What are /r/talesfromtechsupport's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Uhm... You may have read it wrong? There actually is a very popular network debugging tool by the name of wiresharK https://www.wireshark.org/

If not then... Lol. Although I can see a torrenting/file sharing tool used to stress systems, but I imagine there are better tools suited for that.

Not just the review, but the description too!

Unique combination of 16 elements blended (Fibonacci sequence technology) to support optimal health:

Semi-precious stones

Rare metals

Special oxides

Jade, galena, zirconium, gold, silver, titanium, magnesium, zinc, selenium

Elements with superior magnetic properties

Emits Negative Ions (Negative ions are odorless, tasteless, and invisible molecules that increase your sense of well-being and mental clarity)

Edit: this extract comes from this product

I remember before Apple actually had their iMessages™ stored in iCloud™, a big customer of the MSP I worked for at the time got a shiny new iPhone™ and wanted the messages transferred from their old one...

What a fucking nightmare.

I ended up having to setup the last MacOS that had the messages in the OS mail client (before they removed that in an update, otherwise it's not fun), do a synchronisation, export the messages from the client to their iCloud™ mailbox and then explain to the guy that no, I could not get them back in the messages app but they still had all of them in the mail app.

Apple : it just works. except when it doesn't.

On Android at least you just have to give access to the messages storage to something like SMS Backup+ and you're done...

> my parents have been using (the same) flip phones for the last 10+ years

My MIL is very attached to her Nokia 7370, so a couple years back I bought some new old stock of those on the cheap. I still have 1 brand new in box, 1 used but in good shape, one used and quite worn (mainly for parts) and some more assorted parts like battery covers, front covers, protective carrier bags, multiple of the particular headset she's used to, chargers, etc. She should be able to continue using that phone for many years to come :D

F-Droid is a legit alternative to Google's Play Store. And the sheer amount of data that Google collects does pose a danger to individuals, and I think, to society at large. However, Telegram is also garbage and likely insecure. I'm guessing $gran wanting to use it means she isn't a well versed privacy wonk.

This might help: https://justgetflux.com/

Edit: Since this is my most prominent post, I'll take the time to expand it a bit:
Flux is a program for Windows, Linux, Mac, that alters the colour of your screen to resemble natural illumination. During the day you get your known bluish bright display, but the later it gets, the redder it becomes. (customisable)
This is supposed to help people with their day rhythm and reduce strain on the eyes.
Hit their page for a better explanation including science.

Yep, Magical Jellybean Keyfinder.

Produkey is also good, as it's free version finds all versions of Office keys.

Not sure if I'm allowed to plug or whatnot here in the comments, but because of Reddit's encouragement I am a published fantasy author! You can pick up The Wizards on Walnut Street on Amazon in ebook and print, as well as my IT short story collection The Worst End User.

As a suggestion, next time this happens get them a USB connected touchpad doohicky, like what you find on the front of a laptop.

At work I used to use one of those upright ergo mice but still found my right hand freezing up every so often (not good for a guitarist). I switched to one of these and it's much better. I do wish there was one with a few more features, I still have to keep my mouse connected sometimes for scrolling down webpages with the scroll wheel or for when visitors give me the evil eye. But it's a good solution for me and I haven't had any hand freezing since I started using it.

SlySoft has a Virtual Clone Drive which works pretty much like Daemon Tools. If, for some reason, parental units are particularly distraught by Daemon Tools, one may want to use Virtual Clone Drive instead.

Or make a separate, virtual desktop, of course, using something like this.

Other than that, I've seen others that have completely misread something and been concerned. Good job on trying to set them straight!

Alrighty!

You can now buy this printed on a t-shirt here! (I get about a dollar per shirt)

But if you'd rather print it yourself somewhere else, a vectorized file can be downloaded here.

If you print something or do anything with the image, please send me a picture :D

Personally I would upgrade her to Gold internet (chromes gold icon). Tell her it is an upgrade on the old version for W7 and let them run w/ it.

