The Simpsons had it right:
"I should put you away where you can't kill or maim us. But this is LA, and your rich and famous."
For some reason, my fingerprints never work on any fingerprint reader. Not the ones on the phones, past and present. Not the ones on the computer, both the old swipe and new ones. Not even expensive ones where you place your entire finger in. I can't be the only one. I bet the people behind this passkey thinking never even thought the people whose fingers for some reason do not work on fingerprint readers.
The outcome I would want with any lawsuit against Apple is to require them to make the battery user replaceable and the device must allow any battery that is fit for purpose, even if it was not made by or bought from Apple.
I would also require Apple to provide repair manuals and parts for all their products. And if I manage to get that result, I would immediately set my sights on Samsung too.
"Deere and other manufacturers have expressed concerns that right to repair laws would require them to expose trade secrets, a carve-out for which was included in the Colorado bill."
This loophole will cause John Deere to claim everything is a trade secret, and thus exempt. There should be no loopholes at all. The only people who are a threat to their "trade secrets" are large companies who can be sued for copying these secrets. Farmer Bob isn't going to make his own tractor from the trade secrets in John Deere's documents. Still, given how angry John Deere is, this bill is an excellent start. Next up, we need to expand this law to electronic devices too. Take that Apple and Samsung!
Bing chatbox: "I've noticed you have been asking questions about an irregular heartbeat. Why not call your doctor today and ask about Expensiveall, a new drug from Astra-Zenica. With Expensiveall, you can control your irregular heartbeats with just one pill a day! Side effects include poverty, worry over bills, death, explosive diarrhea, irregular heartbeat, and zombie toes. These are not all the possible side effects. Tell your doctor about all medications you are taking. Take back your life with Expensiveall!"
Me: "How do I get to Lutton?"
Bing chatbox: "From your current address, take highway 25 north then highway 273 east. Along the way, why not stop in at the McDonald's just along your route and try the new limited-edition Big Mac with a new special sauce."
And I am sure I could go on. Your chat history will be tied to personal information, and then Microsoft will find ways to personalize the ads in a creepy way. Simple questions will be ways to interject ads. I think I will permanently ignore all this AI chat.
I don't think China is worried about US surveillance with Starlink, but rather that there is an internet connection that bypass their great firewall. Elon Musk is crazy enough to sell internet service through Starlink satellites to people in China.
When a product is better, people naturally switch to it. For example, people did not stop riding horses because Ford motor company used dirty tricks to get you to buy a car. It was because the car was clearly better than the horse, and as soon as Ford made one that was affordable to many, people naturally wanted one.
The fact that Edge has to continually nag and beg you to use it implies that is not better. If it was better, people would just accept it. Edge some serious flaws. First, the homepage is not a simple homepage; it is a Microsoft page with Microsoft ads that obviously make Microsoft money just by opening the browser. Firefox has a similar problem with their "pocket" on the default homepage. Second, has all sorts of junk that just gets in the way. A sidebar. A discover feature that who knows what it is tracking about you. Third, Edge wants to start when the computer starts, even though I did not give it permission to do so. Fourth, make one change in the group policy settings for Edge, and lots of other unrelated changes are locked out unless you delete the group policy setting in the registry.
I know Chrome has mindshare. But Edge could too, if it was naturally better. It would take time, but it could happen.
Google's new proposal sounds like a way to track people that will be harder to block. Clearing cookies is, at worse, a minor inconvenience. Clearing browsing history can make finding a website you visited harder to find again. This can be a major inconvenience. Yet, that is one of Google's proposals, to track you based on your browsing history. You just know it will turned on by default, with the off switch buried deep in the bowels of the settings where few people ever look.
The internet went from luxury to necessity before all this creepy tracking. If those ads worked once, they can work again.
That process no longer works on the newest builds Windows 11. Instead, what you have to do is proceed to the screen that asks you to join a network. At that screen, and only there, press SHIFT + F10 (or SHIFT + FN + F10 because idiot laptop builders combine less useful keys with the more useful function keys). A command prompt window appears. You browse to c:\windows\system32\oobe. The type BypassNRO.cmd. That adds an entry to the registry then restarts. Then you can bypass joining a network in Windows 11.
