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Thanks, Handy, for responding to this security issue so quickly‼️ (I did notice the downtime at one point, but it was cretainly worthwhile.)

Good to hear from you, Fla Man. I anticipated that you might have some antique computers, but I didn't think you'd have one that's four years older than you. ;)

I was searching for something here on SF, and I came across this nearly 22-year-old thread, so I thought I'd dredge it up. After I had my PCs working on grid.org fighting cancer for years, it folded. So I started them working on World Community Grid instead. You may recall some of my postings...

Oh, and sorry for the Padres' loss; I like Manny Machado, and miss him from the Orioles .

Whoa, Mr. Bardwick, pretty impressive; it had or soon will have its quadranscentennial.

OK, I hope Tannin will check in for verification. For old timer's sake. ;) On another note, I have a PC that's 19.21 years old. Does anyone here have an older one (still running)?

Following up on my last ¶, I checked my PCs' (weak) graphics cards. (Apologies for hijacking this Windows thread.) My latest PC has a Radeon R7 240 from 2019, which should be OK for my minimal video usage if I upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04. My second-oldest (10 YO) is relying on its Xeon E3 1200...

Paraphrasing the Florida Man, inertia. I'm still getting security and other updates, and with my Ubuntu Pro "livepatching", they're most often installed automatically, without manual intervention. It's pretty neat when a whole new kernel is installed "in the background", and there's no reboot...

I'm 75 years old. Is anyone older than that in these forums (fora?).

Me, too, on my Win Desktop. My main laptop is @ 11. And I'm still running Ubuntu 20.04 on my 2 newest desktop PCs. (Actually, they're desk-unders. ;) )

Thanks, @sdbardwick‼️ I just had the "opportunity" to get into that Gigabyte PC's BIOS after all these months, and I found and enabled that option.

From the NY Times: Noël Godin, a Belgian entertainer and anarchist, hurled cream pies at politicians and executives, including Bill Gates. Godin died last month at 80.

Breaking fake news: Donald Trump has issued a proclamation changing the name of Labor Day to Management Day. And another one changing the name of April 1 to Trump Day.

Just speculating, but it seems that pickups and SUVs are dominating these days. A pickup seems impractical to me/us, because the cargo is exposed to the elements ( ;) ), but mom-mobile SUVs might be worth considering, since many moms regularly want to trade theirs in for the latest model, and...

Not mentioned in the title, but leading the jam, the inimitable Buddy Guy. And his polka dot Fender Stratocaster.

Wry chuckle at your unintentional pun. May the current be with you soon.

I'm not religious, but I pray that things have improved for you and your area, Merc, and that further and significant improvement comes soon. And bless you for thinking of others in dire times. 🙏

Fun story from the 2ⁿᵈ city, via NYC.

I liked the progressive lenses better than bifocals, but after my surgery, no glasses needed except for "the fine print". I was "lucky" that I had hereditary cataracts, enabling my insurance to cover the operation, which included correction of my natural lenses.

A few years back, mine eyes had regressed to the point where I had to wear progressive glasses all the time. Then I was diagnosed with cataracts, and ended up having cataract surgery. Now, I need the old glasses only occasionally, for real close vision. What a blessing! 🙏

I saw that query and I thought he meant some database. But DB2 has writ large. whiteray@RyzenShine:~$ echo $RANDOM 17531

Yeah, I refuse to buy a TV that's smarter than me. That lowers the bar significantly. ;)

From https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/07/microsoft-secure-boot-has-been-broken-for-most-of-its-existence: An industry-wide standard Microsoft invented to protect Windows, and later Linux, devices from firmware infections has been trivial to bypass for 13 of its 14 years of existence. The...

Here's an interesting OP/ED from our northern North American "allies", still unconquered/not annexed, like Greenland, but threatened with tariffs, some fairly major, and other random, blithering bluster. The upshot seems to be that the rest of the world has grown weary, but much less wary, of...

I can't really explain what it is I don't like about Scotch, maybe it's what they call "peaty". But I guess that's similar to the "smokey" taste you don't like about mezcal. To each his own. And make it a double. 😜

Oddly, I don't like Scotch, but I do like Irish. And/or a nice tequila or mezcal. But for me, "straight, no chaser". Or nowadays, I believe the term is "neat". 🥃

Searching for Malört seemed to agree with "disgusting". Luckily, Virginia ABC stores don't carry it.

I'll have to check into that one. Currently, I'm particularly fond of a nice Mescal.

