Hot and humid in Houston. Because, summer in Houston. No real surprises there. It was hot at the BOL yesterday too, and so humid the windows were covered in condensation. Three drops of rain didn’t really cool it down either.
I did get a bunch of stuff done. I finished power washing the section of the roof I’d started on Saturday. I cleaned the driveway and powerwashed some other stuff. Did a bunch of cleaning in the garage, including setting up the air conditioners and putting the heater away. Loaded up the trash and the compactor for return today.
Which is where I’ll probably start the day, after catching up on ebay and auction stuff. I don’t want to pay for an extra day on the plate compactor. One thing I’ll find out today is if the dark reddish purple on my neck is the burn I think it is… I can’t feel it, but it looks really nasty. I started aloe on it as soon as I realized. I guess some sun got past my hat and crisped me up good.
I’ll also need to figure out how to ship or hand over the big item I sold. It’s about 3x3x6ft and will need to go motor freight, if the guy doesn’t come pick it up. As long as he arranges shipping, I only need to strap it to a pallet and meet the truck. I’ll admit it feels weird to finally be selling stuff again.
The rest of the week will be me getting stuff together for my non-prepping hobby convention/meeting/swapmeet next weekend. If I can get it all to one place it will be a lot easier than driving around with a trailer on Thursday.
Starting to get busy, and school is only starting the first full week. ay carumba.
Stack something, it’s the easy, default choice.
nick
Wall Street has overdone it with Intel.
Intel CPUs and PCI-E chipsets still dominate the Monkey Trick hardware, and no one willingly carries an ARM corporate drone laptop except Apple fanboys and girls.
Forget ARM. Is your wife’s company laptop AMD or Intel?
UP an moving. Tea brewing. Snack packed. One kid is moving around the house. The other is … not.
Why yes, I am indeed sunburned on my neck. It feels tight this morning.
—
Freaking microsoft. Update ran on my dad’s old pc, the tiny little fanless box with only built in memory instead of a hard drive… update installed their AI garbage. Didn’t ask, just did it. MORE evidence that MS thinks YOUR computer is THEIR computer to do as they wish. More reason for not running win10 or 11.
n
Texas has a lot of kabuki running in Austin with both sides trying to hide that state government is a club where the members place priority on retaining their seats over real concerns of the populace beyond making sure the housing market doesn’t crash.
And them jerbs. We gotta have the jerbs, son. Build those data centers for the jerbs.
The special sessons were originally called to deal with the defacto weed legalization which has taken place through a loophole allowing THC products to be sold in stores around the state with minimal regulation.
I think Trippiez on the corner is busier now with all of the free publicity than they were before Abbott vetoed the ban on selling the THC products.
Apple is no saint in this process. Apple affects more than just my laptop when updates install. I have other Apple devices that get impacted. AI has to be turned off with Apple.
Applies to all governments. Competence is optional.
Our current president had a nice trade deal in the bag. Then she apparently called Ursula von der Leyen (EU) to brag about it. Who apparently called Trump. Who cancelled the deal. Brilliant. Meanwhile, another member of the government council has been quoted as saying: “You’ll never hear “Switzerland first” from me”. Grounds to remove him from office, I would have thought.
Meanwhile, the EU, the UK and Switzerland are all simultaneously pushing for forced identification in order to use the Internet. Strange, very strange coincidence. Who is pulling the strings from behind the curtain? Meanwhile, both Germany and the UK prosecute people for opening their mouths. Can’t call a German politician a “Schwachkopf”, and a German woman received a weekend prison sentence for calling a (convicted) rapist a “pig”. Freedom of speech, at its best. Soon to be easily tracked to individuals, with their official digital ID.
Fortunately, we have a real democracy, and we get to vote on the e-ID this fall. There’s an excellent chance that the population will tell the government where to stuff it. Of course, we already voted it down a few years ago, and if it gets voted down again, they’ll try again in another few years. Try, try again…
Every time there is an update.
After Trump reads Little Fuhrer the riot act this morning, he has a meeting scheduled to lower the boon on the EU with regard to the Ukraine project.
Ferengi Rule if Acquisition 125.
