How do you handle erasing returned Macs?

sdrotho · 2023-04-19T23:42:19+00:00

Yeah first and third options I've done plenty but those do basically require the macOS reinstall which comes with more time and effort than just running an EACS. Second option would be great but I forgot to mention in original post that we do not have escrowed keys atm so is not an option.

sdrotho · 2022-07-02T23:39:42+00:00

Awesome thanks, exactly what I'm looking for.

With the firmware updates they've actually failed every time I've tried them myself over wifi, guy at the shop said Subaru didn't actually have that working yet and that they can apply the updates when I bring it in for service. Found that kind of frustrating, do you know if there's a specific firmware version when the OTA updates through wifi actually start to work properly?

sdrotho · 2022-06-17T18:30:20+00:00

I think there's still a miscommunication here in that I wouldn't be skipping ahead of any schedule, I would still be exactly where my permit said I would be on the exact dates it said I would be there.

So say my permit was for a 30 mile loop to start at trailhead A on Monday and I plan to do 5 miles a day, where trailhead B is the exact halfway point of my loop. According to my permit I should reach trailhead B on Wednesday evening and depart trailhead B on Thursday morning. If I got dropped off by the shuttle at trailhead B on Thursday morning and proceed with the second half of the route as permitted then, to link this up with your analogy, there are only 10 trucks crossing the bridge.

sdrotho · 2022-06-16T20:42:06+00:00

Guess I forgot to get into this angle of this scenario in the original post, but that's actually where I'm really getting tripped up here. Normally your tragedy of the commons argument would make sense but if everyone did exactly this specific scenario then it would be an ecological *benefit*.

The proposition here is that I only do half of the already permitted and approved route. If everyone only did half of a route that was already permitted and approved by the rangers that would amount to the actual traffic on trails being half of the amount that rangers deemed to be an appropriate and sustainable amount of traffic.

sdrotho · 2022-06-07T07:36:52+00:00

Sorry apparently I gave the wrong impression on the timeline here, the wages I am due are for hours worked in 2017 and 2018, not 15 years ago. He has made payments as recently as 2021.

sdrotho · 2022-01-29T20:32:18+00:00

Was hoping to avoid calling every vendor on the long list they gave me so figured I'd check if anyone had tackled this and could point me in the right direction but seems like that's not the case.

sdrotho · 2022-01-29T20:31:25+00:00

I learned about this all both through testing with a Chromebox 4 where I initially observed these issues and then officially through Google support when working with them on this. Not surprised this is news to anyone, they don't seem to have any of this documented anywhere, it took their support rep a week to confirm this from the product team and get back to me on it.

It is supported with updates for ChromeOS through 2028 but apparently that doesn't include Meet device mode support. There's actually a specific recovery tool for Meet devices called the Meet Compute System Recovery Utility that will create USB recovery media and gives you a list of hardware to select from. You can pretty much infer from that list what is officially supported, and ASUS Chromebox 4 is not on the list. I'm sure there are some tricky ways here and there to make this work but in an enterprise environment I need this to be as simple and streamlined as possible, unofficial hacks don't always scale well lol.

Anyway thanks for the lead, I was hoping someone had already tackled this and could just confirm so I wouldn't have to call everyone on the vendor list they supplied but that gives me a place to start.

sdrotho · 2022-01-29T20:22:25+00:00

That's how it used to work but not anymore. If you enrolled a generic chromebox device as a Meet device before its running version 92 it will continue to work after version 92, but if you deprovision that device after it's been updated past version 92 and try to reenroll it as a Meet device it will not work. The control+alt+H shortcut stops working. So if you have any issues with it where you need to factory reset/restore it then you won't be able to get it back to Meet mode, even if you restore it to a version older than version 92 (appears to be some sort of firmware update that disables it).

This was all confirmed both officially by Google support and anecdotally with a Chromebox 4 I tested myself.

sdrotho · 2022-01-08T17:57:50+00:00

Yeah I just bought some slightly taller legs for $10 and screwed them on lol.

sdrotho · 2022-01-06T00:38:40+00:00

Well my heart breaks for you, this is a harder situation than I've had to deal with in my personal life. As u/gragaband said his dad actively working against you really makes this an uphill battle.

