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[Vent] Please avoid BusyBox
  • No worries on the spelling correction. I don't know why autocorrect let that through.

    The regexp thing wouldn't bother me if there were at least one tool that could be used. On any standard POSIX system, there would be at least one way, and on most Linux distros, there's a half-dozen relatively simple, installed-by-default tools that can do it. Bash, if nothing else.

    But it's like, in BB every tool excludes this ability. It's frustrating, and of it isn't regexp, it's something else.

  • All political views should end with the word boy in a southern voice.
  • I think most non-Southerners' exposure to it is in media, where it's almost always racist in context. There's a surprising amount of subtly in Southern social interactions that I think it's missing from most of the US. Sure, Midwesterners are known for raising passive-aggressiveness to an art form, but you recognize it no matter where you're from.

    The subtly in social interactions in the South are truly exceptional, hard to get a handle on, and unmatched anywhere else in the US - IMHO. Southerners have as many ways of being condescending as Eskimos have words for snow.

    Is that phrase still acceptable, or is the Eskimo/snow comment now not PC? Is it still OK to use the term "Eskimo?" If the Eskimo thing is offensive, I sincerely apologize. An alternative would be "as North-westerners have words for rain," but I don't know if that's as widely understood an idiom.

  • What are some preparations you think people should know about in advance of migrating to Linux?
  • So, I had an experience recently that has changed how I think about this topic.

    A few years ago, I gave my dad a laptop that I wasn't using anymore. It wasn't that old; I'd just gotten a newer one. I do not have Windows; never have, never will, so the laptop had Arch (probably) on it, which was going to be too much for dad, so I wiped it and put Linux Mint on it.

    I got the occasional call from dad; he got a new (to him, probably used) printer and didn't know how to set it up, but mostly he just used it and didn't seen to have any problem with it.

    OK, so about a month ago, he calls and says he broke the laptop and the keyboard didn't work; a while back, with help from a church friend, he'd replaced the battery, but had missed a screw, had hot-glued something and gotten glue in one of the USB ports... I didn't even want to know what all he'd done, but dad's from a jerry-rig generation. Anyway, he'd missed a screw or something, and something was rattling around on there and one day the keyboard stopped responding.

    So dad goes out and buys a refurbished laptop, and calls me and asks what he needs to do to migrate over. The laptop came with a fresh Windows install - 10, or 11; I don't know. So I tell him, I can help him get any data off the old computer, but he needs to decide whether he wants to switch to Windows; now's his chance.

    Dad's 80. He barely grasps computer concepts - hardware, he'll mess around with, but software... for example, that version of Mint uses the same background for the session manager as the desktop, by default, and so he thinks they're the same thing - it's just sometimes it makes him log in. So given a choice to go Windows, he says he wants to stay with Linux because that's what he's familiar with. I'd like to point it here that he often forgets the name "Linux"; he just knows it isn't Windows.

    Deep breath - we're a 4-hour flight apart - we get a USB keyboard hooked up to the old laptop, he orders a USB stick from Amazon, and we download the latest Mint iso; the next day when the USB stick arrives I walk him through burning the image; booting the new laptop into the BIOS; changing the boot order; and eventually, booting into the Linux Mint install image. We get connected to the WiFi no problem, open the installer from the desktop icon, and then have some debate about dual boot. He says he's probably never going to use Windows, and dual boot makes things a little more iffy, so he picks the easy route and just wipes the drive and installs Mint.

    The install process goes smoothly; he asked the occasional question about, e.g. the keyboard layout question, but mostly we chat while he watches the progress bar. We're doing this over the phone, no video conference, so I'm mostly just listening to him describe what he's doing and answering questions like, "it's asking me for a name for the computer - what should i put in?" That's done, we reboot, change the BIOS setting back (could have just left that one), reboot again with the USB stick out - and he's back in Mint.

    I send him some instructions over email about setting up a Firefox sync account, getting prepped for a Wireguard install (because, if I'm doing family tech support, I wasn't to be able to remote log in over VPN), that sort of stuff. Things he can do download or manage without me, to prep for the next stage.

    OK, some weeks go by without me hearing from him, and he calls yesterday for help with "completing the migration." And here's where I start to change my view on this. I find that he's followed the instructions for Sync and that all his browser stuff successfully came over. That's 90% of what he's wants. I start what I think it's the final configuration steps: setting up the printer, and he says, we don't need to, it's been working since we did the install. He must have configured it himself at some point. We unzip his old /home, I show him the software manager and how he can find and install stuff, we get Zoom installed and make sure the webcam, mic, and speakers work... and I decide to not fuss with getting a VPN into his laptop because everything is just working.