Of course the Fintech bros on Wall Street would like to avoid excessive tariffs on their Submariner purchases during the upcoming bonus season on Wall Street, but it won’t be the end of the world if they don’t get a deal. They will still buy the watches.
I am way behind on Rob Braxman’s videos and other materials on the anti privacy “features” in Apple, Android, and Windows, but he has said turning them off is just a palliative, with no real “off,” either now or soon. Will Linux be next?
‘Course, he has products to sell, so isn’t exactly unbiased. A friend has a new “deGoogled” phone. I am eager to see well it works.
I think being invisible is shortsided, but not really possible anymore. Creating fake persona, while difficult, is a better approach. I remember the founder of this site playing with that.
The absence of digital spore is as telling as if you simply share your plans. I’ve been saying for a couple of years, if you ever think you might not want to be tracked and surveilled at some point in the future, even for an hour or two, you need to start building that space in your life NOW.
“The guys have a rule, no cell phones in the house on poker night.” “ I don’t carry my phone when I’m walking the dog/jogging/doing Tai Chi in the park.” “sometimes I just unplug and ride my bike around at random”….n
“Linux” is the OS kernel. Your privacy and security depend on the distribution you choose and browser used to access the interwebz.
If you run Chrome on Linux, you’re still feeding the beast.
Of course, you are correct. Of course, I was not yet sufficiently awake.
I still say that maintaining privacy while connecting to the outside world is practically impossible.
I ran into an interesting exhibit for bad design the other day.
I was at the optometrist and was leaving, eyes dilated, and taking the elevator down from the third floor.
Where the single down button should be (top floor) was a panel with five buttons stacked vertically, each button about 1 inch in diameter and a inch apart. The top button was silver, then a black button, then a bright red button, then another black button, then a black and silver button.
Which button was correct?
I guessed wrong…
No braille dots, either, which is probably a building code violation.
Your ISP tracks every packet and typically retains the header data for a year. Since the information falls under the category of “maintenance record”, no warrant is needed for an outside entity to access your activity history with timestamp and destination for each packet.
Often, all law enforcement has to do is ask. Others just need a court order, which has a much lower bar than a warrant.
Ask? Oh, you silly man. The ISP is probably selling the information for micro-cents per header information packet. Bundle that with a few thousand packets a second and the ISP is probably making good money. As to whom the ISP is selling the information, why the highest bidder of course. I sort of doubt the police have to even ask if it is mentioned it is for the good of the children. Or domestic terrorism, whichever is the favorite scam of the day.
Thank you to who(m)ever recommended The Whale.
I bought the (used, of course) DVD from Big River and watched it last night. I liked it enough it’s on the “watch again pile”.
Just watch it. Don’t read the reviews by the various harpies being PC and screaming about “fat shaming”. That’s not what the movie is about. It’s not just “divorced dad trying to reconnect with his daughter”.
At essence, it’s a many layered love story.
I give it lots of stars.
“Drivers react to new hidden DPS units in East Texas”
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/texas-new-cop-cars-20822222.php
“Texas DPS says the new units help spot dangerous drivers.”
“The agency’s Southeast Texas division recently unveiled its new “slick-top ghost-letter” vehicles, which are specifically designed to blend in with everyday traffic. According to DPS, the goal is to give troopers a tactical edge in identifying dangerous drivers while patrolling the region’s roads.”
“”These low-profile rides are built to blend in, giving our Troopers the edge in spotting dangerous drivers and keeping our roads safe,” DPS said in a Facebook post on Friday. “Whether you see us or not… we’re out there, watching, protecting, and serving.””
The Texas State Legislature needs to tell them to put roof lights on top of the Explorers. There are too many fake cops running around this place already.
I looked up the hours for Verizon stores this morning. In the Dallas area they sleep late and open at 10am. Here, 9am. I was there when they opened.
I told him what the phone was doing. Randomly going No Signal for the last four or five months. By his body language, he’s heard this bull story before from folks wanting a free upgraded phone.
I told him that I had dropped my phone a couple of weeks ago and this is the brand new replacement phone, same model with all of the same Verizon junkware, that got a smile, and it’s acting the same way, so not hardware. And when it says No Service it is not draining the battery.
