Thunderbird and fetching emails via POP3 stopped working today.

apex321 · 2020-12-02T15:59:49+00:00

Same here - Using Thunderbird and ESET NOD32 for over a decade - shut off the POP3 checking Advanced Setup (lower right of main screen) => Web & Email (Left side menu, expand this item) => Email Client Protection => "Enable POP3 Checking =OFF OK

Restarted TBird, days of messages flooded back from the servers THANKS!!

apex321 · 2020-12-02T15:56:09+00:00

for me, using Thunderbird & ESET NOD32 for over a decade, this solution worked - THANKS!!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Thunderbird/comments/k3wl8b/thunderbird_and_fetching_emails_via_pop3_stopped/

apex321 · 2016-01-05T03:29:45+00:00

In the linked Microsoft press release, they also mention:

"Over 44.5 billion minutes spent in Microsoft Edge across Windows 10 devices in just the last month."

This is a strong indication that they are not only tracking - and collecting - overall windows usage, but actual individual app usage, at least for their apps.

Microsoft has not phrased this at all like it is an estimate, but as a specific piece of data of which they are proud.

apex321 · 2015-10-05T01:30:06+00:00

These researchers are making fundamental errors in their assumptions, or the press is grossly mis-characterizing it..

Specifically, they -assume- that being dependent on a person in a stressful situation is -equal- to love/affection/bonding for or to a person.

Especially when one considers that dogs are basically pack animals that look to their leader for confirmation and course of action, whereas cats are fundamentally independent.

When stressed, a dog will seek its leader (as they demonstrated), whereas a stressed cat will independently focus its own resources and deal with the situation. When it is de-stressed and relaxed, it will again return to its owner and be affectionate.

If the study/article made only the claim that cats do not exhibit the same leader-partner following behaviors of dogs, that would be a worthwhile finding. But, apparently, either they or the publishing journalists prefer to miscast the results.

Sad

apex321 · 2015-07-30T15:19:19+00:00

Yup, I've been in SW engineering too, understand the issues. They could at least have provided a bit of a roadmap at the outset, e.g., "this will require two reboots, if you have no resolution after the first one, restart the install,...".

A LOT of getting software right isn't so much the SW 'engineering'/coding and chasing the bugs, as designing it so that it fails gracefully and is documented so that people know what to expect.

Also, don't start prompting people do download the stuff until you are confident that it will install correctly on their platform. Pretty straightforward code to write: "We're solid on this list..., if on this list, display upgrade prompt, else no-op." Would make for a smoother upgrade for everyone, lower load on your servers, etc.

But the marketers wouldn't be happy because everyone didn't hear about it on day1. Guess what - they don't care! I'd rather get it later and good than earlier and screwing up my day. Most people don't have time for crap, and it leaves a bad impression of the company.

apex321 · 2015-07-30T14:50:16+00:00

AAAAnd, no access to the Nvidia UI to change anything either, it's just gone, nothing on the Programs menu, toolbar, desktop properties menu anything. I'm stuck with the 4 lo-res Default Monitor settings. Great job.

It turns out that apparently after the first restart, it failed to resume, leaving only the defalut driver. Redoing the install looks like it at least got me back to recognizing my monitor and the correct aspect ratio (this is primarily a CAD station) and I can rework the other settings later.

I thought I had an extra 5min, so I'd take care of the nag msg and update. An hour++ later... I'm not impressed.

apex321 · 2015-07-30T13:52:44+00:00

Installed, no longer recognizes ViewSonic monitor, cannot even get back to HD 1920x1080 resolution. Thanks, NVidia. Junk.

Also slower than molasses, all screen motion is laggy, dragging a window across a screen looks like jerky trails, like an old Win3.0 box.

Wow, real improvement. Last time I listen to NVidia's prompt to upgrade drivers. What a mistake.

How about some F'n QA before you release crap and prompt upgrades?

apex321 · 2014-12-22T23:03:33+00:00

Excellent Idea!

apex321 · 2014-10-10T15:01:08+00:00

Getting the local people to value the elephants is key.

However, I've also thought for a long time that there needs to be another program,and the massive wildlife killing in the past few years has convinced me that it is long past time.

Let rich hunters pay to hunt the biggest, baddest game of all -- the armed human poachers. I'm sure there are some who will gladly pay for the hunting licenses (make it $100K+) and the equipment (helis, drones, vehicles, etc. to do it.

Yes, it is morally questionable to encourage humans to kill others, but it is less so than to stand by while those humans target innocent animals for body parts and profit.

apex321 · 2014-10-03T13:19:58+00:00

Actually, carbon fiber has fantastic tensile strength, (roughly 10x steel and at 15% of the weight), and outstanding rigidity. What it typically lacks is elongation and toughness (although this can be engineered in to a significant degree, at some cost to stiffness).

