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1001

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Handling spam on forum

« Last post by Deozaan on August 14, 2019, 08:22 PM »

Spammer?  Posing as someone concerned with spam?  Shows the hallmarks of that being the case.

-wraith808 (August 14, 2019, 01:10 PM)

Agreed. Looks like a bot or spammer to me.

Not only is the post reviving an old thread, but it's not even on topic for this thread. Also, it is written as if this person has voiced their opinion on the subject in the past ("I still feel..."), yet it's their first post.

And yeah, also interesting that they propose new members have to wait a week before posting anything when that's exactly what they did, as if to lend legitimacy to their own account.

1002

Living Room / Re: Kazakhstan’s aggressive mass surveillance technique explained

« Last post by Deozaan on August 07, 2019, 11:04 PM »

I read this article a few days ago. As I recall, the article never really explained where the "coercion" took place. It sounded more like "misleading" than "coercing" to me. Even so, it's spooky.

There are people I talk to about the importance of internet privacy and they don't seem to care. They can't seem to understand why it's so important. All I can do is kind of shake my head and think of how lucky they are to live somewhere that their government isn't actively, blatantly, flagrantly, oppressing their freedoms (yet).

1003

Living Room / Re: For those with a CrashPlan...

« Last post by Deozaan on July 30, 2019, 11:36 AM »

I read "non-hosted" as "non-cloud" which interpretation is further reinforced (in my opinion) by "backup to my local network" at the end of the sentence.

1004

Living Room / Re: For those with a CrashPlan...

« Last post by Deozaan on July 28, 2019, 02:57 PM »

Apparently the space is counting all old versions of files, and so the culprits of space use are likely files that have many copies, but I can't figure out how to find such files..  Painful.

-mouser (July 26, 2019, 04:10 PM)

I believe versions are going to get reclaimed automatically (but probably are counted against the limit).

Deleted files, however, do not get deleted automatically - this pretty much got me locked out of my account. The client will not connect properly when you're above your quota, and the web interface is bloody useless... doesn't show totals for folders, so it's near impossible to hunt down what's taking up space. And with the amount of files I had (because versions), it was also painfully slow. Not that the local client is much faster, when I got access again by contacting support and getting some extra gigabytes quota temporarily assigned, clicking around some of the large folders would take several minutes.

(The knowledge base articles on cleaning up versions and trash via commandline didn't work either - you literally can't clean up with the client if you're above your quota. And that you have to shut down the GUI, if running, before being able to run command line actions is... bloody stupid).

Anyway, deleted files end up in a "trash" folder you have manually empty now and then, might be your issue as well, mouser?

-f0dder (July 28, 2019, 12:00 PM)

Ah yes, that reminds me of my experience with SpiderOak--which ultimately led to me abandoning them--which I posted about earlier in this thread:

Be careful with SpiderOak. I had an experience with them many years ago where somehow a folder that wasn't supposed to be included in my backups got included, and it put me just barely over my storage limit.

They essentially locked me out of my account until I got below the limit. But without having access to my files, I couldn't remove anything to get below the limit. Seemingly, the only option available to me was to pay for a plan with more storage. I didn't actually need more storage; without the accidentally added folder I was using something like half the limit.

I contacted support and told them as much. They were kind enough to (permanently!) increase my limit by 1GB to bring my storage usage back under the limit and allow me access to my account/files again. But they also warned me that there was no way to manage your files while being above your limit.

I never understood why it would happily let me go over my limit but not allow me to remove files to get it back under the limit, and while I was otherwise satisfied with SpiderOak in every other regard, that experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

But as I said, that was many years ago. Maybe things have changed in that regard. I haven't been using SpiderOak for a long time.

-Deozaan (December 05, 2017, 11:23 AM)

1005

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by Deozaan on July 27, 2019, 10:03 PM »

And all of my previous videos suffered due to very low audio from my microphone.

warning: i had a snowball microphone in the past; it was very good quality but one of its quirks was recording in very low volume, so i needed to increase volume in post production.

-mouser (July 27, 2019, 03:36 PM)

To clarify, I was talking about videos recorded with a different microphone.

