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chanandler_bong

461 karma · joined November 26, 2014

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chanandler_bong··on Ask HN: What are people doing to get off of VMware?
Hock Tan's only goal is to increase stock value. Period. At the expense of anything and everything else, stock value.
chanandler_bong··on Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone
This. 100%.
chanandler_bong··on The semiotics of barbed wire fence
I read an article a long time ago that drew a direct correlation between the need to contain/separate livestock in the American West and the battlefields of World War I.

Basically, as settlers moved westward, they needed to contain their livestock as well as separate sheep and cows. Sheep apparently eat grass down to the ground whereas cows don't, thus sheep would deprive cows of food.

So, barbed wire was developed for this purpose and the military saw the utility of it as well. Fast-forward to WWI and the vast battlefields there and needing an inexpensive way to slow enemy advances on foot. This led to the development of tanks to overcome the barbed wire obstacles. Machine guns also became more useful as a way to spray large areas when attacking troops were held up by the obstacles.

chanandler_bong··on Shave and a Haircut
...or Spokane. "Spo-cane" is one I've heard not infrequently.
chanandler_bong··on Bob Moore, who founded Bob's Red Mill, has died
Sad day in the food world... William Post, who helped create Pop-Tarts died today as well.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/14/business/william-post-dea...

chanandler_bong··on Add coffee stains to LaTeX documents (2021)

              This page intentionally left blank.

  (Well, not completely blank, since the above non-empty disclaimer
  appears on the page.  What is meant is that this page is devoid
  of meaningful content related to the rest of the document.  This
  page serves only as a separator between sections, chapters, or
  other divisions of the document.  This page is not completely
  blank so that you know that nothing was unintentionally left out,
  or that the page is not blank because of an error in duplication,
  or that the page is not blank because of some other production
  problem.  If this page were really blank, you wouldn't be reading
  anything.  This page has not been left blank by accident, but is
  left non-blank on purpose.  The statement on the page should say

         "This page was intentionally left non-blank".)
http://www.tytempleton.com/rhf/jokes/93q1/nonblank.html
chanandler_bong··on Hopes for Finding Mars Life After Rover's Ground-Penetrating Radar Discovery
https://eyes.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html shows the current status of the DSN, including bandwidth for each stream. Pretty interesting.
chanandler_bong··on For a moment there, Lotus Notes appeared to do everything a company needed
Back in the mid 90s, I spent a full year migrating my company and ~800 users across six sites from Exchange to Notes. I had no experience with Notes, and absolutely hated it when I started the project.

After a year of hacking, learning from mistakes, and countless hours of RTFM, we got it done. Email, calendar, file shares all migrated, cross-site replication, and some really great new features added in with workflows. I was really proud of it.

As soon as the last migration wave was complete, I called my manager to let him know that the long-awaited day had arrived. Exchange was dead, long live Lotus Notes! Literally, during that phone call he said "Ummm. Yeah. We are going to migrate back to Exchange because of some M&A coming up."

I was not pleased.

chanandler_bong··on How to do OCR on a Mac using the CLI or just Python
+1000 for Trex!! I use it daily, thank you for creating it!

I am impressed how it handles handwriting and crappy screen grabs.

chanandler_bong··on Earliest Carpenters: 476k-year-old log structure discovered in Zambia
You're assuming there will be any trees left...
chanandler_bong··on A Lot of Damage in Grindavík
REK can also handle most jets if necessary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reykjav%C3%ADk_Airport

chanandler_bong··on Razor 1911
Youth is wasted on the young.
chanandler_bong··on Apocalypse Proof: 33 Thomas Street in New York City
The WTC towers were constructed to withstand a 1970s jet (707, DC-8, etc) that was on approach to JFK/LGA, hence at low speed and not full of fuel. This was not the scenario on 9/11.
chanandler_bong··on Borgbase backups have been unavailable for 3 days
Pretty simple, really.

Pick a couple random files that should be in the repo, restore them from a random archive, check the md5sums against the source. If the md5sums don't match (or the file can't be found), something is wrong. I am mainly backing up RAW image files, so they should never change.

Basically...

