WOOD3

Posted on 8 September 2017 by

This is another of the W.O.O.D. series of semi-regular Weekly Occasional (i.e. if I forget and skip one, no big) Open Discussions.

Immediate prior one here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2017/08/23/wood2/
and remains open for threads running there
(at least until the ‘several month’ auto-close of comments on stale threads).

Cannonical list of old ones here: https://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/w-o-o-d/

So use “Tips” for “Oooh, look at the old shiny thing!”
and “W.O.O.D” for “Did you see what just happened?! What did you think about it?”

For this week, I’m going to toss wo topics in the hopper. Do note that Hurricanes have their own open thread:

1) Trump cut a deal with the Democrats, now the RHINOs are pissed… Swamp is full of swamp creatures of all kinds.

2) North Korea: To bomb them into the stone age would be a Very Bad Idea. Don’t want to improve their society after all… But one little drone on a Few Key Leadership and Nuclear Developers could work wonders… as there was no end to the Korean Police Action, just an armistice (i.e. pause) and even that states no new weapons to be introduced, we can just pick up where the old UN Resolutions left things…

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Posted in W.O.O.D. | Tagged , | 49 Comments

The Hurricanes Return!

Posted on 8 September 2017 by

After a dozen years or so Hurricane Drought, we’ve got them back in more normal numbers. Hurricanes are formed with the sea is warm enough relative to the air to cause a water vapor instability that cascades into a “circle down the drain” heat transport; but where the drain is “to space” up in the stratosphere. Since the sun went quiet, the upper air has gotten colder, so now the heat that built up in the oceans during high UV times needs to be dumped. I expect active hurricane seasons until the waters get cold enough to balance the colder air aloft.

Harvey did a number on Texas
(and cancelled my drive to Florida… flew from Chicago instead).

Irma was arriving just as I flew out of Florida back to Chicago.

Now we’ve got Jose (per: http://www.hurricane.com/2017-hurricane-names.php) forming up.

So here’s a place to talk about all things Hurricane Related this (late) season. I’ll be adding some bits over time if I get the time.

FWIW, on the drive back Diesel prices were about 10 ¢ / gallon higher than on the way out. Gasoline moved more but I don’t have exact numbers. Looks like in a real Aw Shit! that Diesel price and availability are more stable… Just sayin’…

The discussion began here:

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2017/08/23/wood2/#comment-86298

On Sept. 5th just as I was getting on an airplane in Orlando… (Minor gripe on that: I got TSA Pre-Check for these 2 flights, to and from Orlando. In Chicago, no problem. Shoes on, laptops left in bags. In Orlando, guy insists on shoes off and electronics in one bin each, slowing the whole thing down and making it The Same As NON_Pre-Check. WT? So what’s wrong with Orlando?… Oh Well, the line was shorter…)

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Posted in AGW and Weather News Events, News Related | Tagged , | 45 Comments

China Joins EU in Push To eCars

Posted on 11 September 2017 by

Looks like China is joining the push to eCars.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/china-to-phase-out-fuel-cars-in-favour-of-electric-vehicles

China to phase out fuel cars in favour of electric vehicles

China’s industry ministry is developing plans to phase out the sale of fuel-powered vehicles and promote electric vehicle technology, according to state media.

By Jonathan Chadwick | September 11, 2017 — 05:44 GMT (06:44 BST)

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is developing a time frame for ending the construction and sale of fuel cars as it makes the transition to electric vehicles (EVs), according to state media citing a Cabinet official.

Deputy industry minister Xin Guobin said at an auto industry forum on Saturday that his ministry has begun “research on formulating a timetable to stop production and sales of traditional energy vehicles”, according to Xinhua News Agency, such as gasoline and diesel cars. No specific target dates were given in the reports, however.

China is the biggest auto market in the world by number of vehicles sold, meaning such a policy change could have a sizeable effect on the global industry.

The country joins France and Britain in their plans to oust fuel cars, both of which announced goals in July to completely stop sales of gasoline and diesel automobiles by 2040 to reduce pollution and carbon emissions.