Interestingly, I've been on voice chat while using the Snowball iCE and people on the other end of the internet have asked me about sounds they heard that were coming from someone in the next room over from me, so it seems like it is capable of picking up noises and speech very well from more than a few feet away. That said, my short tests with Audacity and OBS gave me quieter volumes than I would have liked. But I didn't test it thoroughly enough to know if there was just some kind of misconfiguration on my part or what.

Either way, I'm hoping that having the Snowball iCE on an adjustable boom that I can position a few inches from my face will help with picking up my voice loudly enough.

1006

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by Deozaan on July 27, 2019, 03:16 PM »

Are you going to be starting a podcast, deo?

-mouser (July 27, 2019, 12:59 PM)

I'm under no delusions that people want to see my face or hear my voice.

But I have, in the past, on occasion recorded tutorial videos or even a Let's Play. And all of my previous videos suffered due to very low audio from my microphone.

1007

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by Deozaan on July 27, 2019, 12:44 PM »

Received my new Raspberry Pi 4B 4GB recently:

As well as a new "case" for my RasPi3B+ (which dropped its operating temperature to about 32°C):

-4wd (July 27, 2019, 10:19 AM)

Out of curiosity, what are you using your RPis for?

1008

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by Deozaan on July 27, 2019, 12:37 PM »

Maybe I'll go for one of the lower model Blue microphones, such as the Snowball iCE and just use my CozyPhones. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

-Deozaan (May 03, 2019, 04:20 PM)

I ended up getting the Blue Snowball iCE (in Black).



It's a lot larger than I thought it would be from the photos. Eyeballing it with a ruler next to it, I'd say it's around 3.75-4 inches (~9.5-10 cm) in diameter, or about the size of a softball. Plus it comes with a stand that raises it up another ~3.75 inches, making it just under 8 inches tall. I intended to put it in front of my 2 monitors, right in the center where the two bezels are. But it's so large and so tall that it occludes more of my view than I thought it would and hampers my workflow.

Other than that, it seems to work well enough for basic VoIP and other voice chat for gaming. I haven't thoroughly tested it with anything where audio quality is super important (recorded videos with voice). I did a couple really quick tests using Audacity and OBS and the audio seemed fairly quiet to me in those recordings. But they were both recorded with the Snowball iCE about 2-3 feet away from me, rather than just a few inches from my mouth which seems to be the intended location for this microphone.

For these two reasons (it being too big and too far away) I'm now looking into getting an adjustable boom for it. I've got my eye on this boom:



But then, as I understand, having the microphone only a couple inches away from your face causes plosives to become a big problem for audio quality. Therefore I've also got my eye on this pop filter to help with that:



But because I'm not doing anything regularly where high quality audio is required, I'm not in a rush to pick these accessories up. So it may be a few months or longer before I actually get them.

1009

Living Room / Re: For those with a CrashPlan...

« Last post by Deozaan on July 27, 2019, 01:29 AM »

I've started using a DVCS (mercurial, but it could be done with git) to make backups of things.

I just add things to a repository, clone/push the repo to another drive, PC, or remote server, and I've got a backup with built-in versioning.

That said, my backup needs are relatively simple and small. I probably don't back up nearly as much as I ought to, and this method probably wouldn't work so well for very large amounts of data, especially if that data is stored in a binary format, doubly especially if that binary data changes often.

1010

General Software Discussion / Re: Can't close side panel in Google Voice

« Last post by Deozaan on July 25, 2019, 03:43 PM »

As you've stated, it uses a responsive design so if you make the width of your browser a little smaller, it will normally go away.

Another possible workaround is to block the side panel element with an ad blocker or just remove it (until the page is reloaded/refreshed) by right-clicking the page and clicking the option that should be something like "Inspect Element" and selecting it and deleting it. Look for the <gv-call-sidebar> element. But I'm not sure if that will also have the side-effect of disabling your ability to make or receive phone calls from the website.

1011

General Software Discussion / Re: Image editor with a zoom reticle?