Even better, if they are not the type to install things easily, can use https://ninite.com/ to generate an install package (which can do teamviewer) in an easy option free install... for those who don't like installing things and picking options

Also, write a script that listens to yelling on the microphone, and fucks things up when the user yells too loud.

a la http://superuser.com/questions/545329/how-do-i-make-a-machine-blank-screen-for-a-period-of-time-as-a-penalty-if-ce

To italicize, put an asterisk before and after the text you want in italics. Ex: * words * but without spaces between the letter and asterisk will show words

To show bold, do the same thing but with 2 asterisks before and after the text you want in bold. Ex: ** words ** but without spaces between the letter and asterisks will show words

To >quote

Put a ">" before the text you want to quote. Ex: >quoted words will show

>quoted words

Everything you type will be in quote mode until you make a new paragraph. It is possible to italicize and bold inside of quotes

Some Android clients have cool little toolbars that pop up over your keyboard for italics, bolding, quoting, adding links, and previewing what your about to post. I use Boost for Reddit. iOS might have clients that do this as well but I never tried anything on there besides the official app

Hope this helps, OP

Edit: to ~~strikethrough~~, put two tildes (~ x2) before and after the text you want struckthrough. Ex: ~~ words ~~ but without the spaces between the word and tildes will show ~~words~~

McAfee is the ultimate deceptive piece of software if it is doing what is claimed here.

But claiming that NordVPN or any other VPN provider is reprehensible, just because of what McAfee does seems a bit far fetched. While I would agree that VPN's usually aren't needed for use all the time, they do have a use and they do it well.

You'll replace an entire department with a small shell script before you know it.

I apparently managed to save a lady from transportation so much time spent on manual entries by using a single excel formula she now uses the saved time to get pedicures instead.

All. The. Time. 3 times a week at least.

Which actually annoys me since she's the one with special audit privileges for some high maintenance reporting software I can't test myself.

At another time & job, I created a macro for Photoshop as I was essentially doing the same damn thing on every image. Highlight area, crop, autocorrect colors/sharpen, resize to YYYxZZZ. With the macro I just highlighted and hit ctrl+alt+somerandomneverusedbutton and presto. Since these were thousands of images, I saved a lot of time.

At yet another time & job we'd deployed thousands of .zip files for an educational software package which had a systemic typo in all of the index files (because manglement made a typo in the naming guidelines, we copied it). My boss pulled everyone into a meeting room Friday morning to announce weekend crunch time to meet the Monday deadline. I spent an hour on a small script for sfk that extracted the files, looked for the typo, fixed it, then saved it and repackaged it with the original name.

The script only ran for a couple of minutes or so. I was hailed as the guy who saved the weekend. Except by the one workaholic who wanted the overtime. Oh well.

In "The Practice of Programming" there is a chapter about testing they point out that that if you can enumerate all the cases, you may as well test all the cases.

When Steve Bourne was developing his shell, he noticed that in unix there are 254 possible single character filenames. (That's right, ctrl-C and backspace are not problems). So he created a directory with a file of each of those names. It broke quite a few programs.

> You don't want to use a controlled and secure store to download your app, but a third-party website that could potentially harm your device?

APKMirror and XDA Labs are both reliable.

She didn't want to download it from an unreliable source, which is why she came for help.

>Not to mention that you won't get updates.

You could always install F-Droid or XDA Labs and keep apps updated through there.

There are huge profits to be made in grey-market call termination, especially so if international calls have to otherwise go through a single carrier that dictates insane international rates. In most of the profitable countries, the local cell calls are dirt cheap as is labour to man the stations, so the sim gateways, the sat uplinks (or occasionally DSL) and the simcards are quickly paid off and then it is just profit. Even more fun when that carrier is owned or invested in by members of the royal family or local equivalent, and they use the army to hunt down these 'pirates' and protect their interests.

If you want to get a sense of the profits, look up Cuba on the Skype Rates website, it is currently $0.089 connection fee and USD $0.80/minute, or North Korea at USD $0.70/min or Madagascar at $1.07/min landline ($1.09/min mobile). It doesn't take long or much call volume to cover your costs.

For those that are beating their poor F5 buttons to death Here is a IFTTT recipe that will send a sms when /u/airz23 posts to /r/talesfromtechsupport.

Yeah, too bad Franklin never said that. However, the guy playing Franklin in the musical 1776 does say those words.

Source (4th one down)

This. Severely limit attachment sizes. Or, if worse comes to worst, look into a secure email option such as Virtru. My last job purchased it, and my boss was able to configure it so that it could look for keywords or phrases in the email body (for example, SSN or other easily-identifiable PII patterns would flag on Virtru). It has a log of config settings available, and allows the admin to force all email to be encrypted, or just attachments, or a number of other settings. It has an extension for Outlook, as well as a Chrome extension if you're like my old work place and use G Suite services.

