* Posts by osxtra

76 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Dec 2019

Page:

Wacom says crooks probably swiped customer credit cards from its online checkout

osxtra

It's Only Money

We did receive such an email on Jan 27, and yes, there were bogus charges being "investigated" by the bank belonging to the card used for a purchase on the Wacom site around the end of November.

The fraudulent purchases themselves were dodgy - exact dollar amounts rounded to the hundred - and it looks like at least in our case at least two groups were using the card info, as the first hit was toward the beginning of January with subsequent hits spaced some days apart, but in the middle of that there was a charge then a reversal the next day, as if someone else was testing, perhaps gearing up for more charges.

It makes me wonder just to what lengths the bank would go to catch these criminals. The items would have been shipped somewhere. Some may still be in transit. Perhaps the FredEx delivery driver coming to your door could be a police officer.

A bit more labor, but one thing that would stop this fraudulent activity in its tracks is a "one-time" card number issued by the bank, with a specific dollar amount on it (plus maybe a little more padding for extra shipping, etc.). You'd get into your credit card account, enter the purchase amount and site from which the product is being purchased, and be given a customized card number & one-time code to use at checkout.

Pastor's divine 'dream' crypto scheme indicted by Uncle Sam

osxtra

It's Elemental

Well, let's see. An almost dozen year old flash drive, sitting in a mound of decomposing who-knows-what, at almost certainly elevated temperature due to said decomposition.

Even if this guy found the drive, do you think it'd still be readable?

I'd say let him look. By hand. With a trowel. And a full release for anything that may happen to him while in there.

Being trash, of course (as he ostensibly threw the drive away), once the item is found he'd also need to pay a most likely quite hefty salvage fee to the landfill owners, before he even knows if the data on it is still recoverable.

A New Year's gift from Microsoft: Surprise, your scanners don't work

osxtra

Find That Wire

Wait, people are still using USB to talk to printers? What happened to that newfangled IP thingy?

Panasonic brings its founder back to life as an AI

osxtra

Visiting With The Folks

Shades of Grayland II visiting the Memory Room in John Scalzi's The Last Emperox.

Trump campaign arms up with 'unhackable' phones after Iranian intrusion

osxtra
FAIL

Lackey's Last Day At Work

Lackey to Orange One: "Sir, we've been hacked again".

Orange One: "$#!!&KITALL, HOW DID THAT HAPPEN? THIS IS THE WORST!"

Lackey: "Well sir, it looks like a message came in with a suspicious link, and someone clicked on it."

Orange One: "WHO??? I'LL HAVE THEM TAKEN CARE OF. RIGHT AWAY!"

Lackey: "Uhm, well, sir, the account in question seems to be attached to your personal cell phone."

Orange One: "WHAT? NO, REALLY, WHO DID THIS? TELL ME OR YOU'RE FIRED!"

Lackey: "Guess I'll be cleaning out my desk now, sir."

Compression? What's that? And why is the network congested and the PCs frozen?

osxtra

Giddy-Up

Small stock trading house in the latter 90's, an ISDN line, and the IT guy - who happened to be the brother of the owner - getting canned. for running a porno BBS on the side with their ridiculously "fat" internet pipe.

As they no longer had an IT guy, the shop I worked for at the time got called in to see why email stopped working.

Everything stalled at a certain message. Outlook Express would never finish downloading. We did not have direct access to the email server so couldn't delete the offending message, much less see it.

Office '97 had just come out and the shop had a copy for wrangling all those financial spreadsheets, so eventually we got the email credentials from the owner, configured Outlook, and sat back for a bit to wait for the trouble message to download.

Turned out the fired brother decided to fling a last finger at his sibling, and had sent an 18 meg or so video of a gal from Mexico with a horse.

Ugh.

Thunderbird for Android is go – at least the beta is

osxtra

Did notice that 8.0b1 was actually called "Thunderbird Beta", and for 8.0.b2 it's back to "K9 Mail".

The beta is good. My old K9 v6.something started freezing; sometimes the messages would never appear. The account is near its 2G quota; every now and again I run a script on the server to delete old messages and free up space, 'cause, you know, I'm not Big G, and my VPS would charge a boatload if I had as much storage as the desktop, which is POP. For phone/tablet/laptop/whatever, it's IMAP.

I'd exported the old K9 profile when putting the beta on, and had to enter passwords again. For 8.0.b1 to 8.0.b2, it was able to grab them, importing straight from the 8.0.b1 app.

Personally I find the unified method to be less than useful - why even have multiple accounts if you're going to just see everything lumped together anyway - but as one can choose either unified, or a single account when viewing messages (inbox, sent, whatever), it's not an issue. Just make sure "Show Accounts" is selected in settings and you'll get the option for each account in the hamburger menu.

Who needs GitHub Copilot when you can roll your own AI code assistant at home

osxtra

Leaning Toward Learning

Call me old fashioned, but it seems using AI to "help" write code, term papers, laws, etc. is misguided at best, and outright dangerous for humanity at worst.

There are plenty of good use cases for the technology - iterating through billions of permutations to help discern what *might* become a new blood pressure drug comes to mind - but it seems to be antithetical to straight-up learning.

True intelligence is partly knowing how to combine data, knowing not only what to include in solving whatever problem may be at hand, but also what to ignore.

