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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: January 25th, 2024

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  • One thing I can think of is an overzealous corporate security solution blocking or holding back your email purely for having an attachment, or because it misunderstands/presumes the cipher-looking text file to be an attempt to bypass filtering.

    Other than that might be curious questions from curious receivers of the key/file they may not understand, and will not be expecting. (“What’s this for? Is this part of the contract documents? Oh well, I’ll forward it to the client anyway”)

    Other than that it’s a public key, go for it. Hard (for me anyway) to decide to post them to public keychains when the bot-nets read them for spam, so this might be the next best thing?


  • If you’ve got a VPS at your disposal, many of the homepage softwares I’ve tried over the years have some amount of caching to make them quite fast or even operate offline(“Homer” for one required me to deeply purge my cache as it would still appear when my site was offline…despite having replaced it long ago! 😂). Or, if you wanted to roll your own static HTML page, you can absolutely add a Service Worker for your own offline caching.

    That’s where I’m at now. I use a custom ServiceWorker static HTML for my homepage and tab page on all my devices. This page is a bouncer, checks if I’m at home or not(or if my local dashboard is offline) and either redirects me to the local homepage which has all my HomeLab services on it, or if it fails just tells me I might be abroad or offline and lists a few public websites.

    And yes, this works offline or over a shitty connection. Essentially the service worker quickly provides the cached page from the browser storage, then tries to take the time to check the live version. If it gets one, it updates the cache, if not, enjoy the offline version.



  • Now would be a good time to look for a .com you like, or one of the more common TLDs. And register it at Namecheap, Porkbun, or Cloudflare. (Cloudflare is cheapest but all-eggs-in-one-basket is a concern for some.)

    Sadly, all the cheap or fun TLDs have a habit of being blocked wholesale, either because the cheap ones are overused by bad actors or because corporate IT just blacklists “abnormal” TLDs (or only whitelists the old ones?) because it’s “easy security”.

    Notably, XYZ also does that 1.111B initiative, selling numbered domains for 99¢, further feeding the affordability for bad actors and justifying a flat out sinkhole of the entire TLD.

    I got a three character XYZ to use as a personal link shortener. Half the people I used it with said it was blocked at school or work. My longer COM poses no issue.


  • Plug it into a monitor or TV and keep an eye on the console.

    I have an older NUC that will not cooperate with certain brands of NVMe drive under PVE…the issue sounds like yours where it would work for an arbitrary amount of time before crashing the file system, attempting to remount read-only and rendering the system inert and unable to handle changes like plugging a monitor in later, yet it would still be “on”.


  • Genuine curiosity…what are some proposed solutions we think Valve can implement to solve this crisis?

    I ask because the line about VAC being a joke gave me a thought…VAC is such a joke because it is so simple and un-invasive. Do we really want VAC “upgraded” to the level of more effective Anti-cheats, where it cuts down the bots but is now a monitoring kernel service? Just a few weeks ago people were in an uproar about the new Vanguard anti-cheat…do we want that for Valve? Or do we think they can do it a better way?

    As an aside, honestly in my mind community servers with a cooperative ban list plugin might be the most effective solution of all…it would still be a game of whack a mole since they can always churn out new accounts, but that’s what gives me pause about other solutions because the only real solutions to slow cheaters start to sound like charging for the game(to make account creation costly) or implementing a bulletproof system of hardware bans, which means invasive solutions that can be certain they aren’t virtual machines or such.






  • I wouldn’t say it’s only Critical, LTSC still gets average security fixes. They don’t get Feature updates, but they still get Security updates, is how it’s normally put. And it’s not as bad as it sounds. Even as a gamer stability is a good thing, and there are plenty of third party softwares for any desirable “features” that get delayed or skipped. If LTSC gets any fewer security updates it’s because it has less built in crap to need updating.

    I’ve never needed funny graphics in my taskbar search bar or Bing in my start menu or the Edge bar or whatever it was that now clutters my friend’s task bars as of the last Feature update. But I still get my security fixes and Defender definitions every Patch Tuesday.

    But the trick is getting a copy, true.


  • I won’t claim to know for sure, but I’ll place my bet on it still being about motivated by profit and growth. Supposedly Windows 10 was supposed to be the last Windows ever, and move to an eternal patching process, but I guess that didn’t stick. So obviously just keeping you on Windows isn’t enough, they found a need to create a refresh.

    I did notice that refresh has new hardware requirements, like TPM modules and such. Deals with the OEMs to get people to buy/build new PCs?

    There’s talk of advertisements and sponsored links in the very Start Menu, so partnerships with advertisers to get closer to your daily activities?

    I won’t say I know for sure, because I only use Windows for video games. So, I too will be running Windows 10 until the games don’t work anymore. Might I recommend, if you can get a copy, Windows 10 LTSC? It is a bared bones version of Windows made (by Microsoft) for enterprises and governments who would never buy into consumer features like advertising and analytics, so it’s very clean, fast, and not full of spying junk or ads like the Home versions. And it hasn’t bugged me once about upgrading. All my games run fine after some one-time minor command prompt foolery to get the Store and XBOX game pass apps back.

    EDIT: Also, LTSC is Long-Term Support Channel, so additionally it will be supported longer than the regular editions, and be safer longer. Unless they change their minds this time around of course, but I doubt it. You don’t rush the government through a PC upgrade if you want them to fund you.