You also need to make whole disk encryption is turned off. On many W11 machines, it is turned on without asking.
Microsoft is way ahead of you on that, at least in the United States. The terms you must accept to use Windows says that you waive any right to sue Microsoft and that you must use a Microsoft paid arbitrator. This group will not bite the hand that feeds them, so they will always find in favor of Microsoft.
This is the second story read in the last 12 months about Cisco not properly supporting their products. The other one was about a product with short support. For security products, I expect full support at least 15 years after the last one was sold brand new. With Cisco's greedy disregard for security, I say it is time to dump their products and give our money to companies that won't make you buy a newer one -- and thus have all the headaches of properly configuring a new one -- every 5 years or so.
This is the new Microsoft, whose new CEO wants to be "agile".
The next Call of Duty will be released with severe bugs and crashes, because Microsoft laid off all the quality control people from Activision soon after they bought it. You, the paying customer, will be expected to tell Microsoft why and how it isn't work for free. But you will be asked frequently for your feedback, which will promptly be ignored unless it is nothing but praise for what they are doing. And then when you are finally used to the way things are, the whole user-interface will change for no good reason. And then later you find out that some parts of the game that you already played are radically different because somebody at Microsoft thought they could do that level better. Of course, that redone level will be full of bugs.
Meanwhile, the technology for reliable and proven fission energy is already here. But every time one is proposed, a vocal minority believe the lies about it and protest it until it is cancelled. We need more nuclear fission power plants until fusion goes from 20 years away to a production reactor being built right now.
"The most recent campaign using Zombinder distributed the Xenomorph banking trojan glued to the application from a media downloading company, with the victim lured through malicious ads."
Once again, greedy advertisers put our security at risk. It seems that once they get paid, the ad runs, no questions asked. Between this and malvertising, is it any wonder why people would use ad-blockers? It is real simple, advertisers: you need to verify the identity of the person paying you, verify what the ad is doing, and carefully examine where the link goes to before you allow the ad to run. And once do all that, do not allow anything to change without another thorough vetting process.
There is a simple way to stop malvertising forever: disallow javascript and tracking in ads. When the internet went from novelty to necessity, ads were static. It worked then, and it can still work now.
But I already know that advertisers will never implement this pro-consumer solution. Their greed trumps my security.
Many new HP printers are the most frustratingly difficult devices to install. Gone are the days where there was a standalone driver with simple, straightforward instructions. Gone are screens that help you connect the printer to Wi-Fi. Gone are paper instructions in the box. Now there are fancy beeps, buttons, instructions that you have to print with your paper and ink, and an app that was clearly designed by people who grew up with a smartphone in their hand. And one HP printer I had to install, the instructions that printed were wrong and had obvious spelling errors. What used to take 15 minutes to fully install now takes over 30 minutes. So, I am doing my part and will never buy a HP ink printer again.
And I have many friends whose HP laptops did not make it to 2 years. A few did not even make it to 1 year. The reliability of their computer are now garbage. One I could discount as a fluke; but when many have the same problem, it is not a fluke. So, I am doing my part and will never buy a HP computer again. Dell still makes servers and business computers in Texas, Chinese Lenovo still makes servers and gaming computers in North Carolina, but HP makes everything in China. When I ordered a gaming laptop from Lenovo - due to HP's reliability problem - it shipped from IBM's old factory in North Carolina. I couldn't help to notice the irony of a Chinese company building stuff in America but an American computer only building stuff in China.
Your welcome, HP. I used to buy a lot of stuff from you. But not anymore. I am doing my part to make your profits go down. Good job!
If it is like my Windows, it goes like this:
if (group_policy.disable_driver_install == true) install_driver();
else install_driver();
if (update_available == true) {
if (group_policy.delay_quality_update == true) {
/* Put future code here */
install_update();
}
else install_update();
}
If I am forced onto ARM, I will not be using Windows. The idiots in charge of Microsoft cannot go a full year without several updates that break things and the UI keeps changing for the worse. The only reason any of us put with all that is because of legacy and gaming. You take that away, and many of us will not put with Microsoft.
