Neofetch for displaying system information

Originally designed for use in demonstrations on Linux bash in an easy to understand way that could be used in screenshots and demos. In my experience I’ve found that it also makes it easier to review details of remotely administered and virtual machines or images when performing maintenance.

Neofetch shows Operating System, uptime, CPU, GPU, and memory information. While built for linux bash, it can also be installed on macOS and Windows machines.

Installation for Linux is as simple as:
sudo apt install neofetch

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Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Mining

Unless you’ve been completely removed from society over the past 10 years or so, you’ve likely heard about Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. While the technology behind them may beyond most peoples understanding and buying a single Bitcoin is likely too expensive for many people (as of today its over $56,000 USD = 1 BTC), you can still get in on the craze by mining. At the core of crypto currency is some really complicated math, mining is the process of having a computer perform some of those calculations. Usually this is done with entire farms of computers with high-end CPUs or GPUs. Regardless of your hardware you can still get in on the action by joining services that combine the actions of many users into smaller units of work.

While there are many providers out there, I’ve found that the client offered by CudoMiner is one of the easiest for most users to install and run on modest hardware running Windows, Linux or OS/X. After setup, you just have to leave your device powered and connected to the web to use the idle time to earn some money.

With the increase in remote workers and students over the past year, I’d expect that at least a few of those organizations have figured out that they can use the idle time on those devices for mining to increase their revenue stream.

Microsoft ending support and removing Legacy Edge on Windows 10

Another Microsoft browser bites the dust. Legacy Edge, the original “Edge” on that was designed to replace MSIE on Windows 10 before Microsoft changed direction and used the same underlying engine already used by Chromium, Chrome and Safari is finally going away. During it’s short tenure and overlap with Chromium Edge, it’s lead to a lot of confusion by users that are not aware of the vastly different versions of ‘Edge’. Fortunately its support ended on March 9th, 2021 and it will be removed by Windows Update with the upcoming patch expected on April 13th 2021.

Geekcode

A very long time ago there was an online means to identify yourself online with a short abstracted code that resembled a PGP email signature, at that time I identified as:


-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
Created: 1999/02/02
GCS/IT d-(++@) s+:+ a- c++ UL++(++++$) P+++$ L+ E W+++$
N++ o++++ K w+++ O M V PS+ PE++ Y++ PGP+++ t+ 5 X++ R(-)
tv+ b+ DI+++ D+ G++ e++ h(-) r>++ y++*
-----END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

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Windows Vista EOL

As of April 11, 2017, Windows Vista customers are no longer receiving new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates from Microsoft. Microsoft has provided support for Windows Vista for the past 10 years

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/22882/windows-vista-end-of-support

The most recent version of Internet Explorer in Windows Vista was IE 9.0.8112.16421 (9.0.57)

Even Apple, Google and Mozilla Firefox have ceased to maintain browsers for this operating system, dropping support for Windows XP and Vista at the same time.

Chrome 49.0.2623.112
https://chrome.googleblog.com/2015/11/updates-to-chrome-platform-support.html

Firefox 52.9.0 ESR
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/end-support-windows-xp-and-vista

Safari 5.1.7
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/68836/where-can-i-download-safari-for-windows

Windows XP EOL

I recently crossed paths with a customer that was still using Windows XP and experiencing problems with a website.   This led me to evaluate their options for continuing to use this once very common, but now unsupported operating system.

After 12 years, support for Windows XP ended April 8, 2014. Microsoft will no longer provide security updates or technical support.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsforbusiness/end-of-xp-support

The most recent version of Internet Explorer in Windows XP was IE 8.0.6001.18702

Even Apple, Google and Mozilla Firefox have ceased to maintain browsers for this operating system, dropping support for Windows XP and Vista at the same time.

Chrome 49.0.2623.112
https://chrome.googleblog.com/2015/11/updates-to-chrome-platform-support.html

Firefox 52.9.0 ESR
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/end-support-windows-xp-and-vista

Safari 5.1.7
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/68836/where-can-i-download-safari-for-windows

An additional problem with use of IE8 on Windows XP is that it only supports up to TLS1.0 which is currently being replaced by TLS1.2  in many web applications.

