Mister_Snuggles

Possibly too early, or possibly too ambitious. Looking at the Wikipedia article[0], it feels like it was definitely too ambitious. The design seems to have everything that you'd expect out of a full-blown relational database.

BeOS feels more like a document database - no defined schema, just attributes attached to your files.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS

BeOS did the whole "filesystem is a database" thing that was pretty cool[0].

I think AS/400 does a similar thing, but I don't know a lot about it. PICK OS was also similar.

[0] https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/24-scripting_the_bfs/

I remember calling MS support, vaguely related to this project.

For example, if the Edmonton office needed to send a welcome letter to a new client, the flow might look like this:

1. Create a new file based on X:\Templates\EdmontonLetterhead.dot

2. Insert the contents of X:\Templates\A01-ClientOnboarding.doc

3. Fill in fields. Usually stuff like client name, caseworker name, etc.

4. Click the links in the file (e.g., there'd be a link to X:\Templates\EdmontonContactNumbers.doc), printing each document and deleting the link from the final document.

5. Save the file to the client's folder (e.g., S:\Clients\000123-Jane Smith).

6. Print a copy for the paper file, a copy to mail out, and an envelope.

We called Microsoft Support because when changes were made to the template documents it would update the links to relative paths. These don't work with our flow because the document either isn't saved, or is saved on a different network drive.

Microsoft Support wasn't able to help us. They understood exactly what we were doing, exactly what the problem is, but they weren't able to fix it. That's just how Word works, it didn't have a setting to force absolute links.

I ended up writing another VB6 program, using OLE Automation to get Word to do the work, which opened each document, saved it to a local drive (which turned the relative links into absolute links), then copied it back to the shared drive.

It was amazingly easy to interact with other apps via OLE Automation (aka, COM Automation).

About 25 years ago I wrote a program that would look for requests (in the form of XML files) from the custom software on our Solaris system, then based on the contents of the request it would fire up Word, load up the appropriate letterhead and body template, fill in the required information (e.g., client name/address, caseworker name, etc), print two copies (one for the file, one with an envelope to send out), and store the completed document in the client's folder on the fileserver.

This program saved an incredible amount of time and let the office typing pool concentrate on typing dictated letters instead of filling out templates.

Without the magic of OLE Automation letting me use Word programmatically from my application, creating this would have been basically impossible.

I'm surprised that Canada doesn't seem to be talking about doing this.

We've already got a strong payment processing brand with Interac, it's used daily for millions of debit transactions, and supports all the features you'd expect (in Canada) from a payment card (tap, chip&pin). There's also the MasterCard Debit and Visa Debit branding which seem to bridge debit transactions to the MasterCard and Visa networks. And there's already Interac-capable terminals basically everywhere that Visa and MC are accepted.

My thought is that Interac should launch a credit card brand called "Interac Credit". The actual credit would be via the banks, just like it is with Visa and MC. Interac already has the relationships with merchants and banks to make this happen, and it has the mindshare with consumers to make it successful.

Running two Lenovo ThinkVision displays off of my work MacBook Pro.

On the MBP built-in display, the upper-left and upper-right corners are rounded. I believe this is due to the shape of the display. The bottom corners are not rounded.

On the external displays, the corners are all square.

> - If you are thinking of ZFS/TrueNAS because of the scrubbing functionality, RAID1 + BTRFS also have scrubbing.

In my experience, BTRFS is to be avoided. It's the only FS that I've lost data to.

Honestly, the big thing that the Pi has is the support and mindshare. Compared to many equivalents (e.g., the Banana Pi) you'll find much better documentation and have a much more polished experience with a Raspberry Pi.

The only question, for me anyway, is how much value I put on that experience and whether the increased cost is worth it.

Worked issued me a Windows Mobile based Palm Treo (probably a 700wx), but I'm honestly not sure. It was decidedly not great, but mostly did the job. It was eventually replaced by a Blackberry of some kind which worked a lot better.

I had a number of PalmPilots over the years, I loved those little devices! I also remember using a keyboard dock with one of them to take notes during meetings.

