Will have to look into that, thanks.

One of my key implementation requirements, however, will be resiliency, which means simplicity will be a core feature. The more “moving parts”, the easier it will be to break.

flip phone

Almost all such phones are actually smart phones in a flip phone Edgar Suit. Especially if it has maps or YouTube or any kind of an App Store. I see a crapton of flip phones that run Android, which has all sorts of Google spyware piggybacking along.

I think there may be only two or three dumb flip phones or feature flip phones left on the market, and IIRC two are locked to specific networks.

If you want a bona-fide dumb phone, you might be limited to something like the rotary un-smartphone.

or toaster can’t do its basic job offline

pats my 1962 Sunbeam Radiant Toaster

Obligatory Red Dwarf toaster scene

Go for older laser printers. They’re bulletproof, cheap on toner, free of DRM, and even if they only come with an LPT port you can always build your own print server that gives you all the bells and whistles like AirPrint.

About 3-4 years ago I took a bit of a dive into the firmware of IoT devices. The utter lack of security and the amount of information being hoovered up to the mothership made me swear to never build anything “smart” into the renovations of my current home. Sure, there will be automation. There will be CCTV. There will be solar with battery backup for essentials. There will be conveniences of all kinds. But virtually all will be air gapped, incapable of remote rooting, and under my full control.

Hell, even my laser printers are HP models over two decades old - an HP 4050DTN and an HP 5000DTN - that are totally devoid of any DRM or “smart features” and can trivially take generic overstuffed cartridges that can do 20,000 sheets at 5% coverage.

VM

That still doesn’t solve 99.9% of my issues, it just tries to solve a problem for which I already have a solution actively in-place: a KVM.

In that way it’s become adversarial.

Back in the 2000s, I was able to say that while a fundamental install took only about a half hour to set up, usability tweaks and a full fleshing out of functionality took another 4-8 hours depending on what the user was going to use the machine for.

I just did a Win11 24h2 install. It took nearly 24 working hours before I considered it even minimally functional for my needs. Cycling through Win10Privacy two or three times was particularly frustrating. Registry work alone took me a good 8-10 hours of trying stuff a step at a time and then rebooting to see how it worked.

At this point, the only reason why I am still running with a Windows rig is for those half-dozen programs that don’t have appropriate non-Windows variants. It’s why I’m also running a Mac Mini and an OpenSUSE tower through the same 4-port, 6-head KVM.

For such an invasive piece of code (it seems to drop into my system with every major Windows Update), this would be a hilarious message to see.

The rectum is considerably larger than your mouth, and can hold a lot more shit.

My phones/tablets would be dead in the water, but I avoid wifi for almost everything not actively mobile. So all my iron - even the laptops - are hardlined.

Unless they’re looking to employ Carrington-event-class interference, my networks are fine.

the cable sizes in this infographic are all the same gauge?

They’re not. They are clearly marked as different gauges, except the left most two which have different plug types… one is two prong, the other is three prong.

a 50ft 12 gauge extension cord is about $40

$40USD would be $58CAD.

A 50-ft 12-gauge extension cord costs $112+ CAD anywhere in Canada. A 100-ft is $200+ CAD. Like… fffffuuuuuck.

Well, most of the fridge is already there. You just need to disassemble, sandblast the metal and paint (if the paint is in poor condition), replace the insulation with closed-cell spray foam, replace the refrigeration system with a modern Freon-free system, reassemble and put new seals on.

An old fridge can be quite simple, structurally speaking. It’s in the 70s and 80s when fridges started getting compact, difficult to repair, and disposable.

The fridge will likely operate far less efficiently than a modern fridge unless you have it rebuilt.

With that said, a rebuilt fridge - with a more efficient cooling system and better insulation and all seals redone, etc. - does not cost significantly more than a new midrange fridge.

My microwave is a 1977 Amanda Radarange. It can boil a cup of water in ⅕ of the time a modern microwave can.

Now granted, it has zero fancy settings and a simple number pad that does nothing but set how long you want the microwave to run.

But honestly, this simplicity is a large part of it’s charm. No connectivity needs, no features locked behind paywalls, no extraneous bullshit or never-used features. Just a tool that does only one thing, and does it exceptionally well.

I have an apostrophe

Scottish/Irish?

some companies see it as a SQL injection hack and sanitize it.

Which kind of apostrophe?

A straight apostrophe, fine - that can and does get used in valid SQL injection attacks. I would be disgusted at any input form that didn’t sanitize that.

But a curly apostrophe? Nothing should be filtering a curly apostrophe, as it has no function or use within SQL. So if you learn how to bring that up in alt codes (Windows, specifically), Key combos (Mac) or dead keys (Linux), as well as direct Unicode codes for most any Win/Mac/*Nix platform, you should be golden.

Unless the developer of that input form was a complete moron and made extra-tight validation.

Plus, knowing the inputs for a lot of extended UTF-8 characters not found on a normal keyboard is also a wee bit of a typing superpower.

A line break is a non-printable character. So it would only work in the scope of electronic storage. The minute it hits other media, the line break character is subject to how that media handles it’s presence, and then it is lost permanently from that step forward.

Plus, many input forms make use of validation that will just trim anything that isn’t a character or number, removing the line break character.

Only 2.5℃? Awwww… how adorable. They’re still using the hilariously optimistic estimate, instead of the BAU (Business As Usual) path that we are still solidly on.

Can certain remote connections be whitelisted?

I have a number of non-tech family members that I remote assist and remote administer. Clearly, I need to be able to log in remotely via RustDesk whenever needed, and since RustDesk has no auto-updater, I would need to whitelist the website (and their GitHub page) as well.

Most of America (all but 7 states) and all of Canada are one-party jurisdictions. That means you can record conversations without anyone else knowing so long as you are a primary participant in said conversation.

If you have an iPhone (which prevents calls from being recorded as a security feature), it helps to invest in a small digital recorder and to take all calls on speakerphone.

If you take communications through apps like Teams or Slack, there are third-party apps that can screen record your entire monitor such that the other person won’t be informed of the recording. Recording through teams, for example, would have Teams tell the other person that the screen is being recorded.

Don’t just record convos that you think might be important. Record all calls just in case someone does something particularly in your favour, such as asking an illegal question.