I fear that overuse of this technology will result in humans losing sight of how to think, and that just can't be a good thing.

There's a difference between getting a refresher on the capital of Zimbabwe if it comes up in conversation, and remembering how to solve a differential equation.

Having it readily available to spit out whatever answer is being sought, the tool becomes nothing more than a crutch, and you never absorb knowledge yourself because you can always get the machine to regurgitate it for you.

Sure, if in a hurry I'll query StackOverflow - it's way more convenient than sloughing through many, many boring pages of documentation - but am not just a copy/paste sort of fellow, which is the vibe I get from all these "assistants". I want to know *why* the solution works, not just that it *does* work.

Plus, who knows if they're even correct? I've talked to many a folk that don't have a clue but are still willing to spout as if it's gospel. Do most people fact check the results they get? Survey seems to say "no".

Do we really want to put all of our faith in this still relatively infant technology?

Am sorely hoping that at least in its current state, AI is a modern Hula Hoop, down the road used by some enthusiasts, but not in the mainstream.

Otherwise, we might as well just stop trying to improve our own minds and rely sadly and solely on the tool, awaiting the day it goes away and we've completely lost the ability to think for ourselves.

Core Python developer suspended for three months

osxtra

Kurt Vonnegut Was Right

Seems we're easing our way into the society elicited in Harrison Bergeron.

While it's certainly not OK to denigrate folks based on body attribute 'x', it's equally not OK to denigrate them for their own personal beliefs, unless they try to force those beliefs on others.

(I may, say, believe anyone from Oregon should be shot on site. Sure, it's a stupid opinion, but unless I start trying to carry it out, it's just that: A stupid opinion. There are many such dumb thoughts out there in the world.)

Perhaps future US cabinets will include not only a Handicapper General, but a Speak Nicely General as well.

So far as conversation goes, if only folks would grow a pair; metaphorically speaking, of course.

You don't like certain words flung at you? If they're true as applied to you, then you have no cause for complaint. But, if they're not true, either ignore them as you prefer, or sue in Civil Court for libel or slander as needed.

(Also, while you're of course free to engage in dialog with the 'offending' party and try to come to accord, just because someone may have a right to speak, doesn't mean you have to listen.)

Actions or threats, however are different a different respons. If they're not against you, again you have no cause for complaint, though you're well within your right to inform the police of these activities, should they not already be aware.

But if they are true, (bodily or personal property threats, carried out or not) that's where the police, and then Criminal Court comes in.

I have never in my life denigrated anyone, called them an idiot 'just because', or said someone was stupid merely for what they said. One must have faith that in a conversation the other party is attempting to honestly communicate, not just spew without reason. I have certainly never contemplated bodify harm on anyone just because they differed in opinion from me.

Can exchanges become heated? Of course, if one is passionate with regards their subject.

I may become vociferous in trying to get to the bottom of an issue or point of contention, but like the old adage goes, hate the messege, not the messenger.

Hello? Are you talking on a Cisco SPA300 or SPA500 IP phone? Now's the time to junk 'em

osxtra

Re: Phones still OK on an inside non-routable network?

That's a good point, but hopefully folks are only plugging printers into the PC port. Most of those phones offer a 10/100 bandwidth.

It was a great idea though, having the second port on those phones, as many businesses only have the one plug at each desk. In a finished building, the cost of adding a second or third wire could be difficult to swallow. Any time these days for new construction I always get the customer to run at least two per desk (PC for one, Phone the other, with printer tethered to phone as needed). Another alternative would be small managed switches if you needed more than that amount of connectivity at any one location.

osxtra

Re: Phones still OK on an inside non-routable network?

So far as them becoming beachheads, couldn't one use firewall rules to prevent them from reaching anything but the VoIP provider? That would in theory protect workstations and whatnot on the LAN.

Hello? Emergency services? I'd like to report a wrong number

osxtra
Megaphone

One Ringy Dingy

When we set up our phone system, I really wanted to use 911, but obviously that was out.

We're four digits anyway, so x9999 it is...

Zuck dreams of personalized AI assistants for all – just like email

osxtra
Big Brother

Been There, Done That

One of my favorite skiffy novels is John Varley's 1992 novel "Steel Beach", itself an homage to Robert Heinlein's great "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" from 1966.

Both deal with the idea of a non-human intellegence managing needed resources.

In Heinlein's case, the question was "what makes a person", with "Mike" running all the needed infrastructure on the moon, self-aware, but everyone treating him as "just a machine".

In Varley's case, he had the "Central Computer" - also on the moon, providing the same sort of infrastructure - personalizing its interface to every user.

Unfortunately, all that personalization - building a personality to speak to each differnt user - kinda made it go crazy.

It'll be awhile before we've built something as sophisticated as Data, or Mike. Current AI feels more like Central Computer.

Once this genie gets let out of the bottle, we'll be living with Lor for awhile before we grow up enough to build something better.

Thunderbird is go: 128 now out with revamped 'Nebula' UI

osxtra
Mushroom

Engines of Creation

Yes, that release announcement was a bit over the top, not to mention retentively inaccurate.

If one believes in the Big Bang theory (the actual physics one, not the telly show), supernovas do not create "building blocks of creation".

They merely regurgitate them.

Since they've got this theme running though, wonder if Big Bang will see the light of day, after which they'll just just start all over again?

