Blog

  • UrBackup not recommended

    Was slowing my desktop down too much. So got rid of it. Probably slowing my network down as well. Cause it runs more then once a day.

    Switched over to Borg.

    Orange Pi 5 not done backing up the other drive to the slow drive.

    Can’t afford a faster drive. 8 TB is almost $300 new. Refurbished $150 or a little less for some. I won’t pay the president tax.

    This slow ass drive used to cost $110 new.

    Only a monthly backup, cause it takes days.

  • Good time to buy a new router

    Good news, the US plans on banning all consumer routers, except Starlink.

    And according to one person on a forum, the government will be able to kick doors in, to seize “illegal” equipment.

    Well, some other good news is, I might cancel my internet next year as well. And dispose of the now illegal tech.

    Maybe Linux will be banned too. Might as well ban cameras too, so nobody can film the government anymore. I’ll have a lot of stuff to get rid of.

    And the Litter Robot will be nice without internet, no more app. I won’t buy a different WiFi AP, especially one with backdoors.

    And apparently the US government is exempt from the ban.

    Can cancel lots of bills if I cancel my internet. Might as well cancel my cell plan too. And get rid of my phone as well.

    Good thing the Internet will never be censored.

    New routers will be so smart, nobody will be able to set a password on them, or log into them.

    Might be able to keep using all my stuff, if I don’t update anything. Just cancel internet, retire WiFi. No point in having WiFi, if it can’t be updated.

    Doesn’t Amazon own eero? Looks like they do. Well, they will probably be exempted then. Since Amazon is co-sponsors of the government. I wouldn’t use an Amazon router though.

  • Apparently Firefox is faster in iOS then Safari

    And they both use WebKit.

    Maybe the content blocker was making Safari slow. Installed AdGuard, since Firefox doesn’t have extensions in iOS. Don’t need that at home. Or maybe I do, cause it’s slower, but so is my internet.

    Good luck playing HEVC on an iPhone. It can record that, but good luck converting a video so it’ll play. I can get it in Photos now, but no picture.

    Well, I think I’m done trying to make it playable. If they want to see the video, they can look at it on something else, or use VLC.

    Funny, plays in LibreWolf now though. Didn’t know LibreWolf did H265.

  • Don’t recommend installing everything in openSUSE Tumbleweed in Linux Mint

    Unless, you like uninstalling, and manually deleting config files.

    Just deleted /usr/lib/systemd/journald.conf.d/syslog.conf.

    There was some missed forwarding errors in systemctl status systemd-journald.

    No idea if that file is in a stock install. But I did remove syslog-ng, cause I don’t want or need it.

    No more missed forwarding messages. Maybe useradd doesn’t throw an error now too. Oh yeah, need to log out and back in.

    Or reboot.

    I also don’t recommend setting btusb.enable_autosuspend to 0.

    I got a nice backtrace error after doing that. Had to hold power button down to shutdown. Thought pcie_aspm=off was the problem, well it’s in the kernel cmdline, and booted just fine, I did enable something in the bios, no idea if it is actually needed though.

    Hard to tell if the Bluetooth mouse is disconnecting while using anymore. Not doing it as much. Last time it did it, I wasn’t using computer.

    Thought it was interference at first, cause I was connecting to one of my 2.4 GHz SSIDs.

    Well, there’s plenty of reasons, Bluetooth can disconnect randomly. Only way to know for sure if it’s Linux Mint or not, is to use it with something else, like the laptop which still has openSUSE Tumbleweed.

    Or just keep using it, and see if it ever disconnects while using it again. It has no issues reconnecting.

    I thought Intel Bluetooth/WiFi worked great in Linux though. Maybe not Linux Mint.

    Should have used the LMDE version as well. Didn’t realize it was still a thing. Too lazy to reinstall.

    Apparently at least one front USB port on this case is broken, or two if I count the C port. Computer parts are too expensive nowadays.

    Apparently most 10 Gbps USB Hubs, are for laptops. I’ll just plug stuff into the external hard drive that has two USB ports. It’s cheaper.

    Think they say to replace UPS batteries every two years or something. But it still seems to work fine.

    It says No for needs replacement.

    I wonder, how much heavy SLA batteries cost nowadays.