    My 80 y/o dad bought some random-ass refurbished laptop, and aside from helping him burn the iso and get the new laptop to boot from it... I did nothing. I mean, I provided some guidance for his username, the laptop name, setting the time zone during install; but aside from the iso burning and some trouble we had even getting to the BIOS and then figuring out the right boot sequence, he could have done this all himself. All of the hardware worked; he either added the printer himself and forgot, or Mint did it for him. I was certain we'd have trouble with the WiFi chip (may you be sent to the hell of being boiled alive, Broadcom), or the printer, or... something. But no. It all Just Workedβ„’.

    Seriously. Except that the BIOS boot order makes things extremely challenging for newbies, and burning boot images onto a USB stick isn't trivial (in retrospect, I should have just told him to buy an install stick from Mint; sorry, Mint), Linux has just worked. For a guy who isn't clear on the difference between Firefox and the OS.

    I think it was the WiFi chip and the printer that caused my mental shift; these have been the traditional pain points. Maybe we got lucky. But I think the real reason is that some Linux distros have just gotten really good for novices.

  • The US population only accounts for 4.2% of the world.
  • The internet originated in the US. All of the original specs were made by Americans. ASCII is literally built around English, and ASCII is at the foundation of every single core technology of the internet. Hell, even when they designed UTF-8, it was still Western-centric; to this day it gets some push back from the Orient, because it's makes things harder for them - I think there was a fight to standardize on UTF-16 because it was easier for Asian languages; I may not be remembering the details correctly, but there's some legitimate beef some Asian languages have with UTF-8.

    Now, obviously, more non-Americans are on the internet than Americans, but it's the same argument as Critical Race Theory: when the entire foundation and infrastructure is built on a bias, that bias influences all interactions even when isn't overtly obvious, or even intentional.

  • All political views should end with the word boy in a southern voice.
  • It's always demeaning. Calling a full-grown man of any race "boy" is belittling them. Yes, there's a special racist association, but it's been used as much on white men. The female equivalent might be "little girl."

    "What do you think you're doing, little girl?"

    It might have the same effect as simply "girl" if said the right way, but "girl" has been more normalized and sexualized, so it's a little different.

    Anyway, the terms are belittling, and therefore demeaning, regardless of race. The point of using them is to position yourself over that person, as a parent over a child; it's shorthand for saying they are beneath you.

  • [Vent] Please avoid BusyBox
  • I preface this with a statement that I'm brand-loyal to gliNet products. Love them to bits. I love that they're based on OpenWRT, and that you can ssh into them. But their user space tooling stinks.

    They have 500MB RAM. My home router has a current uptime of 24 days, and half the RAM is still free. It's hard to tell how much persistent storage is on the device, but there's at least 50MB free. They could have put something a little more capable on it. It's what I'm currently fighting with - I want to script it so my VPN exit node auto switches at random times to random nodes - and it's just frustrating with the onboard tooling.

    This isn't the first time I've run into it; it's not frequent, but it's happened more than once, and I think it's just a sloppy, lazy decision someone made.

  • [Vent] Please avoid BusyBox
  • You know, I've never had a problem with Alpine. Maybe it's that I'm choosing less minimal base images, but the tooling always seems sufficient, and adding extra packages is super easy. Or, maybe Alpine just builds a BusyBox with all the features turned on.

    I'm pretty sure when I've logged into my Alpine based containers, I get Bash and not Ash. That solves, like, 70% of the problems right there. grep doesn't need to have good regexp support, because bash has it built-in.

  • Seriously, where do I go?
  • I didn't mention Cleveland, but those ads are hilarious. At first I thought, because I was talking up Oregon, you were linking to one of these Oregon travel ads:

  • This baby has so few fuses
  • Power loss is the main issue; I think there's an inverse square law in there somewhere. But there has been progress in improving that; every do often you hear about some research that's improved the efficiency of transmission.

    Nicola Tesla really believed in this, and pushed it hard. He envisioned giant towers broadcasting out power to communities.

    But, to continue with my (again, newly invented head canon): it works in Federation starships because there's no loss. It's an closed environment, and they obviously have advanced field technology if they have energy shields, tractor beams, scanners, and transporters. They broadcast power throughout the ship, and as long as you're in it, you've got an essentially infinite supply (on the human scale). No energy is lost, because the ship structure/hull itself re-absorbs any energy not harvested by a receiver, so inefficiency loss is negligible. Leave the ship, whatever tech you have has to have its own power supply, and that can run out.

  • This baby has so few fuses
  • The Borg don't spark, either. I think it's because they have a lot of on-board electronics that have to run from fairly beefy internal power supplies. Borg units have to function outside of broadcast power range.

    Federation phasers, tricorders, things like that are probably mostly solid state with embedded power supplies; the power conduits are probably etched directly into the components at the molecular level. There's no empty space in a coms badge; it's all solid tech. Like modern cell phones, only even less componentized. In TOS, they physically modified phasers and such to make them do other things; by the time of TNG, they just reprogram them.

