Month: December 2024

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I regularly receive unsolicited “cooperation” and “collaboration” offers at my New Leaf Journal email. I receive these despite explicitly stating on our contact page that I am not interested in these offers. Something struck me as odd about how these unsolicited emails are worded. Today, I received a follow-up email from someone claining to be an SEO Outreach Specialist seeking to cooperate with a company he represents “in the SportsBook and Casino industry.” I ignored the original email. The follow-up email, which I will also ignore, asks whether I “got” the previous email. What strikes me as odd is how both emails conclude:

Reply with ‘Unsubscribe’ so you don’t hear from us again.

For one, why would a casino “cooperation” offer be sent pursuant to a subscription. For two, why would I unsubscribe from something I never subscribed to? I wish the spammers made more of an effort to make sense.

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I assumed without checking that I could switch between two accounts in the Element desktop app on Linux. This turned out to not be the case. However, the Ubuntu Community posted a useful guide detailing several workarounds. I tested the first workaround. Assuming you are using the Element desktop client, open Element with your already-established profile. Then go into the console and run:

element-desktop --profile account2

This will open up a second instance of Element where you can sign into a second account or create a new account. If you want to use your second account, simply launch it from the console using the above command. This is a neat solution. I tip my hat to Ubuntu Community for the very clear and concise guide.

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I had been using my Google Pixel 3a XL for reading feeds and web browsing (my “phone phone” is a Google Pixel 6a with GrapheneOS). I switched from LineageOS to DivestOS on my Pixel 3a XL several months ago. Today, I learned that DivestOS is being discontinued. I had originally purchased the Pixel 3a XL when I was still daily driving a Murena Teracube 2e with the intent of using it to run Ubuntu Touch, but I failed on the install and went with LineageOS instead (that was before switching to DivestOS). I figured with DivestOS dead, I would go back to the original plan. This time I successfully installed the correct version of Android per the Ubuntu Touch instructions, went into the Ubuntu Touch installer to install Ubuntu Touch, and installed Droidian (wait what?). I never heard of Droidian until 10 minutes ago, but it installed and looks neat. We’ll see…

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My go-to weather app on my GrapheneOS-powered Google Pixel 6a phone (GrapheneOS is a free and open source security-focused fork of Android Open Source Project) is Breezy Weather. Breezy Weather is open source and available on GitHub, Google Play Store, and F-Droid. I use F-Droid Basic as my app store. There are two flavors of Breezy Weather: Standard and Libre. The difference between them is that the standard version supports non-free weather providers. In most standard vs libre app cases, I opt for libre. However, in the case of Breezy Weather, I want standard because Accuweather is the best weather provider for my area. F-Droid itself has the libre version. Does this mean that there is no hope for me but to obtain the standard APK from GitHub or to use the Google Play Store? Not so! The IzzyOnDroid F-Droid repository has the standard version of Breezy Weather. Thus, all I need to do is enable IzzyOnDroid in F-Droid Basic and then select it instead of F-Droid as my preferred source for Breezy Weather.

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Amazon is selling the Google Pixel Tabel for $280. It supports GrapheneOS and I have been tempted to buy one because my preferred feed reading set-up uses Handy Reading (a free and open source Android feed reader) and the Pixel tablet would be a reading upgrade over my Google Pixel 3a XL (running DivestOS, my main “phone” is a Pixel 6a running GrapheneOS). But $280 is still steep. I just can’t quite get there. We’re sticking with the 3a XL for reading, although I need to work on a more ergonomic reading set-up to avoid right hand cramps.

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I opened X a few days ago to check my profile. Instead of taking me to my profile (I have a special social browser profile where I stay logged in), X told me that I was suspicious and made me complete two very annoying CAPTCHAs to prove I was a person. After getting back into my account, I was told to review X’s rules (no clue as to what “rule” was violated). Then I had to log out and in again to interact with the UI. Everything was back to normal the next day. I only use X to post links to my articles (which is similar to how I use Mastodon, Bluesky, Minds, and NOSTR), so “losing” the account would not have been a serious problem like being blacklisted by Bing for the better part of a year was. But consider my story a cautionary tale for anyone who relies on third-party social media platforms (open source, proprietary, or other) as their primary or, worse yet, sole online presence. Focus on building your online home and then use third-party social media to invite others to visit.

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From i24 News:

‘My departure from Syria was neither planned nor did it occur during the final hours of the battles, as some have claimed,’ former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said in a statement released on Telegram Monday.