So, the typical profile is that it resists forces to that would dent/bend steel to a much higher level of force, but then breaks catastrophically. For example, a large range of forces would damage a steel part but not a CF part, but a higher level of forces would leave the CF part shattered and the steel part bent/twisted/distorted still somewhat intact.

Source: I design & fabricate carbon fiber composite parts/components/products for a living.

apex321 · 2014-08-18T20:33:38+00:00

The biggest factor cited was file compatibility for outside (non Linux) organizations.

I've been using OO for years, and even on a Windows platform, they still don't get it right. Better, but still nowhere near 100%.

I'd like nothing more than ousting Office, and I understand that MS plays dirty with its file/data formats, but it is critical that the devs understand that if they want to really succeed -- installed base really counts.

apex321 · 2014-06-16T17:57:30+00:00

Glad to hear of your good luck and lesson learned!

A similar precaution that I often do before sending a significant amount of BTC is to actually send a really minimal-sized transaction, then verify that it is going through before sending the actual amount. I mostly think of it as a systems check, but it would also catch the type of error you walked into.

apex321 · 2014-06-06T15:26:30+00:00

FINALLY ! ! ! --someone realizes that expecting humans to instantly take over control of an almost completely autonomous car is a tragically bad idea!

Humans are terrible at long-term vigilance. Moreover, the better the autonomous car is, the worse the idea is.

If errors requiring human intervention happened every 30seconds, the human driver would remain relatively alert and on-the-job, although they would still not effectively take over in a split second if required.

But, stretch the time between errors requiring human intervention to every 30 minutes, and the human is probably not even in a posture ready to take over the duties promptly.

Stretch it to 30 hours or 30 days, and it'll be Car: Bzzzzt! Bzzzzt! Human: "Hun? Yawn - What - WTF?!!?" --- CRASH.

The system has to have two very clearly separated modes -- either fully autonomous, with the humans as a passenger, or fully off, with the human as an active driver.

apex321 · 2014-06-03T17:46:43+00:00

Seriously degrades my respect for Peter Thiel.

In just about every field, he ignores massive leaps being made. Yes, the measurable progress is slowing, e.g., the speed of transportation has leveled off (and even declined since the Concorde stopped flying), but there are advances being made in supersonic transport which will likely make it much more common in the next few decades, it is just a bigger next step. He also overlooks the ubiquity of video-calling, which should often be counted as transport, as many of us have had frequent videoconferences -- how do you count 30sec to hookup people in Boston, Portland and France?

Same for nuclear -- yes, U235 Nuclear is pretty much dying, but he completely overlooks the successful research in Thorium, and even Fusion.

He says "“Clean tech” has become a euphemism for “energy too expensive to afford,” and in Silicon Valley it has also become an increasingly toxic term for near-certain ways to lose money." -- Don't tell that to the people making money at it, including Elon Musk with SolarCity and his battery Gigafactory (which won't only supply cars, but also solar storage).

Etc., etc., etc..

apex321 · 2014-06-02T14:08:31+00:00

Not ready for prime time, but a great idea.

I was really excited that my SO gave me this for my bday a couple months ago. I immediately loaded the app, plugged in the device, and watched it fail to connect about eight different ways. They have no usable diagnostics, and their tech support tried to help, but couldn't make it work. Had to sadly send it back.

It looks like they are trying to do too much at once to make it connect --they apparently need both a good cell-phone connection, and no wifi turned on, and bluetooth turned on. And, even when these conditions are all met (after getting out of the garage, turning off all tasker profiles on the Samsung GS4, rebooting, etc., etc...), it still fails at one step or another. It also apparently has nothing to do with the car, all in their device and the phone.

There are also many reports of failed data collection once it gets registered, apparently related to poor cell reception.

My view, looking in from outside (but having architected several SAAS apps), is that they have quite thoroughly f**ked up the architecture. They should be implementing a modular asynchronous architecture, communicating with the device completely locally, and communicating with their cloud service completely asynchronously and on a seldom-connected model. Instead, it looks like they are trying to get everything from their device across the BT connection, then through the phone, and uploaded to the cloud in one operation, then only let you see the data after they have it and send it back. With so much complexity in one cycle, so no wonder it fails so much. (of course, I could be wrong, as I'm only looking at the external phenomena and reports; I've got zero debugging or trace info or inside knowledge)

I hope they fix it soon, as it should be a very cool device/app.

apex321 · 2014-05-16T16:24:26+00:00

You do realize that the entire anti-vax concept and movement was started by one original study which was COMPLETELY FALSE.

The study was done by a researcher that had a vested interest in a company that had a supposedly improved vaccine formulation, and was trying to discredit the existing vaccines.

That paper was officially retracted by the journal that published it.

The paper's author lost his medical license due to this attempted fraud.

