Tux in Brussels @tux@mastodon.multimob.be

Always good to know: youtube-dl can also download any video on a #PeerTube instance.

I discovered something funny when updating from Firefox... 43 on a friend's W10 system. (Yes, the friend hadn't opened her browser for a very long time.)

Firefox will automagically update but it will not get straight to version 67. It will download 2 or 3 intermediary versions.

Never mind, it works fine now and the user is happy.

Some people around me are worried about WeTransfer or Dropbox becoming the main platforms for large file sharing.

I would be happy to lecture them about Firefox Send or Framadrop.

But the people I am trying to help use locked corporate devices running Internet Explorer. It doesn’t work for them.

Are there other ethical alternatives that could be advised?

All of a sudden I got thousands of requests on one of my web servers, like this.

"GET /login.cgi?cli=aa ;wget"

Needless to say, fail2ban instantly banned those attackers.

Probably a botnet.
I wonder… what kind of devices are they supposed to target with this command?

A friend was shopping on #Amazon and didn’t know what to do after this screen.
The illusion of free choice.

On #Postfix, I recommend the following setting in main.cf:
message_size_limit = 26214400

This is to match GMail’s current limit. Otherwise, your friends won’t understand why their 25 Mb attachment bounced (Postfix’s default is 10 Mb).

Also, check whether mailbox_size_limit is still adequate, depending on how much storage you have.

I have always wondered why the design of the #Raspberry Pi’s box looks like medication.

After all, it’s here to save the world. It makes sense! 😃

You have a small website (read: no budget) and you want to use HTTPS.

1) CAcert is not trusted by most browsers, it will trigger warnings: your users will be scared away.

2) Let’s Encrypt works fine.

The trouble is: if there is only one viable provider and everybody relies on them, it becomes the next single point of failure in the community.

Any other option so far?

$ uptime
11:11:11 up 256 days

It’s great to have a big round number.
(I mean "256", of course.)

One particularly nasty command on a *nix system is:
PS1=""

Not seing a prompt at all is very disturbing! It can also serve as a practical joke to someone. 😜

#Linux #xterm

I find it disturbing that the simple RPN calculator from F-Droid’s main repo triggers a huge pop-up box at first launch.
This is a big disclaimer about the non-warranty implied by the GNU GPL licence. Maybe they fear that someone might sue them because of miscalculations on a small Android app like this. Really?
Imagine if every single piece of software in a GNU/Linux or Android system would start doing this.

Is there a name for this email #scam? Somebody forging your email address to send you a message pretending to have hacked your devices, owning compromising videos or browsing history, and asking for a ransom in bitcoins.
Not the same as "sextorsion", right?

Here is the editor I was mentioning (apparently no longer maintained): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.paulmach.textedit/

(This is because most text editors have a similar name.)

Looking for a lightweight text viewer in F-Droid with a good search function, to retrieve information quickly in a long list. (User needs to open TXT files, some up to 20,000 lines or 2 Mb.)

Using Text Edit (paulmach.com) but all editors I’ve tested so far have many drawbacks such as:
– slow to open, especially with large files
– they are meant to *edit* files and show the keyboard first
– search function non-existing or awfully slow

Any suggestion anyone?

#Android

Protip for 2019: If you have an algorithm, call it "artificial intelligence". Non-technical people will start buying it, because it sounds so cool!

I wish people would understand that #FLOSS is not always designed to be a free-of-charge replacement for every piece of software they use.

If you drop your car and start riding a motorcycle, you know that you should expect a different look&feel, even if the basic task of getting from A to B is still the same.

Same goes for other piece of software: don’t expect every button or every fancy option to be exactly the same.

I’ve been trying this for a while now: "Yes, I can fix your computer if it’s a _hardware_ problem. If you use free software, I can also fix software-related problems. No exceptions."

It saves time.
So far no friends lost. 😉
I’m curious about long-term effects.