I can’t help but think there are ulterior motives in this. More demand for the “Rare Earth” elements they produce. More demand for cheap electric gear they produce. Less foreign exchange going to buying oil from Arabs. More control of the population (monitor charging and you monitor movement and location, shut off charging rights and you ‘brick’ folks you don’t like…)

I wonder just how long it will take to have folks realize that the Governments of the world are tightening the noose on the liberty and freedom of movement brought by the gasoline car…

Well, looks like I’m going to get my Diesel Wagon fixed back up. (It ‘spun’ #2 bearing a few years back). I can make my own Diesel and I expect it to be available for a very long time anyway since replacing the trucking fleet is far far away… Oh, and it also loves Jet-A ;-)

So I’m “set” for the rest of my life with a great car with broad fuel choices.
(My Sedan is going to outlive me already ;-)

From the Tesla description we see that they track your charging via their billing process:

https://www.tesla.com/support/supercharging

Supercharging is simple and convenient—just plug in and charge up. Supercharging history is automatically populated in your Tesla Account showing the credits used or, if applicable, the amount billed. Tesla is committed to ensuring that Supercharger will never be a profit center.

Think it might ever be an issue to have Government TLAs watching where you charge up and when? How about WHEN the data gets hacked? Think anyone might want to know when you are out of area and not going to be back for a few days? I can see a large demand for that information by both TLAs and home robbery gangs. And the PRC Commissars…

Sigh. So many people paying so little attention to risks and hazards, both from non-Government bad guys and from governments. Anonymity and freedom are antithetical to the Government Type.

This will also have lots of implications for various car makers. Tesla will “suddenly” get lots of competition as everyone wanting to sell cars in China will need an eCar line. I suppose the big question is just how much Government can force folks into buying eCars if we don’t want them…

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Posted in Economics - Trading - and Money, News Related, Political Current Events, Tech Bits | 12 Comments

Opera Speed Dial De-Googling and Obscurity

Posted on 11 September 2017 by

I’d gotten the old broken MacBook Air to run again via the expedient of booting from an external USB adapter and micro-SD card. (The SSD had died, so I bought a new computer for the spouse and inherited the broken one. It was within a couple $Hundred of the same price as the ‘fix’ and this one didn’t have enough memory for further software updates anyway – and memory can’t be increased…) But not being one to toss a whole system for a single part failure, I found a way.

It works quite well. Right up until it swaps… which the Mac does rather a lot… Then I take a long pause, sometimes several seconds to several tens of seconds, while it swaps away. But, most of the time if I keep memory usage low (don’t open lots of browser pages) it’s quite nice.

The Opera browser is more careful with resources than many others (cough; FireFox; cough) so I like using it on limited machines. It also does a nice job of compressing feeds and reducing wire loading on your internet connection ( about 50% reduction of traffic) which has the incidental effect of making your traffic look like it originates from their cache / compression engine site. Not a big security bump, but a nice indirection some times.

So, OK, I like using it.

Except….

It has a panel called the “Speed Dial” pqge that has several of your preferred sites listed. So you click the + and it pops up Speed Dial and your top dozen can be there waiting for you. Nice, except it was afflicted with this Google Search Box that would not die. No way to change it to DuckDuckGo nor any other search engine. The ‘change my search engine’ only changes the combined address bar / search line. Google keeps shoving their orifice in your face, like it or not (NOT!).

I’ve just mostly ignored it for months. Occasionally used it when in a hurry. Constantly been bothered by it. Sometimes did a vague hunt for how to change the setting (not knowing it was impossible).

Now at least I’ve found someone who knows how to kill it, even if I’d rather make it DuckDuckGo. But that’s still an improvement. Orifice removed from face is good.

