Disqus - Latest Comments for mjg

Re: 5 apps I have set to launch when my Mac starts up

Mark Gardner — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 09:58:43 -0000

Try Amphetamine in the Mac App Store as an alternative to Coca. Free to use all features, open source, and much more powerful with triggers, scheduling, etc.

Re: ‘Weirder and Weirder’: Danielle Smith’s New Example for Canada

Mark Gardner — Wed, 31 May 2023 17:30:08 -0000

Two uninformed straw men in one comment!

First, Ayn Rand did not advocate "every man for himself." She specifically advocated for individuals' rights to deal with each other for mutual benefit. She called it the Trader Principle.

Second, she had a distinct moral right to collect Social Security as restitution because of her unwaveringly consistent opposition to welfare statism.

Re: ‘Weirder and Weirder’: Danielle Smith’s New Example for Canada

Mark Gardner — Wed, 31 May 2023 17:18:17 -0000

Ad hominem much?

Re: ‘Weirder and Weirder’: Danielle Smith’s New Example for Canada

Mark Gardner — Wed, 31 May 2023 04:12:23 -0000

Libertarians and conservatives alike cherry-pick from Ayn Rand’s politics and ignore the rest of her philosophy. She rejected both groups.

Rand also called out the fundamental premise shared by conservatives and liberals driving them to crush freedom from opposite directions.

If you find a politician praising Ayn Rand, ask them if they hold that facts are facts; that one can be certain of them through reason and not faith or feeling;, that everyone’s life is theirs to live and does not belong to others, whether family, nation, or God; and that the government’s sole purpose is to protect individuals’ rights to their lives and the products of their minds.

If they can’t check those boxes, they’re just plagiarizing what they feel are “the good parts” and aim to take the rest away from you.

Re: The one and only password tip you need

Mark Gardner — Mon, 08 May 2023 17:01:24 -0000

Apple devices are set by default to only preview notification content like text messages if the devices are unlocked. So as long as you protect your iPhone, iPad, and Mac with a passcode, password, or Touch ID/Face ID, a thief won't see any codes received over text.

If you changed your settings to always preview notifications on your Lock Screen, then yes, you now have a problem.

Re: The one and only password tip you need

Mark Gardner — Mon, 08 May 2023 16:44:08 -0000

That's two-step authentication, not two-factor. Considering that email is also used to reset passwords, this is no protection at all once your email account is hacked or intercepted.

Re: The one and only password tip you need

Mark Gardner — Mon, 08 May 2023 15:15:59 -0000

So why can’t I set up 2FA on my Malwarebytes account? 🤨

Re: Plugable’s New 240W EPR Cables Deliver Power

Mark Gardner — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 18:49:28 -0000

Is there a technical reason why there aren’t 2m length cables available? IIRC those require active Thunderbolt 4 electronics; is that not do-able with EPR?

Re: The architecture of Mastodon

Mark Gardner — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 17:15:17 -0000

Not just storage—you’ll pay severely to receive media from other posts, and you’ll pay to send out media to other servers as your posts are shared. Per Micah Walter:

The hidden cost of storing data for Mastodon on S3 is the Requests. There are so many requests! I’m seeing about 40-50K requests per day! The requests are mainly PUT requests with less than 2,000 GET requests per day.

Re: helloSystem: The Open-Source FreeBSD-Based macOS Alternative

Mark Gardner — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 14:48:40 -0000

Oh dear, and they’re using another ersatz “lickable Aqua” visual appearance with translucent pill buttons. Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10 dropped that for a flat graphic design back in 2014.

Re: Feature Switch Best Practices

Mark Gardner — Fri, 25 Nov 2022 19:01:43 -0000

For SEO purposes you might want to note that these are also commonly referred to as “feature flags” or “feature toggles.”

Re: I2P vs. Tor vs. VPN: Which Is More Secure?

Mark Gardner — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 22:24:01 -0000

“Tor only encrypts data sent and received within the Tor Browser (or a different browser using Tor software). It does not encrypt network activity for your entire system.” This is flat-out false.

