I have implemented tags on notes tonight. I am not sure if I truly like them, or whether I will change the way they look, if I decide to keep them. I also need to go back retroactively, and tag notes accordingly. That will be a tedious task, and I refuse to use an LLM to help with it. We’ll see.
Incidentally, the reason that mail will never go away is that it is fully federated, doesn’t require people to be online at the same time, and is easy to archive and search. So far none of the replacements do that.
Ain’t that right?!
Having used Matrix in the past, and even self-hosted my own Matrix “homeserver”, I can categorically say—in my (own) very, very humble opinion—that it sucks eggs.
Having the Apple Watch unlock—and login automatically on—the Mac feels like magic. Yet another reason to have this device on my wrist.
I am wearing a watch (Apple Watch) for the first time in, like, 25 years. It isn’t to tell the time. Not at all. It is almost exclusively for health reasons (95%), and fast communication/keeping up-to-date (5%). Just like the iPhone I have, which I use for almost everything but as a phone, the Apple Watch is almost anything, but a watch. I’ll say, it is a wrist-held computer.
It makes no difference that Google has updated Chrome for iOS with Liquid Glass (the first of their applications to be “adapted”). As a vanillist, it means nothing to me.
On this one, upgraded to Tahoe last night. This time I didn’t do a wipe-install, but a regular upgrade. Simply restarted the mini—which has been running without reboot for a couple of months, or so—and went through the upgrade. Smooth, no issues.
I have macOS 26 to install and play with, and today, out of all days, I am stuck working past 3.5 hours my quitting time.
So, about the Apple Event today, I am planing to get an Apple Watch 11, likely for Christmas, or Epiphany. Tempted by the AirPods Pro 3, but not quite sure I will get them. Excellent event, as always!
Today is “the day”. I will say—or, rather, write—no more.
I am absolutely loving Perplexity AI. I have gotten to a point on which I treat everything with an “AI” on its name with reservation, even disdain. Perplexity is a different kind.
“Perplexity AI is an advanced AI-powered search engine designed to provide accurate, well-sourced, and real-time answers to user questions in a conversational format. It uses cutting-edge language models, such as GPT-4 and Claude, combined with real-time internet searches to synthesize responses from authoritative sources and always cites these sources for transparency. Unlike traditional search engines that just list links, Perplexity delivers direct summaries and supports features like document uploads, contextual follow-up, and the ability to handle both factual and complex queries for individuals and teams.”
Emphasis mine. Authoritative sources, and citing them, is paramount. This one might be the first AI (ugh, that acronym!) I will be willing to pay for.
Yep, it is happening again—like each year, LOL. Christmas is (might?) coming early, everyone! Add the Apple event to your calendars, and be there or be square!
This section from the NetBSD man page for the sleep command cannot be funnier, yet completely valid. I mean, quite useful if you have the time, right?
BUGS
This sleep command cannot handle requests for durations much longer than
about 250 billion years. Any such attempt will result in an error, and
immediate termination. It is suggested that when there is a need for
sleeps exceeding this period, the sleep command be executed in a loop,
with each individual sleep invocation limited to 200 billion years
approximately.
This is the first search result—at least for me—on Google when searching for “call bank of america”. A Google sponsored scam. Yup. 🤯
Update: 02 Oct 2025 @ 11:20:24
I reported this to Google, and it took them less than a day to remove it. It doesn’t show on my search results anymore. One down…
I am defeated by Hugo’s syntax highlighter. I don’t use code blocks much around here, but the few I have do not want to play nice, and show fonts with different sizes on desktop, and mobile. I haven’t been able to figure out, for the good of me, how to fix that weird behaviour. For now, the few code blocks I around have syntax highlighting turned off.
Update: 02 Oct 2025 @ 11:24:18
OMG! This guy is a saviour! In his own words:
“Lately, I’ve been coming across many blogs that have weird font-size rendering issues for code blocks on iOS. Basically, in a code snippet, the text-size would sometimes be much larger for some lines than others.”
Exactly my problem. Applied the fix he recommends and, boom, just like that, magic! Thank you, Nathan!
code {
text-size-adjust: 100%;
-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;
-moz-text-size-adjust: 100%;
-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;
}
Feeling the urge to buy an ortholinear keyboard. If anything else, it is the uniformity, and compactness of it, that has enticed me. The search for one starts.
“hi <my GitHub nick>, I noticed you stargazed <repository I starred>. Seems like you’re interested in the same kind of productivity software. I’d love your feedback for <web page for product they are advertising>.”
Getting more and more of these type of emails. They must be getting that information from some kind of GitHub API, right? I mean, sometimes they are plainly inventing things, but sometimes they are right on the spot. Is GitHub selling us out? Microsoft would never do such thing, wouldn’t they?
“You might not need tmux”, said no one, until now. I don’t subscribe to that point of view, I use tmux heavily. The author’s solution? Install shpool, which adds yet another daemon. No, thank you, tmux is just fine. Heck, tmux is superb!
➝ Via Hacker News.
░▒▓ Having flashbacks to “simpler” times when Extended ASCII was used for just about everything—and yes, that included ASCII art ░▒▓
While on the topic of LLMs, I can’t stand “thinking” models. It is possible to set think to false on the CLI in Ollama for thinking models, but I haven’t found a way to set it as a variable. Their newly released application doesn’t have such feature. Granted, only DeepSeek and Qwen models are “thinkers”, so perhaps I will stop using them.
Providing an LLM a streamlined, but overall complete initial prompt is vital not to get perplexing answers. It will also greatly diminish the possibility of having the model astraying away, diluting the results. Though I believe this applies to all models, SaaS or local, it is specifically important when using local models, as processing and memory are more finite.
