ReallyOldLurker

"My experience getting older relatives to use Mint has not gone well. The most common is their reliance on Microsoft Office"

I was asked by an older friend to put Linx on their computer because they were too frusterated with MS Windows. She also used MS Word and Powerpoint a lot. I said that I had installed a different version of Offce because it was all I had at the time, so the menus would be slightly different. It was three years before she discovering that LibreOffice was not Microsoft Office. By that time it didn't matter.

For now, you can get a copy at https://archive.org/details/CIA-World-Factbook-collection

My scrollbar changes in Debian:

1. as root, edit /etc/environment and add: GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0

2. in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css add: .scrollbar.vertical slider, scrollbar.vertical slider {min-width: 10px;}

Here is a reference regarding window borders: https://mxlinux.org/wiki/xfce/changing-border-size-with-xfce...

> Only one thing I wish I could set, allow windows to cover the 'bar'. Yes, I can make the bar auto-hide, but I cannot have a portion of it covered by a window.

If I understand your comment correctly, right click on the Panel --> Panel Preferences, Display tab. Checkmark "Keep panel above windows". This allows windows to use the panel section of the screen. Combine with "Automatically hide the panel: intelligently".

OK, here you go:

US Dept of Homeland Defence: https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-cybe...

US Congressman Ron Wyden to FTC: https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/09/senator-blasts-micr...

"I always assumed emails are case sensitive"

Wikipedia has a good summary on what is valid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address

From the second paragraph:

Although the standard requires the local-part to be case-sensitive,[1] it also urges that receiving hosts deliver messages in a case-independent manner,[2] e.g., that the mail system in the domain example.com treat John.Smith as equivalent to john.smith; some mail systems even treat them as equivalent to johnsmith.[3]

You'll find the footnote links at the Wikipedia article, I'm not going to paste the here. So yes, if my email address is my username, then I would expect it to work the same in uppercase or lowercase. If my username is "like an email address, but not an email address" then you make the rules for your site.

I was allowed to go down two short tunnels, one led to part of the underground drainage (the end of it was blocked so I didn't get to look at the drainage itself). Overall it seems the same. From the top of the pyramids in the back, we could look at the remains of the palace area, but it was roped off and I was told that the government was gearing up for archeological work there.The guide I was with talked a lot about how precise the courts were leveled to drain rainwater away and how after all these centuries the drainage still works perfectly.

Wow! That sure brings back memories. I've been there twice, 2011 & 2012. Congratulations. I'm very impressed.

RE: The only states in the US where that is the case are Wyoming and Montana

That is absolutely incorrect. In Oregon, from the town that I live in, it is at least 45 minutes to the next one, regardless of the type of car or the road traveled. Keeping at a legal speed limit it is really an hour or more to the nearest charger.

I'm not surprised at the rise in homeschooling.

When you have anti-education groups like the Oregon Department of Education [1] running the public school system, any parent that cares and can make the effort should remove their child from public schooling.

This semester they switched my son from high-school chemistry to "environmental science". I asked him, "is oxygen flammable?" He couldn't answer. I looked at the content of the so called environmental science. Its really just a repeat of some basic biology material that he covered last year and lots of politics on pollution and climate change.

[1] https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2023/10/oregon-again-sa...

Agreed. I prefer proper packaging and a clean system. I remove any flatpak services that get installed. So far there is a total of two AppImages that I've ever needed to use and those ran inside a firejail sandbox.

No, the reason (in my case) was because the public schools prioritize social agendas over academic quality. My kids can do advanced math. My neighbor's kids estimate or guess. I hope the public schools in my area get de-funded. They are a waste of tax payer money. My choice had nothing to do with who is poor or rich.

I use the nearly the same.

- Zim-Wiki for items or procedures that I refer to or repeat often. Zim-Wiki is mostly plain text and transportable, but handles embedding small screenshots. I keep another Zim-Wiki notebook for small projects or investigations. - A simple text file list for in progress items or projects that I am working that have more or less an end date or specific goal - A simple text file list for to-do items, vague plans, and links to check. This file changes almost daily. - A simple text file list for wish list items and purchase ideas > syncthing on all my devices to keep all them all current

In my paid work I have a few additional things, but not much more. The most important is a separate subdirectory for each project's files. Structure it so that it is ready to use in a retrospective repository when finished. Refer back to it often when planning similar projects.

I used to "hoard" knowledge, had a large library, sets of sorted bookmarks files, etc., but I'm finding that I need less and less of that. I think the biggest change took place when I made a short project once with the goal of making my home computing portable and self-hosting. That really simplified a lot.

A big help is being consistent in a format and structure that makes sense to you regardless of the tools you migrate through.

I suggest using the ESR version rather than the rapid release version: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/#product-desktop-e...

I suggest learning about policies to manage the above mentioned annoyances: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox-enterpris...

Once you have fairly good policies.json it only needs an occasional updates. A backup copy is all you need to "instantly" configure any new installations.

You think it is good to "throw Taiwan under the bus" all for the sake of some organization being able to monitor a disease? Sad.

Following your logic, would it would be OK to "throw Canada under the bus" if it allowed some international organization to more easily monitor, um say their oil exports?

Taiwan did an excellent job dealing with COVID. China did a poor job. WHO should you listen too?

Awesome - I went to Project Gutenberg, picked a title that I was curious about but for which the Bibliographic Record does not have a description. Gave the Kagi Summarizer the URL to the HTML version of the book and got a good description. Finally a way to make my book browsing easier!!!

I wonder if the summarizer's summary can be added to the Project Gutenberg Bibliographic Record?

Just started reading the article, it looks nice! In this sentence:

It’s a 7 bits codes, allowing to send bigger messages than with the Baudot (or the Murray) code, even including the luxe of lowercase and uppercase letters.

