Recent Posts

976

General Software Discussion / Re: Best reliable freeware download sites?

« Last post by wraith808 on August 08, 2019, 12:11 PM »

In my opinion, Download.com is the mother of all software download websites. It’s the oldest of its type and was established about 14 years ago. The site is owned by CNet, one of the biggest names in Technology. There's an app on Apknite has a similar name but I don't know if it belongs to them or not. 

-Akertyna (August 08, 2019, 04:27 AM)

One thing that places a black eye on Download.com in my regard is the practice of wrapping installers in their own installer.  That just leaves a bitter flavor in my mouth.  I'm not sure if they are still doing it as I stopped visiting at the point where they started the practice.

977

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

« Last post by wraith808 on August 08, 2019, 12:09 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.

-Deozaan (August 07, 2019, 11:04 PM)

I think in many cases, the coercion comes in the context.

https://freedomhouse...orld/2019/kazakhstan

https://freedomhouse...-net/2018/kazakhstan

Given the attacks against freedom and the fact that "Those who try to access the Internet without the government-issued root certificate are being redirected to landing pages with instructions on how to install it." creates an environment in an already tense situation where one might wonder what would happen if they didn't comply

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).

-Deozaan (August 07, 2019, 11:04 PM)

I think that's the vast majority of people, unfortunately.  They just want it to work, and get them what they want.  The other things are just ephemeral concepts to them.  And I think a lot of that is what the government depends on (or at least those with any inkling- I think a lot of politicians fall into the same group).

978

Living Room / What did the FTC hear in its loot box workshop?

« Last post by wraith808 on August 07, 2019, 04:03 PM »

via https://www.gamesind...ts-loot-box-workshop

As promised, the Federal Trade Commission is looking into loot boxes. Today the US regulator held an event titled Inside the Game: Unlocking the Consumer Issues Surrounding Loot Boxes "to inform regulatory priorities as well as industry and consumer guidance."

Presenters at the event consisted of academics, industry members, and watchdogs offering their own perspectives on the subject. Much of the day was clearly intended to bring people unfamiliar with games up to speed on the issue, but the event also played host to some breaking news.

During the opening panel of the day, Entertainment Software Association chief counsel of tech policy Michael Warnecke announced commitments from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft to mandate loot box odds disclosures for new games (or existing games updated with loot box functionality) on their platforms by the end of 2020. A number of ESA member publishers made a similar pledge for all of their titles regardless of platform.

More at link.

979

Living Room / Kazakhstan’s aggressive mass surveillance technique explained

« Last post by wraith808 on August 07, 2019, 04:00 PM »

via https://protonmail.c...ternet-surveillance/

On July 17, the government of Kazakhstan began coercing its citizens to install a root certificate on their devices that would allow the authorities to monitor everything they do online. The surveillance affects anyone trying to access certain websites, including Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Once the certificate is installed, the government could access emails, read private messages, log browsing activity, and store login credentials.

They've since said this was just a 'test', but few are buying it.

980

Living Room / Re: Gencon board (and video) game convention, Indiana Aug 2-5, 2018 - Ill be there

« Last post by wraith808 on August 05, 2019, 02:05 PM »

Back from Gencon 2019.  A fun time was had by all, as usual.  Glad to be back with you folks though.

-mouser (August 05, 2019, 11:48 AM)

One day.  Hopefully.  One day.

981

Developer's Corner / Re: Looking for freeware command line text to PDF

« Last post by wraith808 on August 03, 2019, 09:25 AM »

As long as your text is formatted beforehand, (it will truncate lines that don't fit your chosen output dimensions), then txt2pdf, (just another of many), is lightweight and fast.

TXT2PDF
TXT2PDF is a command-line tool for encoding ASCII as PDF. See the "ReadMe" file included with the zip for options and usage.

Example of calling TXT2PDF:

   txt2pdf -i"C:\temp\my ASCII file.txt" -o"C:\temp\pdfout.pdf" -w17 -h11
In this example, txt2pdf reads a file ("my ASCII file.txt") and writes it to a pdf ("pdfout.pdf"). The "-w" switch defines the page width as 17 inches; the "-h" switch defines the page height as 11 inches. Note that there are no spaces bewteen the flags and the associated parameters. See the ReadMe file for details.

-4wd (August 03, 2019, 08:05 AM)

That's the same name as the utility quoted in the original post.  Is it the same utility?  Or just another by the same name?

982

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by wraith808 on July 29, 2019, 10:44 AM »

983

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

« Last post by wraith808 on July 27, 2019, 12:00 PM »

I've started using a DCVS (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.

-Deozaan (July 27, 2019, 01:29 AM)

And this is the reason that I don't require versioning- anything that does require versions (writing, coding, etc), I have in repos that are pushed to a few remotes.

984

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

« Last post by wraith808 on July 26, 2019, 06:30 PM »

I'm using OneDrive, and using nowhere near my maximum space, and am very happy with it.  Of course, my backup plan is not to backup everything, but just my unrecoverable files, so if you're doing a full backup YMMV.  It also does not have versioning (other than office docs), though it does allow you to recover from deletions.

985

Find And Run Robot / Re: What is FARR's connection with Onedrive?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 24, 2019, 06:11 PM »

That is the way that it should be.  I was asking you what was returned for the special documents folder as that's where mouser stores some info for FARR.  That's the reason that he's asking the question above- is that folder there?

986

Find And Run Robot / Re: What is FARR's connection with Onedrive?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 24, 2019, 10:30 AM »

And why would FARR install by default to Onedrive documents folder?

-dantheman (July 23, 2019, 06:32 PM)

Open powershell, and type the following command:

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. [environment]::getfolderpath("MyDocuments")

What does that return?

