Comments on: Happy New Year!

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 04:37:31 +0000

Every move has unintended consequences. I shifting more of my activity to Opera which has a free VPN included. It seems that every time I find something useful, the developers decide to turn to the dark side and screw up their creation.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 08:21:35 +0000

I generally assume most people here will only use the *tweaks* that are appropriate for them. And it’s not difficult to try something & change it back if it doesn’t work for your needs.

One reason I prefer Basilisk or other Open-Source XUL-based browsers. I rarely have to change any such settings as they are either appropriately set by default, or the particular *problematic design* issue isn’t part of the build.

It doesn’t really bother me as I only surf via my hardware VPN/Firewall to a few strategic sites Globally with carefully crafted rules about what can & can’t pass! If I find a site that has a problem with that, I research why & if appropriate, tweak the rules to account for it, or find another site. I also have scripts for some sites I need to use that inject false information they don’t need to actually know to work appropriately (like PayPal, though their privacy support has surprisingly been improving). Google, on the other hand, get’s a lot of garbage from me & many others I know. I wouldn’t believe most of their stat’s if I were an advertiser. 😆

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 08:06:08 +0000

The Firefox “bullshit removal” link will basically render our application unusable. For example, we use websockets to provide responsive dashboards. That way you can open up a view of your network that has icons for every device on it, and when a device goes offline or has issues that need looking at, it turns from green to yellow or red (depending upon the severity of the issue — for example, if a video recording server is losing frames as it saves video to disk due to network or disk congestion, it might just go to yellow). If we didn’t use a websocket, we’d have to refresh the page every 30 seconds or so, which would be a lot more database hit than sending a rabbitmq message from the server that’s setting the status to the UI servers that are serving the data saying “the status of device X that you’re subscribed to has changed”, which just hits the database for the status of device X. (UI servers on the other end of the websocket subscribe via rabbitmq to the things they’re displaying, and the status update / alert servers look for rabbitmq subscriptions on devices whose status they’re changing or issuing an alert on). With the subscription / websocket mechanism, only status changes result in database traffic — as versus every 30 seconds having to look up the status of hundreds of devices in the database.

Various other settings he advocates changing would similarly render our service unusable. It appears that his beef is with modern web UI design, not with security. Websockets to https URL’s can only go back to the site that served the page to begin with, so it’s not as if they can inject things into other pages or be used to snoop on other pages. Not if you have the security set up correctly on your browser to prevent cross-domain attacks upon https connections, anyhow….

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 06:48:58 +0000

Drat! Just remembered I mean to post this when we were discussing the new Firefox Quantum. basically, I dumped it after a week because Mozilla have become worse than Google at collecting & profiting from your info (I'd thought it almost impossible for anyone to be worse than Google @ that)! Much of the tracking/security issues can be disabled if you know how to use the "about:config", one of the thigs I do like about Firefox (but the con for Mozilla is they don't make it easy to find this info). The best project I've found so far for configuring and hardening Firefox privacy, security and anti-fingerprinting: An ongoing comprehensive user.js template There's another (slightly outdated) list of tweaks collated here with more detailed info, with an appropriate title ;) :lol: Firefox bullshit removal Also found a good alternative FF browser fork with all the "pro's", few of the "CON's"! Basilisk is a free and Open Source XUL-based web browser

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 06:02:42 +0000

RW Gov's have the scam down pat. 1. Defund the Gov. Social Service or whatever department they want to privatize & appoint someone purposely incompetent to run it. Also make it expensive to fix! 2. Eventually, public outcry over the terrible service will allow the Gov. to say that the only fix is to hand it to private business. 3. pocket their reward! Looks like Florida is becoming a great place for you to be with your Russian Language skills Bryan! ;) :D Birth tourism brings Russian baby boom to Miami Though, I suspect it's been happening for some time, it appears to have increased significantly the past year as Russian women are becoming more aware of the 14th amendment rights. Conrat's! You may become an *Uncle*!

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 17:53:50 +0000

The first half of January is always overloaded with deaths. People hold on through the holidays, and then give up. They don’t want to spoil Christmas for their family and friends, but use up everything they had in reserve doing it.

The government uses the forced labor of prisoners for the benefit of private businesses, but non-profits are “exploiting” the disabled by providing useful employment and job skills. Politicians would rather they were vegetating on disability pensions than paying taxes and creating assets for the economy.

I’ve heard that crap my entire life – business can’t compete against government, but business is more efficient than government. If business was really so GD efficient they could compete against anyone, and if government was so damn sloppy why does it cost us so much more when a government function is privatized 😡

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 05:22:48 +0000

Well... this New Year sux so far. I just found out that Ron Tandberg died of cancer. I didn't even know he was ill! I'll miss his awesome toon's! And another one gone... Rest, in Peace Ron Tandberg! You helped keep the World sane.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 02:12:40 +0000

Yes. Agree with all.

I discovered that they were very good at repetitive tasks. At first, we made wiring looms & harnesses & it’s amazing how exact they were! And every one was near identical and in 2+ years never had a defect. Eventually, we had a few that became very skilled with a soldering iron. They didn’t really understand electronics, though some did learn the basics and understood. They were excellent @ “This resistor with these colored bands goes here!” etc. I remember well the first small boards they assembled with 8 components, and their nervous looks as I examined them. I tell you… the soldering and attention to details was incredible! I gave them all big hugs & told them how impressed I was! Then took them all to lunch at their favorite lunch shop where the owner & staff loved them and made their sandwiches or meals exactly they way they liked them!

Damn! I truly miss that! The Gov. killed the programs stating we were exploiting people with disabilities! We fought for quite some time, but couldn’t win. of course, what it was really abouit was their donors complaining we were stealing their work, where they WERE exploiting their employees, by offering much better work at better prices. We even had some large Aus. companies on our side who loved the work & they helped fund the campaign. But we lost.

Some people can be good Humans. And some are just plain evil bastards that need a bullet!

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 07 Jan 2018 17:29:11 +0000

I’ve used ARC [Association for Retarded Citizens was the original name, but now just The ARC] for years to supply services and the teams did a great job with attention to detail that most “for profit” businesses didn’t provide. The ARC members separated the recycle stuff from other debris and were really pleased when you told them they could redeem it [$.05/can or bottle in California at the time] when the cleaned up around the outside of the office and parking lot.

Most of the illiterates I have encountered left school to go to work early. They or their parents never saw the point of ‘book learning’. Later they learned how to fake literacy with dodges like drawing their signature to get jobs. My Mother would fill out checks for customers when she worked at the local grocery store and the customer would ‘sign’ them. Trump is faking it. He recognizes his name on the summaries he’s given, and that’s about it.

Trump depends on lawyers, accountants, and kids to do the reading. He is the bullshitter-in-chief, the master-of-ceremonies, the presenter. He has a core vocabulary that is barely into 3 digits.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Sun, 07 Jan 2018 06:26:36 +0000

There was a Mother Jones investigation in 2015 about whether he sends his own tweets. Updated in 2016: Does Donald Trump Send His Own Tweets? An Investigation And yes... I've dealt with semi-literate & illiterate people in Sheltered Workshops I managed for a few years. The difference being, they didn't want to be that way and wanted to be productive. Many had learning disabilities. Almost all ended up overcoming their issues & being wonderful employees. I was proud of them. I'd have kicked Dotard out the door after a couple weeks. Maybe less.