I think "luxe" is really "luxury"?

The Dalles, Oregon is a real city.

>> ... multiple devices, that alone...

A big assumption. POP3 works perfectly fine and is preferable in my situation.

> Where does one find other parents who are homeschooling their children?

I suggest starting with your state resources (assuming you are in the USA). Here are a couple for Oregon: - http://www.ohen.org/ - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/homeschooling-in-oregon/

At the time that I was homeschooling my children, that was enough info to lead me to various parent and meet-up groups.

Something that isn't mentioned much - just like getting a tutor in college, its pretty easy for a parent group to pitch in for an occasional day of tutoring or lecture/review from an expert.

Negative concerns about socialization was never an issue in my experience or from what I saw with other homeschoolers, rather the opposite.

When getting started, make an honest appraisal of your teaching capabilities and home life. Be ready to admit where you have areas of weakness and stop when you reach the end of your capability and don't have support or a parent group to assist in those areas. Be ready to experiment with different learning approaches and look at it as an opportunity for yourself as much as for your child.

Like anything else in life, you and your child will get out of the experience what is put into it. Success takes effort. I think (just my opinion) too many parents let public school do the parenting. When I first started with my 3 year old (who was already reading and doing math by that age) I created a simple set of goals and a project plan and then reiterated through it as I learned more about homeschooling. By the time my second child started to read and write I had a solid sense of direction and a plan that I was able to loosely follow for the next dozen years.

One last tip: don't stick to the public school schedule. Life lasts all day long, all year long. Activities may change with the seasons, but learning doesn't need to stop just becuase summer came. Be flexible. Take lots of field trips. Have fun... OK, that was more than one last tip.

>> `network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy` to 1 in Firefox

Thanks! Just checked and it is at zero for the default. Reviewed https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Referrer and learned something new.

The advantage of a computer and flexible web page designs are to make search results easy to view and understand. In the 2'x4' piece of birch plywood example above, I saw a mix of results and only items 2 & 3 on the first row and item 2 on the second row matched what I expected. I stopped looking at the results after the second row.

"People often assume the search is bad if they see a lot of broader matches". Yes, because it usually is. Non-matching results should always be indicated separately and secondarily from perfect matches.

"...without realizing that there might not be many perfect matches...". Um, I can decide if zero or more perfect matches are good enough for me. If I am looking for a specific item, related results are almost never wanted and are a waste of time. On the other hand, if I don't have something exact in mind, then browsing is OK (since I'm choosing to go broad -> narrow).

If you are old enough, remember searching for a particular word in a printed dictionary? If I didn't find the word I wanted (ie an exact search), then I knew that my spelling (ie my exact search term) was wrong. At that point I could be be finished or I could choose to do more searching. With a printed dictionary I could laboriously expand the search using alternate spellings or synonyms (ie a fuzzy search). The exact match is required for crossword puzzles. The fuzzy search is good when writing poetry and articles.

A while ago I was researching and pricing generators. I had a set of specific parameters in mind and my friend's generator that I was using at the time to compare against. Home Depot's website was partially helpful. It gave me a good overview of what Home Depot has to offer. But, there were far too many extra results and I couldn't tell if my specific item would be included without wasting a lot of time scrolling around. After a little bit of scrolling I moved on to other sites. I didn't buy a generator from Home Depot. During my searches at other sites I stopped as soon as I got an exact match.

In my generator search, the broad results were OK to get a general idea of generator price ranges for the type I wanted. It was too time consuming when I had an exact generator I wanted to compare against and couldn't limit the search. Now that I am writing this, I can honestly say I have never used Home Depot's website again.

I read the article. If I could specify some kind of specificity or weighting to control the amount of vectorization (is that the right way to say this?), I'd think this was good news. This article just confirmed I won't bother to try. Reading the article just makes the Home Depot's website sound like another Amazon search site.

Others commenting about sanctions are correct. Chase did what was expected. Your experience was your fault.

Hopefully your account isn't frozen (happened once to a friend where they accidentally doodled a sanctioned country's name on the side of a check that had nothing to do with that country).

Search on something like "Syria refugee scam" and do your research before sending money. Always research a charity's actual use of money before giving to them. Especially if you can't find any records, they aren't transparent enough for any consideration.

Keep both. Don't hook them up. Tear them apart and see what DYI project arises or parts can be used for your other projects. There is no obligation to Google or Amazon to use them the way they want you to.

> not all who are vaccinated think that the vaccination policies are sensible, and criticizing vaccination policy is not the same as being anti-vaxxer

Agreed. I am vaccinated, but I think that most of the Federal and Oregon state policy is political baloney.

I've been using Zim Wiki since late 2016. I like that all of the pages are physically text files and are fairly readable without the Zim software. That's been handy a couple of times where I threw them onto a thumb drive while on the way to help a friend fix his PC at his home.

What is your take on cfengine? Just curious...

Personal anecdote: my brother was robbed in Mexico of everything including shoes. He went to the embassy for assistance. He was give some McDonalds coupons and told to use them when he got across the border. He even asked them to check against police records, knowing that he had an outstanding misdemeanor warrant. No go. No help. At least one of the persons at the embassy was honest and told him that embassies only help government officials, rich, or public figures. Fortunately he eventually found a way to get in contact with us (much, much later). In the end the way to get back is to just try to push through a border gate so that you'll get arrested. Then they'll be forced to confirm your identity.

Instead of proceeding with blinders on, like many other aspects of systemd, please don't ignore your out of focus items. Sure, don't implement for them, but do some investigative plan for dealing with them eventually if should be needed.

Project Managers call that "risk management". I sometimes get the vibe that Systemd calls that "wontfix".