That could really mess up the versioning system.

Having been on TB since before 1.0, will wait for my current Supernova (v115.13.0) to be self-upgradable rather than manually installing Nebula.

Big Music reprises classic hit 'ISPs need to stop their customers torrenting or we'll sue'

osxtra

Whack-A-File

So, without checking each and every magnet out there, how would they know the content of 'LibreOffice_24.2.5_MacOS_x86-64.dmg.torrent' from dubious-site-43.com isn't really that of 'Descpicable_Me_4.torrent' ?

With users mostly happy to keep older kit, Macs just ain't selling like they used to

osxtra

Fix What Ain't Broke

My last Fruity purchase was a '12 Mini. Before that it was an '09 15" MBP. Both, while long in the tooth, still work.

Noteable about these two pieces of hardware is that storage and memory were user-replaceable.

Would I buy from theme these days? Sorry, not spending $2K+ on a machine I can't work on.

My last "big" purchase was one of FrameWork's 13" Intel models. Cost around what the MBP had. Came with a screwdriver. It's my road machine, and a great tool.

The daily driver is an OpenCore mutt with Gigabyte/Intel/Corsair/Samsung/nVidia parts, 128G of memory, 2TB of main nVME storage.

That, combined with two 28" ASUS 4K screens, would cost an obscene amount of money if purchased through Apple. Assuming they even had such a configuration.

And as things stand now with them, newer kit would never be upgradable.

Am still on Ventura and know eventually I'll have to make a decision on getting away from the Fruity OS. (Them deciding to lock down my system files is just plain stupid, and almost enough reason to switch by itself. I shouldn't have to mount system dirs in my own user space, make changes, then bless a snapshot just to put the latest compiled version of bash in /bin. Sudo is there for a reason. Sure, they *say* it's for "user safety", but it's my machine, not theirs. What's the sense of becoming root if you don't have full control over the bits?)

The Framework runs Fedora. Have a WinDoze machine, too, mostly just to keep a hand in for supprorting folks that use that OS. (The Framework has a W10 VM, but I hardly ever run it). The home NAS is Debian now that TrueNAS has switched away from BSD. There's a dev machine with no X still on CentOS that really needs to be swapped out for Rocky or Alma. Voluminous Free Time awaits that chore.

Much though I don't like software subscriptions, Adobe's products have become even more amazing over the years. When they finally port to 'nix, my Mac days may be over. Out of nostalgia, the only thing I may come to miss is that old chestnut, AppleScript. I still use a bash script written years ago that tells it to talk to Adobe for some doc automation. Will need a new workflow.

Biden throws $1.7B at automakers to prepare fading factories for EV production

osxtra
Devil

Good for the Goose

I disagree that "political maneuvering" was a focus of this deal.

U.S. has allowed foreign manufacture for far too long, and a correction is ongoing to bring things back to the country.

The current president's issues aside, this is still a good move.

That being said, we still have a lot of work to do on making EV more environmentally friendly, giving the vehicles a longer range, and reducing "fill-up" time.

Have been on Prius since '06. Not that I drive this way regularly, but it's nice to know if I needed to I could hop in the car and go quite a distance. The joke is I like to fill up every 500 miles, whether I need to or not. It could actually do that when it was new. These days (she's nine this year), it's around 400 before I feel like refueling. Have never put more than nine gallons in at one time.

Had occasion to drive nearly a thousand miles for a work trip around eight years ago. It was a fourteen hour deadhead run. Left town with a full tank. Stopped twice on the way to fill up. Was close to empty when I got there, but made it without needing that third stop for fuel. Maybe a half-hour was spent in re-fueling and "pit stops" along the way. The rest was many, many mile markers passing by.

Did need a bit of a rest to recuperate from so much sitting, though. ;)

When EV can approach that, I'll be ready to replace my paid-off-but-quite-servicable Toyota with a shiny new American model (so long as it's not Tesla; that guy's a tool).

So you've built the best tablet, Apple. Show us why it matters

osxtra

Through Thick and Thin

I'd say Samsung crushed it.

iFixit hails replaceable LPCAMM2 laptop memory as a 'big deal'

osxtra
FAIL

In A World...

"While users have grown used to buying laptops with a fixed amount of memory fitted at manufacture..."

Who are these "users"? Soldered components that have traditionally been user-replacable is the reason I won't purchase anything Fruity these days...

BASICally still alive: Classic language celebrates 60 years with new code and old quirks

osxtra

Re: BASIC

I still use it for Libre Office scripting. That and many other versions have acquired object capability (remember VB6?)

Haven't had to use GOTO or GOSUB for some years now.

One day, though, I will finally convert all that krufty LO BASIC code to Python ... just in time for the Next Great Language to come out, of course...

osxtra

They Add Up

10 YEARS = 20

20 MAX = 65

30 YEARS = YEARS + 5

40 PRINT "HOW MANY YEARS HAS IT BEEN?"

50 PRINT YEARS

60 IF YEARS < MAX THEN

70 PRINT "KEEP WORKING!"

80 GOTO 30

90 ELSE

100 PRINT "TIME TO RETIRE!!!"

110 END

120 END IF

osxtra

How May I Direct Your Call

In the early 90's, I got a job working for a junk mail company that had US Census data on mainframe-style 9-track mag tape.