I am hopeful that Steam may be solving the gaming on Windows problem, then I can kick Microsoft to the curb.
Always remember that insurance companies are in the business of taking money, not paying out money. They will do whatever it takes to minimize or even eliminate the paying out part. And when must use them, your rates will increase, even if you were not at fault and there was nothing you could have done to prevent the incident.
The Intel i5's in the 12--- and 13--- generation beat AMD in price/performance. When you factor in total build cost, these i7 and i9's can also be cheaper than the Ryzen 7000. This is because both DDR5 and Ryzen 7000 motherboards are too expensive. Of course, as time goes on and manufacturing ramps up, those costs will fall significantly.
When you factor in the price and the fact that Ryzen 7000X3D is coming soon, it is no wonder that AMD's current launch has been a dud compared to Intel's. I personally think AMD's decision to go all-in on DDR5 is better long-term even though it hurts short-term.
I know how Logitech can make more money: bring back the Harmony remotes and Squeezebox. Their old Harmony One remote was about the closest thing to perfect you could find in a universal remote. I am in need of a universal remote as good as that one, and if Logitech brought it back, I would be one of the first to buy it. I don't know why Logitech discontinued them? By all accounts, it was selling well.
Then there are the Squeezebox speakers. It was a very good alternative for those who hate Sonos, like me. I am just glad Logitech made the system open-source so that those who do have their speakers can keep using them.
If a product is naturally superior, you do not need to force people to use it. People did not start driving cars because we ran out horse feed or because Henry Ford was constantly nagging us to drive one.
If Edge was clearly a better product, Microsoft would not need to keep nagging us about it. But it is not. Even though it is based on Chromium, it is inferior to Chrome. Examples: Why is the default home page msn.com? Who gave Microsoft the right to decide that Edge should start when the computer boots? Why does Edge bother me about nonprofits? Or things I can discover? Because of these things, I will never recommend Edge. The only reason Microsoft recommends it is because it is good for their profit, not good for you.
15 years of cybersecurity for a vehicle? That is not enough time. I am still driving my car which is 17 years old. It is reliable and paid for. I expect it to be on the road for a long time. 15 years is not enough. Vehicles are not something disposable, like a "smart" TV. When properly maintained, they can be around for a very long time. I know someone who has the first generation of a Ford truck, and he still drives it. No, 15 years is not enough time for a vehicle. Considering how long they can last, cybersecurity should be permanent.
Of course, the better option is not even have the need for automobile cybersecurity by not having a vehicle connected to the internet.
"It looks like your heart rate has fluctuated the last two days. FitBit recommends Expensiveall, a new drug from Astra-Zenica. With Expensiveall, you can control your irregular heartbeats with just one pill a day! Side effects include poverty, worry over bills, death, explosive diarrhea, irregular heartbeat, and zombie toes. These are not all the possible side effects. Tap YES to call your doctor today and be sure to say 'Dr. Smith, I WANT EXPENSIVEALL'. Tap No to be reminded in 5 minutes to call Dr. Smith about Expensiveall."
Google doesn't need to mix your health data with the other personalized data to be creepy. They can just monitor your health to start pushing expensive drugs or other high-profit treatments on you.
Or, better yet, make the CEO and others responsible for the decision to pay a fine equal to several months of their own pay. If they repeat, double the months of salary they have to forfeit. When a corporation pays a fine, they just right it off on their taxes. The people who are responsible for the decision are unaffected. But you start threatening the pay of the people who are crooked and corrupt ... then you will see things change.
Maybe Intel call follow USB's lead, and confuse up their naming even more.
The Intel Core i9 can become Intel Processor Gen 13.2 ludicrous speed 2x2. Then the i7 would be Intel Processor Gen 13.2 ludicrous speed. The i5 -- Intel Processor Gen 13.2 super speed 2. The i3 -- Intel Processor Gen 13.2 super speed. Pentium -- Intel Processor Gen 13.2. And lastly, Celeron -- Intel Processor Gen 13.1.