Who among us has not at least once found ourselves evacuating Syria aboard a Russian military plane after having not once previously entertained the possibility of engaging in such course of action?

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I quote the following excerpt from a cleverly titled BBC report on a cybersecurity incident at Krispy Kreme:

Some customers in the US have been unable to make online orders as a result of the hack, which occurred in late November but has only just been disclosed.

Since when do people order donuts from Krispy Kreme? Here I thought that was more a “go there and buy a donut” kind of place. The more you learn. In any event, sitting at home or in the office and ordering donuts is unhealthy. You should go out and buy a donut if you want a donut. Moreover, do not install donut apps.

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Jonathan Martin for Politico reported on an internal GOP Senate leadership fight for the post of Intelligence Committee Chairman. Marco Rubio had in line for the Chairman position, but he is now the soon-to-be-confirmed nominee for Secretary of State. Next in line is Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who also secured the third-ranking position in the Senate GOP conference. Mr. Martin reports that Texas Senator Jon Cornyn, who lost a bid against Senator John Thune of South Dakota for the caucus leader post, has backers in a bid to leap-frog Mr. Cotton for the Intelligence Committee chairman post (I wrote about an interesting fact related to Mr. Thune’s ascending to the position of Senate Majority Leader). The logic, according to Mr. Martin (note that Politico is not my go-to source on these matters, but we can set that aside), the logic of the Cornyn idea is that gaining the Intelligence Committee chairmanship would make it more likely that he runs for reelection in 2026. Mr. Cotton seems to be having none of the plan, and Mr. Martin implicitly opines (I am inclined to agree from the outside) that Mr. Thune, who has the power to select chairs, will favor Mr. Cotton because Mr. Cotton supported his leadership bid while Mr. Cornyn was his opponent. But all of this manuvering leaves open an important question, especiall in light of the upcoming push to reform how the initelligence agencies conduct their affairs: Who would be the better Chairman? I will submit for the record that given the two choices, the answer is clearly the one who will most likely prevail in this power struggle, the junior Senator from Arkansas.

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Koko Analytics, the local page counting tool I use here and on The New Leaf Journal, shows referrers. The vast majority of my regular referrals are from Google, with the rest being split between DuckDuckGo, Bing, Brave Search, Yandex, and miscellaneous search engines (usually in that order, although sometimes Brave and Yandex switch positions). Unusual referrers stand out. I just noticed one from potterfun.com. I had no idea what it was, but it turned out to be a Harry Potter fan site. This struck me as peculiar. Not only have I never written about Harry Potter, I also never read it. While I did not find the where my link was posted, I suspect it is my article on a 1920s book about reading tea leaves. Why? One of the most recent Potter Fun articles is titled Study Your Future With Tea-Leaf Reading Divination. But that article does not include a single link, internal or external, so I could be wrong.

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Back on February 27, 2024, I wrote an article on The New Leaf Journal introducing a project wherein I would turn my real play-through of Pokémon Red into a serialized novel. I abandoned two play-throughs (including one with a humorous SNAFU) because I was missing a story angle. I was in the midst of what will be my story-producing run on August 6, 2024. I then shelved the project (for some reason) until today (being December 7, 2024), when I resumed after a four-month hiatus. It took me a few minutes to remember exactly what I was doing, but we are now half-way to the eight-badge mark and I have what I think is my final team (one slot may be swapped for the Elite Four, but that will be late). If all goes well, I may be ready to start publishing “chapters” by the end of the month. For those of you who cannot wait, you can read my side-story from the current play-through about spending an hour in Viridian Forest trying to catch a Caterpie.

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I have a librebooted Lenovo T400 laptop which I picked up on Ebay a few years ago. I went to turn it on for the first time in a few weeks and, to my great disappointment, the screen did not turn on. I did some research and determined that the culprit could be the RAM. The laptop came to me with a spinning hard drive and 4 GB of RAM (2×2). I replaced the hard drive with a solid state drive and doubled the RAM to 8 GB (4×4). The laptop’s screen powered on when I removed one of the new RAM sticks. I got rid of the broken RAM and re-inserted one of the original 2 GB sticks of RAM (so we now have 6 GB total) while waiting for a new order of two 4 GB sticks. I also ordered new case screws since I have a few missing screws and two of the screws that were holding the palm rest seem to not fit correctly. At least it works, I suppose.