Plus folks come to the house and they all have 2 or 3 bars inside the house because of the metal roof and 5 bars outside.
“Do you use wi-fi?” Not on my phone, but I do have good wi-fi in my house.. “Ok, let me look.” I turned the screen on and handed him the phone saying it had 5 bars a few minutes ago in the parking lot. No Service. In the Verizon store. Then it had service. While he was looking at it. “Looks like the sim is going bad’”
He replaced the sim. No charge.
I thought the phone stored contacts on the sim or on Google? No loss of contacts. Like I have a lot of contacts to worry about with 36 and 25 are actual people. Of which I’ve talked to 10 of in the last several months. It is what it is.
Thank you to who(m)ever recommended The Whale.
I bought the (used, of course) DVD from Big River and watched it last night. I liked it enough it’s on the “watch again pile”.
Just watch it. Don’t read the reviews by the various harpies being PC and screaming about “fat shaming”. That’s not what the movie is about. It’s not just “divorced dad trying to reconnect with his daughter”.
At essence, it’s a many layered love story.
I give it lots of stars.
I thought that you would like it. I agree with the Oscar that Brandon Fraser got for best male performance. And the Oscar for best makeup, you really believe that he weighed over 600 lbs.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13833688/awards/
Wall Street has overdone it with Intel.
Intel CPUs and PCI-E chipsets still dominate the Monkey Trick hardware, and no one willingly carries an ARM corporate drone laptop except Apple fanboys and girls.
Forget ARM. Is your wife’s company laptop AMD or Intel?
The question is, is Microsoft going to jump Windows 12 to the ARM cpu ? Microsoft has already ported and emulated the x86 and the x64 for Windows, but is Wintel dead ? Lots of rumors floating around out there. Obviously lots of talking going on behind the scene.
And, will there be a Windows 13 ? Superstitious minds want to know.
I feel so much safer mit der SS und Gestapo patrolling the roads. Ja! OMG, someone might be using their phone….
Ghost letter. Oh, it has a name other than “fraud”.
Yeah, mark the cop cars. Cherries on the roof. Stick the siren horn up there too. Make Barney Fife proud!!!
Stop the off shade decals. Stop the cammo cops uniforms.
And, will there be a Windows 13 ? Superstitious minds want to know.
– naw, it’ll be back to years in the name. Or some vaguely forward looking word that means nothing. Windows Zang!
n
Indeed. I got pulled over by an unmarked car on I-640 in Knoxville at about 9:00. It was dark but there were flashing blue lights. This was about 1991 before cell phones. The “officer” approached my car and asked for my license, registration and proof of insurance. I noticed he was not wearing a uniform. I told the “officer” I wanted a uniformed officer in a marked patrol car. The “officer” said that was not necessary. I rolled up the window, and drove away to the nearest exit.
I pulled into a convenience store that was well lit and asked to use the phone. I called 911 and told them what happened and that I would wait for an officer. About 10 minutes later an officer showed up, in uniform, in a marked car. I told the officer what happened. The officer took my information and said I did absolutely the correct procedure. He said the person that stopped me was a fake as any real officer would honor my request for a uniformed officer and a marked vehicle.
My nephew is a Texas state trooper. Works in the Brenham area of Texas. I wonder if he will get one of the new vehicles.
I keep trying to convince him that he should go to work for the TN state department as they have much better-looking vehicles. TN also has a couple of semi-trucks (without trailers) that they use to look down into vehicles and catch people using cell phones. Painted just like regular trooper vehicles and have blue lights mounted in various locations.
I already run an ARM version of WIndows 11 Pro on my MacBook pro. Almost everything seems to work but there are some software packages that refuse to be installed. I use it mostly for Quicken and that seems to run without issue.
https://x.com/Dapper_Det/status/1957065677086298520
Easy peasy:
Effective immediately, all federal grants to any unit of San Bernadino government are revoked.
Post office is closed for renovations.
Grants to the county are under review, and any channeling funds to San Bernadino will be suspended pending further review.