A security product that was last sold in 2017, I expect support for it to continue to 2032, which is 15 years after the last one was sold. This is one of the many reasons I don't like Cisco SOHO products. 5 years for products like this is at least 10 years too short!
I hate the games companies play with support and security upgrades. Some Android phones once only gave you 18 months of security upgrades. Teamviewer, Garmin, and TomTom define lifetime differently than how I define lifetime. I found out that to each of them, "lifetime" means "until we stop supporting it", not until I or the product dies. The last GPS update for my 17 year old car was 8 years ago -- Nissan didn't even bother giving me 10 years of map updates! I like holding on to my stuff because I hate going through the time and hassle of learning something different. When companies cheap out on support, I try to vote with my wallet.
It took me the longest time to figure out how to print on an iPhone. The option to print was hidden down in a menu which had no scroll bar. There was no visual cue saying that you could scroll. It took me the longest time to figure that out. And even when you do scroll, there is still no visual confirmation of how far up or down you are in the menu. But hey, the design sure is pretty. So I guess being pretty is more important than being easy-to-understand.
Microsoft and Apple's customer forum websites are less than helpful. They know how to give boilerplate answers; they don't know how to think. Often the correct answer comes from someone else, not a Microsoft or Apple employee. Apple has no problem censoring answers that hurt their profit. (Source [1] and [2])
As for Microsoft: someone will say "I need help! I already tried this, this, this, and this." And the first answer from Microsoft is "We are sorry you are having trouble. I am a Microsoft certified employee, and I am here to help. Have you tried this, this, this, and this." The Microsoft employee just gave a canned, generic answer and didn't read. The person already said they did the things you told them to do!
All of it is so frustrating.
If ever I meet the person behind the ribbon, I will have a long conversation with her ... and it won't be "have a nice day".
In the United States, if you include the Three Mile Incident, exactly 0 people have died due to nuclear power plant accidents. Also in the United States, you receive more radiation exposure eating 1 banana than you are allowed to receive per year living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant. (Source)
Chernobyl happened because it was a communist design. It had a design flaw that other reactors never had. You can fly a fully fueled 747 jumbo jet into the reactors we always used, and it wouldn't have a meltdown. The newer Westinghouse reactors are even safer. What caused Fukushima was a flood due to the tsunami drowning the backup systems. Now that we know about that, we can work around it in the future.
Whenever I see a friend with Alexa, I make them turn it off. I tell them: "Suppose the police came to your house and wanted to install a microphone and camera inside. They claimed they would only watch when a crime is being committed and only listen for trigger sounds, like screaming and gunshots. Would you allow the police to do this?"
Of course, the automatic answer is "No!"
Then I ask: "So why are you paying a business that openly admits to listening and watching you to increase their profit to put microphones and cameras in your house?"
I always go into my group policy editor (gpedit.msc) and change it so "quality" updates do not install for 21 days. ("Quality" is what Microsoft calls it, not me.) This setting is a little harder to find in Windows 11, but it is still there. The setting is called 'Select when Quality Updates are received". I figure that 3 weeks is enough time for Microsoft to learn how bad they screwed up.
If you have 10/11 Home, you can always add gpedit.msc with a batch file that needs to be run as an administrator. Just copy the steps below into a batch file; a restart sometimes is, but not always, required:
@echo off
del list.txt
pushd "%~dp0"
dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~3*.mum >List.txt
dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~3*.mum >>List.txt
for /f %%i in ('findstr /i . List.txt 2^>nul') do dism /online /norestart /add-package:"%SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\%%i"
del list.txt
pause
Apple is the kind of company that has a cult following. As Louis Rossman put it, if any other company did what Apple has done, people would have gone with a different company.
And it is my opinion that the cult has gone to their head. While all companies "deny wrongdoing", Apple takes it to a whole new level. It seems to me that Apple would rather spend $100 million in the court than spend $1 million and admit a mistake. It seems to me that Apple would do whatever it takes to make their people believe they are perfect in every way, including lying to them.