    But mainly, the Borg a) have no sense of aesthetics, so they can just cobble together whatever tech without regard for making it look nice, and b) individual Borg are disposable. Wires hanging off to get caught on stuff and ripped out, causing an individual to malfunction or function at reduced efficiency - preventing that is not as important as growth. Borg are fungible, not unique individuals with value. Lose one, another takes its place.

    The Federation values individuals, and they want to look damned good while they're doing their thing. So: streamlined, sleek, compact, safe, and reliable.

  • [Vent] Please avoid BusyBox

    This is kind of a rant, but mostly a plea.

    There are times when BusyBox is the only tool you can use. You've got some embedded device with 32k RAM or something; I get it. It's the right tool. But please, please, In begging you: don't use it just because you're lazy.

    I find BusyBox used in places where it's not necessary. There's enough RAM, there's more than enough storage, and yet, it's got BusyBox.

    BusyBox tooling is absolutely aenemic. Simple things, common things, like - oh, - capturing a regexp group from a simple match are practically impossible. But you can do this in bash; heck, it's built in! But BusyBox uses ash, which is barely a shell and certainly doesn't support regexp matching with group capture. Maybe awk? Well, gawk lets you, with -oP, but of course BusyBox doesn't use GNU awk, and so you can't get at the capture groups because it doesn't support perl REs. It'd be shocking if BusyBox provided any truly capable tools like ripgrep, in which this would be trivial. I haven't tried BB's sed yet, because sed's RE escaping is and has always been a bizarre nightmarish Frankenstein syntax, but I've got a dime riding on some restriction in BB's sed that prevents getting at capture groups there, too.

    BusyBox serves a purpose; it is intentionally barely functional; size constraining trumps all other considerations. It achieves this well. My issue isn't with BusyBox, it's with people using it everywhere when they don't need to, making life hell for anyone who's trying to actually get any work done in it.

    So please. For the sanity of your users: don't reach for BusyBox just because it's easy, or because you're tickled that you're going to save a megabyte or two; please spare a thought for your users on which you are inflicting these constraints. Use it when you have to, because otherwise it doesn't fit. Otherwise, chose a real shell, at least bash, and include some tools capable of more than less than the bare minimum.

    9
    First time roasting with Artisan, how'd I do?
  • Oh no. Oh, nonono.

    I'm using a (nearly) 20 year old Behmor. There's so much guesswork involved, especially if you're someone like me and rarely buy the same beans. I roast my own coffee, but after 20 years I still barely know what I'm doing. I like what I get, but still; it's a lot of trial and error, and guesswork.

    The SkyWalker looks fantastic. It has all the features I wish I had on the Behmor: the sample tray thingy; temperature control; multiple gauges - there's not even a thermometer in the Behmor; an automatic mode? I mean, I'd like to have either a sampler or an auto mode on the Behmor, but this has both?? A proper chaff tray, to get the chaff out of the oven so it doesn't burnβ€½ A smoke filter or proper chimney to direct the exhaustβ€½β€½

    <groan> I don't need to spend any more money on this hobby.

    What's that software (and device) you're using to get the results profile?

  • This baby has so few fuses
  • There's no wiring on the Enterprises. It's all broadcast energy from the warp core directly powering whatever passes for chips, and it's all solid state electronics. This is why, while individual components may fail, you never get situations like, there's no power to only one lift; or, only the bridge looses power. Nobody crawls into a Jeffries Tube to fix wiring, and they never have bulky tool kits; their equivalent of sonic screwdrivers can either make molecular repairs, or the whole component is swapped out.

    Many components are modules with onboard capacitors required for performing their functions; this is why control boards explode so much when the Enterprise takes damage: it's capacitors discharging. Same for the sparks: rapid (but not complete) discharging for the capacitors causes sparks - it's a designed safety feature to reduce full-on explosions. Sparks are better than booms.

    You never see wiring. Ships fall apart in combat; stations explode; support beams fall on people... but never a mess of dangling wires.

    I just made all of that up. I'm sure there's a complete description of the electronics on Memory Alpha somewhere. But I think there are no fuses because there are no wires.

  • Seriously, where do I go?
  • Southern Florida? Like the man said: Florida: the more North you go, the more South it gets. Orlando seems mostly OK. Big city, opportunities, and there's a NASA space center and launch facility not too far.

    My mom lives there, and that's about the limit of my knowledge. I will personally never again willingly live south of the Mason-Dixon line.

    Oh, I hear that if you stay out of the little handle at the bottom, Missouri is nice. A friend from there once told me that if they'd cut off that handle and give it to Arkansas, it'd raise the average IQ of both states. Never been there, myself.

    Lots of places in Oregon and Washington are great; large swaths are not, but if you're not prone to SAD, there are great towns in the Willamette Valley: Corvallis, Eugene, and Ashville down on the California border. Also, California is enormous. N California is very different from S California, and the coast is enormously different from the interior. It's a huge state, and painting it with a single brush is like saying Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania are all the same. It's seriously about the same area as all those put together, lengthwise, at least. The greater LA/San Diego area alone is almost as big as your entire state. But the Pacific Northeast is wet if you live in the Valley, and there isn't much in the way of big cities east of the Cascades.

