- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Re: [GTALUG] Dollar store computer audio system...
by James Knott 09 Apr '25

09 Apr '25

On 4/9/25 06:56, ac via talk wrote: > Personally I buy from here:https://login.aliexpress.com > > It is cheap, effective and the one time in 100 times I did not receive my > shipment, I received a full credit AND the shipment. > > I have not used this when in .ca but I see no reason why it would be different? > maybe you guys, gals and others can enlighten me 🙂 I have also bought a couple of things from them. The first was a mini PC, which I use for my firewall/router running pfSense. Recently I bought a WiFi card for my ThinkPad, so I could upgrade from 2.4 GHz to 2.4 & 5 GHz. Because it took so long to get to me, they refunded my purchase price, which wasn't that much to begin with.

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Re: [GTALUG] Dollar store computer audio system...
by Colin McGregor 09 Apr '25

09 Apr '25

On Wed, Apr 9, 2025 at 6:55 AM ac via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> wrote: > > On Tue, 8 Apr 2025 18:13:58 -0400 > Kevin Cozens via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> wrote: > > On 2025-04-07 23:12, William Park via talk wrote: > > > I always go to Dollarama before I go to Canadian Tire. I swear, you can > > > find pretty good deals at Dollarama, even better than Value Village. > > Value Village was better before it was sold or bought out. I'm now sure > > which it was. The current owners are treating like a business where they are > > out to make money. I once bought a 15" monitor from them for around $15 or > > $20. Don't remember which. Monitor works great and sits on a shelf that is > > beside my workroom table and is connected to a Raspberry Pi. I no longer > > support VV. It is actually easier for me to get to one of two Dollarama > > stores which are each a short walk from home. > > > Personally I buy from here: https://login.aliexpress.com > > It is cheap, effective and the one time in 100 times I did not receive my > shipment, I received a full credit AND the shipment. > > I have not used this when in .ca but I see no reason why it would be different? > maybe you guys, gals and others can enlighten me :) I have bought from AliExpress before and I have normally been happy with them. When things went wrong (ie: they sent me the wrong parts, NOT what I ordered), I got a full refund, no problem there. I do like the low prices from AliExpress. The issue with AliExpress is they can take weeks to get stuff to me, while I can get stuff like the sound system noted above home from a nearby Dollarama in under an hour. In other words there is a time and a place from both AliExpress and Dollarama. > --- > Post to this mailing list talk(a)gtalug.org > Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

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April Meeting Reminder
by Alan Heighway 04 Apr '25

04 Apr '25

Open Source AI? No such thing. But we can get close? <https://www.gtalug.org/?p=228> Description: *No current mainstream AI chat system meets the full definition of Open Source or Free Software. In this presentation we will discuss the state of openness in current AI chat systems, where conventional concepts of open source can be applied and where they can’t. Legal and licensing difference between the various options reveal that some are far more open than others, and that “OpenAI” isn’t really that open at all.* *Also, Evan will be announcing the creation of a new organization, formed by Canadian AI and IT professionals, to support of Open Access AI in Canada.* Speaker: Evan Leibovitch Agenda: 1. Business Meeting 2. Presentation 3. Discussion 4. Adjournment 5. More Discussion @ the Pub (Optional) Date / Time: April 8th, 2025 19:30 EST Location: In Person: TMU George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, 245 Church Street (just north of Dundas), Room 201 (See note below) Online using Nextcloud: https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i NOTE: The doors to the building are normally locked. There will be someone from GTALUG at the doors on the southeast corner of Church and Gould to let people in. If you come late or don’t see anyone at the door please SMS at 647 657 6575 for THIS NIGHT ONLY. Do not call. *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca 416-712-5247 VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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What app/platform to share/edit document?
by William Park 01 Apr '25

01 Apr '25

Hi all, What app or platform do you or your company use to share/edit document for a group of people? Main use would be to put all internal documentation, comment, discovery, and faq into one location. * People say "SharePoint", but never used it myself. * We (old job) use to put Word documents on server. Only one person could write to it at a time, but that was okay for the low traffic. * Plain HTML file might be okay. Edit by Notepad++.

