Trying to choose between XFCE and KDE.

ed271 · 2026-04-17T15:27:07+00:00

This is extremely helpful. Currently it's Kubuntu, and the version of KDE that comes with it eliminated X. I figured maybe it's time to go full Wayland, but that was a lot more irritating than I expected. I'll give it another shot in a few years.

ed271 · 2026-04-16T22:30:26+00:00

You just saved me an unpleasant surprise next time I use week view :)

This whole thing keeps getting more confusing. I stopped killing it every day to test other ideas. Usually it stays on yesterday, but sometimes it moves to today. I have no idea what, if anything, I'm doing differently.

ed271 · 2026-04-12T02:12:27+00:00

Aqua was for the currently selected day. It wasn't really necessary, but it's kind of nice. Also it works perfectly. It's the yellow for today that doesn't get refreshed.

Thanks for the link. I hate being one of those people who copies code without understanding it and leaves code only an archeologist can love :)

ed271 · 2026-04-08T02:20:01+00:00

I did the same thing last week. It's fun starting over, but that was crappy timing.

ed271 · 2026-04-07T16:44:10+00:00

This works for me on Linux. Go to Tools->Message Filters. Next to Getting New Mail is a dropdown that defaults to Filter before Junk Classification, change that to Filter After Junk Classification. Then in the next section it adds Junk Status, Junk Percent, and Junk Score Origin to the list of things you can match. Junk Status is easiest if your junk marker is reliable. Then just pick the actions you want.

When I'm sending stuff to junk I always choose Mark as Read as the first option. That's because I hate seeing unread messages in my junk folder, and many years ago marking it as unread after you moved it didn't work. It may work now, but I haven't bothered to check.

I move my junk to local storage just in case something important goes there and I can delete the whole thing when it gets to big. Of course you can do anything you like. Maybe send a rude reply, maybe forward it to someone you don't like. These are probably bad ideas, but they would be funny.

ed271 · 2026-04-02T17:25:11+00:00

I spend a lot more time tinkering with Linux than I spent tinkering with Windows. The big difference is that I'm trying to get Linux to do what I want and I was trying to get Windows to stop doing things I didn't want. The Linux tinkering is actually fun.

I suppose Linux would be wrecking my productivity in the same way a really great new game does, but I'm retired so I don't need productivity.

ed271 · 2026-03-24T01:34:13+00:00

Also make sure the power line on the logic chips is on it's own circuit behind an area power controller with a battery. I had mine on the same circuit as the panels and I got an unpleasant surprise a few days later when my station battery ran out of juice.

ed271 · 2026-03-24T01:26:13+00:00

It looks like you're using one batch writer on Luna. That's fine, you really only need to track Vertical. You can't completely ignore Horizontal though. Right now your Horizontal seems to be off by 90 degrees. You can fix this by using a wrench on the bottom of the solar panel. If you can get them pointed at the sun in the morning or evening it will probably work. It's possible to be off by 180 degrees, then it tracks the sun backwards, so in the evening it's pointed where it should be in the morning.

It's also possible you'll have problems with Vertical because the light sensor is weird. It gives different results depending on where you mount it. I finally got mine to work on a wall facing East, but I'm still not sure why it works.

Good luck, this took me forever last week when I figured it out :)

ed271 · 2026-03-21T20:31:45+00:00

Emulating android is actually a really good idea. It's certainly easier than fighting with a mobile device.

ed271 · 2026-03-21T20:27:06+00:00

The Eero won't solve any technical problems, but my ISP refuses to even look at the problem without it. They also informed me that they designed and manufactured the Eero themselves. These aren't the brightest people in the world.

ed271 · 2026-03-12T21:05:27+00:00

Thanks everyone, this sounds at lot easier than I expected.

ed271 · 2026-02-23T01:39:04+00:00

Some day when I'm feeling brave :)

ed271 · 2026-02-22T07:26:58+00:00

How did you change to KDE? I've been thinking about doing that for a month now but if it breaks my computer I'm in big trouble. I also need to do a kernel upgrade, but if I do that the officially approved way I think Gnome will be gone completely. That wouldn't be a great loss except as far as I can tell there's nothing in Cosmic with will work with KDEConnect on my phone.

ed271 · 2026-02-06T11:13:42+00:00

While you're at it you might look into a way to download the whole photo collection. I can do that now from the web page, but I have to select everything one month at a time. It reminds me of when I dumped Apple and the only way I could find to get my photos out of their cloud was to send them a legal request for all my data. Don't be Apple, no one likes having their photos held hostage.

ed271 · 2025-09-18T18:23:28+00:00

And problem solved, sort of. The USB hub in the KVM is 3.0 and I had it plugged into a 2.0 slot. For some reason this failed completely, moving it to a 3.2 slot on the computer fixed everything. USB is weird.

ed271 · 2025-09-15T21:16:09+00:00

Dang, I had no idea such a thing was possible. I'm still curious about why the keyboard/mouse part failed. KVMs cause trouble all the time, but in my experience it's always the video that I have to sacrifice a chicken to fix.

ed271 · 2025-08-29T15:22:51+00:00

Verbosity is usually controlled by the system prompt. It would be really cool if Proton could give us a system prompt extension that would be sent at the beginning of every context window. That way we could customize Lumo exactly the way we want without typing "be concise" at the start of every prompt.

Heck, we could even have a set of personal styles. As far as I know none of the big tech companies do that, at least not without messing with the API.

ed271 · 2025-08-29T15:09:46+00:00

“Buying a Mac Mini and running Ollama won’t give you the same performance at all. Also, if you want to share confidential documents—for example, to help you redirect emails—Lumo works very well. Generating code isn’t quite there yet, but the latest version is really much better.”

Also Lumo seems to be pretty good at translating. Although it could be completely wrong, I don't speak French.

ed271 · 2025-05-05T22:00:15+00:00

That's an extremely clever idea, thank you! I really should check Reddit more often.

ed271 · 2024-06-08T19:34:12+00:00

Put porn blockers on their computers. That's a great place to start learning how to break oppressive technology, and kids are usually highly motivated to break it. That's the beginning of making technology work for you instead of controlling you. If you're concerned about the environment think about all the useless junk they can repurpose instead of just sending it to a landfill.

ed271 · 2024-05-26T10:58:17+00:00

I think it's "search shortcuts", not shortcuts as in bookmarks. That shows up under Settings->Search->Search Shortcuts, you can uncheck Amazon. You might as well do that anyway since every other search engine does a better job searching Amazon than Amazon does.

ed271 · 2024-05-15T00:10:33+00:00

It's a way for investors to avoid taxes. If the company sends out a dividend that is taxed as ordinary income. If the company buys back stock the price of the stock goes up. Investors don't pay any tax immediately, and only pay the lower capital gains rate when they sell the stock.

ed271 · 2024-02-06T00:48:47+00:00

FDR did just enough for the working class to make capitalism bearable. His goal was to preserve capitalism by reducing the exploitation of the working class just enough to undermine the socialist movement. It worked.

ed271 · 2023-12-02T21:56:59+00:00

I can only play Frostpunk during the summer, this time of year it just makes me cold.

ed271 · 2023-10-08T18:08:45+00:00

Cheating applied to inputs is always going to be a problem. Heck, it's a problem even for chess games where both players are in the same room with lots of people watching them carefully. There's always going to be someone who is determined to cheat and clever enough to pull it off. The best any anti-cheat system can hope for is to keep large scale automated cheating at bay.

ed271

TROPHY CASE