    How about Boise, ID? Good size college city, lots of microbreweries, lots of outdoor recreation, pretty great weather if you like hot, but you get snow in the winter, too. Plus nearly half the state is national park; fantastic backpacking.

    Most of these places I mentioned specifically lean liberal, although when you venture into rural areas it gets red pretty quickly, like anywhere. An exception is Orange County in CA, which is full of really crazy red-hatters. But it sound like you've already ruled out at least part of CA, and "insufferable" makes me think you're thinking specifically of S Cal.

    Eugene is, or used to be, fantastic. Extremely liberal, and not trust-fund hippie style. Decent sized to be entertaining. You just have to put up with the weather and hippies, or whatever hippies have mutated into with successive generations. Pot's legal in OR, too, if that's your bag.

    Bend, OR is one of the best places in the planet if you're sporty. It's high desert, but smack up against the mountains. In the summer, people rock climb and bike. In the winter, they ski Mt Bachelor. There's fishing and camping, and at one point it had more restaurants per capita than any other city in the US. There's no humidity. At all. Very pretty town. A 4 hour drive north, and you're in Portland, OR, which isn't what it used to be and has been having problems, but is still a large metro area with lots to do and a fantastic science center. 2 hrs West through the mountains is Salem, the capital, which frankly sucks; or or 3+ hours SW is the aforementioned Eugene. A couple hours south is Crater Lake. A couple three more hours and you're in the N California Redwood forest. Oh, and if you do speed through So-Lame (Salem), another 1.5 hours and you're on the Oregon coast, so 3-4 hours from Bend to the coast, mostly through a fantastic, amazing mountain range (and then the Valley and then the smaller coastal range).

    If you want to stay on the E coast, I recommend the greater Philadelphia area. From there, NYC is a 3hr drive. The Jersey shore is a 3 hr drive. Washington DC is a 3 hr drive. Gettysburg is a 3 hr drive. Williamsburg, VA - possibly my favorite place in the US - is a 4-ish hour drive (depending on DC traffic). Plus, you can get to almost any of the coast cities from Philly by train, if you're willing to sacrifice a couple more hours. Pennsylvania wasn't my favorite place to live, but if you can stand living in S Carolina I'm sure it'd be fine for you.

    Honestly, you might consider Minneapolis. It does get cold in the winter (-50F is the coldest I've experienced), but The Cities are fantastic, full of Art Deco architecture, and end-summer temps can hit the 100's. In September, any of the literally over 10,000 lakes are bath-water warm. And we don't have copperheads. The great lakes are close; we're practically in the center of the country, so flying anywhere in the continental US is a 4-hour flight or less. The Cities are very progressive - again, you drive an hour outside and it's Trump signs everywhere - par for the course - but within The Cities it's quite nice. And the bike paths are incredible; miles and miles, and much of it completely off-road - at some point they took all the old industry rail lines and turned them into maintained bike and foot paths. It's really quite remarkable. And the metro system isn't half bad, for a US city. The humidity gets oppressive, but, again, you're surviving S Carolina so I don't think that'd be a problem for you.

  • Bowman loses New York primary in blow to progressives
  • Anybody following this able to give a balanced summary? I find The Hill to tend right-leaning and don't much trust their analysis.

    The Hill seems to be placing the defeat of Bowman on his stance against the genocide in Palestine, which is becoming a sort of dog-whistle saying, "stand against the invasion of Palestine, and this is what happens to you." It may in this case be true; I can believe it, but I don't trust The Hill to not be constructing a narrative.

  • Why do they never think people can stack rocks?
  • Would you be able to show a picture of what you're talking about?

    Oh, yeah. I took tons of photos of those walls over the years. Most of them are in archives, though; like I said, we lived there over a decade ago, but I have one in my front photo album:

    I do have a picture of one end pillar, but that has pointing, and it's not obvious that pointing is aesthetic and not structural mortar (although it is often applied over mortered stone). Anyway, you can't tell the stone isn't mortared b/c of the pointing, so it isn't a useful illustration.

    That photo above, however, is clear there's no mortar, and yet that hundred y/o wall is astonishingly straight and level.

  • Just Plain Terrifying
  • Ah, but I agree with you! It's commendable that we care for our weak who would otherwise die.

    The other wolf, though, thinks there's a good chance the stupid are going to drive us to extinction.

    Thanks for not taking offense when you legitimately could have. Reason 1 why Lemmy > Reddit.

  • US prosecutors want Boeing to face criminal charges
  • I think we're of like mind on this. It's possible to realize something is broken without knowing how to fix it.

    I'm not sure why Boeing is in space, except for the "me too" factor when they noticed the successes SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin were having. I wasn't aware they had a military division - what do they make? I mean, outside of repurposed commercial cargo jets. I don't think spinning off a division that's simply modifying an existing design for a specific market makes much sense; most of the work is in the original design and manufacture, right?

