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davemtl

408 karma · joined September 15, 2013

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davemtl··on Show HN: DeepSeek My User Agent
Roasting your ultrawide 3440x1440 "I need binoculars to see my tabs" setup in Longueuil, QC—a city so forgettable even your *2-core potato PC* probably buffers its Google Maps—while you lurk on Hacker News like a tech bro NPC still waiting for Y Combinator to notice your crypto-SaaS-pet-rock startup. Chrome 131 on Windows 10? Your browser’s as bland as your cookie-enabled existence, and that 50ms network RTT just proves your Wi-Fi’s as tired as your LinkedIn hustle. At least your 24-bit color depth can render the embarrassment of your life choices in vivid detail.

-- Harsh. But extreamly funny. Interesting that it sees my 5800X3D as a 2-core processor. Turning off DDG privacy essentials yeilds the correct core count, etc.

davemtl··on Dumping Memory to Bypass BitLocker on Windows 11
This sounds like BitLocker wasn't enabled on the drive. All of the laptops I've deployed with BitLocker are very good at detecting tampering and will immediately go into lockdown mode. A Linux USB most likely requires Secure Boot to be turned off to boot, if so, the TPM tamper will trigger and BitLocker will require the recovery key at next boot.
davemtl··on Ask HN: How to store and share passwords in a company?
I have Bitwarden Enterprise deployed and authenticate via our IDP. It's been working well for us, each team has their own collection that they manage. From an IT admin perspective, it's pretty hands off. Any changes to password are automatically synced between users.
davemtl··on Ubisoft about to take away games you bought
There's a mixed bag of articles surrounding this. If you've bought the game on Steam or other platform of choice, you will retain access to that game. Online game play and DLC that requires the on-line component is going to be retired.

PC Gamer published and updated this article soon after: https://www.pcgamer.com/ubisofts-online-decommissioning-may-...

Ubisoft's FAQ: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/help/gameplay/article/decommis...

davemtl··on TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business
And in typical Reddit fashion, the post was removed for bending the sub-reddit rules. It's frustrating that a popular and highly upvoted post like this is just _removed_.

Anyone have the original content?

davemtl··on Why I'm using Fossil SCM instead of other source control systems (2016)
Also in gamedev. Git doesn't work for larger AAA projects, as it often chokes on the amount of data that stored by production teams, even when LFS is used. Perforce can handle huge binary files relatively easily in comparison.
davemtl··on Ali, what’s up
I've had the suggestion "sex balls" show up as the place holder of the search box once. I posted a screenshot of it back in 2019: https://twitter.com/DavieDavieDave/status/117813945962534502...
davemtl··on 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work
We're effectively looking at somebody's notebook from 3200 years ago. Makes me wonder what our descendants would think if they were looking at our old notebooks and random text files in the next 3200 years.
davemtl··on Poll: Are you going to leave Twitter after Musk's acquisition?
I decided to take a break from social media this week so logged out of Twitter & Instagram prior to this announcement and removed the apps from my phone. Depending on how it goes over the next week will depend when and if I will resume using it. I deleted my Facebook account in 2020 mid-pandemic and noticed an improvement in my mental health. Deleting my Facebook account had an interesting side effect, I found myself actually conversing more with my social circle instead of liking posts.
davemtl··on Windows 10 minus the spyware plus added stability and security
Couple of issues with this, the first being a "rudimentarily activated using a Generic Key" ISO that's not from Microsoft. Can you really trust this source and technically at this point, it's piracy. Secondly, once the Microsoft lawyer's get wind of this, expect it to be shut down rather quickly.

I'm okay with providing documentation, tools and scripts to remove the cruft and increase privacy within Windows 10, but the ISO linked from a Telegram channel is dubious at best.

davemtl··on End the Streaming Struggle with Plex
This is disappointing:

    "Note that this project is supported on all major operating systems except FreeBSD, which is still incompatible."
Considering both Plex and Emby support FreeBSD, I'm sad to to learn that Jellyfin does not.
davemtl··on Diary of a first-time on-call engineer
I've had jobs where there's been on-call and you can have the pager all week and nothing happens. I was very fortunate to be in a team that had a well matured and very stable service, however when it did go down, it went down hard. Recovery was a well oiled and documented procedure and the environment could be brought back up in under an hour (provided nothing else went wrong -- it rarely did).

Today, my job is very different. It's a whole different playbook. 6 months into my role, I was asked to go on the on-call rotation. I learned enough to get through it, thankfully one of my colleagues were available in case I hit a situation I couldn't handle. Almost 2 years into the job and I don't sweat it anymore, I know enough of my service to fix most issues and now appreciate the escalation procedure. I will kick it into gear, even if I need a storage admin to give me a few GB of disk space to get me through the weekend. :)

davemtl··on Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi
I recently set-up HA on a Raspberry Pi, integrating my lights, security system and other devices. You're right about it having a steep learning curve but once it's up and running it's pretty much set and forget. With HA I'm able to use my Hue switches to toggle a TP-Link Kasa smart power outlet. It also has the added benefit of only requiring ONE application on my phone instead of nine.
davemtl··on Ask HN: Gmail account security
Once again this shows that we're at the mercy of the giant AI machine. For fear of having my data locked into Google, I migrated to my own domain and e-mail hosting elsewhere. I'm still at the mercy of the hosting and domain registrar at that point, but at least they have phone numbers I can call to get support and talk to a human.