This, combined with a for-its-time modern 386 SX 16 PC containing a whopping 4 megs of memory running DOS v4, and a 1600 BPI tape drive whose control box was bigger than the computer, allowed me to pull data which would ultimately become postcards arriving in people's mailboxes exhorting them to "claim their free steak package", "visit the greatest timeshare of all!", and so on.

I only lasted a few years there, but helped the company transition from a Varityper, plates from a vaccum press and a 2-color Heidelberg into the digital word, with me churning out around a million names a month, 4-up onto letter-sized cardstock from a 75 page per minute cold-fusion HP laser around the size of two refrigerators laying on their sides, stacked one on top of another.

As there were no readily available "apps" for getting mainframe-style tape drive data into a PC, I had my employer purchase v7 of the MicroSoft Professional Development System, an interpretation of BASIC which could be compiled, and rolled my own.

Wanting to speed things up, I employed QEMM and other then-modern memory management schemes to trick DOS into using as much of that four megs of memory as possible, and had my code suck as many fixed-field records from the tape drive as it could at once into memory, parsing them to record size.

Why not just read it all into disk once and work from there? The data on those 750+ reels comprised some 25+ gigabytes, and I had a RLL hard drive which IIRC had a 40 meg capacity. So, much reading of tapes, over, and over, and over again.

The tape drive's docs specified an offset I could use to take advantage of "all that memory", as standard DOS only worked with a max of 640K.

Discovered though, that while the driver for the 9-track was 16 bit, BASIC was still 8, so I couldn't actually grab all that data at once. The drive would read what I'd asked it to (I think), but thanks to DOS not all of it could ever make it into the 4 megs of memory, so if I asked for too much at one time I'd just get zero's.

Seeking a solution, I placed a call to M$, and eventually, actually got a human on the line.

Once the guy got over laughing and asking "but why for god's sake aren't you just using a mainframe (they shop had actually hired me away from an operator gig at a small Burroughs shop, but we didn't have one, and didn't want to rent time, having spent all this money on the PC, tape drive and printer), it eventually was determined that yes, this was a bug, and no, they didn't have a workaround.

It's nice being able to remember that at one time - albeit 30+ years ago now - one could actually speak to M$.

Channeling the great Weird Al Yankovic in "It's All About the Pentiums": "I'm down with Bill Gates, I call him Money for short. I call him up at home and I make him do my tech support."

DARPA's latest toy is a 20-foot, 12-ton tank that drives itself

osxtra

In Keith Laumer's excellent BOLO stories, the AI tanks began as a sort of Abrams on steroids, first rolling off a GM assembly line around the year 2000.

He wasn't that far off...

Tesla Cybertruck turns into world's most expensive brick after car wash

osxtra
FAIL

TOS

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

TrueNAS CORE 13 is the end of the FreeBSD version

osxtra

Much Ado

To me, this is old news. Went from Core to Scale on a home-built server, first installed a few years ago. Used ECC so ZFS would be "happy". Went with what the board would hold (128G) in case I wanted to run other apps (Plex server, etc.).

Both Core and Scale are pretty well locked down. You generally can't add thingss; don't even get screen (but honestly, tmux is fine too, just not what I was used to).

The upgrade from Core to Scale was painless.

Not sure I'd want my main backup system booting from a stick. It's on a small nVME (cloned just in case for disaster recovery) with a handful of fairly large spinning rust drives holding the data. The most "perishable" data gets again backed up offsite. Movies etc. I can always rip again from the original media. Hopefully. ;)

Put in some used SolarFlare 10G fiber cards for quick(er) LAN connectivity to the various other boxes.

So far as BSD vs Debian, bits is bits; don't really have an opinion on the underlying OS, so long as it works, and won't bite me in the license.

Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble

osxtra

Earth to V'Ger, Come In, V'Ger

Drats, here I was hoping it was just Spock doing a mind meld...

Musk 'texts' Nadella about Windows 11's demands for a Microsoft account

osxtra
FAIL

Tier X Support

A) He must not have sprung for the Pro version. Much more difficult to bypass M$ account creation with the WinDoze Home.

B) From the classic "All About the Pentiums" by Weird Al:

"I'm down with Bill Gates I call him Money for short.

I phone him up at home and I make him do my tech support."

Biden asks Coast Guard to create an infosec port in a stormy sea of cyber threats

osxtra

Any Port In A Storm

I suggest they use port 25; no serious infosec person is on that one these days.

Work to resolve binary babble from Voyager 1 is ongoing

osxtra

What if Voyager is suffering from a floor sort?

osxtra
Angel

Vger to Earth, Come In, Earth

"...which resulted in the Telemetry Modulation Unit (TMU) sending a repeating pattern of ones and zeroes back to Earth..."

Maybe someone out there is trying to talk to us?

Now where did I put my AFDB?

The Land Before Linux: Let's talk about the Unix desktops

osxtra

Quit Stepping On Guido

"Torvald's humorous title may be Benevolent Dictator for Life"

Mozilla calls cars from 25 automakers 'data privacy nightmares on wheels'

osxtra
Devil

Ugh

Being born during the Kennedy administration, I'm one of those Americans who is dismayed at the current state of privacy, not just here, but around the world. 4th Ammendment, indeed!