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Hacklab Junk Independence Day, Sunday April 13th
by Scott Sullivan 31 Mar '25

31 Mar '25

Back by popular demand, Hacklab Toronto's Junk Independence Day! Sunday, April 13th, Noon - 6pm https://hacklab.to/archives/junk-independence-day-7/ Bring your e-waste and dig through other people’s for treasures. Anything left at the end will be picked up on following Monday and responsibly recycled. -- Scott Sullivan -- Scott Sullivan

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OT: Recommend a Canadian-owned domain registrar?
by Daniel Wayne Armstrong 29 Mar '25

29 Mar '25

Hi all... I want to purchase/transfer domains using a Canadian-owned registrar. I've heard good things about easydns. Has anyone on the list used them before? https://easydns.com/domains/register/ Other alternative Canadian registrar recommendations would be welcome. Thanks! -- Website: https://www.dwarmstrong.org

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OT: The Hundred Year Computer
by Daniel Wayne Armstrong 28 Mar '25

28 Mar '25

I found this a very thought-provoking read: "What might a general purpose computing machine look like, one that's designed to last over a hundred years, one that would even be useful in some sort of post apocalyptic environment?" https://thomashunter.name/posts/2025-03-23-post-apocalyptic-computing What hardware and software choices/tradeoffs would be optimal to build a computer designed for resilience and longevity? Would it run Linux or BSD or something else entirely? Following links led me to the concept of "permacomputing" which seems like a whole new rabbit hole of discovery. :-) https://permacomputing.net/permacomputing/ -- Website: https://www.dwarmstrong.org

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war story: censoring PDF files
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 24 Mar '25

24 Mar '25

Sometimes you want to remove confidential parts of a PDF file. Governments do this all the time. I wanted to do this too. It turns out to be hard. Governments get this wrong too. It is easy to scribble over something but skilled readers can remove these scribbles. What I ended up doing was using GIMP. The best open source tool. I sure didn't want to put my confidential stuff through an internet tool When loading the document into GIMP, it naturally puts each page in a different layer. That's not a great model but it kind of works. If your document is too big, break it up. With the layers menu, you will see each layer listed. Back to front. For each layer: look at the layer menu make sure that it is the only layer is visible: make sure that the only eyeball icon in the first column is for the layer of interest. click on the layer's image icon Move to the image window. select the rectangle selection tool: Tools: Selection Tools: Rectangle Select (or other suitable tools) for each area to censor, select the area censor it by your choice of Edit: Fill With FG color or Fill With BG color (you will type these a lot so learn the shortcut) select all the layers (in the Layers menu: all eyeballs on) File: Export as: select PDF file type/suffix. Pick a new name to not overwrite your original. The result may be a very large file. I reduced the size (and quality?) $ pdf2ps doc.pdf skinny.ps $ ps2pdf skinny.ps skinny.pdf This probably destroys resolution. You can use GhostScript directly and have more control.

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Job site for old guys with legacy skills?
by William Park 20 Mar '25

20 Mar '25

Hi, Do you know any job site, for old guys with legacy skill sets? Regular job, contract, full time, part time, anything is okay. Right now, I'm using Indeed and LinkedIn to look for job. For search, Indeed returns more relevant job posts than LinkedIn. LinkedIn returns too many irrelevant posts, but I nevertheless dig through them, hoping for that right fit. Anyways, I'm finding, my expertise and skill sets are old. I don't have the latest lingo in tools, programming language, GUI framework, web this and that, etc. I don't pass filter (AI or human). --

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Same Bash works differently on two different machines?
by Giles Orr 20 Mar '25

20 Mar '25

I use Debian on most of my machines, and they all have Debian 12/stable installed on them. I have a set of scripts in a git repo that are sourced by ~/.bashrc (including on a couple Fedora machines). I'm not claiming these scripts are bug-free, but they work pretty well and haven't been significantly changed in several months. A couple days ago I discovered that one of my Debian machines was using a local-only ~/.bashrc, so I linked in this set of scripts which works fine on all the other machines. And got a syntax error, for a script line that works on all other Debian 12 machines, but not this one. I tried the single line of code on the command line and found it errors out there as well: $ gr() { grep --color=auto "$@" ; } bash: syntax error near unexpected token `(' On any other Debian machine, if I run that on the command line, it returns silently and without error. The following output is the same on both the test machines: $ echo $BASH_VERSION 5.2.15(1)-release $ echo $BASH /bin/bash I've run `set | less` and compared the $BASH* variables, and I don't see anything significant. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as this isn't making any sense to me ... -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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