The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Comfy.n

wrapped the entire computer in plastic wrap to keep the cat hair out

Customer: "There are smoke and flames coming from my computer."
Tech Support: "Uh, hang up, unplug the computer from the wall, and call the local fire department."
Customer: "That's not the problem. I need to know how to do a backup. Fastest possible method."

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Customer: "There are smoke and flames coming from my computer."
Tech Support: "Uh, hang up, unplug the computer from the wall, and call the local fire department."
Customer: "That's not the problem. I need to know how to do a backup. Fastest possible method."

[Comfy.n]

Top priority!

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Renate

My first monitor was a 14", 640 x 480 B&W because I couldn't tolerate the poor convergence (alignment of the color guns) on the color monitors of that time.

Five years later I upgraded to the Sony GDM-17SE1. That was 17", 1280 x 1024. It also weighed 50 pounds and was 18" deep. You needed a pretty wide desk to accomodate it.

I was glad when LCDs came in.

Similar


Best monitor I've owned was an Eizo 21" 2048 x 1536 colour CRT, I also had an ex-GDR embassy steel desk to put it on, IIRC the CRT weighed close to 40Kg. Got rid of both when I downsized my living quarters.

[rjwse@aol.com]

Tech rant: I want to be able to use container queries in epub. Can't even use grid yet; only flex is loosely supported. So many advantages for container queries! None of the dedicated commercial readers are capable, though. Only computer-based epub software (and only some) would be able to use cqw , cqh , cqi , cqb , cqmin , and cqmax. The ability to effectively read the same epub on tiny phones, mid size, or giant size screens while keeping captions and images and text sizes in good-looking layout is difficult without this new tech.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by rjwse@aol.com

Tech rant: I want to be able to use container queries in epub. Can't even use grid yet; only flex is loosely supported. So many advantages for container queries! None of the dedicated commercial readers are capable, though. Only computer-based epub software (and only some) would be able to use cqw , cqh , cqi , cqb , cqmin , and cqmax. The ability to effectively read the same epub on tiny phones, mid size, or giant size screens while keeping captions and images and text sizes in good-looking layout is difficult without this new tech.

Apologies for derailing your rant. I've moved the replied to https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=363679

I think it would be interesting to explore whether you're right about the limits on current markup.

Futher posts here will be deleted.

[ownedbycats]

lol, another "send me cryptocurrency or I'll release video of you masturbating to weird adult videos" scam email. I don't watch porn (aroace) and don't have a webcam, and my phone camera is obscured unless I have the case open.

Also I feel like someone who's hacked "all your devices" (wait, can a Kobo get malware?) shouldn't be threatening to release it to my nonexistent social media accounts or to my nonexistent coworkers.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

lol, another "send me cryptocurrency or I'll release video of you masturbating to weird adult videos" scam email. I don't watch porn (aroace) and don't have a webcam.

Also I feel like someone who's hacked "all your devices" (wait, can a Kobo get malware?) shouldn't be threatening to release it to my nonexistent social media accounts or to my nonexistent coworkers.

I haven't gotten one of these for years. Maybe I'm too nonexistent even for hackers?

[DNSB]

I've gotten several of those scam emails in the last couple of weeks. What I wonder is how they managed to slide the shutter on my laptop's camera open since that is the only device I use for online meetings. My desktop doesn't have a camera. As for watching porn? Perhaps if it had been available decades back. At this point, I don't regard sex as a spectator sport.

In theory, your Kobo could be hacked since it is a rather insecure Linux system. However the only methods I am aware of would require physical access to your Kobo to copy files over via USB. What are the chances of someone copying over a KoboRoot.tgz file that arrived in a random email to their Kobo?

[PeterT]

Not sure how many of you are fond of cooking, and collecting recipes but.....

For some time I've been making use of an open source recipe manager called Mealie. It can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/mealie-recipes/mealie

I used to self host it on a mini-pc using docker, fronted by an nginx container, but after my disaster of January I finally found a fairly inexpensive hosting firm that uses docker and supports mealie! The firm in question is Pikapods https://www.pikapods.com/

With the most current release of mealie it can now .... leverage OpenAI for recipes it can't scan, and can also use OpenAI to process images.

Recipe scanning is performed using a python library called recipe-scrapers from https://github.com/hhursev/recipe-scrapers

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Not sure how many of you are fond of cooking, and collecting recipes but.....

For some time I've been making use of an open source recipe manager called Mealie. It can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/mealie-recipes/mealie

You might like this Chrome extension that skips past the 5 paragraphs of life story to get to the recipe itself.

Personally, I'm still using my ancient copy of MasterCook 9. It's old enough that I can't open the help file in Windows because the format is deprecated.

[DNSB]

I used a recipe program that I moved from CP/M to DOS and then later to a OS/2 version. After I moved from OS/2 to Windows 2000, I tried quite a few different recipe programs before I gave up. Things like you needed to use IE to be able to import recipes, Navigator users need not apply. I currently store my recipes in a .CSV file which most of the time, I open with Notepad++.

[PeterT]

What I like is that mealie automated totally the processing of the recipe site; just extracts the pertinent info without the gushing prose before the recipe.

The other interesting recipe management tool I found was cooked.wiki

With it you prepend the URL of the recipe with http://cooked.wiki/ and it again scans the recipe and gives you just the meat.

So for instance a raw recipe might be https://www.thekitchn.com/slow-cooke...chowder-259029
The cooked.wiki url would be https://cooked.wiki/https://www.thek...chowder-259029 and the massaged url would be https://cooked.wiki/new/recent/3d3d2...b-cce118796801

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

[ownedbycats]

Oh No

The makers of The Sims have confirmed that a movie based on the hit videogame series is on the way.

Rumours about the adaptation of the popular life simulator, which first launched more than 20 years ago in 2000, had been swirling for several months.

Gaming giant Electronic Arts (EA), which publishes the series, announced it was working with Amazon MGM Studios on the film.

It'd better be in Simlish.

EDIT: Also, I like how the article implies that there's only one Sims game and that it's still receiving updates.

ANOTHER EDIT: Also getting a giggle over the "and, in one case, allowing players to turn their Sims into vampires" because
a) that's the only specific thing they mention
b) they introduced vampires multiple times (for some reason twice in the Sims 3, in two separate expansions).

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Yesterday morning, something on the utility pole exploded and caused the internet and cable to go out for the entire building (possibly other apartments in the area too). Despite me explaining this to the customer service representative, I was still told to reboot the modem.

Fortunately that multiple people calling to complain was enough for them to send out a tech the same day.

Oh, also the cable box started acting up— signal loss and it shut down randomly once. The tech who came out said that it might be damage from a surge coming through the coax. It's replaced now but I lost all my existing DVR recordings and it'll be another few months before the episodes I missed roll back around.

The modem is fine, thankfully.