The mayor, city council, and police chief should get ready for a full forensic audit by the IRS, and the EPA will be conducting field checks of all city vehicles to ensure full compliance with emissions laws.
And about those “medical dispensaries” flaunting federal marijuana laws? Best close them down before they get busted.
Please note that other measures will be completed before the salt trucks come to finish the job.
“Planned restart of California oil production faces legal challenges”
https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_0c1ea8c7-3901-4182-8f10-a01df7eba90f.html
“(The Center Square) – Oil and gas production resumed on May 15 that had been out of service for 10 years after an oil spill off the California coast, with the restart of the Santa Ynez Unit in the Santa Barbara Channel expected to boost U.S. energy supplies by up to 50,000 barrels per day by year-end 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.”
I am guessing about 2035 or 2045 for actual production to restart.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
Windows running solely on ARM would make the company dependent on Qualcomm CPUs, and I don’t see Microsoft doing that.
kinda late to be finally getting a hurry cane.
n
Sure! Although what does 13 mean to the the H1b Pajeets?
The odd number versions seem to be better. Excepting Win98Se. But that was really a huge Service Pack to Win95 that fully integrated IE into the shell.
NT5 Beta was solid. Never crashed on my hardware. Then XP which was a huge amount of NT5 with the Win98 shell. Win7 pulled it all together.
Win8 sucked from what I saw. Gotta mess up the shell because “pretty” or something. They skipped Win9 as far as I know and went to Win10 which on the few (aka 4) machines I dealt with, made WindowsMe look good.
Win11 is solid. Not a fan of moving stuff out of Control Panel into the fog of Settings. I can see why but why not let us old farts find stuff in Control Panel anymore?
Win11 is too full of tracking and MS login and MS store and pushing online storage and co-pilot and now the AI bubble nonsense. But the underlying OS is solid, better than NT5 and Win7.
Not very serious question for the hive mind here. Maybe some could suggest some references for creating a public alter ego. I realize this is a sensitive issue, so am suggesting general references rather than personal experiences.
I think actually creating and keeping secure persona would be hard, with the risk that a small slip could blow the whole thing up. That is primarily why I have never delved into such things.
As a rather trivial example, I have a friend who is impressively skilled in privacy, and proud of it. At least ten years ago, he mentioned that he had practically no Internet presence, and had worked hard to keep it that way. I took that as a challenge, and did some Googling. He had an unusual combination of first and last names, so it was actually very easy, using some quotes. I found him in only a few tries. I brought my findings to him at our next group lunch, and he was not surprised. He had once contributed to a cause that insisted on his verifiable contact information for their tax records, and somehow this became public for all to see. He had tried to have it removed, but it lived on in perpetuity. I don’t remember what he tried, but he was pretty serious. If he couldn’t plug this leak, I doubt very few people could. More importantly, if I could find it, anyone could.
On a lower, practical level, I suggest that such persona might be useful when subscribing to, say, a publication that wants a whole bunch of nosy information. I remember Bob Thompson writing about how he created a couple of profiles for such uses. They were amusing, to say the least. Of course, these were probably throwaways, so only a start.
I would suggest having a private investigator examine any proposed scheme, but I don’t know any anymore. I have mentioned that my deceased uncle was a major fraud detective, and he had told me about some techniques he had used. Some of these were available to members of the public.
Rob Braxman’s channel is a good start, but illustrates the challenge as much as proposing solutions:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYVU6rModlGxvJbszCclGGw
In case the video changes, here is his background:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjX03tgAKpU
I think Rob is an updated and more general version of Phil Zimmermann, the creator of Pretty Good Privacy.
As some might have noticed, I am not always able to read and comment on this site, but do try to read all of it even if delayed. Thanks in advance, and have a little fun with this. I seriously doubt I would ever try to actually create even a trivial alias. Too hard, and I already have way too much stuff out there.
Hurricane Erin? What happened to Hurricanes A through D?
A-D were Tropical Storms, never made it to Hurricane level. See the timeline here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2025_Atlantic_hurricane_season
Huh. Well, ok. If the folks on the boob tube are naming normal snow storms, I guess giving tropical storms a hurricane name is par.