The Magic Page

I found the guidance I needed here:

http://newsblog.wti.com/index.php/2013/11/opera-19-developer-update-how-to-enable-operas-power-user-mode/

Power User Mode in a browser? OK… They go out of their way (Opera does) to warn of how risky it is to enable this before you click the ‘just shut up and do it’ box. Looking at the added settings, I’m not seeing much risk (other than turning off a revenue stream from Google for forcing their search engine, perhaps?…)

So the Mac is a bit different from their directions, but not much. I’m going to quote heavily just since it took so long to find this obscure process and I don’t want to lose it if the link ever goes away:

Opera 19 Developer Update – How to Enable Opera’s Power User Mode

It turns out that Opera’s Power User Mode hasn’t vanished after all … but Opera did make it so Power User Mode is pretty difficult to find.

To find out how to enable the power user mode, scroll down. Opera Software launched the first Chromium-based version of the company’s web browser back in the beginning of July 2013. The release caused quite the controversy, with many existing Opera users being disappointed by the lack of features of which some had been a part of the browser for more than a decade before.

The company promised to address several of the issues in time, and to keep an eye on the old branch of the browser for the time being until the new Opera would make a solid foundation for all users of the browser.

Several distribution channels were created to provide interested user, developers and testers with access to browser features that were not yet ready for prime time.

The company has released four new major versions of Opera in the meantime, with Opera 19 released to the Developer channel ten days ago.

Today’s update of that channel brings a new feature to the browser: the task manager. To load it, you first need to enable the Developer Tools menu with a click on the Opera button and the selection of More Tools > Enable Developer Tools.

It is then possible to launch the Task Manager from the Developer Tools menu.

So it looks like a swap of the core tech being used caused a lot of prior features to evaporate and that’s why I can’t find controls that ought to exist. OK…

The goal is to get to the Developer Tools Menu. On the Mac, one changes this slightly to:

Go to the “View” tab up top, in the drop down at the bottom, click on the “Show Developer Menu” line. This adds the Developer Menu just to the right between Bookmarks and Window. In that menu you will find ‘Task Manager’ at the bottom. Clicking that opens a task manager window. This doesn’t seem relevant to the rest of the process, but that’s how you get to it. I’m also not sure you need the Developer Menu activated, but just went along for the ride on that anyway since I’m following their cook-book.

The program looks and feels identical to the Chrome Task Manager, with two core differences. First, you cannot use Shift-Esc or any other keyboard shortcut to launch it in Opera.

Second, the Stats for Nerds link is not available that leads to the browser’s About memory page.

The changelog lists all other changes in the release. It lists many stability improvements as well as a couple of site-specific fixes. This includes a fix for YouTube not working in the browser’s Off-Road Mode, or a bug that caused Opera Turbo (Off-Road Mode) to fail to load websites.

The settings page has seen a couple of changes. Probably the most important change here is the ability to change the number of columns on Opera’s Speed Dial page, and also a new power user setting to hide the search box on the start page, according to the change log.

The real Magic Sauce seems to come in here:

Power User Mode

I could not find the power user settings in Opera even though the change log was making a reference to it.

The change I’m talking about is the following one:

DNA-12667 Settings | Power-user: Hide search box in the start page

To enable the power user mode press the following key combination while you are on the settings page:
Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right b a

If done right, the following overlay screen should appear.

Super user permission enabling rights

On the Mac, go to the Opera Menu up top, select “Preferences” and the Preferences Tab opens in the browser. Go to that tab and click in the empty space (to move the cursor out of the search box) then do that Magic Chord dance on the keys. Up. Up. Down. Down. Left. Right. Left. Right. b. a. Sigh… It actually does work.

Then adds a box to the Preferences Menu where you can click the box to enable this forever and click the box that lets you disable the Google Obligatory Orifice…

Then you can be Google Free At last Thank God Almighty I’m Free At Last!!!!

