The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

Speaking of SSDs, Amazon has a lightning deal on a no-name 480GB SSD for $48. Obviously not fast or reliable enough for database servers, but at $100/TB you could build in a LOT of redundancy...

If you have the hardware support, you configure things in a RAID array. It's also possible to hot-swap.

(One of the things that impresses me about Google's architecture is that failed drives get hot swapped, and the replacement is automatically repopulated with the requisite data. Everything is stored in multiple redundant geographically dispersed locations.

A Google engineering VP gave a presentation back when with slides of an anonymous concrete block building in the boonies surrounded by fire equipment. He told the audience "I can't tell you what happened, but that was one of our facilities, and it was bad." They lost an entire data center. The only thing Google users noticed if they noticed anything al all was that queries might have taken a second or so longer.

I tell people "If a disaster capable of putting down all of Google occurs, not being able to get to Google will be the least of your worries." )
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Dennis

[Blossom]

I no longer trust Evernote. Last night there was some sort of sync error and it deleted all but one folder! I found the notes in the trash but all my organization is gone. I've been using Evernote before it had a cloud feature. I've never once had a issue till last night. I need to find alternative perhaps an offline alternative like Evernote 2 was. I never lost anything from it.

[BetterRed]

@Blossom - did you lodge a support ticket, they're usually responsive, especially to data loss problems. And the user forum is reasonably good too.

The only alternative I can think of is Onenote, I use both, I even have links in Onenote to EN notes and vice-versa. Last time I looked ON didn't work as well as EN does on Android and iOS.

No consolation, but my EN seems OK. I maintain on and off-site copies of its data along with everything else. So, I am not reliant on their cloud for backup. Onenote ditto.

If you create a Local notebook it won't be replicated to the cloud.

BR

[cc_in_oh]

I've had some problems crop up after the Win 1809 update - maybe related to that?

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@Blossom - did you lodge a support ticket, they're usually responsive, especially to data loss problems. And the user forum is reasonably good too.

The only alternative I can think of is Onenote, I use both, I even have links in Onenote to EN notes and vice-versa. Last time I looked ON didn't work as well as EN does on Android and iOS.

No consolation, but my EN seems OK. I maintain on and off-site copies of its data along with everything else. So, I am not reliant on their cloud for backup. Onenote ditto.

If you create a Local notebook it won't be replicated to the cloud.

BR

I only have a free basic account. I have all my notes, Evernote dump them in the trash. I just don't have the organized structure it once was. I've imported everything in OneNote took less than an hour to organize it all.

I realize I don't really need Evernote as a filing cabinet I can use OneNote 2016 for that then just EN for stuff I reference and basic notes or I could use Keep for that I guess.

I agree the android version of OneNote is not the best. I use it for my bullet Journal but it's such a large app on my phone it's just not an option. I tried SimpleNote but it's just not what I am looking for.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

I've had some problems crop up after the Win 1809 update - maybe related to that?

I didn't use Evernote on my desktop just phone and tablet.

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I didn't use Evernote on my desktop just phone and tablet.

Actually some of the glitches I thought were 1809 turned out to be Firefox 64 which I installed the same day.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

Actually some of the glitches I thought were 1809 turned out to be Firefox 64 which I installed the same day.

Good to know. I use two instances a portable Extended Release and the regular one. The ESR is v52. I don't think I have 1809 yet. Is that the one they pulled due to all the problems if so I'm one version behind that one.

Sent from my Nexus 7

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Good to know. I use two instances a portable Extended Release and the regular one. The ESR is v52. I don't think I have 1809 yet. Is that the one they pulled due to all the problems if so I'm one version behind that one.

Sent from my Nexus 7

Not sure about problems with 1809 but I have already gotten a flurry of minor updates to it. Can't see much difference; it did reset my folder views as always. I had some hope of using the new phone file-sharing feature but my cheapo LG Destiny doesn't have a new enough version of Android to install the app. (I tried the free Feem app but can't find a way to view the SD card, just the useless smidgen of internal storage that isn't wasted by all the non-removable Android bloatware...)

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

Not sure about problems with 1809 but I have already gotten a flurry of minor updates to it. Can't see much difference; it did reset my folder views as always.

