Done Since 2018-10-21
It has not been a good week. Between a synagogue mass murder in Pittsburgh yesterday, filk fan Harold Stein (
hms42) dying of cancer Friday, and pipe bombs in the mail, the fact that I'm despairing of finding work in time to keep from going broke seems comparatively small, but it isn't helping either.
The fundamental problem is that I can't think of any area of expertise I have that would be worth charging consulting rates for, and as time goes on it becomes less and less likely that any of my skills will get me hired for doing it as an employee. Yes, I'm acquiring new ones. But I'm not going to acquire four years of experience in Ruby or JavaScript overnight. I'm a genuine expert at git, but I think that's pretty common. Maybe I could predict the next big thing, but my track record as a seer isn't all that good either.
I certainly didn't predict that IBM would buy Red Hat. Big Blue Hat? Nah. Does "If AOL Buys RedHat" count for a prediction? I wrote it in 2002, and it has nothing whatever to do with the current situation. I guess if Microsoft can buy GitHub...
I did manage to get some website work done, including importing quite a few older software-related posts into the blog on computer-curmudgeon.com/. I'm not sure it matters. And last Sunday I swatted the second simplex bug in hyperviewer, but I don't think tetrahedra and tesseracts have a lot of market value.
I'm blathering, aren't I?
Notes & links:
1021Su * Up 5:15ish; S=5:45; @ Can Visitors Trust Your Website? | SCORE -> address and phone# in footer and on contact page. @ Raspberry Strudel: My Raspberry Pi in Austria | Linux Journal good tutorial on setting up a remote server. # print snippets: sed -n -e 1d -e '/[^ ]/p' -e '/^[ ]*$/q' to.do All that one can say of sed is that its syntax is clearer than teco's & defined the appropriate bash function. * solved the _other_ simplex problem, by realizing that the center (i.e. the average of all the vertices) is at (x+1)/(d+1), where [x,...] is the location of the last vertex; all the others have one coordinate equal to 1 and the rest zero. And that one simply has to subtract the coordinates of the center from each vertex. Sheesh! Should not have taken me a week to figure _that_ out, either. : UB login gives error message: URL: https://sso.unionbank.com/login/ar?... " [h1]Request Entity Too Large[/h1] (error 413) The requested resource /login/ar does not allow request data with GET requests, or the amount of data provided in the request exceeds the capacity limit. " Unable to contact a human. Call tomorrow 1021Mo * up 6:15; W=199.6, S=6:37; x early: call union bank tech support (see above) -> clearing cookies for sites matching 'union' fixed it. verified that Chaos isn't getting weekly transfers anymore -- couldn't remember, so didn't think I'd turned them off. * added markdown preprocessing to ljpost. Required a bit of fiddling. Between that and the fact that it already handles YAML front matter, importing should work smoothly. process markdown with 'kramdown -i GFM --no-hard-wrap' * 1pm - 60min phone interview with Brian Acton of Signal. seemed to go pretty well; we'll see how far it gets. @ Investigating Implausible Bloomberg Supermicro Stories " If Bloomberg cannot present credible information to show how the hack presented is possible, plausible, and did happen, Bloomberg needs to retract the story and investigate how this passed editorial muster and was published. [...] there needs to be a formal SEC investigation. " : BECU phone app kept freezing while I was trying to deposit Mom's check. Even after re-install, though I was eventually able to get it to work. * Further Adventures... cross-posted perfectly from the markdown original. *it even has syntax coloring!* : L's toaster oven can hold 2 English muffins (4 halves) @ Apache Access Vulnerability Could Affect Thousands ... [LJ] It's true that there's a vulnerability, but the article is a gross misstatement and many parts are just plain wrong. 1023Tu * up 6:50; W=200, S=8:07; @ Closing the Loop Email * curmudgeon post on the apache vulnerability. @ Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines - Richard Stallman [LJ] GNU Kind Communications Guidelines - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation @ Who Decides When Pain is "Intolerable"? - Brute Reason " Every single client I’ve ever worked with who was or had been addicted to opiates had one or both of the following untreated issues in their history: 1) repeated psychological trauma, usually sexual assault/abuse, or 2) years of disabling physical pain. What are we doing about that? Specifically, how fucking dare any member of Congress vote for any opioid-related legislation while confirming a man accused of rape by multiple credible witnesses to the Supreme Court? " * SL: paper towels, stick