I honestly don't think either of these were among the original recommendations I received. Instead, I think they were part of an IMDB trail I followed off one of the other shows that was. Either way, I did enjoy both. One of my "guilty pleasure" favorite movies is "Head Office" from the early 80s. It paints a cynical, and I still think hilarious, view of the corporate world. I see a lot of that in these 2 shows, even though they're taking a more "Office-"style mockumentary path.

Hugh Bonneville is his normal great self in both, and David Tennant's narration is fun, as well. Though the mocking humor in the narration is more subtle in Twenty Twelve than in W1A, both are great. I kept waiting for some joke about constantly referring to Siobhan Sharpe as being from Perfect Curve every time she was mentioned.

The striking difference between the two was with Twenty Twelve, you have people actually moving towards a goal, in whatever way they're able to get there. With W1A, goals are met by almost falling backwards into each one, but it doesn't get repetitive. Also, the sheer nothingness of what a lot of the executives say in the various meetings is half the humor of the show! That, and everyone always saying, "Yes," or "Yes, no" or "No, Yes." How the character of Anna Rampton devolved into a corporate-speak automaton by the end was great (and sad of course, but fun to watch). The Simon Harwood character reminded me a bit of Max Landsberger in Head Office. It's never really clear what he does other than avoid trouble, and say "brilliant" a lot.

Anyway, I enjoyed both shows. Doubt I'll do a rewatch; but they made me laugh, so job done!

Awhile back I asked for some recommendations for British shows that weren't police procedurals, since that seems to be about 90% of our "britbox" subscription options here in the states. Anyway, thought I would post some thoughts about them as I work my way through the list, starting with Taskmaster.

This show is great! I was already familiar with Greg Davies from Dr. Who & The Inbetweeners. I also recognized a lot of contestants from season to season, and even found some more I liked who were new to me. I love watching the interactions between the comedians, and it's especially good when they have a history with Greg. We've also found the "Champion of Champions" episodes and have watched the first couple of those. Lastly, the outtakes and other bits on YT are fantastic. We're all caught up and will definitely keep watching.

For awhile I've liked the idea of using a VPS for "critical" services. Currently looking at running:

• Authentik
• Komodo (with periphery agents on local boxes)
• Uptime Kuma
• NTFY
• Panglolin (or Cosmos Cloud?)

So, first of all, to folks already using a VPS, do you think it's worth it? Do you think I'm missing anything? Happy to discuss/research alternatives, too. I've thought about TinyAyuth+PocketID in place of Authentik. While I think Authentik is probably more complex (and likely overkill), it's a single solution. That said, I haven't played with TinyAuth/PockedID.

Second, I was pretty interested in Pangolin until I saw Cosmos Cloud mentioned elsewhere. It seems like it actually ticks a lot of boxes:

• Built-in authentication
• Reverse Proxy
• VPN (At least for local-to-VPS connection, but possibly also for external clients?)
• Docker management(?): They have an "app store" that's all docker images, so there's some docker capability built-in. Not sure yet if it can handle multiple hosts like Komodo.
• DNS (I would still keep at least 1 local pi-hole instance)

Looking at the doc for chaining proxies and hiding IP, here, it mentions creating an A record for services hosted on a different server. I'm curious to know if this means Cosmos will only manage DNS for services hosted on the same box. Honestly this seems kind of odd, unless I'm misunderstanding how proxy servers work.

Anyway, I know this was a bit of a meandering post. Curious to know thoughts on my original plan, but also if anyone has played with Cosmos, I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Lastly: This morning, I found this interesting write-up to manage container updates using Forgejo, Renovate, and Komodo. Another rabbit hole to explore!

EDITS:

• Spelling

Basically, the title. I have the domain, and have used it in the past with Google Workspace and MS365, but both of those services enshitified, so I'm looking for something that won't screw me.

Don't really care about things like password manager, VPN, cloud drive, etc. Just looking for email service for about 5 users that can be configured to work w/ native email clients on macos, windows, linux, iOS (so Proton & Tuta are out). Anyone have any experience with this? Really don't want to roll my own.

I migrated over to Proton last night before realizing that I had to set up the bridge for it to work on macos mail, and can only use the nativ client on mobile. So, trying to find something soon, so I can cancel within the 30-day period.

“Where does that leave citizens? It may be a penny, but that adds up,” said Moss, 29. She paid $8.23 for her orange chicken and cream cheese ragoons with a debit card.

For sure, it does... but this person already had 1 solution already in her wallet! Also, at most you'll pay $0.02 extra for something. This equates to an extra $7.30 if you purchase this thing every day for a year! This also ignores that some things will be as much as $0.03 cheaper.

America last phased out a coin roughly 170 years ago, when it got rid of the half-cent. “We don’t have a lot of experience with this,” said Steve Kenneally, the association’s senior vice president of payments.

... But Canada does. They did this in 2013. I was actually there when they did it, and it appeared to go pretty smoothly. Almost like they had a plan rather than having to quickly react to the whims of a broken clock one of the times it was actually right.

There's also a lot about companies training cashiers on "how to round," which reminds me of the George Carlin quote about the average person's intelligence. Also, plenty about commercial groups "begging" the federal government to help them with the transition and being met with silence. This is probably the most important part of the article.

