furrowsofar

@furrowsofar@beehaw.org

Interests: News, Finance, Computer, Science, Tech, and Living

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furrowsofar ,

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. More then likely kids love to play act and role play. It is one way they learn. Is it possible too that some kids have multiple personalities?

Israel Attack on Iran Is What World War III Looks Like ( theintercept.com )

But this, in fact, is what actual war looks like these days: Sometimes it’s a volley of 300 missiles and drones, and sometimes it is lean, targeted, and carried out covertly. Gone are the days of vast conquering armies and conventional military confrontations between two parties. So long as experts, the government, and the...

furrowsofar ,

I think he is trying to say this is the way it is and implies that this is where it is going. I do not buy it. This may just be a run up. We have not seen major powers engage and I hope we do not. I also do not agree with his characterization of the Russia Ukraine conflict.

furrowsofar ,

Drones are important sure. I am not sure how important. It is no surprise that Ukraine cannot do large scale combined arms maneuver warfare though. Neither Ukraine or Russia is trained in that and Ukraine does not have conventional air support to a large extent. I would not attribute it entirely to drones.

furrowsofar ,

I wonder to what sort of standard. I know I was shocked how poor things were when I started grading college students work as a TA. Same later in the work world reviewing nominations for an award.

furrowsofar ,

I am still not clear what supposed crime he has committed other then pissing powerful people off. He should get a reward for that.

furrowsofar ,

He is not an American citizen and he is not in the US. How does US law apply.

furrowsofar , (edited )

Never forget that Russia was also an instigator in WW II and stared as an axis power and later partially switched sides but then kept the countries they had conquered so really they were just the surviving axis power.

In that sense WW II never really was completed until the 80s. In fact I have a relative that served in WW II in the 60s or maybe 70s. Now they want to reopen it basically.

furrowsofar , (edited )

Supply chain attacks also show one reason that using older software like Debian stable may be a better plan for things that matter. All new software versions need some time to be tested and vetted.

It also shows the importance of security in depth. That less is more in terms of code dependencies and complexity. That knowing dependencies is as important as knowing your code.

I would consider the xz incident to be a success. The supply chain attack was found pretty rapidly. We have already seen many of these and we will see more. Ones I remember off the top of my head include Linux Kernel, NodeJS, Python PyPI.

I would not over blow this. Security is an ongoing activity and all security is porous.

Email service that integrates well with Thunderbird?

I hope I'm not annoying you kind folks too much with my ongoing Tutamail woes, but, in the long slow process of divorcing myself from them (and returning to Thunderbird), I'm looking for an email host/provider that integrates well with TB, meaning that it can sync mail, contacts, calendars, and tasks between the Linux desktop...

furrowsofar ,

Pretty much any IMAP mail provider combined with Nextcloud for sync will work.

Keep in mind too that Proton Mail has a commercial offering that should work with thunderbird. I have no experience with it.

We use our ISPs mail with our Nextcloud instance but long run will probably move to domain mail with maybe Fastmail for the mail component. Not sure yet. I will be interested in what you find.

furrowsofar ,

Why ssh? Does ssh use xz?

furrowsofar , (edited )

My wife and I have used GnuCash for 20 years. We used Quicken before that. Like GnuCash way better since it is actually double entry accounting. The major limitation of GnuCash is that it is not concurrent. So to people cannot be modifying the ledger at the same time. Not sure about viewing. It can be SQL database backed though I have never used that functionality. The other place where FOSS stuff probably lags is integrations.

Edit: Another area in which GnuCash is weak is basis tracking. Fine on accounting for gains and losses but for tracking the basis is limited. At least my version is. I am on 3.x which is the version in the repos of my near end of life Debian 10 distro and latest is 5.5. At least my version there is no way to show true returns either.

furrowsofar ,

LibreOffice unless MS Office comparability is the most important thing. Then maybe try ONLYOFFICE.

What non-FOSS software have you been unable to quit?

For me, Google video search, Google books (Internet Archive is good, but doesn't always have the same stuff), Adobe InDesign (but in the process of learning LaTeX), and Typewise. As for the Google stuff, I liked Whoogle a lot, but almost all their instances seem to have been blocked or shut down. Also, apologies if this is...

furrowsofar ,

FreeCAD is the best FOSS program I know for solid modeling. Librecad works for 2D.

furrowsofar ,

There are a bunch. There are fewer that are multiuser. Search alternativeto. Thing is people want more then double entry accounting. Electronic payment processing, reporting, payroll, AR, tax... Then how does it work with the professionals you hire.