Probably not what you were expecting, but I wanted to figure it out. Assuming that

• A midsize car has a maximum interior volume of 3,370 L according to the EPA (not sure how appropriate or complete that number is, but I'll use it).
• We subtract from that the average volume of the human driving the car, whose volume is 66.4 L as per WolframAlpha.
• The volume of an M.2-2280 device is 2.6433 mL if my math is correct, as suggested by this Amazon product page for an SSD, which lists the size as 1.17 in × 2 in × 0.14 in.
• The trip between Los Angeles and New York City takes 40 hours by car, which is what Apple Maps currently says is the travel time for the fastest route.
• You never have to refuel or stop for anything at all, and loading/unloading the devices is instant.
• All the SSDs are 2 TB in capacity.

First we need to figure out how much capacity we can fit in the station wagon. Minus the human driver, the interior volume of the car is 3,303.6 L, meaning that we can fit 1,249,801 SSDs in that car. At 2 TB each, that's 2,499,602 TB, or 2,200 petabytes.

Now, changing that number of terabytes into gigabits, and changing that number of hours into seconds, we get 19996820000 gigabits and 144000 seconds, and dividing the two, we get a nice 138,866 Gbps link between LA and NYC, if you can ignore the 288,000,000 ms ping time. And, of course, the cost.

RIM Jobs used to be the website you used to apply for a career at Research In Motion, long after they became Blackberry.

My workplace has Cisco 9900 VOIPs with cameras on them. I plan to buy a miniature violin so when a customer complains, I'm going to hold it up to the camera and play the world's smallest violin for them ;__;

You dropped a comma (Project Gutenberg does, too). Cary's translation is

> All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

See the plate. I gave the original Tuscan so people don't think Dante wrote like Yoda because Cary did!

(Edit: gutenberg.org doesn't like inline links from other sites, so I changed it to something that seems to work.)

We used to hire this woman who would ask for copies of my Powerpoint presentations, then occasionally I would find them when maintaining file servers but with her name on them, and found out she was presenting them as if she had written them.

Naturally I would edit them to insert this image at random points then save them again.

Logitech actually has a system like this now that does just that :)

Look into Logitech FLOW if you are interesting in learning more on it.

Here's what you do, 1st change her background to black, she did want it to be darker. Put the badge Reader on the floor, she did want it moved toward her. Since she wanted to know if she got an email, write some code to text her every second for an entire hour. For mouse and keyboard replacements, buy her https://www.amazon.com/Wired-Mouse-Laptop-Light-SOONGO/dp/B01FABWFWY and for keyboard get her https://www.amazon.com/REIIE-Wireless-Handheld-Keyboard-Raspberry/dp/B06X9J8NG4/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1547643748&sr=8-4&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=mini+keyboard&dpPl=1&dpID=51LvpcbfUjL&ref=plSrch.

> Probably any of the warehouse employees, since they all have barcode scanners on their machines and trucks.

Or you know, anyone with a phone.

ninite.com is your friend here. Just select all the runtimes in one installer. Then she just needs to run one thing to update all of them with no other clicking required except to close it when it is finished. and you do not get toolbars or virus programs or any junk.

Looks like it depends on the version you are using. It is obvious why SolidWorks doesn't support 32bit Win7 or Win8.0 in SW's new version though. 32 bit OS ≠ the 8gb Ram requirement, and Win8.0, well, isn't Win8.1 ⇒ no reason to support 8.0 when there is a free upgrade to 8.1.

https://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/SystemRequirements.html

He's using it for classwork at University of Dayton. Mostly that's why I told him to ask his professors if he needs 8.1. He'd be in a much more familiar environment with Win7.

At the same time, he does have a bit of a leg up in that his laptop is touchscreen too. I've never used 8.1 with a touchscreen laptop (or any laptop). Maybe it will be more friendly to him. I kind of want to throw him into the fire, and see what he likes better before I tell him Win7 works with the newest SolidWorks.

edit:

I do not aim with my mouse; he who aims with his mouse has forgotten the face of his father.
I aim with my eye.

I do not draw with my hand; he who draws with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I draw with my mind.

I do not design with a tool; he who designs with a tool has forgotten the face of his father.
I design with my heart.

http://www.wsusoffline.net/docs/
Download updates once. Put on thumb drive/network share. Copy to computer and run the .exe in the client folder. It'll install+ reboot as many times as necessary.

Second one: https://ninite.com/
It downloads and installs programs automatically.

I was recently driving with a trailer, and left my Lenovo Yoga on top of the SUV. Well, as I got up to about 60mph, the laptop caught some air and flipped off the roof, hitting the trailer hard enough to break the light and put a dent in the aluminium. I looked back after the noise to see my laptop getting run over by a truck.

