Simon @simon@fosstodon.org

Since joining #fosstodon I've realised that #blogging isn't dead, and even more so during the #100DaysToOffload series. So I've shut down my medium account, bought a cool domain 😂 and been working on a Jekyll setup that works for me. I have a few interesting technical posts in the pipe but my introductory post is a nostalgic look at my life in games https://cyb.org.uk/2020/06/09/my-favourite-video-games.html . Some initial encouragement and comments may lead to more regular posts from me! 😆

I have never actually learned how to complete the #rubikscube . Today this will change

I had a moment of clarity and deleted the 300+ books I added to (Amazon-owned) #goodreads over the years. When you live in a #surveillance society, the books you own/read are perhaps some of the most incriminating things about you.

After some months not using it, I finally uninstalled brave browser from my phone. I've been happily using a mixture of Firefox and Firefox focus instead. Focus is my default browser for any links I click from apps, and clears my cookies and history afterwards.

My ford sync3 stereo updated to a later version, rendering it unusable. Every button press took 5-10 seconds. It ruined the whole driving experience to Complete 💩. Fortunately I trawled some Russian forums and found out how to downgrade with a usb stick and a bit of patience. I'm getting conditioned into never updating devices. I think my wife has forgiven me, and I'll stop having the nightmares.

“Something that is devastating for the public can be, and often is, beneficial to the elites.”. #snowden - Permanent Record

True story contd.: A couple of hours later i suddenly received an email from Facebook to my alt-account, which has an unused facebook account tied to it, that I've not logged into in well over a year or more and has no connection to my real identity. The email said something along the lines of "you might know $MYREALNAME". I can't figure out how this happened. Why did facebook suddenly email my alt account out of the blue and suggest my name? ideas welcome 2/2

A true story in 2 parts: I built a windows machine to check out some software for making music. On the windows machine i needed to register an email address to download some software. Being wary of windows data privacy I used my alter-ego gmail account which isn't connected to my legit account. At one point I needed a serial number which i had on my Linux machine which I emailed to my alter-account from my legit account to avoid use of my legit login from windows (a lazy mistake). 1/2

I regret putting some data into amazon glacier about 7 years ago. I can't even just delete my vault, but have to (so far)
1) spin up a docker container with the aws cli
2) request an inventory list
3) wait 5 hours for inventory to return
4) run an individual delete for every ArchiveID
5) request another inventory
wait...

Tried a bare metal install of Windows for the first time in over ten years to try some windows midi software out. TLDR two days of pure stress, bugs and failure. Currently I cannot run the latest Windows 2004 update without a BSOD. I despair.

What happens when I get hold of the kid's toys #linux #tux #craft

Regular conversation with my wife:
Me: "I've never heard a song by Kanye West/Taylor swift/Ed Sheeran/etc"
Wife: you must have. They get played in shops all the time...
Me: when did I last go into a shop that wasn't a supermarket?
Wife: ..and on the radio..
Me: unless they are played on tech podcasts I wouldn't get to hear it.

Replaced my powerline adapters with this teeny GL-MT300N-V2 which runs a custom openwrt. Super versatile device for £15 and could also see this being used as a travel router running wireguard

Beware the misleading "chinese export" mark that's made to look like the CE mark. It is the responsibility of the seller (inc. Amazon/ebay) to ensure conformity. https://instrktiv.com/en/blog/law-and-legislation/chinese-export-mark/

I've only just realised that paypal added 2FA via the authenticator app (instead of SMS only). Seems they did it a year ago and didn't tell anyone.

https://medium.com/@fs0c131y/tiktok-logs-logs-logs-e93e8162647a is worth a read, to get facts in times of misinformation. He knows his stuff.

Today I was looking for datasets for a particular ML project that doesn't have many good datasets. I found somebody who was using an ML-generated dataset as their input to perform machine learning on. Pretty sure this is how mad cow disease started.

today I am getting #minecraft running on a supercomputer for legit machine learning purposes 😂

hey #fediverse ... if i bought a #raspberrypi 3 with a faulty display, would i still be able to run it in headless mode, or would it fail to boot?