The dentist’s office has full-blown novels in the waiting room, which bodes ill for expected waiting times.
2 weeks in and GitHub still hasn’t replied to my urgent support ticket for a security-related audit log request, except to close it twice and make me re-open it.
And we pay good money for this privilege.
We’re this close to me asking my CTO if I can pilot a Forgejo POC.
I released v1.4.4 of Frozen BBS. It adds a ping command, a configurable delay between long reply pages, and an indicator of boards that have unread messages. It also removes message and DM and user bio limits, which are unnecessary since the pager can cope with longer texts.
Hey you.
My coworker Secret Santa gets me.
I just bought my first “real” handheld ham radio, a Yaesu FT-70DR. I’ve been pretty good this year and figured Santa might want to hook me up with some nice gear. There were a lot of options in my budget range and here’s how I narrowed the choice down:
Yaesu FT-60R/FT-65R
I’ve heard nothing but good about these, with the 60R having a reputation for a slightly better receiver than the 65R. They only support analog, though, and I wanted to play with digital.
Yaesu FT5DR
This was extremely tempting, but I stumbled across report after report after report of the case cracking, even for people who never leave the house with them. If I paid that much for a radio, and the case broke itself, I’d have to find a steamroller to put it out of my misery.
Also, its APRS seems to keep getting stuck in transmit mode. Just… what?
AnyTone AT-878UVII Plus
The 878 also has a lot of fans! The only downsides were that I already have a DMR radio, and that its prices puts it up against some other extremely nice units.
Yaesu FT-70DR
So I ended up with the FT-70DR. It also has complaints about its battery life, but at least I can work around those by keeping it charged up or buying extra batteries. And now I’ll be able to play with Yaesu System Fusion digital mode, which sounds fun. The price was nicer than some of the alternatives, too, which makes Mrs. Claus a little more amenable to future purchases.
My coworkers weren’t sure what my “2600” baseball cap referred to. I sense an upcoming lunch and learn.
This morning’s programming-adjacent task: making a Shortcut that sets my phone to “reduce interruptions” mode for an hour, sets my AirPods to noise cancellation mode, and opens Maps showing transit times to my office.
Now I can say “hey Siri, commute” and do all these things at once.
My AirPods Pro case stopped charging on my MagSafe charger. The Internet told me, and I quote,
Just smack them shits on your table
It worked. Percussive maintenance carries the day, yet again.
I talked to my company today and told them how phishers use a sense of 1) danger, and 2) urgency, to push smart people to do rash things. I offered to be their personal, confidential fear consultant: “hey, I got this scary thing. Is it real?” Let me do the worrying for them.
This, more than goofy phishing tests that make people feel dumb, is how we help our friends avoid scams.
Finished reading: Class Clown by Dave Barry 📚
Govt. Issues SIM Binding Directions To WhatsApp and Telegram
India sees US and EU lawmaking idiocy and wants to get in on the fun. Basically, they demand that popular messaging apps link your online ID with a physical element the government believes they can control. They say so right in their claims: it will deter “fraud”; that is, any activity you wouldn’t want traced back to yourself.
In this specific case, I hope the corpos tell them to shove it.
Another hiker caught my wife and me cresting the top of a hill, then airdropped the photo to us. People on this trail tend to be either don’t-bother-me busy with their workout, or very social and ready to chat. Not that I’m either of those, exactly.
The Black Panther Party had a 10 point platform. These demands are painted in various places around Oakland, CA. This is the painting for number 4:
We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter of Human Beings.
It’s in the middle of a homeless encampment. Some things are better now. Some are not.
Mise + fnox + macOS Keychain is a great combo for running Ansible with stored, encrypted secrets.
In mise.toml:
[env]
DBSERVER_PW = { value = "{{ exec(command='fnox get DBSERVER') }}", tools = true, redact = true }
In Ansible’s host vars:
my_servers:
hosts:
dbserver:
ansible_become_password: "{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.env', 'DBSERVER_PW') }}"
Now you can run ansible-playbook and friends without hardcoding your sudo passwords anywhere!
For giggles, I added a new Rust implementation of Little Fluffy Clouds so that you can use it as a standalone binary. The Python version isn’t going away! It’s still the only solution I know of for merging lots of IP networks quickly and correctly.
Chinese Regulators May Kill Retractable Car Door Handles That Never Should Have Existed
Compared to mechanical door handles, however, these door handles come with a trade-off in complexity. They require electricity, motors, and a functioning control system to work. When all is well, this isn’t a problem. However, when things go wrong, a retractable electronic door handle often proves inaccessible and useless.
I’m glad this is getting attention. I would not ride in a Tesla. I’m astonished that these insane door handles are legal at all, and that they haven’t been sued into bankruptcy for willful negligence.
The crucial part to booting FreeBSD on my 2018 Intel Mac Mini (macmini8,1) was in the FreeBSD wiki:
$ mount -t msdos /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes
$ bless --mount /Volumes --setBoot --file /Volumes/efi/boot/BOOTX64.efi --shortform
$ diskutil umount /Volumes
$ reboot
Emergency cat pics! June Bug is grooming “her” kitties, Sam and Dean.