I'm pretty sure I had a PalmPilot Professional, a Palm V, and a Tungsten T (which slid open). The Palm V was easily my favourite, it was a very good looking device that worked very well. In comparison, the Tungsten T was somewhat clunky.

What DNS features are you missing? Is this a weird UXG limitation?

I have a UCG-Ultra and was able to set up DNS just the way I wanted. My needs aren't extreme, but I was able to set up a wildcard entry (*.apps.domain -> 192.168.x.y) and fixed addresses and DNS names for various hosts.

The configuration is in a non-obvious place now and has moved around a bit over time. Currently it hides in Settings > Policy Engine > DNS. It shows entries that come from the per-host fixed IP/Local DNS configuration (you can't edit these here) and you can create new entries here (like my wildcard or some other random entry).

Rather than regulating features, I'd start with a dependency list.

So a smart plug might have a list saying:

- Functionality requires 2.4GHz WiFi, Internet access, access to whatever.vendor.com, and a vendor.com account.

- Provisioning requires the above plus BLE and Vendor's app.

A smart washing machine might be more complex:

- Express wash requires nothing special.

- Regular wash requires 2.4GHz WiFi, Internet access, access to whatever.vendor.com, and a vendor.com account.

- Heavy Duty wash requires the above plus a vendor-supplied detergent cartridge.

How does this prevent a random application from making an HTTPS request to a random hard-coded IP address? Similarly, how does this prevent an application from making an HTTPS request to a generic host (e.g., api.example.com)?

This is what DoH looks like from outside the application. You can't really tell that it's DoH since it's just an HTTPS connection, which is kind of the whole point of it.

To play devil's advocate, shoving everything into HTTP/HTTPS also allowed a ton of innovation.

Would video streaming sites (Youtube, Vimeo, etc) ever have gotten off the ground if they had to go to IANA to get a port number assigned, then wait for browsers to support the new protocol that runs over the new port, etc? Probably not to be honest. Or maybe browsers would just let JavaScript connect to any port, which would be terrifying from a security standpoint.

I'm firmly convinced that shoving everything into HTTP/HTTPS was a mistake. But I'm also willing to acknowledge that it's probably the least-worst solution to a bunch of problems.

I can see a future where Chrome will use the system resolver for everything except Google's advertising domains, and those name resolutions will be impossible to block because they're going to a Google IP that may also serve services you want. Maybe Chrome would get called out for this change and they'd back it off.

But I doubt that a smart TV that does this would get called out, and even if they were the response would likely be "Oh, that model is three months old and we don't do firmware updates, sorry."

Usually.

Some middleboxes inspect the TLS session setup (e.g., SNI sniffing) and in some corporate environments they even decrypt the traffic (this relies on the endpoints having a root certificate installed that allows this functionality, which is something you'd see in a corporate environment).

There's no reason you couldn't, and this would actually be fine in my view.

The problem is that with DoH the applications themselves have their own resolver built in that doesn't respect the system defaults.

The thing that bothers me most about DoH is that it moves the responsibility for name resolution from the operating system to each application. So now you don't have the ability to set up your own DNS server system-wide, you need to do it per-application and per-device. Assuming, of course, that the applications and devices in question allow you to do this and/or respect your choice when you do it.

Also shoving every protocol under the sun into HTTPS just feels wrong. I get why it's happening (too many middleware boxes and ISPs think internet == web). But shouldn't we fix the ISPs and middleware instead of endlessly working around it?

I see the carbon tax as a 'stick' (to penalize undesired behaviour, in this case emitting carbon), but it needs to be coupled with a 'carrot' to encourage the desired behaviours.

I'd like to see a carbon tax coupled with massive investments to make public transit legitimately good. There are too many places where there is no viable alternative to driving, a carbon tax will unnecessarily punish those people without giving them a reasonable alternative.

Do people not look at the operating costs before buying a vehicle? Do they really just negotiate a monthly payment and get surprised at the amount they have to pay for fuel/maintenance/insurance?