I eventually found it on the side of the road, the case had flipped open and it was at the login screen. Still worked fine, except for the touch screen. I eventually had to send it back for repair because the screen section was coming apart (right hinge broke off, the bottom-right part of the screen that I assume hit the trailer was coming apart, and most of the plastic was broken and all the metal was bent up.)

I will always and forever defend Lenovos as improbably durable laptops, and have never had a problem with any of them, or the IBM ThinkPads I've owned.

Edit: Some pictures I had on my phone: its remarkably undamaged,except the screen section that actually hit the trailer, and a few scratches. https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=3AEA6C47F85F5127!377&authkey=!AH99hbV1mH76JJ0&ithint=folder,.jpg

For those that are beating their poor F5 buttons to death Here is a IFTTT recipe that will send a sms when /u/airz23 posts to /r/talesfromtechsupport.

Or use an Email version provided by \u\xaitv

I was tempted to use that once, but whatever I had at the time had no input blocking option.

Now I won't use it unless really pissed off ever since I've let our L2 to remote into my machine so they could remote into a machine they couldn't reach for some reason. They decided for some reason block my input, at which moment I was startled by this thing stretched over the full screen. Not even the guy who was remoting in was aware of that.

I wonder if it is possible to customize what's shown onscreen on those, we expected the lock screen to be just blank/black until that moment.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-printer-the-first-100-3d-printer-and-sc

"The object you want to print must first become a 3D model in Blender. The software we wrote as an add on to blender takes the data from that 3D model and translates it into an audio waveform. It then plays the audio file out to the printer through the headphone jack in your computer. This waveform drives a pair of electro magnetic mirrors. The higher the volume, the higher the voltage, the more the mirrors move. The purpose of these mirrors is to reflect and control the path of the laser beam. By using the audio waveform generated from the 3D model data to drive the mirrors, we are able to get the laser beam to draw out the shape of the object. That's takes care of the X and Y axes."

While you do need a bootloader in most cases, and that would be the default behavior for many distro installers, it's not an absolute requirement these days with UEFI:

> If your motherboard has a good UEFI implementation, it is possible to embed the kernel parameters within a UEFI boot entry and for the motherboard to boot Arch directly.

Source: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFISTUB#Using_UEFI_directly

Also, check out rEFInd: http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ which is included with multiple distros.

>He wanted a fresh install

My default maneuver here is to just replace the drive so there's an intact and ready rollback that takes no time at all, especially because HDDs are so cheap anymore that a decently sized drive could be purchased on Amazon for [$50 with one day shipping], and [several other] drives are available in a similar price bracket with the same shipping.
Saves a shitload of time, especially when it's just that one thing you missed in your backup and it's easy to transfer.

May be time to do a lot more scans.

• r/kill
• herd protect
• hitman pro
• maybe make a bitdefender bootable scanner with that fancy thumb drive.

Then install: * uBlock Origin *

sigh because sourceforge has been picking up projects their owners arn't using including popular software that has moved on from sourceforge and repackaging their installers with adware

You can get that running on modern hardware.

You can get the iso from archive.org and then run it inside DOSBox.

Assuming modern internet, you could probably have it downloaded, installed and setup in the time it takes his old computer to boot.

You can also do two spaces followed by a newline
Same exact thing, and you don't end up with all the blank spaces between lines.

That's honestly just standard Markdown syntax though, nothing to do with reddit itself.

http://www.howtogeek.com/196817/how-to-create-a-windows-to-go-usb-drive-without-the-enterprise-edition/

Works on any USB drive, assuming it's big enough (32GB) and fast enough (USB2 HDD works fine, but for flashdrives you need at least USB3 to get good performance)

This works on all versions of Windows 8/8.1 and also Windows 10.

I've never actually activated an install like this legitimately, and I've heard people have had issues with activation when they put it in a new computer. I just install a VL copy and use Microsoft Toolkit. I've also never really used an install like this with more than one computer, since it takes a while to boot and it needs to download drivers when you plug it in the first time, so it makes more sense to have a portable Linux install in that case.

You could use Windows 10 with this, and there's my post on /r/windows with links to Windows 8.1 install media.

And that's why you can't use regular expressions to parse HTML (in case anyone hasn't seen that one yet)

Tiny screws and such is why I was glad I found a screwdriver that had multiple bits but most importantly, an extendable magnet.