    The ones on my Amazon wish list, apparently about the same price.

    The seller I bought the UPS from, said these batteries work in it. But I’m not a fan of Amazon.

    Looks like a dollar more, if not bought from Amazon.

    Still haven’t bought anything from Batteries Plus, and probably never will.

    Have to be a business customer, apparently to buy some stuff.

    At least $53 per battery from Batteries Plus, or some other brand for $45 or so for two. I’ll pass on Batteries Plus.

  • Good news

    This Anker “MagSafe” battery, can be used without the wireless part, but attached to phone. Didn’t need to buy the wrong thing, to try and magnetically attach a bigger heavier battery to my phone. I have one magnet that’s strong enough, but too lazy to cut off the bracket thing on it. It’s for using an iPhone as a webcam.

    Probably won’t ever use phone as a webcam again though.

    Using a cable is better, not as much heat. Not sure why they call it “MagSafe”.

    Shouldn’t use your phone apparently, if wireless charging. The good news is, if you do, and the phone overheats enough, and dies, you can buy a new phone.

    The bad news is, if my phone dies, I won’t have enough money for a new phone, or maybe that’s good news.

    It’s a good time to buy computer parts, like hard drives. A slow 8 TB new one, cost I think $260 on Amazon earlier. I paid $120. Or was it $220? Well, over $200. Who wants a slow as fuck 8 TB drive for over $200?

    The good news is, refurbished drives cost more too.

  • Did anybody invent “security” yet?

    There is a new iOS update. But it already got the automatic background “security” update.

    The keyboard might work better in the other update. But what other new “features” does it have?

    If somebody wants to hack something bad enough, they will. Security doesn’t exist.

  • HDMI CEC sure is useful

    Mom has my old Vizio soundbar, and she has a Vizio TV.

    Well, HDMI CEC stopped working for some unknown reason.

    She basically had to turn everything off for 30 seconds. That’s how you properly reboot a “smart” TV.

    She uses an Apple TV, not the shitty TV interface. Maybe the Apple TV updated itself.

    I stopped using CEC, cause it didn’t work for me either.

    Walmart will surely make Vizio better.

    Probably a Hisense or any other cheaper brand, is better then Vizio. Grandpa had a Hisense, don’t know if he still does.

    Also, don’t update Vizio TVs. I think her TV went white once, probably updated itself. I unplugged the Ethernet cable from my TV. Some people on internet say not to update Vizio TVs either.

    Somehow the audio volume setting got changed to fixed, and it needs to be set to variable for a soundbar. I doubt anyone changed it. Requires more then one button push to do it.

    Maybe the TV has a memory problem. Just like me.

  • Another iOS “security” feature

    My iPhone updated itself, some background security update.

    And it stayed in sleep focus as well. Had to manually change that.

    Background security updates can be disabled, but they put it in a different spot then the main updates, so people would be less likely to disable it.

    Not much point in disabling it. Apple can likely push any update to it, as long as it has internet.

  • Heat

    How to slow an iPhone down.

    Easy, put the hot magnet battery on it, while using Zoom.

    Guess I should have plugged into a slow charger.

    These magnet batteries aren’t very useful.

    Phone was crawling after the Zoom ended. Didn’t need to reboot though. I also checked the battery percentage, and then removed battery. Then it cooled down, and works again.

    So these magnet batteries, might make iPhones die sooner. Well, then I won’t have a phone. That’ll save me $19 a month.

    Would have done Zoom on the computer, but computer was being a dick, or Insta360 x4 camera was. Might have found the problem though, USBIP. Hmm, I should remove that for good measures.

    No idea how it could have fucked anything up though. Cause it wasn’t actually being used. Maybe running, but the router doesn’t have it installed anymore.

    Well, zypper dup –allow-vendor-change, maybe have removed it. Or that error in the journal was that it couldn’t find USBIP.

    At least Kate isn’t spinning when opening text files anymore.

  • Another iOS “feature”

    Looks like Shortcuts got a nice error. Trying to open the shitty Garmin app.

    I reported a bug to Apple, they never fixed it, as far as I know.

    When I had an Apple Watch, it would have the wrong time on notifications. I wonder how many people reported that bug.

    Fixing bugs won’t make them money apparently.