  • Gaming @lemmy.world π•½π–šπ–†π–Žπ–‰π–π–—π–Žπ–Œπ– @midwest.social
    Moar Borderlands

    I know it's tragically pedestrian; and I know there's supposed to be a 4 in 2025; and I also know there's many a slip twixt cup and lip, and the gaming industry is going through some pretty radical changes... but all I really want is another Borderlands.

    There's not much they can do with it, not many places to go, and I'm sure everyone who's worked on the series over the years is thoroughly sick of it. But, damn. Every one of the main games (at least; I haven't loved every in-between spin-off) has his a sweet spot of mindless fun, funniness, and replay-ability. I've played 3 so many times through, and spent so many hours just running around in every location, even I can't work up much enthusiasm to fire it up anymore.

    There's an occasional game that fills the same niche; Bullet Storm was pretty fun, but with low replay-ability. I just want a game where I can turn off the higher brain functions and run around killing stuff in interesting ways.

    Thanks for attending my Ted Talk.

    8
    [ANN] Rook v0.1.3, a secret service backed by a KeePass v2 DB

    Rook provides a secret service a-la secret-tool, keyring, or pass/gopass, except backed by a Keepass v2 kdbx file.

    The problem Rook solves is mainly in script automation, where you have aerc, offlineimap, isync, vdirsyncer, msmtp, restic, or any other cron jobs that need passwords and which are often configured to fetch these passwords from a secret service with a CLI tool. Unlike existing solutions, Rook is headless, and does not have a bespoke secrets database full of passwords that must be manually synchronized with Keepass; instead, it uses a Keepass db directly.

    Rook is in the AUR; binaries are available from the project page.

    From the changelog, since the last Lemmy release announcement (v0.0.9):

    [v0.1.3] Mon May 20 17:12:25 2024 -0500

    Added

    • status command, a more lightweight way of testing if a DB is open. Using this instead of info in e.g. statusbar scripts greatly reduces CPU load.
    • case-insensitive search.

    Changed

    • removing some nil panics that could occur when DB is closed while a client call is being processed.

    Fixed

    • a hidden bug in the OTP pin code.
    • some errors being ignored (and therefore not logged)
    • TOTP attributes getting missed by otp generator check

    [v0.1.2] Fri Apr 26 15:13:55 2024 -0500

    Added

    • one-time pin soft locking
    • installation instructions for distributions that have rook in a repository
    • more of the special autotype {} commands are supported (backspace, space, esc)

    Changed

    • getAttr adds a little delay before typing, allowing initiator tools (like rofi) to close windows before text is output
    • cleans up code per golint/gochk

    Fixed

    • an autotype bug in outputting literals

    [v0.1.1] Sun Mar 17 13:44:54 2024 -0500

    Added

    • the original source rook.svg
    • ability to start the rook server passing in the password via stdin pipe.

    Changed

    • assets moved to directory
    • documentation referenced Keepass v4; there's no such thing, it's v2.
    • license, was missing (c) from original
    • stop trying to remove the version number from build assets
    • documentation to clarify when the master password exists as plain text, in response to questions from @d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz

    [v0.1.0] Fri Mar 15 14:03:25 2024 -0500

    Added

    • nfpm file
    • logo

    Changed

    • clears out the password so it's not being held in plain text by the flags library.
    • some of the documentation, and fixes the duplicated v0.0.9 entry in the changelog.
    • CI build targets are more limited, but also include some distro packages
    • better README documentation

    Removed

    • the monitor attribute was taken out, as rook no longer busy-polls the DB
    0
    [Ann] v0.1.2 of rook, a keepass-backed secret service

    Rook is a lightweight, stand-alone, headless secret service tool backed by a Keepass v2 database. It provides client and server modes in a single executable, built from a reasonably small (auditable) code base with a small and shallow dependency tree - it should not be challenging to verify that it is not doing anything sketchy with your secrets.

    Reasonable auditability, the desire to use KeePass files, and to do so through a headless tool that doesn't spawn off the better part of a DE through otherwise unused services, were the main motivations for Rook.

    You might be interested in Rook if one or more of these are true:

    • you use KeePass v2-compatible tools to store secrets already
    • you are not running a DE like KDE or Gnome (although Rook may still be interesting because of secret consolidation)
    • you prefer to minimize background GUI applications (KeePassXC is excellent and provides a secret service, but doesn't run headless)
    • you run background applications such as vdirsyncer, mbsync (isync), offlineimap, or restic, or applications such as aerc that can be configured to fetch credentials from a secret service rather than hard-coded in a config file.

    Pre-built binaries for limited OS/archs are built by the CI, and Rook if available in AUR. There's an nfpm config in the repos that will build RPMs and Debs, among others. I consider Rook to be essentially free of any major bugs and fit-for-purpose, although I welcome hearing otherwise.

