Notices by Jeff Geerling (geerlingguy@mastodon.social)

It's hard to have a good time on a Mac.

Which is why I spent far too many hours tinkering with GPS, Chrony, and NTP to see if I could improve the timing situation...

See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtmQGMwF_M8

I did not die installing a GPS antenna at the studio with my Dad... and I got to learn some of the tricks of the trade with coax and antennas for permanent outdoor installs from him! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg4U73uTKDs

Pet peeve: People complaining about the way I maintain my open source projects under MIT license (particularly my decision to use stale bot, since I don't like seeing literal thousands of open issues across my repos).

Just fork it! No skin off my back. https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/just-say-no

@darix fine by me!

I often post a PR to a project with zero expectations whatsoever.

The only reason I post it is so (a) I can incorporate that into my own documentation or fork, and (b) so others who use the project can benefit.

If anyone on the project ever decides to merge my code, that's just icing on the cake.

@AdmSnackbar @darix my stale bot configuration has a pass for bug and "planned" labels.

But I apply those labels sparingly. I don't close bugs, but I often close feature requests. The projects are first and foremost for me, if others benefit from my code that's great.

macOS setup is not even close to as bad as Windows, if you want to create a local account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE-hFyANr0Y

I'm still annoyed by how many dumb questions they ask in the first-time setup wizard. And Apple Intelligence is still dumb.

A thousand times slower than my Apple Watch—and finicky to use.

But at least this Apple II can run 50+ more years with no cloud service required! https://youtu.be/AVec5Db_SRo #AprilApples

De-censoring a video's never been easier.

Check out how quickly people were able to undo the pixelization in one of my YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acKYYwcxpGk

Blog post if you don't enjoy video: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/its-easier-ever-de-censor-videos

@paul try Geekbench 5 instead. Multicore absolutely falls apart on Geekbench 6 beyond about 8-12 cores. It's baaaad for multicore.

Found this cool active GNSS/GPS antenna that is literally powered over fiber (like 300-ish mW), using a laser. Don't look into that optic!

From the HUBER+SUHNER booth at #NABShow

Thanks so much to the SBE for inviting my Dad and I to talk about Media over IP and Broadcast mini labs at the Ennes workshops at #NABShow this morning!

And of course I had to bring up a Raspberry Pi for SDR... :D

The result of those many months of work is this first video in a series on time and timekeeping with a Raspberry Pi time server (called 'Time Pi'), and that video is out this morning! Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT71UvUxhjU

I was honored to be visited by John Clark (Masterclock's CEO) and Dr. Demetrios Matsakis, former Chief Scientist at the US Naval Observatory, a physicist who contributed much to our understanding of time (and it's measurement). We spoke at length about DIY timing solutions!

In that second picture is my 'Time Pi', a project I've been working on for over a year which runs a Raspberry Pi as a Stratum 1 NTP/PTP server with a timing-specific GPS module from u-blox. More details on my blog: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/diy-ptp-grandmaster-clock-raspberry-pi

For the past few months, people have been asking me about these two clocks that keep showing up in my videos—one in my rack, another at my desk.

Both are PoE-powered NTP clocks from a local company called Masterclock 🧵

For illustrative purposes, re: Bosch requiring WiFi connection + app to use certain features like rinse or eco mode.

My old GE dishwasher broke (completely dead, tried many ways to reset, was dying for months though...).

Bought a new Bosch 500 (highest not-zillion-dollar model I could get over weekend).

Installed, went to mess with some settings, then saw:

"this setting requires the HomeConnect app"

Oh. Okay, so like Bluetooth or NFC or something?

Nope. They want me to connect my _dishwasher_ to WiFi to configure a number of settings on it! Ugh. No way, no how.

@dipolecat indeed, I hate shorteners for that very reason. (Ironic on a post relating to infosec!)

Because if the length of the URL it wouldn't fit on Twitter and I think bsky. Since I often post across 6+ sites, I don't always customize the messages for each.

@klopf I still use X, Bsky, Threads, Insta, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Facebook, and my good ol blog, because that's where viewers are.

Despite rumors to the contrary and despite Elon's best efforts to trash it, X is still a huge community, especially in the maker and electronics crowd.

Even though the scammers are getting pretty clever, you'd think these unicode-fooling names could still be detected by Google, what with all their fancy Gemini AI...

Targeted phishing is only going to get worse (re: my GitHub issue last week: https://x.com/geerlingguy/status/1901313223015518250 )