 

Fixing the Windows 7 is not genuine message

While I’ve run various builds of Linux for many years, I still have to routinely test my work in Windows. While I often attempt to keep my laptops able to dual-boot into Windows, that only (realistically) supports only a single version of Windows. For older versions, I generally rely upon VirtualBox and can then have different configurations available when needed, while keeping my Linux apps open too!

Occasionally, I’ve had a virtual machine running a licensed copy of Windows 7 start warning that it is not activated. This can prove to be annoying for several reasons, as such I did some research and found that others have encountered the same problem and shared the below solutions.

First method:

  1. Open a command prompt in Administrator mode.
  2. Execute “slmgr -rearm”
  3. NOTE: some sites tell you to locate and remove “slui.exe” – DO NOT DO THIS!
  4. Restart Windows
  5. Problem should be resolved

Alternative – reactive with your product key:

  1. Open a command prompt in Administrator mode.
  2. Execute “slmgr –upk
  3. Execute “slmgr –ipk (your product key)
  4. Restart Windows
  5. Problem should be resolved

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Windows 7+ “GodMode”

To give you complete control over all the configurable options in Windows 7+ at a single press of a button just simply create a new folder anywhere and rename it to this:


GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

The folder you create will now have 270 items that are to do with configurable options in Windows 7. Interestingly it also works for Windows 8.1 and 10 as well.

NOTE: Vista partially supported this feature, but was prone to crashing until the folder was removed.

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Hackintosh – running Apple OS/X inside VirtualBox (on Ubuntu or Windows)

I’ve done a LOT of web and software development in my career, one of the biggest problems I’v e had is doing proper testing on various platforms. VirtualBox can be run on most platforms, and allows for you to virtualize various operating systems. Apple’s OS X can be problematic to install, here’s some functioning instructions and settings that I’ve successfully used for my virtual Hackintosh test environment.

WARNING: As this uses an image of the software, it is advisable to also have a valid licenced copy as to use this without a licence would be “stealing”.

NOTE: this is a version of Snow Leopard, unfortunately you will NOT be able to update or add “fixes” to this test copy as it will usually break. I recommend making a copy of the VM if you wish to try!

My VirtualBox settings:

Mac OS X
Mac OS X Snow Leopard (64-bit)
1024MB
1 core
Disable EFI
6MB+ video

Steps:

  1. English, continue
  2. Utilities… disk Utilities… Select drive, Erase, name, erase… close
  3. continue
  4. Select disk… continue
  5. Customize (see instructions for: updates, kernels & bootloaders)
  6. NOTE: i only did 10.6.1 (an earlier 10.6.2 failed)

  7. Install
  8. Resolution fix – (I could not save file, but here are the instructions…

    Finder > OSX Drive (On desktop) > Extras > com.apple.Boot.plist (open with TextEdit – use the field to find)


<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1280×1024x32</string>

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“msapplication-config” and browserconfig.xml

Windows-8/MSIE-11 introduced Tiles, as such server administrators may have started seeing HTTP 404 errors in their server logs as it attempts to look for a “browserconfig.xml” file at the root of a website domain. If you are inclined to use this file, you should definitely look into the documentation for how to best make use of it. Others may just wish to prevent the error from making “noise” in their log files.

To remove the error, add the following to your pages; alternately you COULD define the URL of your file as the ‘content’ attribute:

<meta name="msapplication-config" content="none" />

You can alternately place an empty /browserconfig.xml on your web server for each domain.

An common example of how to use this file is below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<browserconfig>
<msapplication>
<tile>
<square70x70logo src="/mstile-70x70.png"/>
<square150x150logo src="/mstile-150x150.png"/>
<wide310x150logo src="/mstile-310x150.png"/>
<square310x310logo src="/mstile-310x310.png"/>
<TileColor>#8bc53f</TileColor>
<TileImage src="/mstile-150x150.png" />
</tile>
</msapplication>
</browserconfig>

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