    Utility scripts in zsh and bash are available for providing autotyping and entry/attribute selection using xdotool, rofi, xprop, and so on; these are YMMV-quality.

    Changes from v0.1.1 are:

    Added

    • one-time pin soft locking
    • installation instructions for distributions that have rook in a repository
    • more of the special autotype {} commands are supported (backspace, space, esc)

    Changed

    • getAttr adds a little delay before typing, allowing initiator tools (like rofi) to close windows before text is output
    • cleans up code per golint/gochk

    Fixed

    • an autotype bug in outputting literals
    0
    [Solved] Elektra Micro Casa Leva portafilter(s)

    Update

    On a whim, I tried searching YouTube instead of search engines and found a short video which led me to this shop in Etsy. It looks quite promising, so I'm going to update the title as "solved."

    Original post

    I've had an Elektra Micro Casa Leva for a number of years, and a while ago I bought a naked portafilter for it. It was (and still is, on the product site) as "for the Micro Casa." It is, without a doubt, one of the poorest quality things I've ever bought. The wood appears painted, not stained; it's been resistant to oiling, and lately the paint has been flaking off leaving what I assume is cheap pine. The wood itself has been cracking and splitting. The portafilter itself is painted to look like brass; I can tell this because that paint has started chipping and peeling. It looks as if it's some type of steel underneath -- I'd suspect aluminum, except for the weight and I assume the maker would be concerned about having one literally melt on a user. In any case, it's horrible. The handle is not screwed in, or else it's screwed & glued; if the metal weren't so obviously crap, I'd consider routing out the handle and replacing it myself; as is, it's so poorly made it hardly seems worth the effort. Regardless, I've been using it for a few years and it hasn't outright broken yet, but with all the paint chipping and peeling, it's looking really rough, and you don't own a Micro Casa Leva for the convenience.

    The Elektra takes a non-standard 49mm portafilter, which can make finding parts challenging. Is there a company that makes decent portafilters that fit the Leva? It's possible I simply haven't delved the depths of the web deeply enough. Or, is there a craftsman in the community who does this sort of work -- making nice handles, sourcing appropriate baskets, etc? Failing all of that, is there a place I can buy a naked portafilter of good quality for the Leva, and is there anyone making good handles for portafilters? I'm no craftsman, but I can manage sanding wood to fit a hole, and I can mix epoxy.

    What I'd really like to end up with is a brass portafilter with a beautiful wood handle with a nice grain and stain. I'd settle for a naked portafilter for the Leva that isn't a cheap piece of garbage.

    0
    Rook, a secret service backed by Keepass 4.x kdbx

    cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/9890016

    > Rook, a secret service backed by Keepass 4.x kdbx > > Howdy Lemmy, > > I'm announcing Rook v0.0.9, software that provides a secret service a-la secret-tool, keyring, or pass/gopass, except backed by a Keepass 4.x kdbx file. > > The problem Rook solves is mainly in script automation, where you have aerc, offlineimap, isync, vdirsyncer, msmtp, restic, or any other cron jobs that need passwords and which are often configured to fetch these passwords from a secret service with a CLI tool. Unlike existing solutions, Rook is headless and does not have a bespoke secrets database, full of passwords that must be manually synchronized with Keepass; instead, it uses a Keepass db directly. > > While the readme goes into more detail, I will say the motivation for Rook evolved from a desire to use a Keepass db in a GUI-less environment and finding no existing solutions. KeepassXC provides a secret service, but is not headless; it also provides a CLI tool, but this requires the db credentials on every call. kpmenu exists, but is designed specifically to require human interaction and is unsuitable for cron environment scripting. Every other solution maintains its own DB back end, incompatible with Keepass. > > Rook also benefits from minimal external dependencies, and at 1kloc is auditable by developers - I believe even by ones who do not know Go (the language of implementation). Being able to verify for yourself that there's no malicious code is a critical trait for a tool with which you're trusting secrets. > > Rook is fit for purpose, and signed binaries are provided as well as build-from-source instructions (for auditors). > > The project contains work in progress: credentials are limited to simple password-locked kdbx, and so doesn't yet support key files. Bash scripts that provide autotyping and attribute/secret selection via rofi, fzf, and xdotool are provided, for GUI environments; these have known bugs. Rook has not been tested on BSD, Darwin, or any other system than Linux, but may well work; the main sticking point is the use of a local file socket for client/server communication, so POSIX systems should be fine, but still, YMMV. > > As a final caveat: up until v0.0.9 I've been compressing with brotli, which is very nice yet somewhat obscure. With the next release, everything will be gzipped. Also included in the next release will be packages for various distributions.

    0
    Rook, a secret service backed by Keepass 4.x kdbx

    Howdy Lemmy,

    I'm announcing Rook v0.0.9, software that provides a secret service a-la secret-tool, keyring, or pass/gopass, except backed by a Keepass 4.x kdbx file.

