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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)LI
Posts
9
Comments
852
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • The xz issue might not directly affect an anti-virus, so maybe in this specific case, it would work fine. But it wouldn't be hard to come up with another library that would make the anti-virus moot. And even in the xz situation, doesn't it affect systemd?

    All bets are off when you can no longer trust low level software like this.

    Also, the Ken Thompson Hack comes to mind.

  • For the shed wiring job...

    First, switch wiring. Normally when you wire a light switch, you have your 14-2 (or 12-2, or whatever, I'll use 14-2 but the gauge isn't really relevant) coming into the box, then another 14-2 wire leaving the box, and the two black (hot) wires are connected to the switch. A sequential setup, if you will: Power, switch, light. A simple diagram.

    However, in certain situations, it's more convenient to run only one 14-2 to the box. For example, you might do this if you have a supply of constant power at the light fixture, but no source of constant power near the light switch. So, you bring the supply 14-2 into the box, and then use a single 14-2 to run to the switch. The black wire is connected to the supply at the light and one terminal of the switch, and then you connect white to the other terminal of the switch, and back to the light in the first box. You are supposed to mark the white on both ends to indicate it is being used as hot rather than neutral. Here's a diagram of the setup.

    I think of it as a giant T - supply power comes in the top left, light is on the top right, and the vertical line is the wire to the switch that carries supply hot and switched hot on the "wrong" wire. It's useful when there's no power source near the switch, but there is power at the light fixture it controls.

    Note that in the box at the light, you'd have three 14-2 wires coming in (6 conductors plus 3 grounds) - supply, power for the light, and the run for the switch.

    Okay. It's like the previous owner of our house learned this trick...and wanted to use it everywhere.

    So, there's a box in the shed that has:

    • A constant supply coming in.
    • A constant supply going out to outlets in the shed. (No GFCI, but we'll ignore that issue for this discussion.)
    • TWO of these fucking T setups. One controls a light in the next shed, and one controls a light in the shed this box is in. Each one of these generates TWO sets of wires (supply is already accounted for in the first bullet).

    So, I have 6 sets of wires coming into this box (hot, neutrals, and grounds). Oh and on at least one of them, he switched the neutrals, not the hots, so there are white wires serving as hot (unmarked, naturally) and who knows what else is going on. At the very least it's a violation of the code for the amount of conductors in that size of box.

    The worst part, though: It wasn't necessary.

    • Both light switches are near outlets that have constant power that could easily supply the switches.
    • The light in the second shed could run directly to the switch that controls it, and that would have saved wire and complexity, and make diagnosing an issue much easier. There's no reason to run that complex circuit.
    • The lights in the first shed, where the box is, are somewhat near the box, but not so close that the complexity of this setup is worth it.
    • Even if he did want to supply the switches directly from that box for some reason, he could still cut it down to FOUR sets of wires in the box, with no unusual usage of wires and a much more understandable setup.

    It's insane. I'm going to redo it soon, and I don't think I'll need to buy ANY supplies to do that. In fact I bet I'll have extra wire when I'm done (I may need smaller wire nuts, which I have already).

  • Well said. I originally compiled my own kernels because I thought it was something you just did to use Linux. I also compiled hundreds of them, probably. Now it's stock kernel all the way. Not worth the effort and time and headache.

  • Slackware in the late 90s. 3.x version. "If you want to know how Linux works, ask a Slackware user" used to be the mantra back in the day.

    I've been using Kubuntu on my desktop machines for at least a decade now. So, I've completely lost track of some of the things going on, like docker, flatpak, and so on. Which is actually a good thing: Linux has gotten so good, I no longer need to know how to administer my Linux system. I can just use it.

    I currently run Debian on my server and intend to switch my desktop to Debian as well. Haven't gotten around to it...been busy. I also have to figure out how best to set up the nvme drive I have for it - GPT partition tables? Do I need a FAT32 partition? Etc.

  • You just unlocked a memory for me, and this happened from about 2008-2010 (not cell related, but it is phone related).

    One day we got home and there was a message on the machine from someone asking us to remember to bring something when we visited him. Unfortunately, we had no idea who it was, so we just wrote it off as a wrong number. It happened a few more times after that, and we were getting curious.

    I'd moved into the house in 2006 and received that phone number at that time. We often got calls from bill collectors looking for the previous residents, so we generally let everything go to the machine.

    One evening we got a call, and I think I recognized that the number was this person's, so I answered it. I told him he had the wrong number, and he said he'd had that same number for years and read back my number, the one he'd just called. I was like, "Uh, I don't know what to tell you, but I've had this number since 2006." He tried a few more times, and it was sometimes late in the evening.