Hurricanes start out as Tropical Storms. So they get a name. If they increase to a hurricane intensity, they use the Tropical Storm name for the hurricane name. If they don’t increase to hurricane level, the next name is used for the next Tropical Storm.
I just go by “paul”. Some sites say that username is taken. So I come up with something super secret like “emupaul” where they want your web addy too. remsset.com? . I’m just me.
All I really don’t want out there is my house address and strangers showing up. I don’t have a backhoe. Buzzards are sometimes random with their efficient skills.
Heck, way back when when I was a U-Tote-M (pre CircleK) store manager, there was a sign ya had to have. The district manager wanted the store manager’s full name on the sign….. And some how, in the days before cell phones when a mobile phone meant a car phone, and everyone had a land line, I was the freak because I refused to post my entire name.
Last I looked there are six folks with my surname listed for Texas and I know for sure one is dead.
Call me names. Whatever.
I do have a lot of e-mail addresses that all go into my main inbox. It helps with filtering crap.
I was going somewhere with this. The dogs decided it was “supper time Right NOW”, Train of thought derailed…
One cool thing about Starlink is all the sites, like Home Depot for example, think my nearest store is on Lemmon Ave in Dallas.
I really hate looking for stuff and being geo referred to Lampasas or actually, any f*****g where.
Not tracking like Erin across the Atlantic.
The season runs until the end of November.
I was a super mod on a popular forum. I really enjoyed posting there. But I realized that I was using one of my very earliest web aliases which had part of my last name in it, and was part of my email address. It was EVERYWHERE. And it was linked to my IRL details in dozens of ways.
So I quit. Two little girls growing up, and this world is weird and dangerous for little girls as it is, without bringing any of my crep down on them.
I’ve been pretty careful with this persona. .gov and anyone with access to server logs could make a match to me IRL in seconds, but mostly it’s circular using public sources. I’ve even planted some misdirection over the years.
But all you have to do is read the hacker book “The Cuckoo’s Egg” to see how even involving telcos and crossing national boundaries, you’re still trackable, even in pioneer days.
There’s another story, but I forget the case, where they got the guy because he used the same computer to set up a domain name that he used in his hacking activities as he used for his RL. That one is much more modern, and shows that even with very good discipline and resources, it still only takes one mistake.
————–
In the old days, you went to a cemetery and copied down some poor soul who died in childhood’s information and used that as a starting point.
Now there are government service providers who create all the digital spoor that agents working under cover need. They make big money doing it too.
n
Train of thought derailed…
– it ain’t just the dogs that it happens too….
n
Lot of crashing and banging and even some flashing, but no rain hitting the ground yet.
n
xkcd: Predicament
https://www.xkcd.com/3130/
Yeah, that is going to be a problem that should have been investigated on the way up.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3130:_Predicament
Well. Going from here to Marble Falls to the Verizon store gave time to listen to tunes. Truck has a great stereo system. But I’m hearing the same stuff…..
Moving in Stereo.
I have a thought. I have about 126 GB of music. Total. Lots of crap and duplication. Call it about 90 GB of good stuff unsorted.
So. USB memory sticks? Or a stack of CDs? Or something else. We can mail the media to each other…. Or whatever.
Nick has a lot of tunes. Same for anyone else here.
Can we figure a way to swap music libraries? But no Creed. Ok?
Windows running solely on ARM would make the company dependent on Qualcomm CPUs, and I don’t see Microsoft doing that.
The word on the streets is that Microsoft is very upset at Intel about their inability to run their desktop cpus below 20+ watts whereas the desktop ARM cpus can idle at 5 watts or so.
California cops have been trying this, for decades, and keep getting shut down.
State law is definite: the cruisers need to be two distinct colors. Usually this is black-and-white, but there are slight variations here and there, some of the more rural cops use brown and white for example.
I believe a couple of SoCal cities tried single color cruisers, and were rebuked.
For a while the State Highway Patrol here was using gold and white colored cruisers to crack down on truckers, and then stealthily expanded them to standard traffic patrol. That was challenged in court and the troopers lost.