$TEST_FILE=$(ls -p /source_dir | grep -v / | shuf -n1)

$TEST_ARCHIVE=$(borgmatic -c config.file list | shuf -n1)

borgmatic extract yada yada yada

md5sum $TEST_FILE restored_file

chanandler_bong··on Borgbase backups have been unavailable for 3 days
The fact that as a customer that is impacted by this, I only found out about it when my backups and automated test restore failed is worrying.

I get that things happen, but not realising that this was going to be a service impacting event does not inspire continued confidence. Sure, this situation probably won't happen again, but what else don't they understand about their infrastructure?

chanandler_bong··on Here’s how it sounds when you turn NASA spacecraft data into music
The process of data sonification can help scientists better identify patterns in complex data and create beautiful music for the public.
chanandler_bong··on GoDaddy: Hackers stole source code, installed malware in multi-year breach
They did have a couple of years with good commercials, though.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9v5p4

chanandler_bong··on SS United States, the fastest passenger liner ever built
If I were a gazillionaire, this would be my yacht. Updated (sympathetically) to modern standards and efficiency, and open to the public as a museum ship when not in use.
chanandler_bong··on The Black Ships Shock: A Historic Encounter That Changed Japan
Their biggest miss was not hitting the fuel dumps and repair facilities. Taking out a few ships, even carriers, would be easy to replace. Wiping out the logistics support capability would mean that ships would have to return to the US west coast to refuel/repair.

That would have been a major disaster. Pearl Harbor was just an irritant and catalyst.

chanandler_bong··on Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)
Mr. Fring would like to see you in his office. Now.
chanandler_bong··on iPhones and iPads Now Require a Passcode on Every Backup/Sync
"...an attacker with physical access to your Mac and device..."

If someone has physical access to my Mac, I've got more things to worry about than them swiping my phone data.

chanandler_bong··on Washington State DNR publishes new high-res Lidar imagery
Washington state's Department of Natural Resources have published a batch of high-resolution LiDAR images.

These are stunning visuals of the topography, and they have very thoughtfully provided a series in 16:9 format, perfect for desktop wallpaper (Flickr link to albums in the main post).

chanandler_bong··on Pi-hole: Network-wide ad blocking
A strange game. The only winning move it not to play.

Eventually, yes, device/software manufacturers will start using encrypted solutions, but until then, ya do what ya can do. Maybe the blocking solutions will evolve and adapt as well.

chanandler_bong··on Pi-hole: Network-wide ad blocking
If your blocking solution supports it, you can define per-client rules for what is routed to your blocker, or bypasses it.

My work systems bypass everything and I route them to Quad9. If that breaks my work stuff, then the IT department has some splainin to do.

chanandler_bong··on Pi-hole: Network-wide ad blocking
I recently upgraded to an ZenWiFi Pro XT12. Expensive, but I have zero wifi issues now, and with the Merlin firmware, nearly infinite control.

The only downside of the XT12 is that there are no USB ports, so you cannot have external storage. Definitely WTF, but an OK trade-off for me.

chanandler_bong··on Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
14 point? Does Blinken need glasses? (ignoring the obvious double entendre there).
chanandler_bong··on Pi-hole: Network-wide ad blocking
+100 for NextDNS. Happy paying customer here.

Aside from it just working, their mobile client is a fantastic thing. When I am off wifi, my phone routes DNS to NextDNS and I get the same adblocking when I am on cellular data.

chanandler_bong··on Pi-hole: Network-wide ad blocking
That's like saying your seatbelt is uncomfortable so you don't wear it while you're driving. Don't take it off, find a solution to make it work.

Use a better block list (OISD has been mentioned already), or use NextDNS. Neither of those cause breaks in most sites and stop the most bothersome/prevalent ads.

chanandler_bong··on Pi-hole: Network-wide ad blocking
If your router can do it, have it route all of your DNS queries to your (pi-hole|adguard|nextdns). Doesn't matter if they are hardcoded to 8.8.8.8, anything to port 53 goes through the blocker.

Asus Merlin firmware handles this nicely.

chanandler_bong··on Pi-hole: Network-wide ad blocking
If your router can do it, have it route all of your DNS queries to your (pi-hole|adguard|nextdns). Doesn't matter if they are hardcoded to 8.8.8.8, anything to port 53 goes through the blocker.

Asus Merlin firmware handles this nicely.

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