Offline backups is a must at this point.

davemtl··on Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?
I selected other. I was working in the Air Transport Industry as the pandemic kicked off. Three months in we started having weekly meetings to "update" us on the situation, saying the company has money to weather the storm, expecting that storm to be just a couple of months at the time. Then there was the call for voluntary redundancies, reduced hours, discontinuation of bonuses, reduction of benefits. Once that talk started, I decided I wasn't going to hang around. I've seen situations like this play out before and this time I didn't want to be part of it. One night, a recruiter on LinkedIn slid into my DMs with a position that I was interested in. Two weeks later I had an offer on the table and accepted. Now I'm happily working in the Video Games industry.
davemtl··on 25-Dec. Shout-out to everyone else at work
I also drew the short straw for on-call this weekend. I've probably already clocked up 10hrs following a network failure at one of our datacenters.

I'm not an essential worker, but I want to pass on my Christmas wishes to people who are; doctors, nurses, healthcare assistance, ambulance crews, fire crews, police and everyone else who keeps the world turning over the Christmas holiday. Thank you all for your hard work!

davemtl··on Chrome client “variations” can be used to identify you (2020)
That's a tough thing to do when said sites are server IPMIs that never get up to date firmware.
davemtl··on Chrome client “variations” can be used to identify you (2020)
Microsoft now provide binaries for Debian and RHEL based Distros. Used Edge on Ubuntu for more than 6+ months for work, probably one of the best experiences I had with a browser now that I think about it.
davemtl··on Chrome client “variations” can be used to identify you (2020)
Firefox recently started refusing to render pages for me on some sites, no amount of resetting the profile fixes it.

I'm curious why Edge isn't an option for you? I've started using it recently and so far it's a fairly decent experience. Sure, it's Microsoft and run into the same trust and privacy issues you get with Google Chrome, but that being said, my browsing habits are pretty benign so I just accept it for what it is. Let's be honest, options are slim when choosing a web browser.

Another browser on my radar is Valvadi [https://vivaldi.com/], another Chromium based browser with a ton of bells and whistles, most of which can be turned off. It has very much an Opera vibe.

davemtl··on DC3 Still Flying at 70
There was a DC-3 rescued from St-Hubert Airport near Montreal, it was just a shell when they started and it flew for D-Day memorial. Registration C-FDTD. You can read more about it here: https://planesavers.com/ and watch the videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/MikeyMcBryan. Having this DC-3 being rebuilt in what is pratically my backyard, it was fascinating to see the progress and see it in person.
davemtl··on Windows 11 has started rolling out worldwide
Welp, I guess it's not for me. I'm unable to upgrade my Microsoft Service Pro (2017) as the CPU is not supported. Which is odd, the CPU is more than capable and all the other requirements are met. I get the feeling of planned obsolescence.
davemtl··on Masked email from Fastmail and 1Password
My worry was this required both FastMail and 1Password, to my delight you only need FastMail. Masked Email is an option under settings.
davemtl··on Introducing Age Verification
The age verification appears to be opt-in, however they don't say what happens if you don't hand over your kids ID. One would hope that it would disable or limit communication between players and keep the player in a suitable for all category. I wouldn't be surprised that because their user base is growing up, they they would want to change it into kind of a "second life" for teenagers.

Whichever way, they're not getting my kids ID.

davemtl··on 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
I have Nexus, since getting it no more need to take my shoes off or take my laptop/tablet out of my carry-on. You practically get waved through security. Also, at the border in Canada & US, you effectively skip the line and use the Nexus machines allowing you faster entry into the country.
davemtl··on Rolling your own minimal embedded Linux for the Raspberry Pi
Maybe it's just me, but I get forwarded to an advert for iFastNet and the domain gets forwarded to suspended-website.com.
davemtl··on What domain name to use for your home network
I use a sub-domain of a domain I registered. For example, I use in.[myname].ca.
davemtl··on Thunderbird 91.0
I welcome the integration, but how'd you even turn it on? Nothing in the settings I can find after installing.
davemtl··on Don’t Wanna Pay Ransom Gangs? Test Your Backups
Considering it was almost 20 years ago, just as the Internet was starting to take off and it certainly pre-dates things like Cloudflare, things like this were pretty mandatory. Couldn't tell you if it's still the case, but it did make me appreciate having a good DR and OR plans if the nukes did drop.
davemtl··on Don’t Wanna Pay Ransom Gangs? Test Your Backups
Yes, test your backups regularly.

When I worked for a large insurance firm, we would run drills every 6 months to perform off-site disaster recover and operational recovery tests to validate our recovery processes. Everything was tested from WAN links, domain controllers, file backups, mainframe recovery and so much more. We were more or less ready for a nuke to drop.

Obviously this costs money, but if you're an insurance firm, not being able to recover would cost way more than running DR and OR recovery drills every 6-12 months.

davemtl··on Google Workspace for everyone
Is this just another Google product I'm going to invest a lot of time in, only to find out that one day they take it 'round back and put it down? [1]

[1] https://killedbygoogle.com/

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