We Yanks are to blame, though; this inter-tubes thing, combined with rampant capitalism, shows clear path as to how things have gotten the way they now are.

That being said, am pretty sure my '01 Tacoma pickup truck is not sharing anything with its parent. Not sure about the '15 Prius, though.

BMW's response sounded the best, but am wondering which - if any manufacturer - actually respects my privacy and collects zero data (guessing the number is zero).

In other words, when it comes time for another car, to whom should I look as the "least evil" choice?

Framework starts taking orders for 16-inch repairable, upgradeable laptop

osxtra

Way to Go

Last August I bought a batch 3 13.5" model, i7-1280p cpu, supplying my own ram and nvme storage. Also got the various expansion cards. It was not cheap, but any machine that comes with a screwdriver is OK in my book. It fits a little snugly in a 13" targa case.

The new laptop replaced an aging (but still functional) 15" '09 MBP, the last of the Fruity hardware I'd consider purchasing, back when you could actually could upgrade your own storage and ram, or swap out the main board or other components as needed.

Truth to tell this laptop is not my daily driver, but is still a great machine. I use it on the road to connect back to the shop or various cloud servers for maintenance and issue troubleshooting, or jotting notes while enjoying morning coffee outside before ambient temperature reaches one million degrees.

Haven't messed much with other modern laptops but I do like how the BIOS can be set to how much it'll let the battery charge. If it's to be mostly plugged in all the time, they recommend around 60%. Unfortunately, being in BIOS you can't adjust it on the fly without rebooting, so if you're going to be disconnected from battery there's no simple way to switch it back to 100%. It charges via USB-C, so any charger will do, but I sprung for theirs. I normally keep 2 C's, and A, and the 1TB additional storage module installed, swapping out one of the USB's for an HDMI or DP adapter if I want to connect a larger screen, which is a rare occurrence.

Ended up putting Fedora on it. Wanted Debian but decided not to mess with driver incompatabilities as at the time Debian's kernel was too old. Fedora installed without a hitch. Have never had a GUI *nix, mostly deal with servers, RHEL and variants. Had to get used to typing dnf instead of yum. No biggie. Do not use the fingerprint reader but like how it's incorporated into the power button.

I also purchased a blank ANSI keyboard (have touched on Dvorak for 35 years or so), and later got a blank backlit keyboard but didn't like it so put the other one back. The plastic caps needed to be more opaque; you can see the LED's inside, and while not distracting (as a touch typist I'm not actually looking at the keyboard), it is visually unappealing.

My only complaint, and it's minor, was that they had to send the blank keyboard separately, and as a separate purchase. The add-on modules all came in the box with the laptop, but they said something about a different manufacturer or delivery process or something and could not just send the unit with the alternate keyboard installed. It had to be purchased and shipped separately, then I had to swap it.

In my model there are around 60 screws holding the keyboard down, so tedious, but not hard. They even have arrows pointing to many of them.

Can't recommend this machine enough. It's a solid piece of hardware, and made to be worked on, though after swapping the keyboard I haven't had occasion to pop the lid again.

Would consider getting this new larger version, but having thrown a bunch of bucks at the 13" model just last fall, can't really justify it.

Here's what the US Army picked for soldier-worn tactical USB hubs

osxtra

Dick Tracy's Two-Way Foxhole Radio

Well, it *is* science fiction, so who knows what's going on under the hood. In the books I got the idea some far-flung outpost troop could talk to sector HQ as easily as whispering to the person in the next barracks bunk.

How that would actually get built, who knows? Would I want one in *my* head? Probably not.

(Reminisces on "The President's Analyst" wherein the ATT robot was explaining to James Coburn how everyone in the future would have a phone injected into their brains at birth. Yuck! What if they call me at 3AM because I'm late on the bill? Or worse yet, just cut off the "service"? And how would one go about having an unlisted brain?)

osxtra

What's Your 20?

Putting aside that it's skiffy and certifiably creepy to consider having one of these in you, John Scalzi's BrainPal from the Old Man's War series sounds like a great, secure way for the troops to communicate, though even the author talks about hacking that network in the books...

From tiny acorns mighty oak trees grow – RSA is back in town

osxtra
Happy

Lyrics

Oh, you better watch out, you better not spam, you better not phish, I'm telling you ma'am...

Microsoft stumps loyal fans by making OneDrive handle Outlook attachments

osxtra

M$

This is one reason I have my own domains. Sure, they do cost a small amount per annum, but being in control of my bits is well worth it.

The other principal reason is spam control. Adding company_name@my_domain.tld to the aliases file is a great way to track the inevitable onslaught of crap that appears when providing contact info to some new, assuredly happy-to-monetize-crap-they-shouldn't-care-about company.

Fresh models of Framework modular laptops in the works

osxtra

Re: Frame Up

Thanks for the tip, but I'm always switching between 'doze, 'nix & OSX, so good to give the pea-brain something to do. In practical terms, sitting down at a machine that's not my own I'd have to load some code to make it do that. Easier to let the muscles remember...

osxtra

Frame Up

Bought one of their 12th gen i7 models last year. It's a great machinne, though I haven't yet quite gotten around to making OSX run on it so Fedora it was. Wanted Debian but Bullseye's kernel was too old for the hardware and got tired of messing with it. Red Hat's - er, Big Blue's - OS loaded with no issues. Had to re-train thumbs again on CTRL vs CMD, as when switching away from the M$ platform some years back. WinDoze spun up in a virtual machine just fine. Don't use fingerprint for unlocking it but like how that functionality is built into the power button.

