Category Archives: tech

no fly

Posted on December 23, 2021 by | Leave a comment

This gets old as hell.
Just want to get out of town.

access denied on url

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Posted in rage against the machine, tech

nstelco

Posted on December 22, 2021 by | Leave a comment

NorthState. TF is that? ☎️

Fiber optic TV remote featuring the name North State

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dat web server tellin’ lies

Posted on December 11, 2021 by | Leave a comment

“We’re sorry. We have encountered a System Error. Please navigate to the login page, and try your transaction again.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire.  👖🔥

You just don’t want me on a VPN, plus all browser protections must be dropped.

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firefox beta v96 arrived today – beautiful

Posted on December 8, 2021 by | Leave a comment

Firefox Browser rolled out beta version 96 today (v96.0b2). The UI and tabs are especially beautiful. Love it! Get the betas for desktop and mobile. I’ve never had any trouble with them.

I am also very fond of the Vivaldi browser for desktop and mobile. I get the stable releases. The snapshot (beta) releases are more beta than Firefox’s and sometimes give trouble. If you’re into testing that, all is well, but I like to stay stable with Vivaldi.

Mobiles are in the Play Store for both on Android.

Firefox:

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/channel/desktop/

Vivaldi:

https://vivaldi.com/download/

  • screenshot of “about” for Firefox version 96 beta

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browser sillies at a website

Posted on December 6, 2021 by | 1 comment

OMFG, grow the hell on up. This was today on a shopping site.

I can almost hear the dialup modem grinding away on copper landline: “this site optimized for Internet Explorer” and “free e-mail for life at Net@ddress” oh, and “Infoseek”

  • browser warning popup smearing firefox

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captcha hell this morning

Posted on December 4, 2021 by | Leave a comment

The frustration of solving CAPTCHAs, let me count the ways:

— pick out the “motorbuses” when some of the trucks are counted as buses.

— pick out the trains when some of the pics are too close up to tell if it’s the side of a train or bus.

— pick out the fire hydrants when there are mailboxes that are counted as hydrants.

— pick out traffic lights. Do I count the housings and the ones so far in the distance that I can’t really tell what I’m looking at?

— pick out the storefronts when I don’t know what little stores look like on the other side of the world.

— when I know I’ve scored 100% but have to do 3 screens regardless.

— CAPTCHA not at all suitable for the visually impaired.

— I still have to solve these things when I have 2-factor authentication turned on.

— CAPTCHA protecting something of life and death importance, like a music streaming service.

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getting things directly – news, reading

Posted on December 3, 2021 by | 4 comments

I still get a lot of news and unfiltered reading by means of RSS (the feeds) and Telegram messenger.

To get RSS feeds on desktop, the Thunderbird e-mail app and Vivaldi browser have a feed reader you can set up, or there are stand-alone apps. On mobile, there are apps, but I find many barely work.

Telegram is available for everything.

They keep me in the reading. Good ways to get things direct.

Direct e-mail subscriptions also good, but I get buried in that.

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floppy copy

Posted on November 21, 2021 by | Leave a comment

Rooting around the house over time, I find these here and there. Whenever I collect a few, I put them into a USB floppy disk drive (FDD) and try for a data copy. So far, not a single one has failed to read. They’re old, too. 💾

I copy them and archive. With the cost of storage lower than ever, might as well.

  • stack of diskettes in front of keyboard

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web browsing

Posted on November 19, 2021 by | 2 comments

Some sites won’t let you pass if you have an ad blocker on.
Sometimes I can switch on “reader view” and keep going with those important stories like this one about pay phones in Japan. 📞 🇯🇵
Reader view is called simplified view on some browsers.
By the way, the pay phone story wasn’t much. It was content that one can predict before reading it. A few interesting usage stats in there, though.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/11/18/national/disaster-pay-phones

screenshots of webpage

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passwords

Posted on November 13, 2021 by | 2 comments

I groan when I have to create yet another username/password account for some diddlysquat thing. Yep, love keeping track of it all.

Most password managers and web browsers will now generate and save one for you. If not, this works well:

https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

You can mix/match/modify things from the three boxes partway down. I also date every creation and reset to know when things are getting old. Keep a safe backup somewhere in case of device failure.

Some people also like complex, yet memorize-able, pass phrases. There are many methods.

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