I am still on 1803, and I have had a similar update flurry over the past couple of weeks - at least 3, maybe 4.

I updated Firefox Quantum a couple of weeks ago, too many sites became unusable. The main thing I miss is BBCodeExtra, anyone know anything similar.

BR

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

Actually some of the glitches I thought were 1809 turned out to be Firefox 64 which I installed the same day.

Which Firefox 64 version?

I've been running 64 bit builds for some time. I have Firefox Quantum release version (64.0), Firefox Developer Edition (65.0b6), and Firefox Nightly (66.0a1) installed here, and can switch between them or have more than one active at a time. (Doing that requires using different profiles, as the first instance to use a profile locks it. That's easy here - shortcuts for each version run thm as "firefox -no-remote -p", and I get a dialog box letting me pick the profile to use. The "-no-remote" parameter enables multiple simultaneous instances.)

I haven't had issues I can definitely attribute to Firefox, and I wouldn't expect 32bit vs 64bit to make a difference. I do get the odd Win10 BSOD, but those have occurred when FF is not running. (The last occurred earlier today when I was updating Visual Studio Code, and when Win10 restarted I also got a cumulative Windows update.)

Win10 1809 hasn't appeared here yet - I'm still on 1803 - but I'm in no particular hurry to get it.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I updated Firefox Quantum a couple of weeks ago, too many sites became unusable. The main thing I miss is BBCodeExtra, anyone know anything similar.

You updated to Firefox Quantum because too many sites became unusable? If you were still running an ESR build I'm surprised you could use it as long as you did.

I still have a Firefox ESR v52 build, but haven't used it in some time. It was purely an interim solution to let me continue running various extensions while I waited for WebEx extensions that could replace them. At this point, enough of my preferred functionality exists that I was able to switch to Quantum a while back.

The big missing piece for me is a password manager. Under older FF versions, there were extensions that would let me view and modify Firefox stored passwords, and do things like see what various stored passwords were, as there are sites I visit infrequently enough I may not recall what password I created for them. (I do not use third-party cloud based password managers like LastPass. That's not a security concern - I've just never needed the functionality.) The last I knew, extensions to the WebEx API that would allow an extension like that to be created which would duplicate the functionality I missed was under security review at Mozilla. Waiting...

I haven't seen a replacement for BBCodeExtra, but I stopped using stuff like that years back. I have enough grasp of BBCode to simply add the markup inline as I craft messages on sites that use it.
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Dennis

[BetterRed]

I just sat on regular FF 54.01 with my old XUL extensions, some plugins continued to be updated, notably Lastpass and Ublock. But eventually I was spending too much time dodging in and out of Chrome and/or Edge, so I bit the bullet and switched to Quantum. Finding an acceptable RSS browser was a bit of a hassle - settled on Feedbro.

BR

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I just sat on regular FF 54.01 with my old XUL extensions, some plugins continued to be updated, notably Lastpass and Ublock. But eventually I was spending too much time dodging in and out of Chrome and/or Edge, so I bit the bullet and switched to Quantum. Finding an acceptable RSS browser was a bit of a hassle - settled on Feedbro.

I was using a XUL based RSS feed browser in Firefox called Sage. I spend most time in the browser anyway, and didn't see a point to using an external application if it could be done within Firefox.

I haven't looked for a replacement as I don't actually read that many RSS feeds these days. I'll look at FeedBro to see what it implements, but don't see adding it here.

I have Chrome and Edge here as well, and decidedly mixed feelings about MS giving up on Edge and shifting to Chromium as the underlying rendering engine for future browser efforts. Edge worked well enough here, with the big win being how fast it invoked. But despite the fact that it has an extension capability, the extensions available for it were fairly few, and the one I actually used in it was uBlock. A more robust extension ecosystem might have helped Edge gain browser market share, but it's a moot point now.
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Dennis

[Blossom]

I'm still using Firefox 52 ESR portable other then CPU usage on Facebook it continues to work great. I have Firefox the latest version installed but seldom need it.

I'm re-visiting the netbook needs a new OS issue again. It's been a year almost and XP has become unusable for internet. So I have two free options Ubuntu or Chrome OS that I know of....

Sent from my Nexus 7