    The problem Rook solves is mainly in script automation, where you have aerc, offlineimap, isync, vdirsyncer, msmtp, restic, or any other cron jobs that need passwords and which are often configured to fetch these passwords from a secret service with a CLI tool. Unlike existing solutions, Rook is headless and does not have a bespoke secrets database, full of passwords that must be manually synchronized with Keepass; instead, it uses a Keepass db directly.

    While the readme goes into more detail, I will say the motivation for Rook evolved from a desire to use a Keepass db in a GUI-less environment and finding no existing solutions. KeepassXC provides a secret service, but is not headless; it also provides a CLI tool, but this requires the db credentials on every call. kpmenu exists, but is designed specifically to require human interaction and is unsuitable for cron environment scripting. Every other solution maintains its own DB back end, incompatible with Keepass.

    Rook also benefits from minimal external dependencies, and at 1kloc is auditable by developers - I believe even by ones who do not know Go (the language of implementation). Being able to verify for yourself that there's no malicious code is a critical trait for a tool with which you're trusting secrets.

    Rook is fit for purpose, and signed binaries are provided as well as build-from-source instructions (for auditors).

    The project contains work in progress: credentials are limited to simple password-locked kdbx, and so doesn't yet support key files. Bash scripts that provide autotyping and attribute/secret selection via rofi, fzf, and xdotool are provided, for GUI environments; these have known bugs. Rook has not been tested on BSD, Darwin, or any other system than Linux, but may well work; the main sticking point is the use of a local file socket for client/server communication, so POSIX systems should be fine, but still, YMMV.

    As a final caveat: up until v0.0.9 I've been compressing with brotli, which is very nice yet somewhat obscure. With the next release, everything will be gzipped. Also included in the next release will be packages for various distributions.

    6
    Help with QMK issue

    I assume this is QMK, because changing the settings clears or introduces the issue. I'm using Vial for the programming/configuration.

    I have a key configured tap-dance, like many others: - on tap, and ctrl on hold. The issue is that most of the time when I type something like -p, I get only the -. Then, the next time I type p, I get 2 of them. So something like this will happen:

    I type foo -p bar baz, but don't notice the p is missing until after baz, cursor left and type p again, and end up with -pp

    Most of my keys are tap-dance of some pattern: <char> on tap, layer shift in hold, <char> on tap-hold. I've noticed this buffered character after - on other characters; it isn't just p. Changing the timeout does affect the frequency, but doesn't entirely eliminate it. I haven't noticed it on any other combo, although they're all of the same pattern; it seems to be only happening with the -/ctrl tap-dance. Removing the multitap on - eliminates the issue.

    This is my first QMK. I'd been using an Ergodox for years, and kmonad on my laptop for a year or so, although I recently switched to kanata (fantastic piece of software, incidentally), so I'm more or less familiar with the world of layers, multi-tap/tap-dance, combos, and so on. This one has me stumped, though.

    I've checked and there's no combo defined that involves dash. I've never created a QMK macro, but it occurs to me that I didn't check if there are any defined.

    Does anyone have a suggestion of how I can debug this? Could there be some bug, some bit that I accidentally set, that's causing this? Is there some QMK feature that does exactly this thing, and I've somehow enabled it? I've power cycled the keyboard, although I haven't yet tried a hard or factory reset.

    Any ideas would be appreciated!

    Edit corrected "multi-tap" to "tap-dance", as QMK calls it the one thing and not t'other

    6
    Is there a QMK Lemmy community?

    I've been looking around for one; search (in my Lemmy client) doesn't find one, and while there seems to be at least one in Reddit, the only communities listed on qmk.fm are Reddit and Discord.

    Is there a good place to ask questions in the Fediverse?

    5
    What's the term for the distance between keys called?

    I have been using a piantor built for me by beekeeb.com, and am enjoying the more agressive stagger than my previous Ergodox. However, my typing experience is being spoiled by how tight the key spacing is. I have large hands, and can span an octave on a full-size piano; the Piantor is downright cramped.

    In looking for a possible replacement (the Kyria was my primary option, but I guess splitkb.com has entirely given up on selling pre-builts, and I don't solder), what should I be looking at for specs to get some wider spacing on the keys? Is it simply "key spacing?"

    Most commercial keyboards are fine; my prior was an Ergodox and the spacing was fine. The Piantor supplies that - it might even be a touch too much, but it's still better than the tepid stagger on the Ergos.

    6
    Question: Terms for language anachronisms

    What are the terms for language anachronisms?

    I had a conversation about a year ago with someone about anachronisms in language. We both felt that there were terms for these things, but could neither recall nor find (via web search) satisfying answers. This came up again recently in a different discussion in a Lemmy community, and it's driving me a little nuts. Help me Linguistics-Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope.