WTF? I'm boycotting Kentucky – bourbon in particular, as well as the many other liquors they sell. I've switched to Canadian whisky.

Happy 5ᵗʰ of July‼️🧨🎆 And happy royal wedding 👰🤵💒: From NYTimes: It’s a love story What better way to celebrate America’s 250th birthday than with our own royal wedding? Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce tied the knot at Madison Square Garden last night, amid a constellation of stars from the...

Whoa, you don't have AC, Merc? We're in for a 4ᵗʰ of July flag-wave of heat in the great ol' USA: Here in VA, highs around 100 Thu-Mon. Good thing there's no such thing as Global Warming, or things could get really hot soon.

MS just quietly extended the Win 10 extension by another year: From https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/extended-security-updates: "You can enroll in ESU any time until the program ends on October 12, 2027. If you’re already enrolled, your coverage will automatically continue through that...

Naw, my script runs sudo efw disable, then nohup Rhythmbox & without sudo, then runs sudo efw enable. I might try closing the ports I opened when I started mucking with them for this UPNP adventure. I believe if I'm not at risk with the brief firewall disable, it won't matter what ports I have...

Unfortunately, when I open those firewall ports, restricted to my local network, there is still a long delay detecting upnp sources in Rhythmbox. So I wrote a little bash script that turns off ufw, starts Rhythmbox, then turns ufw back on. Then Rhythmbox sees the upnp sources right away. How...

Thanks for your input, sedrosken. I checked the router, and it does have a firewall that's blocking outside access, so that part is good.

Back to my firewall issues, it looks like something like this: ufw allow from 192.168.1.0/24 1900/tcp ufw allow from 192.168.1.0/24 3689/tcp would restrict the port access to just the devices in my local network. Would that be acceptable, or would it still be as insecure as I am?

OK, I deleted those ufw rules, and I'll check into how to make them specific to my little network.

Upon further review, I figured out that my other PCs connected quickly because they weren't running firewalls. I don't know why; all 3 are running regular Ubuntu installs to which I didn't do anything UFW related. I googled a bit, and I found to open ports 1900 and 5000, and then VLC would see...

Confession: I'm using Rhythmbox instead of VLC, because in my search for the nasty problem that VLC skips the first 2 seconds of every song, I haven't found a solution. So for now, I'm just leaving Rhythmbox up. I'll check into turning off the firewall sometime. I'm a sporadic multimediot...

It's running Ubuntu Linux, and the music is hosted on Windows.

Pardon my ignorance again, but I'm having a vexing issue on my main PC, a relatively fast (for me) Ryzen 3700x with a decent M.2 SSD on a gbps ether-network. When I open VLC to try to play music from my UPNP record collection, it takes quite a while to find it. I just checked again, and it...

Yes, looks like Arthur is heading straight NE on the Texas Gulf Coast, then right through Louisiana and into Mississippi: Lord help those poor people. We've had major weather disasters in significant areas of the country; perhaps El Niño will cut back on the Eastern U. S. hurricane season...

Sub-Subject: Trump's Birthday White House Fight-Club (Self-)Celebration This just reminded me of the ancient Roman Emperors' vicious gladiator "games". Caveat Emperor. Hilarious commentary from some Late Night hosts: jimmy-kimmel-jon-stewart-roast-trumps-ufc-white-house-event Luckily...

RIP, Sonny Rollins. . . . . . . . . . 🎶 Blue 7 from

Maybe tariffs / protectionism are playing a role? Keep out / price out foreign RAM/SSDs, as if that will magically create American manufacturing capability.

A week later, it's still running OK. It even survived a Patch-Tuesday "quality update" and forced reboot. It's been running World Community Grid cancer research tasks 24×7×4 cores×100%, as usual. Those tasks take about 1½ hours each, so there have been hundreds of work-unit downloads and...

Thanks very much, Merc and Sed, for your responses. I'm writing this on that WinPC, still going strong (?) after another half-day. And the Magician and CrystalDiskInfo both say the disk is OK. (I did a full scan with Magician.) Because I don't really use it much, I think I'll just let it...

Yo, I'm donimating:

So Saturday, about 11 months later, I woke up to find that PC had locked up. I tried a few restarts, and it would boot and run OK for a few minutes, then freeze up again. I pulled off the cover to see if it was something obvious, like the CPU cooler fan not running, but I found nothing...

More pickin' (and bowin' and slidin') (and fun): [1947 - seminal to rock & roll]