« Last post by Deozaan on July 25, 2019, 10:52 AM »

Have you tried Screenshot Captor? It has a zoom view that is displayed separately from the image, so it can be viewed while the image is completely zoomed out.

1012

General Software Discussion / Re: VLC player has critical security flaw - July 23, 2019 - UPDATED

« Last post by Deozaan on July 25, 2019, 01:48 AM »

Update: VideoLAN confirmed that the issue was not a security issue in VLC Media Player. The engineers detected that the issue was caused by an older version of the third-party library called libebml that was included in older versions of Ubuntu. The researcher used that older version of Ubuntu apparently. End

-https://www.ghacks.net/2019/07/24/confusion-critical-vlc-media-player-vulnerability/

Wut?

The TechRadar article says:

The issue has been detected in the Windows, Linux and UNIX versions of VLC, however the macOS version appears to be unaffected.

VideoLAN, the not-for-profit organisation beind VLC Media Player, says it has been working on a patch for the flaw for the last four weeks, and is 60 percent through.

-https://www.techradar.com/news/vlc-player-has-critical-security-flaw

Where did they get the information that the exploit exists on multiple OSes and that VideoLAN was only 60% finished with a patch for the flaw when VideoLAN says it was fixed over a year ago and only vulnerable on an old^* version of Ubuntu which uses an old 3rd party library?




^* To be fair to the researcher, the "old" version of Ubuntu is supposedly Ubuntu 18.04, which is the most recent LTS version of Ubuntu.

1013

General Software Discussion / Re: Can't close side panel in Google Voice

« Last post by Deozaan on July 25, 2019, 01:16 AM »

Which side panel are you talking about? Got any screenshots to show what you mean?

1014

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Possible Malware Debug - HW laptop back-light detector

« Last post by Deozaan on July 18, 2019, 07:47 PM »

In my very first post in this thread, I assumed all of this. I just wanted a tool to tell me which thing was doing it!

-Asudem (July 18, 2019, 05:11 PM)

My apologies. Nothing I read in your OP indicates that you assumed it was a notification (which could be from any/every application running on your PC!) that kept waking your monitor.

I have a problem with my computer, even after a new hard drive "Reach" install of Windows 10, so a fresh Windows 10 install is being used. The problem is that my computer will, at seemingly random points in time during the night, reactivate my screen, after it has powered down.

I would like some kind of recursive diagnostic logger to help identify the cause of this issue down to the executable, daemon, rootkit, malware, or virus this may be.

Note: Only on my Win10 partition do I exhibit random "screen turn on experiences" with nothing in my log files. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Ubuntu 14.04.5 Desktop 64bit.

-Asudem (December 24, 2018, 09:19 PM)

1015

General Software Discussion / Re: Brave: A new browser with built-in adblock and payment solutions

« Last post by Deozaan on July 17, 2019, 06:15 PM »

Looks like Brave Ads are now available in the Brave Android app.

And I'm starting to see more and more websites and content creators on YouTube verified. It's nice seeing this thing gain some adoption.

Some of the more notable sites that I've noticed are now verified: DuckDuckGo, ProtonMail, and SourceForge.

1016

General Software Discussion / Re: Fun and Games with 2fa Lockout Problem

« Last post by Deozaan on July 17, 2019, 04:25 PM »

Virtually every 2FA I've ever set up either gave me a bunch of one-time-use recovery codes and instructed me to back them up, or has some other means of recovering the account if the 2FA method is inaccessible.

That said, and ironically enough, (actual) banking sites often have some of the stupidest and insecure "security practices" I've seen.

However, in cryptocurrency-related fields there is much more responsibility placed upon each person to ensure the safety of their own funds. So the "banking site" you're referring to may be of the opinion that it's not their problem.

1017

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Possible Malware Debug - HW laptop back-light detector

« Last post by Deozaan on July 17, 2019, 10:32 AM »

I don't know exactly what causes it, but sometimes my screens reactivate or the screensaver is interrupted whenever a notification pops up from any program. If I get a text, or email, or IM, or any app shows any notification, it can cause the screen to wake up.

It doesn't always happen, but it happens often enough to be a semi-regular thing on my PC. Maybe your laptop is doing something similar.