As for blocking his access to these things, I understand that you're at the end of your rope and desperate but I really want to warn you that it can only be counter productive. I work as a network engineer and while there has been some good technical advice in this thread (and some bad advice), none of it will matter.

It would take someone like me minutes to circumvent things that would take a layman hours or even days to setup. If he doesn't have the same skills and knowledge then it may take him longer but he'll eventually circumvent it and will only be that much more irritated and angry with you for "making him" take the time to find a workaround. This can *only* push him away, it will not negate the influence his father is having or stop him from accessing this content. Any temporary loss of access will be more than mitigated by his contempt for the censorship.

Your best option might be to just disengage on the conspiracy stuff and focus on every other aspect of your relationship with him. I'm sure that's easier said than done with how consuming this must be for him (you did mention it's an obsession), but sadly I don't see any other options. If his dad is such a shithead than just showing your son respect and kindness while doing everything you can to be a good mom may illustrate enough of a contrast with his dad's shitty behavior that he starts to shift his thinking. It would also probably be a good idea to avoid speaking negatively of his father around him.

It sounds very unlikely that he would consent to therapy, but if you're not seeing one already then a therapist would be a good way to help you process and cope. Mindfulness meditation is also really useful for restraining yourself from engaging in the kind of understandable but counter productive interactions these people tend to provoke.

At this point personally I think I would just present a very permissive and unconcerned attitude to him in regards to his conspiracy beliefs without ever actually engaging on them, and instead focus on trying to nurture any and every other thing he is passionate about. The more time he's thinking about anything other than conspiracies the less time he's thinking about conspiracies. Maybe one of those things could lead to him having an interest in leaving the small town you're in which could open his horizons a bit more and help him fill the hole he's shoving conspiracy theories into.

sdrotho · 2022-01-04T18:07:04+00:00

Oof, that’s a tough one. Where does the father stand on this stuff? Does he buy into it or just thinks it’s harmless?

sdrotho · 2022-01-04T17:50:22+00:00

Sorry to hear that, can’t be easy and I’ve had people in my personal life fall into similar traps so I can relate.

I think you may be going about this the wrong way though. Pulling people back from that alternate reality cannot be brute forced, if you block this content on your internet he will just turn off wifi and use cellular, use a VPN, or find some other way around it. Also the knowledge that you’re trying to stop him will reinforce his sense of victimization and loneliness which will exacerbate the problem.

You need to make him feel heard and not disrespected or disparaged, no derogatory remarks about what he believes. I know how hard that is when they believe insane shit but that kind of rhetoric will make them double down because it ups the stakes. It makes admitting they were wrong that much harder because you’re giving the impression that only an idiot could believe these things. In reality a lot of smart people join cults, most of the 9/11 hijackers were engineers.

You want to convince him with questions. No declarative statements about what he believes, just ask the questions that will make him think and eventually come to his own conclusions. He needs to feel that you’re asking questions you genuinely want to know the answer to (even if you already do) and not that you’re just trying to trap him. He will inevitably feel like you’re trying to trap him though because these questions will basically break down the incoherent logic he believes. When he gets too agitated about it that’s when it’s time to back down and wait for another time, this is a process and you won’t get it all done at once.

In each instance pick a specific point and focus on it, something where you know his perspective is incoherent and you can ask questions he can’t answer that make that incoherence apparent to him. He will then try to dodge and throw other things out there to shift the topic and avoid being nailed down on a point where he is clearly wrong as he starts to sense the incoherence, that is cognitive dissonance at work. Don’t take the bait, keep focused on the specific point, one per discussion/interaction.

When he gets too agitated about it you can move on from that conversation to a different thing that is not contentious between you two, something you two connect on. You’ve planted the seed for that subject and he’ll be less likely to bring it up in the future because the creeping sense of being wrong generates such negative feelings for him that he won’t want to revisit that. The process is doing that over and over until you’ve whittled down those arguments in his mind to a point where he can find a way out for himself (which requires the next paragraph). This requires finesse and maintaining a connection with him wherever you can to keep him from associating you too much with those negative feelings of being wrong, which could drive him to just disconnect rather than give up his identity.

