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By not being on social media sites, I have a choice in what I consume from a news perspective. I want sources that give me the data to form my opinion rather than get opinions framed as news. So this is what works for me: Use a web browser “incognito” mode so tracking cookies aren’t used. This will help prevent news shaping. I use a web browser called Duck Duck Go that helps prevent tracking data from being used. I highly recommend using it for a browser on your phone and the search engine on your desktop. Once google has some history on you, the shaping algorithms will take hold quickly. I use multiple sources. If I watch CNN, I also try to watch Fox News and so on. It helps to see the different perspectives and the spin applied on all sides. For any of the “news” sites, I first look at the ad’s that I’m bombarded with. I want to determine right off the bat how the site makes money, and what generates the most revenue (typically its the product you see most of). They will usually not tell you directly, but you’ll get a sense of why they want you to buy while you stay on the site. I use Axios; they are trying to be a news source with little spin. You can see their mission statement here: https://www.axios.com/about/ They tell you how they gather information, how it’s gathered and qualified, and how they make money. Most of the content is short and concise with little fluff. I appreciate the attempt. I use allsides.com frequently. allsides is an aggregate site that tried to rate news stories as right, left, and center. It’s a good site to get an honest perspective on things. Their take is no news is unbiased, so they show you how. There was an exciting science project from Middle Schooler where they looked at bias in google search engine using data from allsides. More detail on the science project is located at: https://www.allsides.com/blog/teen-proves-media-bias-google-search-results-can-influence-political-opinions Is the content focused on the subject, and is the opinion kind? If the content attacks aperson rather than a position, it’s typically because the position they are trying to make is weak and doesn’t hold up well on its own. I’m sure I can keep rambling, but the above list encompasses most of what I do. Let me know if you have better methods!

From https://eplt.medium.com/5-minutes-to-install-imagemagick-with-heic-support-on-ubuntu-18-04-digitalocean-fe2d09dcef1 sudo sed -Ei 's/^# deb-src /deb-src /' /etc/apt/sources.list sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf libtool git-core sudo apt-get build-dep imagemagick libmagickcore-dev libde265 libheif cd /usr/src/ sudo git clone https://github.com/strukturag/libde265.git sudo git clone https://github.com/strukturag/libheif.git cd libde265/ sudo ./autogen.sh sudo ./configure sudo make sudo make install cd /usr/src/libheif/ sudo ./autogen.sh sudo ./configure sudo make sudo make install cd /usr/src/ sudo wget https://www.imagemagick.org/download/ImageMagick.tar.gz sudo tar xf ImageMagick.tar.gz cd ImageMagick-7* sudo ./configure --with-heic=yes sudo make sudo make install sudo ldconfig sudo apt install php-imagick cd /usr/src/ wget http://pecl.php.net/get/imagick-3.4.4.tgz tar -xvzf imagick-3.4.4.tgz cd imagick-3.4.4/ apt install php7.2-dev phpize ./configure make make install sudo phpenmod imagick A restart of apache2 should finish the job. Check with the phpinfo() call… ...

I couldn’t agree more about how to take control of your digital consumption from, “The Center for Humane Technology”. Here’s the link and a snippet from the web site: https://www.humanetech.com/take-control

I thought I understood the general concepts and algorithms that companies like google, Facebook, twitter, etc. use but I was astounded about how much it impacts us as a society. The documentary, “The Social Dilemma”, on Netflix, is filled with conversations with many of the original architects of these systems and how monetization though ad targeting is driving behavior modification of billions of people worldwide. The Social Dilemma also goes on to explain how our younger populations are being affected and correlates the dramatic increase in many conditions like anxiety are due the nature of keeping someone always engaged in a platform for monetary gain. ...

This page is to document my trials with zfs snapshots for backup purposes. There a problem I found that entails when incremental snapshot sends are performed when the receive side has changed in some way. I’ll provide complete details soon. Good news my zfs retention script looks to be running well. I’ll document that as well soon. Here’s a teaser…

Good Morning! After not being active on Facebook for almost a year now I made the move to completely delete my account. While it was surprisingly tough initially it was a great decision. I realized all the ads and shaped content was not worth the family and friend connection I was actually seeking. My account on Instagram will probably be deleted soon as well. I’m getting ads and such on that platform as well. It’s not surprising since Instagram is also owned by Facebook. ...

Local System - Let’s call it alpha Remote System we don’t want to have to enter passwords for, Let’s call it foxtrot Prep: Harden your existing ssh keys since RSA 1024 sucks. This will create a new 4096 version - ed22519 is actually preferred so you can skip the rsa creation if preferred. me@alpha$ mv ~/.ssh/id_rsa ~/.ssh/id_rsa_legacy me@alpha$ mv ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ~/.ssh/id_rsa_legacy.pub Step 1: Generate new keys: me@alpha$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -o -a 100 #RSA version me@alpha$ ssh-keygen -o -a 100 -t ed25519 #Preferred ed25519 version Step 2: Copy the Ed25519 keys to the remote system called foxtrot: ...

Since I had a old windows laptop as a plex and file server for years I thought it would be good to try something new. After researching options I ddecided to try FreeNAS. Since it has ZFS and I’m an old Sun guy - why not. Well…. After a few weeks I decided to abandon FreeNAS and roll my own using a ThinkCentre M93p Tiny. I’ll try to post some notes on how the build goes.

I’ll review my experience with this SoC shortly…

So I ran into a few issues using the dd image backup I referenced prior Raspberry Pi 3 SDCard backup The Image is very large even though the data was not. For example on a 32GB SD card I was getting a 12GB file. I only have 3GB of data! so that was a bummer. When it comes time to recover, I have to expand the gz image file to a full 32GB to then image it onto another SD device. There’s tricks around this I’m sure but still. Since dd was reading 100% of the SD card (/dev/mmcblk0) even with compression it took a LONG time to create the image. 20 minutes or so. Since I’m backing up a live system this was a real issue. I did manage to figure out how to create a partial image if your partition sizes were smaller than the actual device - This seemed to work but it still was storing 6.6GB of data which was over double what I actually had: ...