Later my dad gave me one of those magnetic wants that expand. Like one of these

When a screw eventually fell and rolled under a fixture I could slide the magnet around under the fixtures and pick up all of the paper clips, staples and eventually the screw I dropped that was under it.

This is brilliant! Though I suggest this mouse instead of the LED one. It's slightly more expensive, but I feel she'll really appreciate the comfort of the pink rhinestones since they can't install an actual throne in her office.

This is already Discord, Slack, the Atom text editor, or any of the desktop apps on this list. They all use Electron, which I will let the wiki bot describe:

Edit: /u/WikiTextBot, you had one job

The use of "app" as shorthand for "application" is completely acceptable and was used long before "application" even was computer-related.

There are a few that are good enough for music management, but they don't seem to sync up with iOS devices as well as iTunes itself does (I'm assuming that's a requirement here).

I'd say give MediaMonkey a look. It seems to be the one with most features (including iOS device syncing) and it's free too. I've used it myself in the past and found it pretty easy to get to grips with.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/download/

There's a (small) chance her friend had used one of these - I know I've seen them around that time period in fancier conference rooms and auditoriums

Relative cueing sounds like a complete disaster, for exactly the reason you point out in the post. I've never seen that ever—either cue sheets with individual cues with explicit levels for each, or ETC boards that are nice and well-behaved (within reason).

Also, I assume you're aware of QLab by now? Should cut down on grumbles-from-Sound quite a bit.

There are some applications to relaunch programs automatically.

As for the shutdown button, it can be removed via GPO.

https://youtube-dl.org

This tool will safe you both time and anxiety. I don't know what the install process is like on windows (which I assume you're running. If you're on Linux you can just get it through your package manager), but once you have it you can just type

youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 <YouTube link>

into Powershell and you'll have the MP3 on your computer. I typed that command from memory, so it might be slightly off, but I don't think so. It saves tons of time, and you don't have to worry about viruses or ads or getting to the website.

That is the old model. Get the newer much cheaper version to save some money ~~https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Gaming-Adjustable-Weight-Tuning/dp/B00CJD4HD2~~

As pointed out, that is not the correct link for the g502, this is https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00IRHE892/

No, no, when you change another user's password, it warns you then and there that it will render their encrypted content unreadable. KB 290260 has details relevant to Windows XP, but I don't imagine that's changed much since then -- this is just what I could find by a quick google (Ninja edit: I also just found this SuperUser question with pictures).

The only alternatives I'm aware of that would preserve the encrypted data are: knowing the password; or having a password reset disk.

I've found WinCDemu to be hands down the best and most easiest. Its even open source.

http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/

Work uses virtual clone drive and it sometimes doesn't work. WinCDemu always works

Features: > One-click mounting of ISO, CUE, NRG, MDS/MDF, CCD, IMG images. > Supports unlimited amount of virtual drives. > Runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions from XP to Windows 7. > Allows creating ISO images through a context menu in Explorer. > Small installer size - less than 1MB! > Does not require rebooting after installation. > A special portable version is available.

Yes, use DOSbox.

That's what we told people in the Win98 to XP days when DOS ran too fast. Back in the day I just used a command line argument, these days there is probably a GUI or something.

All these chumps complaining it's not perfect probably never even tried to see if it works.

https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Performance

I know if I had a million dollar machine that was down I'd at least give GOG a call and see if they can work their DOSbox container magic before hauling anything to the scrap yard.

You should really familiarize yourself with ddrescue, it's an insanely useful tool for cloning the good portions of a failing hard disk. It's Linux only, but well worth learning about. Once you have a cloned image, you can use a tool like testdisk or photorec to actually recover the files. Obviously no substitute for an actual backup, but good to know about in case of emergency.

They do however maintain Certificate Revocation Lists, that most people never use. That in no way consumes an amount of resources equal to what you pay for certs.

But fear not! The Mozilla Foundation agrees with us, it's not yet here, but it is being rolled out and presumably being put in everyone's trusted CA list*. https://letsencrypt.org/

• I presume this because the standard referenced by every browser I have looked at is the one created by Mozilla/Netscape or a near clone of it. Being the standard writer has it's perks. Doesn't mean I am right but things seem to favor this.

If you use IFTTT, you might be interested in this. It's a recipe I created to text you whenever /u/Gambatte posts something in /r/talesfromtechsupport.