The expansion slots are a great idea. It holds four, so I usually keep two USB-C, an -A, and the 1T storage module, swapping out a -C for Ethernet when wired is a better option for getting the bits. Have yet to use either the HDMI or DP adapters but like that they're in the bag and available. Have also not used the Micro-SD but you never know when it'll come in handy. Sprung for their power brick even though any old USB-C will do.

The keyboard options are great, too, if one doesn't mind dealing with about five dozen tiny screws when swapping. I've touch-typed on Dvorak for 30+ years, and had a DAS Keyboard back in the day, a great mechanical model with no stencils. Security through obscurity!

Sprung for the blank ANSI keyboard at initial purchase, which for some reason had to come as a separate shipment rather than with the main unit and its various expansion modules. Docs said about 20 minutes to swap; it took a little longer, and I even managed to not lose any of those damnably tiny screws. There are little arrows pointing to the screws you need to remove, and while they missed a few, it was pretty painless, if not tedious. (Not the first time I've taken something apart. Have just gotten silghtly better over the years at re-assembly.)

Now there's a back-lit version of the keyboard, but must say the blank one needs some work. Started swapping it out for the blank ANSI but the keys just don't look right. Think they should have shaded the plastic a bit so you couldn't so clearly see the led's underneath. It was disconcerting. Ended up leaving the blank ANSI in place. Will happily purchase v2 of the blank backlit once they get the look of the keycaps straightened out.

Haven't even connected a mouse to it. While the trackpad works fine, I'm keyboard-centric. Mr. Cheese is used only when absolutely necessary.

Got storage and memory separately - 2TB NVME, 64GB - so the unit is pretty maxed out. All told, it was around what my now-aging (but still fully functional) 15" MBP cost back in '09, but thanks to the insight of the late, great Mr. Moore, what an improvement on performance!

(This is no slight of the old Fruity device, which is still a great machine, albeit one of the last of their models you could actually upgrade on your own. First thing I did to it was add memory, and switched to a SATA SSD some years later when they became affordable. But, like a beloved pet, it is 14 now, and a core-2 duo sitting on a board that maxes out at 8GB just can't keep up with an i7-1280p.)

I was a little disconcerted about the thought of going to such a small screen, but have adapted. After all, this is not the daily driver desktop with its 2 28" 4K Asus screens. Haven't quite abandoned the Hackintosh desktop I built when first noticing how the MBP was getting long in the tooth (won't buy any more of their products until they stop gluing & soldering everything down), so it's still mostly for dialing in to fix things while on the road. I can suck it up and scroll a little.

All in all, I'm very happy with the purchase. Who wouldn't want a computer that comes with its own screwdriver for easier disassembly? The bottom lid screws are captive, a thougtful touch.

However, having just spent a fair picee on this 13" model, don't think their upcoming larger offering is in my immediate future; but, were I just now getting around to purchasing a new machine, it'd certainly be a consideration.

As Apple sales slide, Tim Cook says fanbois will tolerate higher iPhone prices

osxtra

Yes, just waiting for the day I can go to the grocery store for an Apple Apple... ;)

osxtra

Brake Fix

My trusty '09 MBP is still trucking away, though not used nearly as much these days after getting a Frame.Work machine last fall.

There's a '12 Mini laying around somewhere that I keep meaning to press back into service, though am not sure exactly what I'd have it do.

What have these two Fruity devices in common?

User repairability and upgrades; keeping the OS out of my way when I tell it to; and the fact that I haven't purchased an Apple product in over ten years.

The MBP has had most of its innards replaced over time. But, being a Core 2 Duo with "only" 8 gigs of ram, I was really only using it as a bigger screen than what the tablet has when on the road and needing to dial into the shop to fix something.

While the Frame.Work device is great, haven't quite gotten around to loading OpenCore in a VM on it yet, so it's either Fedora or 'Doze.

The main desktop, though, is running OpenCore and Monterrey; those OC folks are amazing. Back when Catalina got loaded (still Clover then) I had to give up on my now-aging - though very powerful for its time - Titan XP, switching to a Titan Black with, at 6GB ram, only half what the XP had. (For reasons left to another comment, I prefer nVidia.)

And don't even get me started on locking root out of the file system. Sure, for a vast percentage of users that's probably a good safety feature, but just whose machine is it, anyway? I (purport to) know how to operate the thing, and understand the risks when running as boss. When I say "sudo mv" to something whose target is in /System, it had better damn well work.

Or, what if I *like* still having bash as my main shell, and don't feel like running sed on the first line of all scripts to change from /bin/bash to a recently compiled /usr/bin/bash?

I shouldn't have to create a snapshot & bless it just to keep things usable.

Overall what they've done to BSD is great, but this overwhelming need to control the entire experience, and keep folks from working on their own machines, is antithetical to the spirit of the company J&W started.

Sure, eventually, they'll have moved away from Intel hardware, but by then one of two things will have happened:

They'll go back to letting folks mod their own machines. Memory and storage, that's all I'm asking.