The US is finally doing something it should have done decades ago, and it's choosing to do it in the most chaotic way possible. Rather than looking at what other countries have done and forming a plan, they're acting like the edict itself, along with no longer minting pennies or accepting deposited ones, is all the government should have to do. Is this the "small government" utopia conservatives dream about!? One that tells states and businesses, "We've done the minimum. You figure out the rest amongst yourselves." Seems like it's going great so far!

Overall, the article should've been more about how terribly this is being enacted, and less about people not being able to do basic math. Especially disappointing since the original source is WSJ (and I know who owns it - it's still a mostly business-oriented publication).

Edit: spelling

On Sept. 11, Michigan representatives proposed an internet content ban bill unlike any of the others we've seen: This particularly far-reaching legislation would ban not only many types of online content, but also the ability to legally use any VPN.

The bill, called the Anticorruption of Public Morals Act and advanced by six Republican representatives, would ban a wide variety of adult content online, ranging from ASMR and adult manga to AI content and any depiction of transgender people. It also seeks to ban all use of VPNs, foreign or US-produced.

Main issue I have with this article, and a lot of articles on this topic, is it doesn't address the issue of youth access to porn. I think any semi-intelligent person knows this is a parenting issue, but unfortunately that cat's out of the bag, thanks to the right. "Proliferation of porn" is the '90s crime scare (that never really died) all over again. If a politician or industry expert is speaking against bills like this, their talking points have to include:

• Privacy-respecting alternatives that promise parents that their precious babies won't be able to access that horrible dangerous porn! (I don't argue that porn can't be dangerous, but this is yet another disingenuous right-wing culture (holy) war)
• Addressing that vagueness in the bill sets up the government as morality police (it's right there in the title of the bill, FFS), and NOBODY in a "free" country should ever want that.
• Stop saying it can be bypassed with technology. The VPN ban in this bill is a reaction to talking points like that.
• Recognize and call out that this has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with a religious minority imposing its will on the rest of the country (plenty of recent examples to pull from here).

Unfortunately this is becoming enough of "A Thing" that the left is going to have to, once again, be seen doing "something" about it. So they have to thread a needle of "protecting kids," while respecting the privacy of their parents who want their kids protected and want to look at porn, and protecting businesses that require secure communications.

It's just... ugly. It's kind of a retro-ish, but chunky design. It really shows it full ugliness in the Finder windows, especially when you column view (which I default to). It looks like a design by committee mishmash of stuff that all collides. I'm not normally one to hate on stylistic choices in an OS. I've never had much interest in "ricing" my environment, but I'm really just not a fan of this.

All the individual little "bubbles" of things instead of buttons, or even just borderless areas denoted by an icon. The way the left column looks like it's just plopped down on top of the rest of the content. Like it's a separate entity, but it's not. Especially noticeable in how the lower cookie crumb trail at the bottom of the window just abruptly ends at the border to the left column. Also, the color choice for the sliders is... bold. Almost the most noticeable thing in the screenshot! This looks like a Linux Enlighenment DE theme from the early `00s trying to emulate OS-X. The dark view looks slightly better.

About the only positive thing I can find is the tolerances around the edges of windows for resizing feels more forgiving than in the past & w/ other operating systems (ahem: Windows). On some OSs/desktop environments, it seems like there's a 1-2 pixel area where the cursor changes and you can resize a window. In contrast, this works pretty good in Tahoe.

Archive Link

Honestly wasn't really sure where to post this. Since this is supposedly a documentary, this seemed like the right place. Anyway, I thought is was a pretty good article talking about the slant of the doc, as well as the things surrounding Deen's "cancelling." A couple if interesting points the author makes:

• This was a problem that could've been easily avoided with a settlement. Maybe even a private apology to the complainant.
• I agree that she could very easily rehab her public persona by embracing MAGA, but AFAIK she hasn't. If true, that does say something about her character. It's sad that such a low bar is to be commended, but here we are.

I mainly work from home, and my personal daily driver is an M2 Ultra MacBook Pro. My work system is a Lenovo P1 gen 4, with Win 11 24H2. Well-spec'ed "portable workstation" that the P1g4 is, it obviously does not have a built-in Ethernet port. I've used 2 different USB-C Ethernet adapters, one of which has worked fine with my backup ThinkPad T480s using the same cable. Whenever I use the Ethernet connection, connecting via RDP using the awesomely-named "Windows App" for macOS, my connection starts dropping ~50% of packets. Using Wi-fi, RDP works fine. I've seen some sites saying to disable UDP, but I don't see that option in Windows App. I've tried lowering the display settings to 16-bit, but that made no difference. I'm just using a ping to see the connection performance between my MBP and the P1g4.

Editing to add: I've tested the cable with my MBP, and it works fine - no packet loss to other systems on my LAN. The two systems are connected to the same switch - a fairly new Netgear 1Gb dumb switch.

Copying this from Reddit (I still get the daily emails). Since I no longer post there, I figured I would ask here, and include my prediction: Will be more popular, possibly in stable release. Still won't be able to rotate photos natively.

All the mention of me.com email addresses being badges of honor.... Me over here laughing in mac.com!