But, like Texas, they are trying again with the “low-profile” stuff.
https://www.thecorsaironline.com/corsair/2025/5/24/chp-deploys-all-black-enforcement-vehicles
The sad part is, reckless driving is on the increase, I regularly see people run signs and lights every time I drive, and speeding is endemic.
Yup. It was an absolute disaster in a lot of business applications.
That was because a lot of earlier applications used a test to recognize “Win95” and “Win98”, and wrote the test for “Win9” to recognize either of them, because they were essentially similar. So M$ skipped Windows9, and jumped straight to 10.
My name is Ken Mitchell. Back in Sacramento, there were a DOZEN “Ken Mitchells” in the phone book. “Security Through Obscurity”!
Apple, to their credit, saw the Intel incompetence writing on the wall, and took charge of their own fate.
Microsoft should do the same, they could buy Intel with pocket money and force the necessary changes.
X86 has probably run its course, but if they prune the workforce (Intel really went woke) and use the IP they could turn it around. Maybe.
One cool thing about Starlink is all the sites, like Home Depot for example, think my nearest store is on Lemmon Ave in Dallas.
I really hate looking for stuff and being geo referred to Lampasas or actually, any f*****g where.
Yup, I have noticed that also. I have no idea how to change it.
skipped Windows9, and jumped straight to 10.
Yep. I had forgotten that. Shame on me.
Uh.. I see it as a desired feature.
It messes up the tracking stuff..
The previous chip I had in my home server was an Atom which idled below 5 W.
The reason the board/chip didn’t last long is that Intel crippled the chipset with a 2 GB RAM limit even though the CPU was x86_64 and capable of addressing a lot more memory.
Once mainstream Linux began requiring 4 GB RAM to do anything useful with a GUI, I went with an AMD APU and 8 GB RAM.
WRT the geolocation, that is where starlink’s downlink joins the terrestrial net, or that’s where the IP addresses you get assigned geolocate to.
On each store site you can usually select your “home” store, and as long as you allow cookies, it should stick.
——-
@ken, I always wondered why they skipped win9 and your explanation makes sense.
——-
VPN will change your IP and thus where you geolocate to. Keeping in mind that TPTB want to know where you are and who you are.
——–
now there is some moisture from the sky.
n
Intel crippled the chipset with a 2 GB RAM limit even though the CPU was x86_64 and capable of addressing a lot more memory.
— iirc that was in a deal with MS because they put win98 on those machines and didn’t want them (cheap lappys) to be upgradable or usable with other OSs.
The lappys were only a little more money than the cost of the OS alone in a retail box.
n
The FTC would never allow Microsoft to buy Intel.
Apple is under a lot of pressure to produce a big iron server for the Monkey Trick and add support for running the software to Mac OS.
VPNs can move the packets in space but not in time. Packets in and out of the country are logged, and matching timestamps to local ISP records can provide probable cause to get a warrant for the suspect’s hard drive and browser cache.
IPSec also has a very distinct signature. The VPN packets using that protocol attract attention.
This chip is going to make IDS and packet monitoring a lot more common. I wonder how many three letter agencies were involved in the specs because 16 cores with 16 GB is the sweet spot for introspecting everything on a 10 Gbps connection. Throw two in a box and 65 W TDP
https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-epyc-4545p-efficiency
of each chip means you can place the system almost anywhere on a network with 120 V available.
Ran out of time on the editor.
When Atoms hit 13-14 years ago Win98 was long gone.
Atoms were used in “netbooks” and tablets running Windows 8 32 bit. 2 GB was just enough to handle email and light browsing.
Ah, maybe it was win8. I don’t feel like booting my atom lappy to be sure. That thing was slow as F. I got almost no use out of it. I only bought it to get all my personal stuff and activity off my company lappy. Heavy, slow, and not upgradable. Joy.
I remember quite clearly though that it was a deal made to protect MS and the OS market.
n
Not with Trump or a successor in office, and probably not while BillG is connected and people remember Epstein didn’t kill himself.
Rain stopped. I’m calling it a night. I’m sleepy and sore from yesterday’s work, so my bed is calling extra hard tonight.
n