Two months ago I went into my local dealership to custom order a custom Camry hybrid. The dealership insisted on a deposit -- which I didn't mind -- and $2000 in aftermarket extras, such as LoJack and nitrogen air in my tires. The dealership would not budge on these high-profit items. So I walked out. I called another dealer further away, and they ordered the car without any dealer extras. And they are throwing in free oil changes for life. The first dealer called me later, and I made it clear just how bitter I was over that $2000 fee.
The attitude I see a lot in software and design can be summed up like this: "I like it and it works for me, therefore you will like it and it will work for you". I call it myopia. The people who make the stuff are special -- just look at their trophy! -- and they know their ideas are great and wonderful. If you don't like it, then the flaw is with you, never them. If it doesn't work for you, then you need to be like them.
Take for example websites. You complain about a website not working. "What browser are you using?" I respond Firefox. Their response: "Just use Google Chrome." In other words, because they use Chrome and they like Chrome they expect you to be just like them. Testing on other browsers. Nah. Just be like me. They use Google Chrome, they have powerful computers, they have ultra-fast internet; ergo, you do too. "Just be like me" is the way they think.
Another example, Windows 7 and earlier would ask you which timezone you live in. Now, everyone lives in the Pacific timezone because Microsoft's home is in the Pacific timezone. Never you mind that the majority of Americans don't even live in the Pacific timezone. "Just be like me" is the way Microsoft thinks. And since they are special -- just look at their two trophies! -- they will suffer no criticism, no matter how legitimate. They cannot understand why you would not like to surrender your personal information to use their product, why you are complaining about drivers installing without your permission, or why you are frustrated that years of muscle memory is being thrown away for a new start menu.
"Just be like me. I have been told all my life that I am special, so it must be true. If there is a flaw, it must be you." I call it myopia. And it is very frustrating.
While I welcome more competition to the GPU market, this statement by the quoted analyst is absurd:
<< "This workstation launch kind of negates a lot of the rumors that they're going to shutdown their discrete business that they haven't even really spun up yet," he added, arguing that many of these rumors are likely borne out of fear that Intel could pose a threat to Nvidia and AMD's duopoly. >>
With the way things are going right now at Intel, I can guarantee you neither AMD nor Nvidia are not spreading these rumors about Intel's graphics division. That statement is just further proof that all of these so-called analysts are know-nothing know-it-alls. They get paid for their opinions even though they are hardly ever right. I would love to have a job where I can almost always be wrong, and people still value what I think.
Big Media can deter copyright infringement with a few simple things. (1) Make their product reasonably priced and easy to obtain. (2) Make it easy for me to do what I want with my purchased product. (3) If I purchase a digital copy, they will be required to always make it available to me whenever I want, even 1000 years from now. (4) Remove all that annoying and unskippable junk found in purchased products.
For instance, if I am paying customer, I put my DVD in. I get an unskippable company logo, sometimes several 'coming attraction' intros that I have to skip one at a time, an unskippable menu into, then I select play, then I get an unskippable anti-piracy warning, an unskippable reason for the rating, and finally an unskippable legal disclaimer about the commentary opinions.
However, if I illegally download the movie, I push play and enjoy right away.
The problem is the media people give me several reasons to download the movie, and none to do the right thing.
These are governmental bureaucracies. Being competent is actually the first disqualification for any government job. As the saying goes, if you put the government in charge of the Sahara desert, in 5 years they will run out of sand.
No good will come antagonizing China. Especially since so many computer chips are made in Taiwan, a country that the China has repeatedly said belongs to them.
Teamviewer pulled that "lifetime" bait and switch on me. That was over a year ago, and my anger over it still hasn't calmed down. Recently they called me and asked why I don't want to switch to their subscription. Well, I made it clear how angry I am. I didn't direct my anger at the person who called me, because that was not their decision. But I did make it quite clear that because of what they did to me, they would never get any more of my money. I told them I did not want to reward greed. They said 'we can help you get the best price.' I said that I had the best price of $0.00 per month!
"Google remains determined to preserve its ability to target ads, which the advertising behemoth self-servingly insists are necessary to keep the internet free."
When I see this statement, I feel like shouting "LIAR! LIAR!" to Google much like Mad Max's wife did to him in the Princess Bride. The internet went from luxury to necessity with static ads that did not track you. If it worked once, it can work again.
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