Simples…

Honorable Mention goes to these folks:

http://forums.opera.com/discussion/1832965/remove-google-search-bar-from-speed-dial/p1

Where I picked up the link that got me to that other page. And I note lots of other folks were happy to be able to Nuke Google’s Orifice…

alreadybanned
April 2014 1 3
alreadybanned
89 posts

You can remove it from Speed Dial by way of a silly easter egg; Go to the settings page and click an empty spot on that page, then (using your arrow keys) up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, then the letters “b” and “a” this unlocks another mode which gives you the option. simple enough right?

As for your own default search engine, I’m sure just like with bookmarks, studies show that you only need google and the either provided search engines. So while you can add new ones, you can’t make them your default. Or maybe it’s because we have had only 5 major version releases so such a big feature will take time to implement. Opera is built from scratch don’t you know?

Honestly, the loss of features that I used regularly and lack of customization is bad enough but the google integration with NO way to remove it is the thing that leaves the most bitter taste in my mouth. Welcome to the New Opera Order

Just help the poster without the horrible negativity, already banned. it wouldn’t hurt you ;)))) If you’re like this about your life, you’re in big trouble.

What you have to do to make the change is to enter Power User Mode. Here’s a link on it:

http://newsblog.wti.com/index.php/2013/11/opera-19-developer-update-how-to-enable-operas-power-user-mode/

Already banned is quite right though, that when you go to the settings page click an empty space first, to get yourself outside of the search box (if you’re in the search box with the mouse, it will mess things up.

Then you do the stuff with the arrow keys . . . . Also, type the small “b” and small “a”at the end per alreadybanned instructions. When you get the Welcome Box, click “proceed”

Then you go down the menus. Scroll about half way down to the section on the Start Page, and put a check in hiding the search bar.

Voila, that should do it!

frankj9999
April 2014 1 1
frankj9999
2 posts
Thank you both! That did the trick. Now the speed dial page is clean (and no Google!)

colderwinters
April 2014 0 1
colderwinters
166 posts
Yeah, I never search with Google, I dont even like the term “Google it” I only search with Startpage or Ixquick with customized settings. Every one of those choices they give you to search with suck.

joelwol
April 2014 2 0
joelwol
1 posts
Thanks for sharing. I was also equally disturbed by having the Google search window always visible.

etc. etc.

So there you have it. I’m now able to use Opera “Google Free” on the Marginal MacBook Air. Yay…

Now on to the next bug, challenge, fix, enhancement, problem, opportunity, etc. etc…

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Posted in Tech Bits | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Tips – September 2017

Posted on 8 September 2017 by

About “Tips”:

While I’m mostly interested in things having to do with:

Making money, usually via trading
Weather and climate (“Global Warming” & “Climate Change”)
Quakes, Volcanoes, and other Earth Sciences
Current economic and political events
(often as those last three have impact on the first one…)
And just about any ‘way cool’ interesting science or technology

If something else is interesting to you, put a “tip” here as you like.

If there is a current Hot Topic for active discussion, try one of the Weekly Occasional Open Discussion pages here:

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/w-o-o-d/

You can also look at the list of “Categories” on the right hand side and get an idea of any other broad area of interest.

This ought not to be seen as a “limit” on what is “interesting”, more as a “focus list” with other things that are interesting being fair game as well.

The History:

Note that “pages” are the things reached from links on the top bar just under the pretty picture. “Postings” are reached from the listing along the right side of any given article (posting).

Since WordPress has decided that comments on Pages, like the Old Tips Pages, won’t show up in recent comments, it kind of breaks the value of it for me. In response, I shifted from a set of “pages” to a set of “postings”. As any given Tips Posting gets full, I’ll add a new one.

I have kept the same general format, with the T page (top bar) still pointing to both the archive of Tips Pages as well as the series of new Postings via a link to the TIPS category.

This is the next posting from prior Tips postings as they had gotten so large it was taking a long time to load. Same idea, just a new set of space to put pointers to things of interest. The most immediately preceding Tips posting is: https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/tips-august-2017/.

The generic “T” parent page remains up top, where older copies of the various “Tips” pages can be found archived. The Tips category (see list at right) marks Tips postings for easy location.

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Posted in Tips | Tagged | 8 Comments