There's a whole gender that has problems with growing a beard. Luckily, for them there are these: https://smile.amazon.com/Costume-Halloween-Disguise-Mustache-Quality/dp/B073JTTFCK/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&amp;keywords=fake+beard&amp;qid=1611447497&amp;sr=8-2

You're correct... as in you're not right. ;)

You can have 100 foot patch cables. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BMZ1O8I

Patch cables mean that both ends are male, generally. Length doesn't have anything to do with it. Although it's true you usually mean that it's short.

You can get up to 2 TB on a (rather chunky) USB stick: Kingston Data Traveler Ultimate GT 2TB but it costs a pretty penny. And by "pretty penny" I mean it's stupidly expensive.

More seriously, for installing games to, I highly recommend the Sandisk Extreme USB sticks (3.0, Go or Pro versions are all good). They have the extremely good random access performance compared to a lot of USB sticks I've seen tested, easily orders of magnitude higher than most! This is an older benchmark, but just look at it (specifically the write performance, the black bars).

What's more, they have an exceptional warranty - All the Sandisk "Extreme" USB sticks have a 30 year warranty. 30 years!

https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/

The new macbook pro's dont have ethernet ports. We have clients who just purchased them and now they have to buy adapters for it.

Edit: BUT IT HAS RETINA DISPLAY SO OMFG SO COOL

If you ever want a quick run down of good stuff to use, BleepingComputer has a list of the most popular downloads for removing viruses.

Just run the top ones in the left "Most Downloaded" pane and it will get rid of 90% of the viruses.

(ADWcleaner rocks)

This place has had them in stock in their physical stores before.

I've purchased a giant marine hole patch (Basically a suction cup the size of a manhole cover) from them before and labeled it "Internet plunger" to hang in my office. I wanted to get a riot shield but last time I visited they were out of stock and didn't know when that specific store would get more.

For those that are beating their poor F5 buttons to death Here is a IFTTT recipe that will send a sms when /u/airz23 posts to /r/talesfromtechsupport.

If you're feeling really diabolical, give her a French European keyboard that looks almost normal. Then insist that it's the same as every other keyboard in IT storage.

(My last job we were mistakenly sent one of these hidden in a shipment of US keyboards. I got a confusing call one day when a user asked me why her question mark key was gone. After I figured out what was going on and replaced her keyboard, I kept the other one in IT storage to give out to cool users as a joke.)

Here's a cheapo mouse that has a chamber for weights:

https://www.amazon.com/TeckNet-Computer-Programmable-Breathing-Ergonomic/dp/B01GCIU77E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1517846916&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=weighted+mouse

Plus he can impress everyone with his sick blue LEDs. (I would probably put this purchase on THEIR department's budget, not yours.)

It's bad, certainly.

But there's worse.

From a year or two ago on this Hackernews Thread JetBlue restricts you from having 'Q' and 'Z' in your password.

For those scratching their heads and wondering why that would matter, I'll quote from the thread.

> As several people have noted, the Q/Z restriction likely arises from inputting passwords from a telephone keypad.
>
> [...] The reason is that Q and Z were mapped inconsistently across various phone keypads. The present convention of PQRS on 7 and WXYZ on 9 wasn't settled on until fairly late in the game, and as noted, the airline reservation system, SABRE, is one of the oldest widely-used public-facing computer systems still in existence, dating to the 1950s.

So, it sounds like (at least for users of their phone system) - the passwords are being converted to numbers, so you can dial in and input your password.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35460

>...control up to four computers from a single mouse and keyboard. This means that with Mouse without Borders you can copy text or drag and drop files across computers.

There are extensions that save your tabs indefinitely. In the one I use, you can even save and load custom named sessions for specific goals ("Holiday planning 2015", for example) or just recover the last opened session (you can set how many closed sessions it holds in memory, too). It effortlessly handles close to 100 tabs, and starts right when Firefox does to ask you what session you want to restore.

Edit: for people curious, the Firefox extension I use is called Session Manager.

On my work laptop where I prefer Chrome, I use Session Buddy.

I'm currently camped out at my grandmother's house taking care of her while she recovers from complications of a heart valve replacement.

We are in the heart of the silicon valley (go east a couple miles and reach eBay intergalactic headquarters) and her internet connection is... Sonic.net DSL that my dad set her up with years ago. It's so freaking slow. 1.4 megabits from the test I just used on fast.com (the one using Netflix servers, not that I expect Sonic to cheat).

She says she spoke to Sonic six months ago. They said she was in the edge of their service area, which we knew. They also said they weren't planning to expand on her area for five years, which means the Fusion service they provide that's really nice isn't an option. I suppose she could switch... We wouldn't blame her for it. But we all rather like Sonic's business practices. It's a quandary.