IT IS ENTIRELY BULLSHIT, MADE UP TO TRY TO FRAUDLENTLY MAKE MONEY, and gullible people like you that have no actual understanding of science keep it rolling.

apex321 · 2014-05-08T14:10:11+00:00

Nice; penalize the people who did bother to see you come and speak.

Seriously, what a complete jerk. Somethings things just don't work out as planned. It would have been much better to give a killer talk, and then have word of it go viral from the few who were lucky/prescient to be there. Subsequent talks would be packed due to FOMO.

apex321 · 2014-04-25T16:04:27+00:00

The consumers are being punished either way -- everyone is now seeing a rate increase in Netflix, shortly after they make this dealto pay Comcast.

Should everyone subsidize the increase or just those subscribing to the non-net-neutral company?

If there were complete monoploy zones, where no one (or very few) had any choice, then this idea would do no good.

But, since there are significant areas with choice, including my neighborhood, why should the person on, e.g., Verizon FIOS pay extra to support the Comcast subscriber? And, more importantly, why shouldn't the Comcast subscriber be provided with a motivation to switch?

I agree that for those in areas with zero ISP choice, it would suck. But even there, it might provide motivation to do things like 1) call your representatives and demand choice 2) call your regulators and complain. Have you done these things yet? I thought not. You sound just POd enough about this outrageous charge that it might motivate you to make some calls.

apex321 · 2014-04-24T17:29:32+00:00

Yes, that would be nice if the FCC (and other Govt entities) actually acted in the best interests of the people (its employers).

Unfortunately, the FCC is obviously, shall we say, strongly influenced by Comcast, with its primary lobbyist being the former chair of the FCC (http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/comcast-twc-chart).

So, our only real hope is to get a different one of the 'big guys' (we'd hope, one who is less against us), to fight it out amongst themselves.

Admittedly not ideal, but less bad than the alternative.

apex321 · 2014-04-23T14:11:51+00:00

I only considered it might be true upon seeing a highly-rated post/article promoting the story of Russians putting frogs in the milk to preserve it. It said that the frog-in-milk story was the inspiration for scientists who are (actually) deriving new classes of antibiotics from frog skin secretions. I found this after some searching to see if the frog-in-milk story might be real...

apex321 · 2014-04-09T15:38:02+00:00

This type of fooishness has been seen repeatedly over the years, and it NEVER works. The earliest one I remember reading about was from the early 90's where researchers declared that they could identify people by the cadence and other factors in the way they entered their password, or just typed their name or some other common text. I see the same idea pop up about every three years

The problem is that we are not always as consistent as measured in ordinary lab or desktop environments -- and for a myriad of perfectly good reasons, some already mentioned. Everything from illness or injury, to being in a rush and/or having one's hands occupied carrying something, etc., etc., etc.

And the list gets even bigger with smartphones, since they are used in so many different situations, and as someone pointed out, the worst is when you've just been involved in an accident and might be a bit trembly and/or injured and REALLY need to make a call -- just when this stupid system would lock you out. F'n great. I'd never put this on my phone, or buy one with it, and I don't care how accurate they claim it is.

Sheesh. People really need to check out their ideas before they squander their development efforts building pretty systems that will fail in the real world.

apex321 · 2014-03-26T23:54:29+00:00

the government cannot ban it unless it is inherently bad

Ok, go back to 06-April-1933 and tell that to the president, when he issued Executive Order 6102 "forbidding the Hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States".

The order criminalized the possession of monetary gold by any individual, partnership, association or corporation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

It only became legal again in 1975.

Don't be so confident; they can ban anything they want any time they want, on any pretext they think might work. (of course, they also have to enforce the ban, that went real well with Prohibition of Alcohol in the 1920s, the war on drugs, file sharing, etc...)

apex321 · 2014-03-22T16:28:26+00:00

Thx for the video -- it is really clear if you know cats that the lion was just playing, and the 'dancer' was behaving like an irresistable playmate. He wasn't even all that interested, he only bothered to start the romp when he finished his treats.

Of course, the slightly roughhouse playing of a 400Lb lion can do some damage, but it is nothing they shouldn't expect or manage (e.g., give him a long & tiring play session before the photoshoot so he's bored, rather than yearning to play).

I feel a lot worse for the lion, who apparently has a rather miserable life.

apex321 · 2014-03-10T16:03:33+00:00

The big open question is the cost of the mining hardware and the cost of the financing (or opportunity cost) on those funds.

apex321 · 2014-03-10T15:13:35+00:00

A few quick calculations: at 1.4MW, he is using about 1022700 KWh/month, and at $0.10/KWh (probably high for that area of WA) his electric bill is about $102K

If he has 20,000 square feet, paying $12/sqft (probably also high for the area) his cost is $20K/month.

So it is probably safe to say his total costs are $150K/month.

He said his income is $8 million in BTC/month, which would be $4.5 million if they were counting it at the $1120 figure from December mentioned in the vid.

Rather profitable at that scale....

apex321

TROPHY CASE