They'll stop putting a gag over the fingers of folks who actually know how to operate the device.

Alternatively, folks will figure out how to hack their OS with 3rd-party M* chips, just as they have with Intel.

Personally, am not holding my breath. I like OSX, I really do, but don't use any of their native apps. It's just a pretty screen. No Maps or FaceTime or any of that, more iTerm & Vim/VS Code/Pulsar (when it matures a bit). It's just a tool, and it's *my* tool. The manufacturer should not obstruct my either repairing or operating it.

(The overall tenor of this also explains why I've never purchased one of their phones.)

Hopefully, eventually Adobe will create a 'nix version of their own rental software, so I don't have to learn Gimp/Inkscape/Scribus/Audacity/etc., and thus also don't have to consider going back to 'doze as my daily driver.

As to the sliding sales, sure, all this is part of it - I can't be the only one tired of their shenanigans - but part of it is also surely a simple case of glut. Eventually we'll just run out of folks that either need - or can comfortably afford - the latest shiny bling, especially as it's really no shinier than that other bling they just got a little while ago.

Look! Up in the sky! Proof of concept for satellites beaming energy to Earth!

osxtra

Ouch

Sayeth the article: "The SBSP microwave receiver would allow light and rainwater to pass through."

What about birds? Or airplanes?

Microwave radiation is probably not the best medium for transmission of electricity. Wonder if Tesla considered it when performing his experiments?

Girls Who Code books 'banned' in some US classrooms

osxtra

Grow a Pair

Unless you're committing a crime, it's invariably better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

While the censorship occurring when any school system bans a book is reprehensible, there's nothing wrong with a student bringing in the book on their own, reading it with friends at lunch or on recess, or lending it to them to take home.

Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. does still have a First Amendment, so I'd just love to see the footage of some teacher trying to rip a book out of a kid's hands that they brought to class on their own. How fast can you say "fired" ? The ACLU would eat up a case like that.

I read Sybil in the 8th grade. In class. Big whup. Poor kid, she really got abused. But my mind was old enough to read it, so I did. Went from that to The Minds of Billy Milligan, then the Eden Express. Crazy people are crazy! Does that make me crazy? No, but I've always been fascinated about how the mind works, and it's no one else's business what I read.

Did reading those books turn me into a psycho-killer? No way! It was education, and I learned a lot about why some people don't act "normal".

Books aren't dangerous. Honestly, if anything you read can mess you up that much, the problem isn't in the book.

If America hopes to reclaim its (recently) past glory, part of it is remembering it's up to us, not the State, to say who's in charge. We have the most incredible liberties - on paper. Do we exercise them? Why do folks keep blaming the State for undue control? If you want to do something, just do it. So long as it's not an actual crime (stealing, assault, etc.), you're good. Fake crimes such as would be prosecuted by so-called "morality police" are just tripe, fear-mongering control methods by those so weak and fearful of social "cooties" they can't stand others having their own opinions, their own way of living their own lives.

Serious surfer? How to browse like a pro on Firefox

osxtra

Hide Tab Bar via userChrome.css Does Not Work

FF 105.0.1 64 bit, OSX 10.15.7

Could be a conflict with another addon, or perhaps my version of FF, but the instructions on hiding the native tab bar did not appear to work.

Per the post, updated about:config so legacy stylesheets would operate, and created userChrome.css in the profile folder with the suggested css code. No change. Native tab bar still there.

Also, from your description of how to find the profile folder, it sounds like you folks are on WinDoze.

On a Mac, there's no verbiage saying "Profile Directory" or "Open Directory". Instead, it's "Profile Folder", in the first big section, "Application Basics", with a "Show in Finder" URL and the actual path shown to the right. Also, after the "Important Modified Preferences" section there's "user.js Preferences", with verbiage about your profile folder and a URL to that file; examining this link also shows where your profile lives.

Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

osxtra

Think of the children

Nuclear is not the way to go. There is already more than enough energy to meet our planet's needs coming from another source. It'll just take a little elbow grease.

No matter which form of power generation is chosen, ultimately it's all about electricity.

Given enough scale, both wind and sea-based forms would probably be detrimental. Who knows what all those ugly turbines would eventually do to global wind patterns. Who knows what all those undersea inertia-transferring gadgets will eventually do to our tides.

Solar - as we know it today - is also not the way to go. Panels everywhere. Too inefficient. Too much atmospheric dissipation.

Since we're going to spend the money on *some* technology, rather than billions upon billions more to "perfect" nuclear energy, let's get two things working:

1) Space Elevators.

2) Wireless transmission of electricity.

Artsutanov came up with the idea for #1 in 1960, and besides other still fictional tales, it was used to great effect twenty years later in Clarke's "Fountains of Paradise".

Tesla never did quite get #2 working, but had it not been for his spat with George Westinghouse, many things may have turned out differently for him, and us.

The solar collectors would live tethered to the space end of the elevator, adding mass to help hold it up, and out of the way of that pesky atmosphere. Need it to be a few miles across? No problem! Plenty of room up there. Put one atop every elevator; in aggregate, more than enough to power the planet's needs.

The resulting electricity would augment the energy needs of the elevator cars (offsetting the extra energy needed for mass going up, if there's not a corresponding amount coming down), but its primary task would be to travel part-way down the shaft, then beamed 'round the world, as Tesla envisioned.