Although Tor Browser is recommended for most nontechnical users, many can and do route other traffic through the Tor network. Hell, Proton VPN provides an option to run all your traffic through a VPN over Tor.

Re: Is It Bad to Charge Your Smartwatch Overnight?

Mark Gardner — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 20:56:56 -0000

‪My routine is really simple: wear my Apple Watch all day and have an alarm that reminds me at 9 PM to charge it. By the time I’m ready for bed it’s charged and I can wear it overnight to monitor my sleep as well as wake me up with a vibration on my wrist.‬

Re: The pitfalls of using ssh-agent, or how to use an agent safely

Mark Gardner — Sun, 14 Aug 2022 14:05:26 -0000

One thing to keep in mind is that when you try to login into a remote host, ssh will try authentication with all the keys you have loaded, one at a time, one after the other.

You can deal with this in OpenSSH by using its IdentitiesOnly configuration directive, either in your ~/.ssh/config or via the -o ssh command line option, combined with either IdentityFile or the -i command line option to use a specific SSH key.

Re: CPAN Report 2021

Mark Gardner — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 23:14:44 -0000

Maybe the best way for it to happen is to create a github team to work on it together?

I’m game.

Re: Cross-posting considered harmful?

Mark Gardner — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 04:31:58 -0000

The moderators of Stack Overflow and its spin-offs can be brusque like that sometimes. I wouldn’t generalize the experience to mean that cross-posting is bad everywhere.

Re: Scosche launches three iPhone 12 MagSafe mounts for car and home

Mark Gardner — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 14:11:22 -0000

A bit pricey considering it still requires a $39 MagSafe Charger.

Re: Our Favorite Ad Blockers and Browser Extensions to Protect Privacy

Mark Gardner — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 22:19:37 -0000

I use Magic Lasso on Mac, iPhone and iPad. Also use StopTheMadness on Mac.

Re: Google Voice updated w/ redesigned web & iOS apps, promise of ‘regular’ updates

Mark Gardner — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 15:29:43 -0000

FYI the service was originally a separate company, GrandCentral, and launched in 2005 with the one-number-multiple-devices feature. Google bought them in 2007 and relaunched it as Google Voice in 2009.

Re: The multiple meanings of #

Mark Gardner — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 16:41:02 -0000

Also in URLs it precedes the fragment, used to link to in-page named anchors or ids, e.g., https://tools.ietf.org/html...

Re: Toolkits I use in my software

Mark Gardner — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 17:06:05 -0000

Why do you use both pagedown and marked?

Re: Facebook allegedly building a native Messenger app for Mac

Mark Gardner — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 18:45:35 -0000

I just used Fluid to make a separate app pointed to messenger.com. It wouldn't surprise me if Facebook did something similar with a browser wrapper rather than a native Cocoa app.

Re: 1000 songs in your pocket… now in HTML5

Mark Gardner — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 19:15:34 -0000

Mark G from The Phoenix Trap here. Thanks for featuring our music in this, it's really cool.

Re: Screw Texting. It’s Time to Pick a Universal Messaging App

Mark Gardner — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 08:49:42 -0000

We have a single, standardized messaging protocol that enables different services and apps to talk to one another just like SMTP does for email. It's called XMPP and both Facebook Messenger and Google Hangouts used to support it well, although unfortunately never with the necessary federation features that would have allowed users on each service to exchange messages. Slack also supports XMPP.

Facebook shut off their XMPP support earlier this year, and Google's has been languishing though still works for basic text (it's what lets you use a Google account in Mac OS X's Messages app). If these other services would only support it, and most importantly turn on federation so we can talk to each other across services, we'd have a much better shot at letting everyone use the messaging app that suits them best while still letting us talk to each other without all the hassle.

Re: Apple Music is a nightmare and I’m done with it

Mark Gardner — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 15:39:47 -0000

"Nobody I’ve spoken at Apple or outside the company has any idea how to fix it, so the chances of a positive outcome seem slim to none."