This is ridiculous. It shouldn't be this hard to get usable, uncapped internet in the beating heart of the tech epicenter of the world.

Oh, and she keeps all her passwords in a booklet. The hilariously named &quot;Original Internet Address Book&quot;, that acknowledges in its first pages that search engines are making it obsolete already.

^(EDIT: a compass direction)

While there are certainly situations where you can replicate everything perfectly, those are usually very small things, not the whole system.

There are many reasons really but the most evident one is: real world users are not test users. That's not necessarily to mean that the end user is stupid, but simply he does things in a way that the test environment CANNOT replicate.

As an example there was a story here about a medical touch screen used in an operation room, for surgeries. The surgeon used it all the time but during a long operation the screen would progressively become coated with physiological fluids and become unresponsive.

Another thing is: the external environment can have unknown effects on your system. Case in point, a recent fairly large data center had a catastrophic failure during the rollout test of the fire suppression system. The SOUND from the fire suppression going off had been enough to kill through vibrations a lot of the HDDs.

TL;DR: &quot;no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.&quot;

I know this will sound a bit naive of me; but why not have everything boot in parallel, and have event readying so that once storage is ready, servers make storage requests; once network readies, storage connects and readies etc, loading everything and waiting for it to say ready and/or (if it initialises faster than the reliant pieces) flip a bit to say it's ready and waiting for the process to attach.

Multiple <code>EventEmitter</code>s if you will; emitting "net_start", "db_ready", "store_ready", "net_ready", "net_shutdown" etc; even toggling between the values 0 (not ready), 1 (ready) and -1 (err, see stderr).

Edit: thanks to everybody for the detailed responses!

Here's an IFTTT recipe that sends you a text each time the good captain posts a story. For those of us who enjoy his stories as much as I do :)

That actually works with a mouse like the Logitech MX Master 2 and the free Logitech Flow program :)

The more you know ^

Here, this might help! I've started creating IFTTT alerts for my favorite authors on Reddit, and /u/airz23 is now officially a member of that elite group.

Similar story to me ex's mom. She has a masters degree in Aerospace Engineering her husband I believe has a masters in History and Geography. They both ride bikes but she's the one that's getting down and dirty replacing the chain, winterizing their bikes, cleaning and rejetting the carbs, etc. (they both have FI bikes it was just my ex that had a carbed bike). Her dad prefers to just ride like the guy who explored and looks around to see the sights in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Ya......here is what you should do. Go get FOG Project It is a free and easy as ol hell to install on Ubuntu Server computer imaging solution. I use it here at home and my old school used it, It brings an easy to use interface and computer management system to the table. Even offers Automatic Active Directory Joining. Coupled with Deepfreeze by Faronics and you well never have a problem.....Please for the love of god stop using discs to re-image a Lab

I twirl open the menu... 100+ updates. Fuck My Life.

And THIS is why I've got these:

http://www.wsusoffline.net/ to generate offline update packages (also as ISO image)

ZALMAN VE-300 usb hard drive which emulates a usb cdrom to boot from ISO images stored on the hard drive

Retina MacBook Pro has a 1 out of 10 repairability score according to iFixIt. Ars Technica wasn't impressed by this.

Just for future reference - the standard program for this sort of thing is Photorec. It comes together with Testdisk, which would probably have restored the deleted filesystem, complete with folder and filenames.

Debian Quick Reference Guide.

It's aimed at debian - the parent distro that Ubuntu is based on.

Install Virtualbox - a virtual machine emulator - then get an ISO of Ubuntu and install it.

Use that reference guide to mess around and get used to Unix - better than jumping in the deep end.

It won't necessarily teach you how to administer your turnkey Linux server, but it'll give you enough information to get started with the fundamental.

It's a really excellent guide.

I've been building computers from scratch for 8 years, so I've picked up a lot of skills involving hardware and software. Prior to that I got the hand-me-down computers from my older brother, and getting them running could be a challenge. You'll want to be able to go over a motherboard and know what's connected to what, and be able to recognize when something is out of place. Familiarity with OS problems, especially some of those nasty viruses that lock down a computer, is good too. If you don't know how to use rkill (from bleepingcomputer in tandem with malwarebytes, go learn.

For dealing with students you want to be able to recover data, deal with hardware issues from laptops that have been dropped, replace screens that have been closed on a pair of headphones, and be able to offer multiple solutions at a good cost. I'd also pick up HTML/CSS.