1018

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for AsciiDoc editor

« Last post by Deozaan on July 10, 2019, 08:36 PM »

I'm reminded of this:

xkcd: Standards

1019

Living Room / Re: Micro Reviews of Board Games From a Non-Competetive Perspective

« Last post by Deozaan on July 10, 2019, 02:25 PM »

The "people" you showed the negatives to weren't actual people, right? They were just AI/NPCs? And there weren't any actual compromising negatives, right? They were just kind of a conceptual/abstract thing you could use as part of the game?

If that's the case, then IMO you don't need to be embarrassed/ashamed by it, and it does sound like the kind of thing that would lead to a fun(ny) inside joke.

1020

Living Room / Re: Micro Reviews of Board Games From a Non-Competetive Perspective

« Last post by Deozaan on July 10, 2019, 12:50 PM »

Care to explain the catchphrase "show her the negatives"?

1021

Living Room / Re: good Videos [short films] here :)

« Last post by Deozaan on July 07, 2019, 12:18 AM »

Very early film usually plays at a very high speed (I'm not sure why) and is silent...

-tomos (May 25, 2019, 01:18 PM)

I think it's because the person filming had to manually spin the reel, and they didn't spin it while recording as fast as it plays back on the projector machine.

There's something very meditative about these videos:
below is #18 in a series about an aquarium without filter/CO2/fertilizer.

made with smartphone + macro lens attachment

-tomos (July 06, 2019, 04:21 PM)

Very clean looking water for no filters. Also very high quality image for a smartphone. I enjoyed it! Thanks for sharing.

1022

General Software Discussion / Re: Out, damned WiFi spot! Out, I say!

« Last post by Deozaan on July 03, 2019, 03:04 PM »

Can't you right-click the old ones and select "Forget"?

1023

General Software Discussion / Low volume after Windows 10 1903 update

« Last post by Deozaan on June 30, 2019, 01:20 PM »

My PC updated to the Windows 10 1903 update a week or two ago and I've noticed that the audio in my headphones is really quiet now.

Whereas usually I had the volume set to the 20-30% range, sometimes turning it up to about 40-50% if it was too noisy around me, now I have to have the volume cranked to 100% with Loudness Equalization enabled to be able to hear decently in a relatively quiet environment (e.g., with maybe a quiet TV on in the background). Sometimes the audio coming through my headphones is still just too quiet for me to be able to hear what's going on on my PC, such as when the TV gets turned up or people are talking too loudly, and I have no recourse since I can't turn the volume up any higher than 100%.

I've done some searching for potential solutions but everything seems to suggest either rolling back the driver (which isn't an option for me; the button is grayed out and disabled) or reinstalling the previous/manufacturer's driver (I've never used any driver for this headset other than the Windows built-in driver). These headphones aren't anything special. Just two little speakers connected to an audio jack. There are no special buttons or volume controls on the cable, etc., that would require custom drivers.

Does anyone know of a way to get the audio working back to the way it was before the 1903 update? Or perhaps can anybody recommend some software that allows me to boost/equalize the audio coming from my PC?

Thanks in advance. I hope to hear from you soon.

EDIT: Maybe I spoke too soon. Just after posting this message I rebooted my PC so that Windows could finish installing a cumulative update and when it got back into Windows, the volume was set to 20% and I can take it all the way up to 100%, with it getting louder than I'd like at around the 50% range. So it seems things are back the way they were for me.

1024

Living Room / Re: Is it possible to change the buttons in Motorola G7?

« Last post by Deozaan on June 27, 2019, 02:47 PM »

Why change it? That's how it's supposed to be. AFAIK all Android devices work that way, except Samsung decided to be different and put the "back" button on the right, even though the icon has an arrow pointing to the left.

But if you really want it changed anyway, then I think you'll need to install a custom ROM. I'd suggest asking around on xda-developers.com.

1025

Living Room / Re: Any good free android scientific calculator?

« Last post by Deozaan on June 27, 2019, 02:34 PM »

I used RealCalc and was so happy with it that I gladly paid for RealCalc Plus, which I've now been using for many years.