April 2023 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

[GTALUG-Announce] Membership Dues
by Warren McPherson 13 Nov '23

13 Nov '23

With the agm coming up, now is a great time to renew membership and make a small twenty dollar contribution to the organization. For those looking forward to the chance to wind their way through the Interac E-Transfer process again here is my summary of how it works. (Actually I forget each time so the novelty never wears off -- luckily it is easy.) Log in to your bank and look for "Interac e-Transfers" you may need to go to the "Transfers" page and then you will see this option. Select "email method" and use the email address: membership(a)gtalug.org Putting your name in the message can be helpful as the notification I get can sometimes be a touch obtuse. Thank you to those who have already contributed! (I know who you are. Ha ha) Thank you, Warren --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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DECTalk TTS in source for Linux
by Stewart C. Russell 05 May '23

05 May '23

DECTalk - the venerable text-to-speech system (think Stephen Hawking, or Moonbase Alpha) - seems to be available in source form: https://github.com/dectalk/dectalk There's a web demo: https://webspeak.terminal.ink/ While I've built it and run it quite successfully under Ubuntu, its licence is ... troubling. At best it's abandonware. At worst, there's an owner somewhere who hasn't found the github repo yet to shut it down. As such, it shouldn't be deployed without taking legal advice. [Karen - I know that DECTalk is a subject that matters to you. While this is interesting news, it likely doesn't mean that new, cheap DECTalk boxes will be hitting the streets soon. Some of the reasons include: * the licence: you need the permission of a possibly defunct company to use this software; * porting: the software doesn't seem to be set up to listen to a serial port and speak whatever comes in from that port; * availability of hardware: small Linux computers are in very short supply right now; and * sound quality: the built-in audio hardware on most single-board Linux computers sounds atrocious. Without an add-on amplifier/equalizer, I think you'd be horrified at the lack of fidelity.] cheers, Stewart

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how many addresses possible
by o1bigtenor 30 Apr '23

30 Apr '23

Greetings (My head is swimming with all the explanations on IP routing - - - have spent about 3 hours now looking at various documents - - - - I just can't find a clear answer. The first statement is my present network - - - I'm trying to figure out how to move beyond the access of only 254 devices at one time. Please - - - this is not my business - - - - I'm just using a highly connected system design idea in the planning and trying to figure out how to get what I would like - - - done. ) If I set up a router using the 192.168.1.1 I can access some 254 distinct IP addresses from my router. If I set up a router using the 176.10.1.1 how many distinct IP addresses can I access? (I'm thinking some 64k worth but dunno!) TIA

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The good old days of oreilly.com
by sciguy 30 Apr '23

30 Apr '23

Hi folks I hadn't logged on to Oreilly.com in several years, and today I had a reason to do so. I had been a frequent purchaser of Oreilly books at one time, and recently I had become interested in their Raspberry Pi Cookbook, and decided to used my old login to their site and see if it was offered there. The search only led me to a 404, and that it wouldn't show me anything unless I paid a subscription fee. WTF? I recall I had had a number of PDF bookmarks to previous purchases of other titles of their books. All gone. Sorry if I was out of the loop. I was hoping to just order the book; preferably a PDF. Is Amazon in control of everything now? Paul

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wireless to ethernet adapter suggestions?
by Karen Lewellen 29 Apr '23

29 Apr '23

Hi wise souls, I hope I ask this question clearly, as it may be hard to picture. My new landlord is including Internet in my rent, all the more motivation to find a solution. he has bell, fibe for home, which includes things like Internet, but is not very aware of unique methods of using the Internet, like Ethernet connections. for the past year I have quite easily used fibe connections with my main machine, so I feel sure this may be more about distance than anything else. There is no physical modem in my apartment. Instead, I have a set of two adapter I got from the source a few years back. they plug into the wall, have a single Ethernet jack, and when the other item is connected to the modem via the same method, I can use the network, no extra software involved. The problem we are having though is that for unexplained reasons I loose internet access, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for several hours at a time. My first thought was that perhaps the service upstairs thinks i am a threat, but again my new landlord has no idea how to check for this. To be forthright the Internet shakiness is becoming a major factor for me personally, I still have no land line, doing a great deal of work with resources on line, like reach my office email. Leading me to the question. given adapter like the one I am using now existed, think 2017 or 2018, I am guessing comparative ones exist that allow the Ethernet connection to tap into a wireless network. By which I mean, there will be no need for the adapter to be physically connected to the service modem, the adapter can draw upon the wireless resources, while still providing say a single Ethernet jack. Anyone know of such an adapter? amazon Canada would be wonderful as I have a gift card balance just now. If confusing, ask questions that make it easier to follow, my main computer uses Ethernet only, I have no wireless resources whatsoever. Thanks, Karen