    At some point I looked up the number he was calling from and found it was a nursing home, and the pieces started to fall into place. My wife and I talked about it a few times, and we decided that if our relative was doing that, we'd want to know. We weren't upset, but it felt like information the family should have. Who knows who else he might be calling, or getting calls from. So, we decided that when he called again, we'd call the nursing home and let them know it was happening.

    But, we never got the chance. He never called again.

  • Right? It's not, say, cheating on his pregnant wife with a prostitute? I would have thought THAT would be the thing that destroys his support among Christians, but nah, they don't care.

    But selling overpriced Bibles does upset them? Why? It's probably the least insane thing he has done yet.

  • The Key Bridge isn't even that bad. There are WAY worse bridges. Just roll down the water a few miles and go after the Bay Bridge near Annapolis, for example. I'm still irritated that as bad as that pair of bridges is, there's STILL no long term plan for replacement. We've been talking about it for at least a decade now.

    One two lane bridge (circa 1952), and one three lane bridge (1973) with a lane that is often set to the reverse direction - without barriers! No shoulders at all. You break down, you're in the lane. People freeze up from fear driving over it, and I really don't blame them - I've never had an issue, but there is little to block your view of water almost straight down out the side of the vehicle. Don't forget the metal grate section that gets nice and slick in any sort of wet weather. And they carry far more traffic than they were ever expected to handle. Oh and there are often high winds that add to the fun.

  • That skit killed his job. Don't get me wrong, I'm okay with it. But Trump saw it and decided he couldn't even be near someone who had had fun poked at him lest he appear weak, so it was good-bye Spicey.

  • I don't buy vinyl, but I do buy CDs for albums I want. I have (what I believe are well-founded) trust issues with services supplying digital copies.

    I will say I have bought some nice, normal mp3s in the past from Amazon. Those are fine. But generally I want the discs. I'm going to rip them immediately to mp3, and store the discs away, but I still want them.

  • Basically you need the mdtools package. I use Debian, but Ubuntu is based on Debian, so it should be pretty similar. It's likely mdtools will be installed, but if not, apt install mdtools as root should do it.

    The one thing I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend, after a harrowing week or so a few months back: Do not use the entire disc for the raid arrays. Partition each disk with a single Linux partition, then use those partitions as the array. If you use the entire disc, you run the risk of losing the array if the BIOS thinks those drives are messed up, which is what happened to me. I was able to recover, fortunately, but it was EXTREMELY stressful, and I was to the point where I was starting to figure out what I had lost.

    When you issue the command to build the array, such as:

    mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=5 --raid-devices=5 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1 --spare-devices=1 /dev/sdf1

    Keep a copy of that command somewhere so you know how you created it, in case you ever need to recreate it.

    I also kept copies of the output of /dev/mdstat, blkid (for the RAID drives and partitions), and mdadm --examine for each drive, just in case. Doing this probably means I'll never need it, so that's a good tradeoff.

    And, as always, RAID is not a backup. In my case, my array is small enough that a single drive can back it up (which wasn't the case when I original built it ~5 years ago), so I have a large drive in my desktop machine that backs up the array every night.

    It's pretty straightforward though. Install Ubuntu on a drive that isn't part of the array and get that working, which should be pretty easy. Partition the array drives like I said above (use gparted or other tools, which will be installed with Ubuntu). Issue the mdadm command similar to what I wrote above, note your partitions will very likely be different. Do not overwrite your Ubuntu partitions with it. That is Bad.

    mdadm will create a /dev/md0 or /dev/md127. Some versions do one or the other. It'll tell you.

    After mdadm finishes, do a mkfs.ext4 /dev/md0 (or md127) to create the array assuming you want to use ext4.

    Add a line like this to your fstab: /dev/md0 /mnt/media ext4 defaults 0 1

    Reboot and go.

    There are a bunch of more detailed guides out there, I've just given the high level steps.

  • If you slide down south of the Bay Bridge, there are about 12 ships anchored there. I usually a few when I cross the Bay Bridge, so I'm not sure if that's a larger-than-usual amount. You have to figure that the ship that was leaving would have triggered another one inbound before long; I doubt they normally leave the dock empty for any longer than absolutely necessary.

  • Not exactly. If you're traveling I-95, you might take this if you're carrying hazmat and can't use the tunnels. Or you could go on the other side of the beltway (which I imagine many do, because it avoids the tolls for the bridge). Unfortunately, the west side of I-695 has more traffic than this side.