Edit: For personal stuff, my wife and I use GNUCash. It does have small company features. I do not think it is concurrent though, but it can be used with an SQL backend though. We do not use the database mode so no experience with it.

furrowsofar ,

I used to use Solidworks and NX some. I think there are similarities. That is sketch based. I admit though, not really learned FreeCAD either. On my list some day.

furrowsofar ,

Actually Solidworks is consider low to mid market. NX and whatever PTC calls their high end now are the main stream CAD systems as far as I know.

furrowsofar ,

Nice thing about Solidworks is I think is used the ACIS kernel. Means it is directly compatible with a lot of other software.

furrowsofar ,

I liked the Usenet and Reddit similarity. They both seamed to have more length stable patterns then the others. Also similar platforms in a lot of ways. Usenet ironically was the one that showed some declining toxicity with conversation length.

furrowsofar ,

It is the 4th Turning. That would be one interpretation.

furrowsofar ,

Just FYI. By 4th Turning I mean the book. A couple of decades ago there was a book that takes about patterns in US history. The 4th Turning was about 2020 time frame if you followed the book. A turning from the books thesis is a time of political and social unrest. Weakening institutions. Usually a major war. We see signs of this all around us.

Edit: Feels very pre world war 2 too. America retreating into isolationism. Russia planning to expand. Lot of similarities.

furrowsofar ,

I put a question up yesterday on Reddit and got no engagement with it in like 12 hours. Maybe no one that knows anything is answering questions now. I guess we will see.

furrowsofar ,

Maybe that is why I cannot see the answer. I have ublock origin enabled. :)

furrowsofar ,

No I did not. Financial forum her is kind of dead. Not sure what other tax related forums there are on lemmy. My question was about some specific issues related to getting an incorrect 1095-C. I think I have decided on a cousre of action now but was looking for others thought too.

furrowsofar ,

There is Darktable and Digikam too. Little different direction.

furrowsofar ,

Yes but it does have some editing and metadata management features. Personal opinion is everyone should start with a photo manager and then only use another program if you need more. On Linux Shotwell is another photo manager and Digikam is cross platform. I know my wife uses just Shotwell. She has never needed more. I use Digikam because it is a little more powerful and flexible but less elegant. My wife is into photos... me not as much too.

U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly ( www.nytimes.com )

The department joined 16 states and the District of Columbia to file a significant challenge to the reach and influence of Apple, arguing in an 88-page lawsuit that the company had violated antitrust laws with practices that were intended to keep customers reliant on their iPhones and less likely to switch to a competing device....

furrowsofar ,

Yes. This is why I would never use an iPhone. Closed walled garden. Cannot even load apps from other repos.

furrowsofar , (edited )

Taxes. What can I say, there is always something...

Former employer issues me a random 1095-C saying they offered me health insurance in 2023. Of course this is false. How much trouble this will cause when I try to claim the PTC this year, who knows. Then I get my taxes almost into FTU and find that it will not handle this years taxes. So I have to find another provider that can. On top of that, still waiting on one final set of tax documents from one entity that can't seem to get its act together. Have no idea if they will by April 15 or not. Feels 50/50 at this point. May have to put in an extension while I wait 3 to 6 months for the wheels to turn on something that should have been done 2 months ago. Of course this means I cannot finish my taxes or get my refund until who knows when. Ironically this year my refund is larger then usual so timing matters more.

Not sure where I am. Makes me want to laugh and scream at the same time.

furrowsofar ,

Yes we know who Musk is... and it is a very mixed bag. Some where around the time he became the world's richest person I feel like something changed and he went over the top or over the edge. Not sure which.

furrowsofar , (edited )

I was on Reddit the other day asking a tax question. Seemed like posting was less. Felt like a ghost town in some subreddits. Just my impression. Had not been there for maybe 6 months. Place seemed different.

I wonder if traffic and posting is really down?

Edit: Read the article. Says maybe stable maybe some growth. Says search driven traffic less fractionally. I know I see fewer search links to Reddit on DDG when I search.

Edit: Article was a bit vague about stock of new content. Are big contributors adding important new content? Not even sure how to measure. Reddit seems to like to focus on page views and time on site, maybe because financially that is all that matters? Maybe they do not really care about good content and content generation so much?

furrowsofar , (edited )

I liked how the article tried to paint less fractional users from search as a positive. Too me that sounds like less relevance which is negative. Also interesting that Reddit no longer publishes that statistic. Makes a me wonder why.

Edit: Also in line with my experience. Feels like I see less search links and when I see them, I am less likely to click on them.

Epoxy takes a while ( imgur.com )

I'm almost wrapped up with filling voids, bark inclusions, and knot holes in the boards for the bookcase. If our garage was climate controlled I expect this process would have gone faster; the same could be said if I had more horizontal working space for staging and filling. Once everything is done curing I should be able to go...

furrowsofar , (edited )

Work space. I have a small collapsable bench and two jaw stands with a couple of 2x4s I use in my garage for my work surface. It all collapses when not in use. Love those jaw stands. Inherited the little bench and it works great too and is more stable. I tend to use the bench as my work area and the stands as supports but for quick jobs I will just use the stands.