It has been over a month since Google revamped Snapseed and, though I am fine with the changes—many people aren’t—I am getting a bit tired of seeing updates almost every week, with no changes on the changelog; that is, the changelog has been the same since it was revamped.
You might notice some new things sprouting around here. Not only did we freshen up the app to help make editing a breeze, but we also swat away some pesky bugs for a smoother experience. Oh, and remember to give the new film filters a try for some sweet, vintage looks. As always, these are free of charge.
Yes, we know, now, quit it! Geez!
Hashing known_hosts is a good idea, as it reduces the amount of information an attacker will collect, if/when (ha!) your machine gets compromised. Usually, a line on the known_hosts file looks like this:
less ~/.ssh/known_hosts
...
tilde.team ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAID1zw6+VOW8L4Rr3swbUVju3GGcknaV/fyhSJwH7NLfu
...
After running ssh-keygen -H it will look like this:
less ~/.ssh/known_hosts
...
|1|c6NiIH06AidrkPUman0oPEx6+6Y=|rPhYjXlkLgYaNR8jwaNMy7mur4I= ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIJsJP1XDyRhEPdtgBeXYm2hf4GKG9aLlqA1+ZPgBadbl
...
That’s it! Oh, and don’t forget to add to your ~/.ssh/config the following, so that future entries are hashed as well:
Host *
HashKnownHosts yes
Started using Zen web browser at work, because Google, in their infinite wisdom, decided to deprecate a ton of widely used extensions from Chrome. So far Zen is doing its thing, and doing it well.
Musk has confirmed that its Grok AI (version 4) is coming to Teslas “next week at the latest”. I don’t want it. I wouldn’t want Musk in my car, neither.
Because I work using Ubuntu, and do personal stuff using macOS, I am always confused and going nuts with keyboard shortcuts. From copying and pasting, to closing windows, to locking the machines. So. Very. Hard! I need to find a solution that will make Ubuntu (Gnome, actually) mimic macOS keyboard shortcuts.
It looks like Grok (Musk’s own LLM and chatbot) is doing “great”. It seems that Musk, just like the Biblical god, is molding it to his own image. That will end up well, I am sure.
grep -i passwd *.log | awk {'print $7'}
...
/etc/passwd
/..%5c..%5c..%5c..%5c..%5cetc%5cpasswd
/....//....//....//etc/passwd
/..%2f..%2f..%2fetc%2fpasswd
/.htpasswd
/config/.htpasswd
/.env.passwd
/backup/.htpasswd
...
With almost 2,000 different tries—of which the above is a small sample—it seems someone is hell-bent on finding a passwd of some sorts. I don’t have one, OK?!
Tesla launched its Robotaxi—which isn’t the Robotaxi, but a Tesla with a Robotaxi logo—service in Texas. There are just a few, all operating in a small section of the city, and with “a human safety operator in the passenger seat”. LOL. So, just a taxi.
“As expected, only a handful of vehicles are available right now, they only operate in a small part of the city and there’s a safety driver in the vehicle in case it encounters situations it cannot handle autonomously.”
A real Robotaxi should have no glass windshield, and a blocking divider between the passenger area and the “driver”. After all, it is best not to see what’s coming your way. Surprise! 😅
Update: 02 Oct 2025 @ 16:46:58
My friend George, more often than not, can be the “voice of my conscience”, and today he was. Being the Tesla fan he is—and Tesla ≠ Elon—he made me aware that Tesla’s official statement was:
“We’re bringing these autonomous rides to you today—starting with Model Y. Cybercab, our fully autonomous vehicle, will begin offering rides in your area in the future.”
In other words, BBC sensationalised a bit, or I processed the news that way. It truly is a private beta, with an strict set of requirements.
I have automated the process that adds a notice and timestamp when I edit a note, when adding more content to it at a later time. It works great, as it uses the git lastmod timestamp. The unfortunate side effect was, all timestamps got reset because I actually modified all notes that had an UPDATE notice. 😩
I am trying to implement a workflow, so that I can use a graphical editor for creating new notes while in front of the computer, that is, not over an SSH connection. Let’s see how it goes.
Update: 02 Oct 2025 @ 16:49:20
Yup, it works quite well. I really don’t know why it took me this long to implement something as simple as this (I am using Obsidian now to create and edit notes if not over SSH). I guess I usually create notes on Terminal, on Bash, and didn’t have the need for anything else. Until now!
Apple’s Lisa 2 computer. I know it is old, I know it is retro. My old eyes will certainly complain at the screen size and resolution, but damn, such a beautiful machine, and keyboard design! Yup, I am certainly on “boomer’s” mood.
I have decided to use Apple’s Journal app more. Towards that aim I have placed it on my mobile device home screen. That will not interfere with any of my public interactions, as Journal will simply be that, a personal journal, and thus not for public comsumption.
My aim is to document the mundane, “what did I eat last night?” kind of thing, to recollect, and preserve, daily happenings and thoughts at day’s end.
And… the first two are here! Took a little over 1 hour to transfer data to mine. Kid’s will have to wait until after pickleball. The 16 Pro’s soooo buttery smooth. Oh my!
Now, this is some promise!
When we launch Private Cloud Compute, we’ll take the extraordinary step of making software images of every production build of PCC publicly available for security research. This promise, too, is an enforceable guarantee: user devices will be willing to send data only to PCC nodes that can cryptographically attest to running publicly listed software. We want to ensure that security and privacy researchers can inspect Private Cloud Compute software, verify its functionality, and help identify issues — just like they can with Apple devices.