    So we have the term "skeumorphism," which refers to oramental anachronism. I may be using "anachronism" incorrectly, but it's the hammer I have. Skeumorphisms, in computers, refer to the graphical representations of things, but not the underlying concepts. There are similar linguistic anachronisms that I feel also have specific labels:

    • "disks" which are still in use, but are largely being replaced by solid-state, rectangular SSDs; but most people still call all persistent storage devices "disks."
    • "film" to refer to movies, regardless of the media (increasingly digital and having nothing to do with film).
    • "rice" to refer to the process of fancifying something, like computer desktops
    • "desktops" to refer to computer GUI window managing interfaces
    • "files" and "folders" in computers

    Are these all the same category of things? Is there a term for them?

    0
    Cancel install, or... ?

    A recent update to Droid-ify has improved the user experience in a confusing way.

    This is the new package installation modal confirmation dialog.

    2
    Why are owl hoots low-pitched?

    There was an owl hooting outside our house earlier, and it occurred to me that every other bird has a high-pitched call.

    Ravens have a croak that could be considered low, but their loud call is a caw that's higher. I can't think of another bird with a call nearly as low as owls'.

    Search engines are no help, mostly duplicates answering why they hoot. Why are owls' calls so much lower than other birds?

    15
    How accurate is current eye-tracking tecknology?

    Can commodity products detect which pixel you're looking at on a screen?

    For a number of years, I've wanted a system that eliminates mouse pointer devices. In my imaginary system, there are hotkeys bound to left &amp; right mouse clicks, and what gets clicked is whatever you're looking at.

    When I've looked at this before, the tech field tends to suffer in granularity and/or physical limitations, like needing to limit gross head movements. Most products talk about what they can do, but avoid talking about their limitations. It can be hard to find out what devices are capable of - accuracy, working with corrective eyewear, speed, head movement, software (OS) support, etc. Many products are geared at research, leading me to believe the tech isn't there yet.

    Anyone have, or used a device that would be able to replace a mouse?

    6
    Non-intrusive PGP pinentry

    I got tired of pinentry popping up and interrupting whatever I was doing; I didn't find a solution elsewhere, so I wrote a little bash script to address this. This is designed for (poly|i3|way|...)bar users. The blog entry (no ads, no tracking) linked has the script verbatim, plus some rambling about the why and wherefore.

    It's 22 lines of does-stuff; the rest is whitespace, comments, and instructions -- including a little blob example of using it with polybar.

    A known issue is that it does occasionally pop up pinentry twice in a row when unlocking. I'm not surprised, and it has happened to me only once since I've been using it -- not enough for me to need to bother trying to address it. But I wanted to call it out.

    It's not rocket science, but it took a bit of time to make sure it functioned correctly (enough), and hopefully it'll help someone else.

    6
    Wall control panels

    On Amzn, there are nicely framed, wall-mounted control panels for proprietary home automation systems. What are people using for HA? I'm leaning toward trying to wall mount tablets, but I'd need 3, and cost starts to factor in. Mounts are a problem; I want it to look as built in as possible, but most mounts aren't picture-frame style. The ones that I've found that are, are designed for specific tablets, and not the low end cheap ones. I don't have a 3D printer, so I'm limited to mounts I can buy.

    I like some projects here I've seen using eInk - that's the ideal solution! Is there a source for pre-fab Android eInk wall mounted control panels, or are what I've seen bespoke projects?

    I'm not opposed to gross wiring, and am not afraid of cutting holes in dry-wall... it's really the mounting that I'm stuck at. Android 7-10" tablets sufficient to run the UI would probably work, and I can probably even figure out wiring the charger, if I could just get some nice picture-frame style mounts.

    What are your solutions that you think is pretty neat? Or products that I may have missed?

    31
    Do Lemmy admins have to federate communities?

    Suuuuper new to Lemmy, so apologies in advamce if this is a particularly stupid question. DDG has been no help.

    I'm a member of midwest.social. I'd like to subscribe, and post to, a community (sub?) on another server. I know the other server is federated with midwest.social, because I can see other subs, and I know the sub on the foreign server (in this case, lemmy.ml), which I found with DDG.

    So why can't I find the sub in Jerboa? I've searched by name, by name including server, by every combination of reference I can think of. !, #, @.

    It's a technical sub, and I can't imagine it's been intentionally blocked. So I'm thinking that maybe Lemmy is whitelist-based? Do admins have to explicitly include subs from other instances? Or is there some magic that I've somehow missed about how to get to a federated sub that maybe nobody has yet accessed on the instance I've joined?

    I found an old (1y) discussion about how to make Lemmy more accessible to new users. Someone offhand referenced this topic (accessing federated subs) needing more clarity, but with no explanation. A pointer to a how-to would be handy; maybe answers will help some future user when they find this post through whichever fad search engine privacy wonks are using in a couple of years.

    1
    sxan π•½π–šπ–†π–Žπ–‰π–π–—π–Žπ–Œπ– @midwest.social

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