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small laptops (recommendation?)
by William Park 28 Apr '23

28 Apr '23

Hi all, Following the current thread on "cheap small computers", I've been browsing again. I have 11.5" chromebook and am looking for similarly small but decent laptop to run Linux on. I looked at 15", 16", 17" laptops, but decided that even T450, that I already have, is too big. I've been eying ThinkPad 11e laptop, partly because Lenovo has been spamming me. Is there any alternatives you know of or recommend?

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slides from Marcel Gagne's talk "Advancements in Generative AI"
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 27 Apr '23

27 Apr '23

| From: Alan Heighway <alan(a)heighway.ca> | Subject: [GTALUG-Announce] Reminder: GTALUG General Meeting - Tuesday, | April 11, 7:30pm | | Advancements in Generative AI <https://gtalug.org/meeting/2023-04/> with | Marcel Gagne <https://gtalug.org/> The slides from this talk are at: <https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/890409767602884650/10964891083244912…> This is from GTALUG's #general-discussion: <https://discord.com/channels/890409767141535775/890409767602884650> (I barely use discord so I think it is nice to have this kind of thing on the mailing list.)

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bell home hub 3000?
by Karen Lewellen 27 Apr '23

27 Apr '23

Hi wise folks, in the latest chapter of troubleshooting the situation with Internet here, my landlord and I have a question. well, I have a question, my landlord freely owns he knows absolutely nothing about the workings of his technology. which is why I am seeking a manual for the bell home hub 3000, or anyone here who might have this particular modem? Thanks profoundly, Kare

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Checking TLS certificates across multiple machines
by Giles Orr 27 Apr '23

27 Apr '23

Three weeks ago I mentioned to a couple people on this mailing list that I'd written a script at work that live-checks TLS certificates across multiple machines. This is a very useful thing to have when one of my jobs is maintaining multiple small websites. One of these people responded that I should give a short talk about this project, and added "Most of us do a little sys-admining and can learn from the pros." At which point I burst out laughing ... and realized Imposter Syndrome had reared its ugly head once again. A "professional" is someone who gets paid to do a job, and I am that. Doesn't mean I feel like a "professional sys-admin," even though I am - more of a professional jack-of-all-trades ... But "Imposter Syndrome" is another huge discussion ... we now return you to our irregularly scheduled programming. That message prompted me to talk to my bosses, one of whom not only endorsed my idea of publicly releasing this code, but did so enthusiastically. My thanks to Toronto Public Library for that. And so I give you: https://github.com/gilesorr/robotface-utils (The naming is a weird story - explanation in the README if you're curious.) Given a list of fully qualified domain names, the 'chkcertexpiry' script goes to each one, retrieves the TLS certificate, and lists the expiry date and issuer. If the expiry date is soon (number of days settable by a command line switch) the date is colour-highlighted. If there are connection problems, those are noted. At work, I run this once a week against all the sites I'm responsible for. I don't think we've had an expired cert on any of those domains in the 5-7 years I've been using this script. I hope people will use this. I welcome comments and suggestions. I'm a little scared of PRs because I've never had to deal with them before ... Please feel free to share as you think appropriate. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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Fedora 38 is out
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 24 Apr '23

24 Apr '23

I just downloaded a 2G .iso. It seemed to take less than 30 seconds to download! I was using a 1g Rogers Cable connection. I guess that 20 seconds is about the fastest theoretically possible so this is startling.

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