When I bought my most recent car I had a spreadsheet which projected fuel (whether that's gas, electricity, or gas+electricity) and maintenance costs (there was some ball-parking here) for a dozen different models based on our driving habits. Once the list was narrowed down a bit I did some online quotes at my insurance company to add that in.

There were no financial surprises when I bought the car.

The section on the author's background could have almost been written by me. I'm also a PeopleSoft developer, and the ability to build fully-functional CRUD apps without needing to know about HTML, JavaScript, Browsers, etc, is severely underappreciated. For very simple CRUD pages, no code is required. For developing line-of-business apps it's actually an incredible toolset.

There's a $100 one for making desktop apps with SQLite support, which doesn't interest me. $399 gets you to the Web tier with PostgreSQL support, which is the feature set I'm most interested in.

I'm still tempted...

Wow, a quick cruise through the documentation suggests that this is EXACTLY the kind of thing I'm looking for!

I find myself waffling between "This is too expensive for me to play around with at home" and "Considering what this does, $399 really isn't that bad..."

Is https://delphi.fandom.com/wiki/Delphi_for_PHP the one you're thinking of?

This is truly interesting, and the description on that wiki page suggests that it might be exactly what I'm looking for, but it seems like any concrete information about it has vanished.

I would love something like Delphi/VB6, but made for web development.

My day job involves working with PeopleTools, which basically does this. Draw forms (and build all of the supporting objects), save them, and they're accessible through a web browser. You don't need to know HTML, CSS, JS, etc (though it can help), and you can knock out a very based CRUD form in no time without writing any code.

I think the Microsoft Power Platform has features similar to this as well.

But neither of these options are very accessible to regular folks. Something that has the ease of development of Delphi, the deployment simplicity that comes with presenting the application via a web browser, and is accessible to regular folks would be incredible.

I've only bought two toasters in my life.

The first was a two-slice Kenmore (RIP Sears) which still works. It cost $20 and was purchased close to 25 years ago. I only used this a couple times a week and now the usage is very sporadic, but it always works when I need it to.

The second was a Cuisinart toaster oven, which is not exactly a toaster but has ended up being our primary toaster. I have no idea how old it is since we bought it at a garage sale for $5 about 5 years ago. This is used almost daily, sometimes multiple times a day, and for a lot more than just toast.

I can see buying one more toaster, meaning a toaster oven, in my life, but it will probably be to get new functionality (e.g., air fryer, larger capacity, etc) instead of replacing something broken.

From my predictions:

> Your deep dive into embedded systems will lead you to create a heated keyboard powered by the same batteries as your Milwaukee heated jacket.

While I don't have a Milwaukee heated jacket (I have no idea why it thought this), this feels like a fantastic project idea.

> After years of watching payment technologies evolve, you'll finally embrace cryptocurrency, but only after creating a detailed spreadsheet comparing transaction fees across 17 different payment methods.

I feel seen. I may have created spreadsheets like this for comparing cloud backup options and cars.

From my roast:

> You've spent so much time discussing payment technologies that your credit card probably has a restraining order against you.

This one is completely wrong. They wouldn't do this as they'd lose out on a ton of transaction fees.

> The solution I've come up with but haven't yet put into action is to use an ESP device, with some sort of contact switch which sits _in_ the hole where the lock goes and detects whether the lock (bolt?) is physically present.

Another option is to disassemble a door/window sensor and replace its reed switch with a contact switch, much like you want to do with the ESP.

> - Missing feature; do not connect when on certain SSIDs.

I'm very surprised by this omission as this feature exists on the official iOS client.

I've taken this approach as well. The WireGuard clients can be configured to make this basically transparent based on what SSID I'm connected to. I used to do similar with IPSec/IKEv2, but WireGuard is so much easier to manage.

The only thing missing on the client is Split DNS. With my IPSec/IKEv2 setup, I used a configuration profile created with Apple Configurator plus some manual modifications to make DNS requests for my internal stuff go through the tunnel and DNS requests for everything else go to the normal DNS server.

My compromise for WireGuard is that all DNS does to my home network but only packets destined for my home subnets go through the tunnel.