Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Well now that we don’t have privacy, here’s a quick review of what to do to harden your Mac: Install 1Password using Dropbox because it’s a pain to remember all the passwords. Turn on System Preferences/Security & Privacy/FileVault. This encrypts your hard disk, so in evil hands, they at least need your password. Turn on…

OK, I admit it I mainly use Vi for editing mainly because it is just so fast to edit things from the keyboard. You don’t ever need to leave the keyboard when moving around. It is arcane and terrible yet, I actually got running (thanks syntactic) an coding environment that let’s you lint and then run…

Not simplest thing to find because instruction seem to vary, but on the latest vuescan, here is all you need to do: Put a page in and press preview when it looks good press scan For each succeeding page press preview and then  scan + When you are done you don’t have to push save or anything,…

I’ve got now five homes where I’m helping folks run their networks. Unifi is pretty awesome because you can configure the AP at home and then take it to someone and it is completely configured for them. It is so unlikely that a regular human can figure out the access point systems, so it is…

Well with privacy always under assault, besides a VPN, you need an Adblocker and tracking masker. Here are some choices: Ublock Origins. This isn’t regular Ublock (which isn’t developed anymore), but a new fork that has a Safari build. Adguard is another one which gets good user reviews Then the ones that are questionable as…

Now that there are no limits for ISPs on reselling your personal browsing and other information. What can a person do. Well the easy things are: Buy a VPN. You need a reputable one. I’ve used Private Internet Access for years and they seem pretty reliable. The main issue is that with iPhones as you…

Well, if you are a Chevy Bolt owner and wonder what all those parameters mean, here’s a little bit of a decoder ring (it is incredible in this day and age that even with all that infotainment, there isn’t a simple thing like a Tooltip to tell you what a setting means), but fortunately there…

Now that there is no more privacy in the US (because ISPs can freely resell all your access information). Here is what you can do to protect yourself: Get a VPN. There are many that are not so reputable, but Private Internet Access and ExpressVPN seem at least more reputable. You have to load them…

You can use picture in picture if a web site programs it or use PIPifier from Mac Apps. It’s really convenient for any HTML5 video so it works like iPads. The easiest way to install it is to brew install mas which is Mac App Store command line interface, find the id of it from a…

Well, if I have frustrated by all that horrible spam and Bluehost have been great but even with Spam Experts and Spam Assassin, we still get way more spam. I originally just wanted to make Gsuite just filter messages and send them back to Bluehost for deliver, it turns out that this is actually impossible. You…

Hat tip to my Tesla friends, while Washington doesn’t have nearly the incentives that California does for electric vehicles, they do have $500 off of a level 2 ev charger. Hard to find, but once you do super worth it. Also you can get power strips that reduce vampire draw for $10, also a good…

I have not seen this discussed too much, but we use iCloud Photo Library extensively to save old photos. We try to stay in the free 5GB tier, so the algorithm is: Use iCloud Photo Library like the old Photostream, but it saves all photos up to the 5GB limit. Every so often get on…

If you are getting a new car, here are some indispensable accessories to go with it: Tire Pressure Gauge. It’s huge but it is reliable and easy to use. All analog and no batteries. LED Flashers. Yes you need batteries, but they are way better than flares Flashlight. You need a bright one and Candlepower…

If you have a company and you are merging or getting acquired, then what’s the easiest way to get the data across. Turns out this is a little tricky. But the basic things to understand are: There is the concept of an owner for a file. This is the user who sets permissions. However, you…

You would think there would be an easy FAQ if you have an Electric Vehicle, turns out that after navigating through all the many sites, here are the easy steps, if you aren’t lucky enough have the plug and play Tesla. First the plug nightmare As usual with the start of an industry there are…

1. Right now the easiest thing to do is to get a NAS box which supports 4-12 bays. I personally use Synology for this, they are reasonably cheap and they keep their linux based system up to date. (You can even run docker containers on it). Idk how much future proofing you do, but right…

Wow now that UltraHD is now a thing and you can buy UHD Blu-ray, how do you think about encoding all of this. Well here are some of the things to know: X.265 (aka HEVC). This is the latest encoding format. Think of it as life beyond X.264 (aka MPEG-4). It is about twice as…

If you like your spiffy new mechanical keyboard but want to use it on a Mac, you need to map the Command key and Option key around because on a Mac, it goes Control, Alt or Option and then Command whereas on a Windows keyboard it is Control, Windows-Key and then Alt. This is really…

Google Drive has some pretty hard to understand semantics when it comes to sharing folders and files. When a file or folder is shared with you, they are not synced to your desktop, they live in a special place called ‘Shared With Me’ So they do not take any of your disk quota (much better…

Well somehow things just keeping getting more annoying, but here are the gotchas if you have your own generic IMAP account: MacOS seems to get confused about the default account. And you get this strange, cannot move message to (null) message. What this means is that you need to go to Mail/Preferences/Accounts and look into your…

Ok this is a good one. If you use the chase portal and your Chase Freedom card on hotels and car rentals, you get 10 points (worth about 22%). go for it!

Well these are confusing results: T-Mobile is first in OpenSignal and last with Root Metrics. Makes some sense if you think about it. One is weighted by people. So there is a bias where most people are on the cities. Root metrics is by region. So the best plan would be to use t-mobile mainly…

Well, we’ve been using Verizon for a while (mainly because coverage in house was just so poor with AT&T). But two years ago, GoogleFi shipped and the ability to pause the service and the roaming with T-Mobile and Sprint actually worked pretty well. And of course the zero roaming charges was really great. It has…

How maddening is this, with traditional Mac Apps, it is pretty simple. Got to Edit/Emojis & Symbols. Find the arrow or whatever and then double click. This however does not work with Gsuite at least on Safari: Google Docs. You cannot double click, you can however drag and drop the symbols Google Slides, does not…

I haven’t ripped a DVD in a very long time, but sometimes I see these VOB files. I have used Handbrake in the past to get my old DVDs of the kids over to a modern format, but somehow the latest Handbrake fails me and stops after the first segment. Sigh. So onto looking for…

Wow been binge watching quite a bit and some of these new series have just awesome soundtracks. Tunefind.com is wonderful as it is a place where these get aggregated and you can play with Apple Music from there, so some great soundtracks. I wish the thing would just make a playlist for Spotify or Apple Music,…

When you want to read, here are the great sources beside the usual suspects (Amazon Kindle and Audible that is): Overdrive. They connect to your local library. They have ebooks and audiobooks and the app works well. Mobilism.org This is another great source of hard to find books

OK, so I think I’m on the right track. This sudden shutdown is likely due to bad memory. There is nearly 32GB of memory in the iMac 2009 and it is third party, so could be bad. But figuring out how to diagnose it more a riddle. The main problem is that hitting the D…

With prices and hardware changing there are so many different choices for a good developer setup. Here are some of the edges assuming a relatively modest $6k budget: A monster gaming laptop. Today for $6k Ok got it so that’s a $6k box that weighs 13 pounds. And it sure is powerful. And relatively cheap.…

MacBook Pro 2016 prices are falling. They are now 10% off at B&H so remember prices keep falling. If you want to get decent battery doc on your MacBook Pro turn on the battery checker but you should Safari instead as it is much more efficient than Chrome and Firefox. Also when u see the…