In reality most issues can be solved with some Google-Fu, but curveballs pop up pretty regularly. Students find creative ways to break things it seems.

Lastly, don't work pro bono for students. I have a student rate, but I never work for free, even for my friends. I'm not an ass about it, but I will say pretty bluntly "make an appointment, this is how I pay for gas," and they'll usually do it. They're getting a better deal for a fix, and they trust me to advise them in their best interest (since I'm not a retailer), but my expertise and experience does come at a price.

Edit: Keep your tools in your trunk. That 5th pocket on your jeans (for coins)? Keep a flash drive in there. Mine has Ubuntu 10.10 boot disk, malwarebytes install, rkill/iexplore, avast antivirus install, and some utilities from Hiren's Boot CD.

Here's the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Basaltech-Mechanical-Steampunk-Typewriter-Style-Anti-Ghosting/dp/B07WNHWDXB/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&amp;keywords=steampunk+mechanical+keyboard+pink&amp;qid=1611246317&amp;sr=8-4

Here you go. Nothing too complex or fancy about them:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/VonHaus-Adjustable-Computers-Aluminium-Designed/dp/B0196JNYZ8/ref=mp_s_a_1_15?keywords=monitor%2Bstand&amp;qid=1571992988&amp;sr=8-15&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1

It's a bastardized quote of this: "Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death." — Sun Tzu, The Art of War

To be fair, this is what the mouse looks like. No wires or nothing, pretty symmetric design.

...of course, given how symmetric the design is, how the HELL was the customer so sure she didn't have it backwards? People are idiots.

What scares me is that the other day at the library I found an actual "Farmville for Dummies" book. (I think it was this one, but I ~~ran away screaming~~ walked away quietly and left it on the shelf without investigating too deeply.)

edit: fscking close parentheses!

Anyone have a link to the man who's last name was Null, and he would crash everything?

Edit: found it.

Also a Wired article by Christopher Null.

Jesus. I did this once when I was troubleshooting the hostserver for a webapp. This server is running 2012, so for some reason you don't have the option to deselect "always use this program to open files of this type".

What happened was that I opened a .config file and selected notepad. I closed notepad by accident and reopened it without rethinking what I did. Suddenly all .config files where set to open in notepad and the webapp went down (luckily outside of prod time). I reset the extensions and went through the registry deleting all extension entries. But the damn .config files still had notepad as default.

After a long period of sweats and swear words and forehead smashing, I took a walk, did some googling and found this amazing application. It reset all extensions and worked like a charm. I slept well that night.

Well...that might not be true anymore depending on what channels you need. Football is sometimes aired on local channels and Dish just released a new streaming live TV service: Sling TV. They carry ESPN as well as an additional package with the suite of ESPN channels.

I haven't tried it myself (and admittedly, I don't watch live sports myself), but it's the first time I've seen a provider even make forays into this realm without an existing TV package.

"...I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
From Charles Babbage. It seems fitting here.

Yep, I've run into this issue before.

http://download.bleepingcomputer.com/grinler/unhide.exe

That's the direct download link for unhide.exe. If you'd rather not take my word for that, then I found it in this thread on bleepingcomputer.com:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic405109.html

Made by the same guy that made rkill.com.

For those that are beating their poor F5 buttons to death Here is a IFTTT recipe that will send a sms when /u/airz23 posts to /r/talesfromtechsupport.

Plug it in and lock it in place

https://www.amazon.com/Secure-Connect-electrical-safety-product-single/dp/B0083V4NG0/ref=pd_sim_75_1?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=B0083V4NG0&amp;pd_rd_r=GZ1GB0BMKNDT1XWSP1DM&amp;pd_rd_w=Sg49M&amp;pd_rd_wg=CTjLV&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=GZ1GB0BMKNDT1XWSP...

I just made this quickly off of http://www.bestbuy.com (so there's your source).

http://i.imgur.com/vqbBPBM.png

There's an obvious overall trend there, if you count apple products as outliers. And even there, you can start to see a trend within its own brand. You have weight and price rising together to a point, being about the 5lb mark. Then, it drops back down, and begins the trend over. So the trend holds for each individual category of laptop, but not between them.

Hm. Still, with that, I can see why a normal layperson would correlate 'heavier = more expensive = better'.

EDIT: I kind of want to re-do this graph a little ways down the road with more cases, and solely within the PC realm. Apple products insane pricing schemes can really throw ANY attempted correlation out of whack, as it really doesn't follow industry standard. More 'cult mentality' standard.