I wanted to correct you but than I stopped myself because I'm not sure if you meant that sarcastically. Because with a /s at the end your post makes sense.
DNS servers can take the IP address of the client into account. If you query a record for amazon.com from the USA you will get a different answer than from Europe. (And you don't need anycast for that.)
That the client information doesn't get lost when it goes through different resolvers
the DNS extension EDNS Client Subnet (ECS) was invented.
explains it better than me. The whole point of the extension is to make geo-guessing the original client over DNS more stable.
Now you can have privacy conscious DNS servers that strip the ECS information (or mess with it somehow) and instead of the server closest to you you get the global fallback for example.
(controld.com goes as far to say "switch countries without a VPN" by only messing with ECS. No idea how stable that is though.)
Interesting! I always just assumed sites used geoDNS to figure out where the user is. I like the "Controversy over lack of support" section in the wikipage. I've been mainly using NextDNS and learned that they anonymized this information https://medium.com/nextdns/how-we-made-dns-both-fast-and-pri...
The default remote desktop client on Windows 11 can have his picture freeze. Mouse and keyboard input still goes through though. (Which is especially dangerous because enraged users will smash their keyboard.) Years without a fix from Microsoft. Just a registry hack as a workaround.
Facetiously: Well actually, you didn't need a driver for the SATA drive but the SATA controller.
Something that was also true for Windows and such a common problem that many BIOSes would offer a IDE compatibility mode one could switch to.
26 years ago I installed SUSE and it just worked on my self build PC. Smooth sailing all around. Than I tried Debian and couldn't for the life of me get X11 to work.
So yeah, the distro and hardware lottery is still a problem.
I don't doubt you had that problem. But it, and the solution you want, sound a bit strange. You want a button that gives your user access to everything despite its access settings... Than login and work as root.
I mean it's hard to tell what really happened. But a different user could have created this files with access rights only for himself on purpose. Something one can do with NTFS on Windows too. It also could have been a distro bug.
> but sometimes these problems still pop up.
I'm a 90% Windows- 9.5% Linux- 0.5% Mac-Admin at day job: Don't tell me Windows has no problems poping up. ;-)
Yes. Another user could have restricted access rights on purpose, maybe? But I can still apparently seize them for myself by typing an arcane command into the terminal. Why shouldn't the UI give me a way to do this more easily?
If it requires typing in an admin password to solve, so be it, but at least the UI could lead me to the answer while offering a password prompt.
And yes, I wasn't telling you that Windows has no problems. In fact, Windows probably caused this problem -- this drive worked just fine with Linux the night before; then I transferred some files into it from Windows and plugged it back into my Linux computer and suddenly this happened. I have no doubt that Windows was responsible for messing up the drive state and causing the problem. But to a non-technical user, it's not a question of who is to blame; Windows reads the drive fine whereas Linux gives an error that has no obvious solution. And it can't be solved by right clicking the drive in the explorer and selecting "take ownership and mount" or something like that, it requires using an unfamiliar command into the terminal to fix the problem. And that's basically the case with most file-permission errors that I encounter on Linux systems.
>Windows reads the drive fine whereas Linux gives an error that has no obvious solution. And it can't be solved by right clicking the drive in the explorer and selecting "take ownership and mount" or something like that, it requires using an unfamiliar command into the terminal to fix the problem. And that's basically the case with most file-permission errors that I encounter on Linux systems.
That definitely seems like a feature that could/should be added to some (most? all?) linux file managers. In fact, it doesn't even sound like that difficult to implement with standard system calls[0].
It's not really an issue for me (I prefer the command line -- heck, I still use octal when setting permissions instead of 'rwx'), but it sounds like it bugs you a lot.
You don't mention which Desktop Environment (DE) you're using, but I imagine the file manager in your DE is open source. As such, I'm sure you could make yourself and the (I'm sure) many others who'd like to be able to modify file/dir/filesystem permissions/ownership via their GUI file manager much happier.
Try doing that with Windows Explorer or Finder. I think not.
Hm, I'm a KDE user. I just tested what happens when I try to open a folder I don't have access rights for. The standard file browser Dolphin says authentication is required. "Act as administrator." If clicked there comes a warning and I can enter my password. Than it shows the content.
Good! That's exactly what I would like to have happen! I think the error was more like that it didn't have permission to mount the drive. I logged the message at the time, but I don't have access to that computer this week, so I'm going from memory.
> Aren't those Fritz!Box routers (common in Europe) precisely examples of "shitty routers with terrible security?"
Not at all. They had security bugs, sure, but not constantly. Each device has a randomized admin password from the factory. Some changes require physical hardware access because one needs to press a button to confirm. They support the hardware for ages. Their 7490 model just got a feature firmware update. The model is 13 years old!
In Germany, if you ask someone where his router is he might not know what you talk about. But he understand if you asked about "your fritzbox". (Even in cases where they have something else.)
But enough of the glazing. In 2024 they got sold to private equity. Lets see how the enshittification will treat them.
I sometimes wonder if I'm doing something wrong (as a German citizen). What are all this legal letters, people supposedly get all the time? Since I have "Briefankündigung" where I get a picture of the envelope via e-mail the night before it gets delivered I just checked all my mail of 2025. (Excluding Spam, not even 10 letters. The majority where RFID-card delivers.) I got the voting card for the 2025 Bundestag election and the car tax guys did sent me something because of a new car. Why the later didn't use Elster for that, I have no idea.
I give you that. Most organisations are paper first and you have to login and select "digital communication only" once.
Any communication from water and garbage utilities is always in paper form. No option for digital in any way. When asked it was for "legal" reasons.
Property owner's insurance also sends their legal information and billing updates via letter.
Property tax updates and bills also come exclusively on paper. Even though they have my email and communicate non-billing and legal stuff over that.
I made an inquiry with local Bauamt about something and asked for email communication. The email I got said:
"You've requested communication via email. So we're letting you know that we've sent a response to your question via letter.
I genuinely meant that lottery winners got murdered at a noticeable higher rate. However I can't find a good source for that belief now. So I'm happy to drop the belief.
Nevertheless, here's an article from an untrustworthy looking site!
In Europe, or at least in Germany, they don't name drop. If the jackpot was very high, like >100M you can sometime hear in the news something like "the win goes to nord Bavaria." But that's it.
The winners even get schooled on how to stay low. Only talk about the win in the family. Open an new bank account in a big city and not at your village bank. Don't immediately quit your job. Don't invest in shady shit etc.
If you self select to be public about it, that is on you. And there are people who do. Most talk about it after they have lost a lot of money and are in debt now. They thought they are set for life. So they raise their living standard drastically. Give out big gifts etc. And "suddenly" 10M isn't that much money anymore. :-)
But yea, I agree that lottery is stupid. Put the money on savings.
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