Notices by Tim Chase (gumnos@mastodon.bsd.cafe)

A = IPv4 DNS record
AA = battery size
AAA = automobile association
AAAA = IPv6 DNS record
AAAAA = me yelling about DNS issues

@cks I played around with xfontsel(1) but it doesn't seem to let you put arbitrary text. Then fiddled with xmessage(1) but it doesn't seem to take font-resources.

Here's an uuuuuuuuuugly (and there aren't enough letters there to express the extent of the ugliness) hack, but it seems to work for me:

$ xclock -digital -strftime "This doesn't need to be an actual strtime format string" -face Sans-24

@feld

My understanding was that there are a limited number of signals—one for each bit in a 32-bit integer, and I recall reading that Linux chose to use that particular bit for some other purpose (SIGPWR).

@q66 @lispi314

Recently came across the Lynx² JavaScript project and was frustrated at their choice of names. The lynx(1) web-browser¹ predates this upstart by *decades*. As a twist of the knife, because lynx(1) doesn't support JavaScript, you can't even make use of LynxJS in lynx(1).

While naming things is one of the classically hard problems of computer science, please choose a different name, folks.

⸻
¹ https://lynx.invisible-island.net/
² https://lynxjs.org/blog/lynx-unlock-native-for-more

blarg, got suckered into a substack article (they had their own domain rather than substack dot com, so it wasn't obvious).

Opened the tab to a full-covering "hey, subscribe to this person posts!" Dismissed that and started to read the article. Didn't make it more than a screenful or two down the lengthy article, before another "subscribe to mail notifications!" slid into view, obscuring the article text.

Two annoyances for a page that could have otherwise been a SSG site (plain HTML + CSS + a few images) without all the substacky annoyances. 😑

And for the record: you can get low-end VPS instances for $1/mo¹ (or shared-hosting for static sites is even cheaper) that will more than adequately handle such a site. No need to subject your readers to substacky abuses.

⸻
¹ https://lowendbox.com/blog/1-vps-1-usd-vps-per-month/

@nixCraft

A BlueTooth vulnerability¹?

Meanwhile, #OpenBSD users everywhere:

⸻
¹ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/undocumented-backdoor-found-in-bluetooth-chip-used-by-a-billion-devices/

@jpmens

@robn @dexter but in my experience, the problem stems from Outlook (or Gmail) 🤬ing with otherwise-standard protocols.

(side anecdote: at $DAYJOB where I do contract work, they finally cut off password-only-auth-IMAP access to my work mailbox, and neither mutt/neomutt nor OfflineIMAP/mbsync qualified as one of the approved apps with some app-id token needed to access the auth, so I went from checking in on my email dozens of times throughout the day (because it was right there when I was checking personal mail, so 0 effort) to 1–2 times per day when I made an intentional effort to connect to the VPN/remote-desktop and check in. Their "security" measures had a side-effect that wasn't what they wanted, but I was quite fine with that 😉)

@solene oh, that day was loooooong ago here. It started as the occasional gray/white hair in my beard/stubble, and before I knew it, they'd multiplied like rabbits 😑

@nixCraft

@tevo I'll support you on that one.

And even as annoying/verbose as XML is, at least it's not YAML ☺

@teajaygrey
amusingly, my brain first tried to parse your curse-word abbreviation as a Usenet group hierarchy 🤦

@prahou @xtaran

I regularly hit CloudFlare-fronted services that refuse to return (even static) pages because I'm browsing from lynx(1). Really irksome. And yes, changing the UA-string to something Chrome-ish/Firefoxish merrily bypasses the braindead check.

@feld @Tubsta I'm unaware of any such coops, but there aren't that many folks in my circles who fall in the intersection of technical competence and familial trust. Fortunately, the VPS requires minimal upkeep and I try to keep the domain-name registered as far out as I can, so, while my demise might mean she has to switch to something like gmail or a different mail provider, she at least has some time to do it.

@sun @feld

Of a "vintage" age myself, I remember when file-servers (good ol' Novell Networks), email servers, FTP-servers, etc, were all measured in *mega*bytes of RAM. The first machine I had with >1GB of RAM blew my mind that software could be so profligate. And yet here we are

:glares at Chrome & Firefox:

RA RA ah-ah-ah, roma, roma-ma…

@Tubsta As much of a pain as running your own mail-server is with regards to successfully delivering, everything else is pure win. Your mail provider dropped POP3 or IMAP support? Bummer, mine still works without issue. Oh, they added OAUTH2 requirements and your preferred local mail client can no longer connect? Sad to hear, but mine doesn't. Your Exchange server requires client-application verification and no longer allows you to connect from mutt? Sorry, but I can still connect to my mail just fine even with `openssl s_client` if I need to.

(having experienced all of the above with connecting to $DAYJOB mail, I feel the pain acutely and appreciate that my personal mailserver doesn't manifest any of that grief)

@WiteWulf

ActivityPub/ActivityStreams allows for instances to cache media from external instances, so depending on whether instances choose to do that (some do, some don't), you could either get media requests per-server (scales roughly with a nebulous decentralization-factor) or per-user (which can drag a machine to its knees for popular posts)

(and please no blockchain! 😂)

@dalias @ItsThatDeafGuy

@WiteWulf

Having been around the internet since pre-web days, there was very little paying others for services in the early days—the only paying involved setting up your own (obtaining your own hardware, paying for connectivity & electricity, etc), Or paying tuition to a university that gave you internet access 😉

@ItsThatDeafGuy @dalias