987

Find And Run Robot / Re: What is FARR's connection with Onedrive?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 23, 2019, 10:07 AM »

It looks like you're syncing that location with OneDrive- it's in your documents folder looking at the path.

988

General Software Discussion / Re: Stop using LaTeX!

« Last post by wraith808 on July 20, 2019, 10:40 AM »

PDF should be thought of as an export, read-only format. Keep your documents in source form for editing!

-f0dder (July 20, 2019, 09:54 AM)

QFT!  I've seen too many projects unable to update because they assumed that the PDF would be good enough for source.  Or they have cost overruns because of the effort involved.

989

Developer's Corner / Interview with the woman in charge of the software for the 1969 Moon Landing

« Last post by wraith808 on July 13, 2019, 05:27 PM »

An interview with the first software engineer ("Computer science and software engineering were not yet disciplines"), and a hero of the Apollo missions.

The computer system was the most sophisticated of its day. Her rigorous approach was so successful that no software bugs were ever known to have occurred during any crewed Apollo missions.

https://www.theguard...n-landing-nasa-women

990

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 12, 2019, 11:09 PM »

The largest argument against mining bitcoin: https://www.bbc.com/...logy-48853230?utm_ca

991

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for AsciiDoc editor

« Last post by wraith808 on July 10, 2019, 12:28 PM »

CommonMark had the potential of standardizing things until the creator of Markdown spoke against it.  Some people are avoiding it for just that reason.  I've created documentation in Markdown before and output it to different formats quite easily using Pandoc, or even just the converter in Sublime Text.

Though there are many variations that implement different things that the baseline Markdown don't, I find that much of it is just window dressing.

992

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

« Last post by wraith808 on July 10, 2019, 12:25 PM »

That's a really cool idea!  We did something similar at one point, but didn't have the cool props!

993

General Software Discussion / Re: Bloomberg Billionaires Index -> Google Spreadsheet?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 05, 2019, 11:26 AM »

Look for the attribute window.top500.  That seems to have the whole thing in a JSON Array.

Formatted in JSON: https://cryptpad.fr/...OWmXWr2g5B7vWz4MVl0/

994

Screenshot Captor / Re: Turn off automatic saving of screenshots

« Last post by wraith808 on July 01, 2019, 06:15 PM »

How are you pasting it?  I copy to the clipboard from the dialog that comes up, and never save to disk.

995

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

« Last post by wraith808 on June 27, 2019, 03:07 PM »

Have you looked online for the reference manual?  It would answer the questions better than we could.

996

Living Room / Re: Some of rock's greatest riffs may be up for grab

« Last post by wraith808 on June 24, 2019, 01:11 PM »

Interesting but it seems that there should be a simple legal way to amend this. IE resubmit the copyrights in their entirety, and the actual holder/creator gets first rights to copyright them within a certain time frame.

-nickodemos (June 24, 2019, 10:45 AM)

Nothing with IP/Copyright is ever simple, and I'm sure that someone would make it more difficult to push through.

997

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by wraith808 on June 24, 2019, 10:01 AM »

I mean in the bar at the bottom.  I'm not sure if SlimJet shows it's downloads in the bottom bar...

-wraith808 (June 23, 2019, 10:54 PM)

?
Thought my screenshot via Screenshot Captor wasn't that bad!

So it's not working for you - well, my Brave sync code isn't registering on their service, so i guess we're even!

VirusTotal extension is a good addition for (Firefox and) Slimjet (or Chrome based clones):
https://chrome.googl...aegfbieplglfidafgoka

-dantheman (June 24, 2019, 08:21 AM)

I don't use brave sync, or really _any_ sync.  And yeah, that screenshot illustrates what I meant; I didn't even realize that you had a download in the bar at the bottom; I thought you were talking about the popup!

998

Living Room / Some of rock's greatest riffs may be up for grab

« Last post by wraith808 on June 24, 2019, 09:49 AM »

...because copyright laws are stupid.



Do you know what a deposit copy is?  I never knew until I read this article on Bloomberg.  from the article

<snip...> “deposit copy,” as it’s called, is a spare document handwritten by a record company scribe who listened to the record and then distilled it into only 124 notes of piano music. The reverse engineering was required to comply with U.S. law, which before 1978 allowed songs to be registered only via sheet music “deposited” in Washington.

The first pages of the deposit copies of some songs you may know. Note the spareness; the courts are working out whether song elements that aren’t shown are copyright protected.

PHOTO: COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Let that sit for a second.  That spare amount for Stairway to Heaven, for example, doesn't include the most recognized portions of the song.

“You would agree that there’s no solo on the deposit copy … of Stairway to Heaven, which was deposited with the office?”

“Yeah, we—I agree with that. It’s not in there, no,” Page said.

Malofiy then pointed to the first measure. On the record, Stairway begins with a finger-picked introduction—one of the most recognizable musical passages of the past half-century, mimicked by millions of aspiring guitarists. That iconic intro, Malofiy said, “That’s not represented in the deposit copy?”

“No,” Page said. “You’re correct.”

That's just... mind-blowing.

more at https://www.bloomber...rock-riffs-loophole/

999

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by wraith808 on June 23, 2019, 10:54 PM »

I mean in the bar at the bottom.  I'm not sure if SlimJet shows it's downloads in the bottom bar like Chrome and Brave, but when it shows down there, I can't read the text with Material Pro.

1000

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by wraith808 on June 23, 2019, 01:05 PM »

The brave theme just has the grey for the active tab, which I find noticeable enough.  I tried that dark material pro, and I see where it's the inverse of that.  But I can't read the downloads with that installed as easily.

But it's good that we have options so that everyone can get what they want!