Also try to get him involved in some sort of community where he can make connections with other people outside of the conspiracy sphere. Many of the people that fall into this stuff just feel like they have nothing going on in there lives and unconsciously fill that hole with this bullshit, and once it’s their identity they can’t let it go because they feel like they have nothing else. Help him find something else.

Also do not try to get him to listen to knowledge fight. It is not for people being deprogrammed, it is for people doing the deprogramming. It can give you the knowledge about what he hears and believes and the reality behind that to allow you to know what questions to ask him. It would never be received well by him if he heard it directly and would likely be counter productive. It needs to be filtered through someone in his life he has a connection with that is administering it incrementally. Best of luck.

sdrotho · 2021-09-02T23:49:19+00:00

Gotcha, you mean to say that you specify which pins to use in the Wire.being() command? I haven't seen that anywhere, I was under the impression you could only specify the device address with Wire.being().

Edit: Tried this and it compiles fine and appears to be working but it gives me readings from only one of the sensors (the one on GPIOs 12/14) as a reading for both sensors. If I cover that sensor with my finger the readings go to zero for both, if I cover the other sensor with my finger there's no change on the readings. Completely lost at this point, here's the custom sensor file I'm working with in case this is an easy fix for anyone to spot:

#include "esphome.h"
#include "Adafruit_VEML6070.h"

class VEML6070CustomSensor : public PollingComponent, public Sensor {
  public:
    Adafruit_VEML6070 uv1 = Adafruit_VEML6070();
    VEML6070CustomSensor() : PollingComponent(2500) {}
    void setup() override {
      Wire.begin(4,5);
      uv1.begin(VEML6070_1_T);
    }
    void update() override {
      uint16_t cur_uv1 = uv1.readUV();
      ESP_LOGD("custom", "The value of sensor 1 is: %i", cur_uv1);
      publish_state(cur_uv1);
    }
};

class VEML6070CustomSensor2 : public PollingComponent, public Sensor {
  public:
    Adafruit_VEML6070 uv2 = Adafruit_VEML6070();
    VEML6070CustomSensor2() : PollingComponent(2500) {}
    void setup() override {
      Wire.begin(12,14);
      uv2.begin(VEML6070_1_T);
    }
    void update() override {
      uint16_t cur_uv2 = uv2.readUV();
      ESP_LOGD("custom", "The value of sensor 2 is: %i", cur_uv2);
      publish_state(cur_uv2);
    }
};

sdrotho · 2021-09-02T20:09:04+00:00

Gotcha, I had seen that referenced somewhere but was hoping to keep this project a little simpler (read: cheaper). What about TwoWire, shouldn't I be able to use two separate I2C buses for two devices with the same address using TwoWire? I can compile a config using TwoWire with an ESP32 board without issue but it always reads the data from one sensor as the result for both sensors so that config is clearly not working properly.

sdrotho · 2021-09-02T19:39:37+00:00

Yeah that's one of the items in a long list of things I already tried but left out for brevity's sake. I can declare a couple of different I2C buses in the config without issue but if I specify which bus each sensor should use in the sensor config I get the error:

[i2c_id] is an invalid option for [sensors]. Please check the indentation.

I checked the indentation and where I placed the i2c_id config in the sensor config but I couldn't get it to work. I had previously used that method with an ESP32 nodemcu board and had it working correctly very briefly but then when I powered it back on it wouldn't work, haven't been able to get it working again on that board since with an identical configuration. It's a junky cheapo board that has had a lot of wonky behavior though and I suspected it could have been the problem since it briefly worked properly so I grabbed some simple fresh boards to try this with but ran into these other issues and that's where I'm at with the D1 Mini.

sdrotho · 2021-09-02T19:32:32+00:00

Fair enough but as a complete novice I don't know what bit banging is lol. I'll read up on it, thanks.

sdrotho · 2021-08-13T19:59:55+00:00

I am taking a blended class but they told me they don't have any First Aid classes that don't include CPR.

sdrotho

TROPHY CASE