I remember when I was young I use to use IR lamps in the winter when curing paint on my car. You do have to get the placement correct to get the best surface temperature.

Just a couple of ideas.

furrowsofar ,

I think what I use to use was an IR spotlight in a portable spotlight fixture that had a clamp you could clamp about anywhere. Also make certain you have enough ventilation.

Pondering drastically altering my resume after learning an employer that bookended several years of short stints due to layoffs shut down last year

I was the news editor of smaller of the two sister papers from 2003-2006, when I was pushed out by the IT manager (offsite at the other paper). Life conspired to keep me in town, as my fiancee was wrapping her undergrad. I got laid off the next year because the next place I worked shut down. I was able to quickly find a...

furrowsofar ,

Regarding wage stagnation. I do not disagree. That however does not change the basics of managing ones carrier. OP is trying to work in a dying field. Really questionable if that is a good idea. We have family that are writers and they have had similar issues to OP. The way to get paid well is to either be a specialist preffereably in short supply, be management, own your own business, or be in a union. Working in a growing not a dying industry is important too.

furrowsofar , (edited )

I have no great answers. My wife likes to say find the intersection of your skills and passion and the world's greatest needs. I prefer to also add and for which you can get paid for, preferably at least 2X median income if possible.

Of the writers I know one did freelance for awhile then wrote a book after getting out of news. The other ultimately switch to being a producer of radio content. Think both were difficult. I had another writer friend that did technical writing for a large company. Something in the medical R&D area. Another person I know did creative stuff in video production and gave it up to be an executive assistant.

furrowsofar ,

Storj is the other one. No personal experience with it. Also of course Drive e2, and wasabi which others have mentioned. Not sure any of the 4 low cost providers are that different in price though your specific use patterns will matter.

Personally I have been trying Backblaze B2 recently.

furrowsofar ,

By the way, some of the mentioned services are annual and block pricing. Those plans, the per TB cost depends on where you are in their brackets. Backblaze is pay as you go which is more flexible and you do not pay for more then you use.

furrowsofar ,

I am confused. How is $250 per TB/month cheap. Backblaze B2 is about $5TB/mo.

furrowsofar ,

Thanks. That is what it seemed like to me. $245 for the software and $5 for the storage per month. Which of course is a bit nuts.

Block level deduplication does seem interesting. My experience file level dedup is not that effective though of course incrementals are. Compression is not either but easy to do. Lot of document formats are already compressed too. Cross system dedup could be large savings also.

furrowsofar ,

I have the same concern about them. Seems to me that one wants data in a professional and planned data center and based on contractual relationships.

furrowsofar , (edited )

The other cheaper way is just 3 USB drives and rotate 1 off site. Should probably do that anyway. If USB is too slow or small then hot mount SATA slots, drives. and drive storage boxes. Presumably SATA drives in hot mount slots are what Backblaze uses anyway.

furrowsofar ,

FOSS related: The Free Software Foundation, The Software Freedom Conservency, The Software Freedom Law Center, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (aka the EFF), Debian, the Mozilla Foundation, the Document Foundation (aka Libreoffice)...

furrowsofar , (edited )

Nicely put. I just cannot tell if that is how you feel or your just channeling.

For me, I am divided. On one hand people do nothing unless motivated and needing basic necessities is a powerful motivator. On the other, I am curious as to the most cost effective approach. Plus I would much rather spend money on people getting along then police and armies.

Edit: Just thinking, maybe call me a libertarian socialist. Maybe that is why I am always confused.

furrowsofar ,

It is an interesting question. That is, the question if what motivates people to be productive. I think it varies widely.

furrowsofar , (edited )

Frankly do not agree with your assessment especially about Ukraine. Russia still retains maximal aims. Ukraine still retains the ability to militarily defeat Russia but the west has been a day late and a dollar short. Manpower. That is a Ukranian political decision. Ukrainian losses have been not that large compared to their population. Similar in ratio to Russian losses to their population.

Gaza is harder. No good solution. The residents of Gaza choose this by choosing Hamas as their government and starting a war with Israel. Iran is similarly responsible.

Edit: The amount of money the US has put into either conflicts is minimal, had been spend largely in the US, and has no relation to social funding.

furrowsofar ,

Thanks. Interesting.

furrowsofar ,

Yes. Ham is about playing with tech, learning skills, and building a social network all before the internet existed. It was also considered a means if communication in a national emergency and presumably a base of skills. It was not intended to be a service delivery platform.

Plus as the post says, the security apparatus does not universally like the use of encryption by the public. This is a fact not a conspiracy theory. Liked the way the poster said that.

furrowsofar ,

Gnome 3 under the hood but it is nothing like the Gnome 3 your thinking about. It is more like Gnome 2 as far as the UI.

There is still a Gnome 2 fork around also. Cannot remember the name. Used that in the early days but had some minor but annoying compatibility issues with some apps so went to Cinnamon which is based on the modern base to avoid those.

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