butter, eggs, ham, 2 breakfast sausage, bread, English, ground beef, pork chops, frozen mixed veggies, cream of chicken soup, 3 cans cream of tomato soup, brussels sprouts, fresh walnuts (bins or new crop), more biscuits @ Automated Accessibility Testing During Development - Human Made 1024We % out of bed for ~1 hour around 3am; not clear I got any sleep at all before that. * up 7:00; S=6:36; probably half of that "sleep" time was spent awake worrying C also slept badly due to post-nasal drip; went into LR to sleep on chair. @ Project Wondeful Ad Network to shut down August 1 - The Beat (Don Marti) @ Privacy Badger Now Fights More Sneaky Google Tracking | EFF * conflikt hotel room 0125Fr - 0127Su Conflikt Room 0125-0128 ack 32LDVC4G STUPID -- didn't get a tower room. Requested upgrade. * noon: landscaper coming for estimate => 1800 for driveway, 3500 for fence, 1150 each for the gravel walkway and the flower bed. He says that the weed with the brown seed stalks is dock -- in the buckwheat family @ Apps Installed On Millions Of Android Phones Tracked User Behavior To Execute A Multimillion-Dollar Ad Fraud Scheme : while C was asleep, V cuffed my new pants and sewed buttons onto my damaged shirts. * Imported the remaining curmudgeon posts, using a bash script. Required the usual amount of fiddling, but eventually worked. : C has been sleeping most of the day. A little worrisome, though she seems ok when she wakes up. Hopefully just short on sleep. @ Ripple - Playing for Change [YoutUbe] drop-dead gorgeous arrangement, dead-on editing. @ A New Approach to Our Work on Drip - Kickstarter so write off Drip and its maybe eventual successor (XOXO) for at least another year. -> XOXO * humira 1025Th * Up 6ish; S=5:46; % windy (weather.gov says gusts to 28mph, which isn't too bad) : Colleen much better this morning. Not quite up to par, but not sick. Recovering. @ rachelbythebay : Writing is my newest time sink. @ PINE64 PINEBOOK Review - Is This $89 Linux Laptop Worth it? !! (ARM-based) PINE64 - 64-bit Single Board Computer Fantastic set of low-cost boards. for $80 you get 4Gb, USB3, USBC, and a PCIE slot. @ Medieval Jews Celebrated Passover With Bird-Human Hybrids - Atlas Obscura (siderea) " I would accept, alternatively as consolation, that it documents furries to 14th century German Jewish communities. Somebody notify the relevant fandoms. " (S) @ Syncthing open source encrypted sync (central server used for discovery; there's also a local protocol using broadcast udp) : posts to import: ../2018/01/08--meltdown.html * started signing up for buymeacoffee.com and discovered that it doesn't support PayPal, just stripe and payoneer (which I'd never heard of). Growf. Ko-fi does, though, and I ought to get onto Stripe anyway. : L is back. Got in fairly late; it is now past midnight. 1026Fr * up 5:35; S=5:35; * Set up ko-fi.com/mdlbear. Which _only_ takes PayPal. Added to DW profile * Pay insurance (late) AX ref# 2661852995 * pay car loan (4 days late; see earlier blunder) * check on property tax - paid, presumably by lender. Or I set it up for automatic. @ An Open Letter to Facebook, A Dying Platform: Just Give Up : discovered why Ticia was trying to get my attention: she wanted me to put C's bed pad in the laundry so she could sleep there. Surprisingly clever of her. * Imported computer, web, software posts from .ljarchive. Suitable mods to MakeStuff * scripts/import-blog-entries: Added 'layout: post' to headers import-blog-posts & created scripts/slugify-lj-filename to add title slug to filenames. sed and tr : (filk fan) Harold Stein died today. Many beautiful tributes in FB and some in DW/LJ % 10ish very sleepy 1027Sa * up 7:30ish; W=199.4, S=; @ mneme | Godspeed, friend. Best obit for Harold Stein so far; also posted on FB. Memories of Harold Stein [The Mad Filkentist] filk | RIP @ Own Your DNS Data | Linux Journal should post on privacy (part of LJ's weekend reading for this week. Others include:) Facebook Compartmentalization | Linux Journal Protection, Privacy and Playoffs | Linux Journal The Wire | Linux Journal -> The most secure collaboration platform · Wire Tor Security for Android and Desktop Linux | Linux Journal What Individuals Should Do Now That Congress Has Obliterated the FCC’s Privacy Protections | American Civil Liberties Union Can you trust Tor’s exit nodes? - Naked Security @ Yes, we should regulate the way companies use data. | LinkedIn (but) response from Kinsa to the NYTimes article about the thermometer that phones home: data aggregated by zip code/county and used in ways that promote public health. @ AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR FELLOW JEWS - Extra Newsfeed (notasupervillain)
[Crossposted from mdlbear.dreamwidth.org, where it has
comments. You can comment there with openID, but wouldn't you really rather be on Dreamwidth?]