Neither technology is quite within our grasp today, but if we don't start working on it, we'll never get to enjoy it down the road.

Tavis Ormandy ports WordPerfect for UNIX to Linux

osxtra

F11

The DOS version of v5.1 was great. Much better than the M$ offering at the time, and who needs a GUI or a mouse, anyway?

One could - and often did - go a little overboard customizing what commands were tied to the various keyboard button choices.

I still miss Reveal Codes, an invaluable window into why your formatting was going wonky. Too bad LO Writer doesn't have that.

These days, like many, it's either VS Code for GUI work, or VIM when dialed in somewhere...

Systemd supremo Lennart Poettering leaves Red Hat for Microsoft

osxtra

The Opposite Of Defenestration

Ultimately, defenestration (see: Icarus)

Soviet-era tech could change the geothermal industry

osxtra

A Different Tack

Need energy? Sap the seas via electro-wave generators.

Need energy? Sap the earth by drilling holes to allow its heat to escape.

Need energy? Sap the winds by erecting huge fans to capture it.

Need energy? Sap all plant life (and eventually, us), by blowing previously sequestered carbon back into the skies, which will eventually smother what is below.

The problem with all those methods is they're extracting energy from our own closed-system, the Earth. Yet, we have a constant supply of energy coming in from outside the planet.

Why we don't make more use of it is a mystery.

(Well, OK, not *so* much a mystery. More a reluctance for people making money to consider other ways of making money).

So: Need energy? Just use the sun. It's got all the energy we need, and is anyway the ultimate source of all the energy we currently have.

Sure, we're not there yet, technology-wise, but things have been moving faster and faster this past century or so.

Before too long, when Tsiolkovsky's space elevators (neatly described nearly a century later in Clark's Fountains of Paradise) are up and running, and someone equally as bright as Nikola Tesla has finally figured out how to handle ground when transmitting electricity in wireless fashion (or maybe it won't even be electricity, just another wavelength converted back and forth as needed), it'll be a piece of cake.

Simply place the collectors outside the gravity well, tethered and adding to the mass that keeps an elevator from falling back to earth, and beam power from points along the tethers to whatever device may need it. A few hundred feet up for most buildings, vehicles, or pedestrians. Higher for aircraft. Under water or ground may take a little more research.

Look, Ma! No extension cords!

Sure, sounds like science fiction, but in Verne's and Wells' time, so did space travel.

Would just be nice if we could grow up a little, and stop acting like little three year olds wanting to hold on to the sugar cube we have, when the chocolate banana-cream pie we're going to know how to bake down the road will taste so much better.

The only way to learn how to bake that pie is with practice. If we try but once a generation when crisis-de-jou rears its ugly head, it'll be scads of those before any progress is made. If we try every day, even just a little, progress will come that much quicker.

DARPA wants to refuel drones in flight – wirelessly

osxtra

First Thing First

To accomplish this, DARPA first needs another piece of technology: Time Travel. Given that, they could bring back Nikola Tesla and let him resume his research. He'd figure it out.

Contrary to a previous comment, Mr. Tesla did not know "how to do this" 100 years ago. But he sure was working on it. Had he not been screwed by Marconi, who knows what else the man may have ended up accomplishing.

(It is funny though, how we're coming back to the idea of direct current. Turns out both he and Edison were correct. In the house, DC is ultimately the way to go. But, how do you get all that juice *to* the house? Thus, the need for transmission without wires, or alternating current, as you prefer.)

His issue with wireless transmission of electricity was the same any modern inventor will face: determining how to handle ground. During his lightning experiments in Colorado, horses 30 miles away would spontaneously jump into the air as Tesla conducted his experiments. Shocking! ;)

True though, if anyone could figure this out, it'd be Tesla (the man, not the company). Wireless transmission of electriticy would mean no need for power lines cluttering up the streets, and no need for earth-bound generating plants (just capture the sun at the top of the space elevators encircling the equator, then beam it from the exterior of the elevator shafts some miles above ground).

TSMC and China: Mutually assured destruction now measured in nanometers, not megatons

osxtra

Test Your Backup

This is just dumb. Sure, TSMC currently has about half the global market share, but that's mostly because we've become complacent, assuming the tech we've created will always be available. Too many eggs, not enough baskets.

If that plant in Taiwan stops producing for the West, sure, we'll lose some hardware, but not the ideas that *make* it. I do agree the physical plant should be rendered useless to any usurper, but hey, it's just a building! Didn't humans make it once? We can make it again.

Ghu forbid that during the reconstruction we might have to go on using last year's device for a while.

It took the US some time to ramp up during WWII, but once it did, look out. The same applies here. TSMC has to have a backup of all their data, all their plans and layouts. It's unlikely all that data will perish.

Why don't we, the descendants of those who won the Big One, get off our duffs and put a little elbow grease into the problem? I'll bet we could have another fab up and running in under two years, if we really *wanted* to.

Perhaps - with a nod to historic poetry - near Eindhoven, where we could start all over again worrying about that country's crazy neighbor? Or perhaps in Arizona, where we could worry about some weaponized wacko taking over the plant and demanding "justice"?

We do need a backup plan for Taiwan, but it shouldn't be just one fab. Why not spread the love to at least a half dozen?

Page: