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@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

Joined 9 September 2022 · 1574 posts

I'm no longer using Noise, having switched to Tangled. https://gr8whitesnark.tangled.com/join bitcoincash:qq4em2hvjxx8hx9kpqgs32gkm6g2jc02qgquhtg5xl nano_3sn…

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Posts

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

Today, I submitted a request to close my Luno account. This was as a result of Luno requesting I provide more personally identifying information about myself and my crypto transactions. I'm not prepared to do that and I don't approve of my home country's government passing legislation to regulate exchanges as financial service providers. If you feel inclined to send me BCH, please don't use the address that Noise has stored for me (and won't allow me to change). Instead, please send BCH to the address below. Otherwise, I won't receive it: bitcoincash:qq4em2hvjxx8hx9kpqgs32gkm6g2jc02qgquhtg5xl Failing this, I will have to give up using Noise and jump ship to Tangled or some other Web3 platform.

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

There are few things as annoying and distracting as a dripping tap or shower nozzle (especially if it goes on for most of the day despite being turned off tightly). My bedroom-cum-study area is right next to the bathroom. It's been driving me crazy, only to stop and be followed by rain on my window and walkway.

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

TIL: The scientific/Latin name for kangaroos (Aborigine for "I don't know") and similar marsupials is "macropod", which is basically "big foot". There we go, folks, Big Foot does exist, but in Australia. All those people looking for Big Foot in the Americas should head to Australia. :P Sources: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220126-is-the-pilbara-the-oldest-place-on-earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macropodidae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macropodiformes

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

Following a post on How Telegram works (and the arrest of its creator, Pavel Durov) by @CryptoFab, I set out to see if Signal actually uses end-to-end encryption (E2EE) or if, like WhatsApp, it actually uses transport-layer security/encryption (TLS/E) and merely claims that it's the former. At this point, having done some reading (only a fraction of all I can read about it), I'm still not certain. Obligatory Disclaimer: I'm not a cryptographer by any means, so I'm not as clued-up on cryptography as I could/should be. My understanding could be mistaken and my explanations erroneous. Please DYOR if anything seems unclear or incorrect. https://www.publish0x.com/cryptographic-viking/does-signal-use-end-to-end-encryption-e2ee-or-transport-laye-xpxknxw?a=oQeZVJGJep&tid=Noise&t=Noise

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

Well, well, well ... As it turns out, the scheduled power outage for today didn't happen, after all. I'm somewhat annoyed about that, since I planned to not do anything requiring electricity today. I could have done my washing or used my computer, but no, I spent most of the day sitting removing D and O rings and clips/fasteners from old and frayed dog collars, harnesses and leads for a local charitable cause. I got blisters on the thumb of my right hand thanks to all the cutting action I performed over the course of a few hours. It was quite hard-going, but I've done most of it, with only four or five items left to tackle. I'm leaving those until the blisters are gone, so probably the rest of the week. In other news, it's apparent that CAPTCHA (or the creator thereof) doesn't know that starfish can walk.

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

Tomorrow, the town in which I live is going to experience a scheduled power outage that might last up to twelve hours, if not longer. The outage is scheduled to start from 08:00 in the morning. Fortunately, I have prepared breakfast for myself, since I've got an appointment at 08:30 and will likely only be able to eat after it. As for the rest of the day, I'll have to fill it with tasks that don't require the use of electricity. Ho, hum, what fun I have without reliable infrastructure! On that note, I'm off to bed in the hope that I'll wake early tomorrow, but I'm not counting on it.

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

Oof! I've just spent 350 banana republic bucks on a new phone charger, since the old ones I have no longer work. Unfortunately, I've had to dip into my savings account to compensate for that unanticipated event and keep my current account out of the red. I am not thrilled. I've also tried closing my Luno account (since all crypto exchanges in my home country are required to register as financial service providers and perform KYC on users). I've been unable to do that, since I still have a non-zero balance in BCH and transferring that to another wallet is pending.

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

Once again, I've been creating digital art (which will hopefully drive people to my Patreon page, but I don't have much hope of that since it's yet to happen). Here's just a small sample, for those who like neko-chan (cat girls) and Barbie dolls in fetish clothing. https://www.patreon.com/Jizzy_Rascal (NSFW; 18+)

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@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

On the Internet, we can all be the people we choose to be (abusive, argumentative, easily offended, petty, etc.), but it behooves us to be the people we want to be, the best versions of ourselves (courteous, patient, polite, understanding, etc.), just as we should be IRL. As for me, I sometimes forget the distinction between my snarky online persona and the real-life me.

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

I had Thai takeaways for lunch today. Now, all I can taste is spring onion. It was worth it, though; I regret nothing.

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

Fortune Cookie of the Day: (anarchism) "A structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of explosives."  — Peter Kropotkin Likewise, a structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few hundred wallets full of Bitcoin. Instead, the structure will adapt to extinguish the resistance, or morph to incorporate it. Building a new structure will take dynamite — more than a few kilos, as well as brick, labor, and many other things. That hasn't stopped revolutionaries from trying to abolish existing structures through violent means (such as coups and beheading bourgeois aristocrats), however.

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

I feel the urge to post something on one of my blogs, but I'm out of ideas. All I have to report is that I spent about half the day in bed and the other half posting an updated CV to various job sites and applying to positions I'm unlikely to get (thanks to my brain issues) or in which I have no interest, but I need to find some way of earning a living. (Sadly, blogging, music production and milking crypto faucets ain't it.)

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

A while ago (October to December last year), I made yet another new album, with the intent of uploading it before Christmas. Mainly due to my own laziness and disorganisation, I missed that deadline. I've kept missing it since. It's taken me until today to upload it to Band Camp. Have a listen, why don't you? I hope you like at least some of it. https://greatwhitesnark.bandcamp.com/album/three-blonde-mice

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

For some reason that eludes me, I cannot get Steam to run on Debian 12. I've run it from a terminal window and looked at both the output to the console and the log files it generates. I am still none the wiser as to why it crashes or how to fix it.

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

Hey fellow noise-makers! Some of you might have noticed that I've been quiet since the ides of May. That's because I've been unable to log in to many of my accounts (including Noise and Medium). The reason for that is I've had a prolonged cash flow problem that prevented me from paying my account for email and thus having no access to my inbox. Fortunately, I managed to get a disability grant for my health, so will have a little more money coming in every month. I'll be using that to pay my bills and saving what I make from weekends at the kennels. Unfortunately, I've lost my bank card and driver's license, so need to head to the bank and DMV soon in order to get replacements. That's not going to be fun. I also need to get the bank to reverse a stop I put on one of my monthly debits, since I can't do that through online banking.

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated! As many of you may have noticed, I've been away from noise for a while. That's not because I disappeared for good. I was taking a break to write my first novel. It's a whopping ~260 pages, which is quite a feat for someone whose short stories are a few pages at most. The full write-up for it is on Publish0x: https://www.publish0x.com/hunting-of-the-snark/reports-of-my-demise-have-been-greatly-exaggerated-xwvmqwp?a=oQeZVJGJep https://leanpub.com/recall-the-deeds-pba-01

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

Whoo, somebody got a tax rebate. Somebody used it to replace a car battery that's been troublesome for at least the last two years. That same somebody also bought new threads and shoes with that money (although the shoes are a size too small, but an exchange in store should sort that out) and still had enough to pay the rent. Somebody remembers what it feels like to have money, be able to do things with it and not feel like a nobody. Now to finish the blasted edits to my CV that I've been putting off for a week and find a blasted job ...

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

I really don't get the point of TOML and YAML. Surely, between *.INI, Java *.properties, JSON and XML, there's something elegant, expressive and versatile enough to describe whatever configuration one desires? Apparently not ... Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/927/

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

I finally managed to withdraw a small amount of BCH from Faucet Crypto (despite the fact that it's over 70% of the daily limit). Hopefully, all the hours I've spent there have paid off, but I'm not holding my breath. I've also done quite well on Fire Faucet, but I do wish I'd withdrawn my earnings when XNO was at ~$0.63 instead of ~$0.735. I'd have made a small profit, considering I've gone from ~11 XNO to ~9.7 XNO in the space of two weeks. https://faucetcrypto.com/ref/1640001

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

Once again, I am having trouble with Windows 8+. This time, it's the AV software I was running (Avast) having removed `CMD` and `findstr`, thus preventing me from running a lot of software, particularly CLI-based. (That's a serious problem, since using the console is mainly how I interact with Windows anyway; everything else is a resource hog and takes ages to load and run, then crash or hang for another age.) In order to get around/past it, I changed to using *NIX through WSL. I've been meaning to learn to use `bash` and the CLI properly for a while anyway, so it's not necessarily a bad thing that adversity has forced me to. https://www.publish0x.com/back-to-the-source/even-with-one-hand-tied-behind-my-back-i-can-still-make-a-fi-xxvyyqd

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

I've got yet another assessment project to do, due in a day or two. The thing is that I can do it in *any* language of my choice. I've got half a mind to create an esoteric micro-language of my own (an extension to Brainf**k), write, debug and test an interpreter for it, convert it to a CGI executable or Apache 2 mod and then complete the project in the language I've created, just to be a dick and prove that I can. (Although I'm sure it's not practical to generate CSS, HTML and JS with Brainf**k, it's also not beyond the realm of possibility.) The only caveat is that I've got a maximum of 1.5 hours to complete the project once I start. I'm doing well if I can even create one non-trivial page of HTML/PHP code in that time, never mind convert it to another language.

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

TIL:It is possible to fit up to 1250 characters into a QR code (inclusive). I found this out by attempting to generate a QR code for/of the Gettysburg Address. It kept causing overflows in the JavaScript, so I set the maximum length for the text input to 250 characters, increasing the maximum allowed length by 50 characters and regenerating the QR code image each time, until it overflowed again. If you want to make use of the tool, it's available here: https://www.halbard-digital-softwr.co.za/QRCode/

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

At long last, I'm writing my autobiography, which I will be publishing in parts on LeanPub. This comes after much delaying, distraction (including the years in which I wrote likely inflammatory, offensive and rant-filled blog posts and attempted, in futility, to educate fellow cishet white men about the finer points of relating to other genders and races) and procrastination (at which I excel). In truth, I've been writing it for *years* (over a decade), since I first started keeping a journal in high school as a means of coping with my crazy, problematic life and the trauma that preceded it. However, I am only now going through those old, yellowing, age-spotted and probably mildew-heavy volumes. (Shortly before a mid-life crisis hits is probably as good a time as any, if ever there is one, to write a biography). What I like about LeanPub is a number of things: - Pays 80% of all income from sale to the author. (Typical publishers pay 10% or less.) - Authors can upload a book in parts, as it is writ, allowing readers to review it and provide feedback that can be incorporated into the final draft. - Authors choose for how much they want to sell books (free or $8 USD to $1 000 USD). - Books can be sold as part of a bundle (of multiple books) - LeanPub also allows creating educational courses, with questions and tests, possibly leading to obtaining a certificate at the end. (I prefer learning from books to learning from videos). - Multiple courses can be bundled together as a track. For example: If I created individual courses on HTML & CSS, Java, PHP and one on Python (each with books for them), I could bundle them all together into a "Computer Programming" track. - Anything that isn't a book can be included as an extra. That includes multimedia

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

"You wouldn't shoot a policeman, steal his helmet, go to the toilet in it and then give it to his widow, would you?" So begins an elaborate send-up of anti-piracy ads on films (particularly those distributed on DVDs), as depicted in Graham Linehan's much-loved _The IT Crowd_. To that question, I answer, no, *I* might not, but my boss' dog might (minus the shooting bit, of course). https://www.publish0x.com/hunting-of-the-snark/snark-with-a-sick-dog-1-highway-traffic-jam-0-xrxyzky

@GreatWhiteSnarkOnNoiseApp

TIL: The Hive Keychain wallet plugin for Firefox uses node.js. It has also been interfering with/breaking the JS on many of the sites I visit (including MyLot). Since I seldom use it and am not a fan of Hive anyway, I have uninstalled it. I wonder if it's also the culprit for a lot of the weirdness I've been experiencing with the TinyMCE editor on Publish0x.