Technology

Most of the casks that disappeared from Homebrew in the last couple of years didn’t go because the software was bad. They went because the author hadn’t paid Apple. That’s not how it’s phrased, anyway. The PR says the cask failed brew audit. The audit flags the binary as unsigned, or signed but not notarised, or signed by a Developer ID that doesn’t match the bundle. The deprecation policy gives the cask a sunset date. From the outside it looks like quality control. From the maintainer’s side, it’s a $99-a-year invoice from Cupertino. ...

I run Invidious on a TrueNAS SCALE box at home. Ads, tracking, the algorithm’s mood swings – none of that gets through. But Shorts still wrecked the subscriptions feed. Half the page was a wall of clips I had no intention of watching. I assumed there’d be a setting. There isn’t. Upstream has three feature requests asking for one (#3920, #4457, #3541) – all closed as “not planned”. The TrueNAS app wraps stock Invidious, so the GUI offers nothing either. ...

I’ve been running a Mastodon instance for a while now, and every time I set one up from scratch I end up digging through documentation that’s either outdated or assumes you already know what you’re doing. This is the guide I wish I’d had. What you need A server with Docker and Docker Compose installed A domain name that points to your server’s IP address Somewhere to send email (Mailgun, SendGrid, or your own SMTP server) That’s it. No Kubernetes, no systemd fiddling, no compiling from source. ...

I’ve been trying to figure out which productivity app actually fits my workflow. Both WHPH (Work Hard Play Hard) and Super Productivity keep coming up, so I thought it was worth comparing them properly. WHPH (Work Hard Play Hard) WHPH is a general-purpose productivity app. It does several things: tracks your tasks, monitors which apps you use and for how long, helps you build habits, and gives you a basic sense of where your time goes. The sync between desktop and mobile happens over your local network – no cloud, no account, just devices talking to each other. ...

I have a drawer full of spare AA and AAA batteries. Some are fresh, some are from remote controls that died last winter, some I found in a toy. Before tossing them or putting them to use, I check the voltage with a multimeter. It takes thirty seconds and saves you from guessing. What you need A cheap multimeter is all you need. Any digital one will do — I’ve used the same £8 model from Amazon for years. The probes should be intact and the battery in the multimeter itself should have charge (if it beeps when you turn it on, you’re good). ...

Both are Firefox forks for Android. Both strip out telemetry. They diverge on what to do after that. Iceraven is built around customisation. It exposes about:config, supports a wider range of add-ons than stock Firefox for Android, and tries to replicate the desktop Firefox experience on mobile. Updates come through GitHub releases. It’s aimed at people who want to tweak their browser. IronFox comes from Mull, which itself is a privacy-hardened Firefox fork. It removes more telemetry than Iceraven, disables features that leak data by default (WebGL, for example), and keeps the interface stripped down. It’s on F-Droid and Accrescent as well as GitHub. The trade-off is that some websites break because of the aggressive defaults. ...

TOGAF is documentation-heavy and linear. Scrum is iterative and lightweight. Running them together means breaking the Architecture Development Method into sprint-sized chunks instead of treating it as a single pass from Phase A to Phase H. Mapping ADM phases to sprints The ADM doesn’t have to run in one direction. You can treat each phase as a backlog item and pull work through in sprints. TOGAF Phase Scrum equivalent Preliminary Sprint 0 — governance, tools, team setup Phase A: Vision Product backlog epics for the EA vision Phases B-D: Business, Data, Application, Technology One domain per sprint Phase E: Opportunities & Solutions Backlog refinement for implementation Phase F: Migration Planning Roadmap prioritisation Phase G: Implementation Delivery sprints Phase H: Change Management Sprint retrospectives Roles The Enterprise Architect maps closest to Product Owner — they prioritise the architecture backlog. The Architecture Board shows up at sprint reviews. The Scrum Master facilitates the process and removes blockers. ...

I used to take on any project that came my way. That was a mistake. Not every problem deserves your time, and not every client is worth working with. Over the years I’ve learned to filter opportunities through a simple set of questions before committing to anything. Can they fix it themselves? If the answer is yes – or if a decent blog post could solve it – then it’s not a consulting engagement. It’s a homework assignment. The value of consulting lies in the gap between what the client knows and what they need to know. Close that gap and you’ve got nothing to sell. ...

The quickest way to get a BIOS serial number on Linux: sudo dmidecode -s system-serial-number That’s usually all you need. dmidecode reads the DMI/SMBIOS table and prints the serial number directly. Other options If dmidecode isn’t available or doesn’t return what you need: # lshw sudo lshw -C bios | grep serial # /sys class interface (no sudo needed) cat /sys/class/dmi/id/product_serial The /sys/class/dmi/id/ path is the cleanest option if you want to avoid sudo. It exposes several DMI fields: ...

There was a period, roughly 2004 to 2008, when phone manufacturers decided that phones could be fashion accessories. Not phones that looked like fashion accessories. Actual fashion accessories that happened to make phone calls. I collected a few of them, or at least got close enough to handle them, and I still think some of the best phones I’ve ever held had nothing to do with specs or benchmarks. Nokia 8800 Sirocco This was the one that started it for me. Stainless steel body, a sliding mechanism that felt like opening a luxury watch case, and a weight to it that told you it was built from something real. The Nokia 8800 Sirocco wasn’t trying to be a smartphone. It was trying to be a thing you pulled out of your pocket and knew, immediately, was expensive. It worked. ...

A friend sent me a VMware image of Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha 1, so I’m sharing it here in case anyone wants to try the new release without installing it. The image is a fresh install with GNOME on a 64-bit system. VMware Tools are included, and it was built on VMware Workstation 7.1.2 (build 301548) under Windows. No software updates have been applied, so it’s a clean snapshot of the alpha as it shipped. ...

Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad yesterday. A tablet. Bigger than a phone, smaller than a laptop. No keyboard, no trackpad, no USB ports worth mentioning. The internet is already divided. Some call it a giant iPhone. Others call it a toy. A few are excited. I don’t have one yet, but the idea of a device that’s comfortable to hold for reading, browsing, and watching videos while on the couch appeals to me. It fills a gap that neither phones nor laptops really cover. ...

GNUSL3S Linux is a distribution built in Goa. It bundles a wide range of pre-installed software spanning bioinformatics (EMBOSS, Primer3), security tools for penetration testing, system administration utilities, and development editors. Boot from the DVD for a graphical interface with KDE, XFce, Fluxbox, or IceWM. Based on: Slackware, SLAX, Alixe, Davix Version: 10.05.xx Architecture: i486 (32-bit) Origin: Goa, India Status: Discontinued

Not sure which Linux distribution you’re running? Open a terminal and type: cat /etc/issue On Debian 4.0, for example, this outputs: Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 \n \l The \n and \l are escape sequences for the hostname and terminal device – they’re not part of the distribution name. This works on most distributions. Some also have /etc/os-release with more detail: cat /etc/os-release

Mandriva Linux 2010 is launching on November 3rd. Highlights from the announcement: KDE 4.3.1, GNOME 2.28, kernel 2.6.31.1, and Xorg 1.6.4 RC 1 with updated Intel graphics drivers. There’s also a Moblin 2 spin for netbooks. I’ve used Mandriva off and on over the years. The Control Centre has always been one of the better configuration tools in the Linux world. Worth keeping an eye on to see how this release shapes up.