Honestly, if I have the option to keep it toggled on/off I’m fine with it, but I also don’t see it in my latest update which came in last night. But not too concerned yet (Pixel 8a) so it’s still pretty new I guess. :)

Instability you ask? This is like a slow creep to instability and freeze your system. It’s called the Bash Fork Bomb (look it up if you want), but it’s a copy/paste you put in and it slows your system down by consuming all the system resources and cause it to lock up HARD. It goes away after a system reboot, though.

I was going to post the code here, but decided to play nice. But if you are curious:

https://itsfoss.com/fork-bomb/

(edit: Made ‘slow’ ‘slows’)

I tried it the other night on my Pixel (Android 15) and had no issues. I’ve been trying out different launchers in an attempt to find one which isn’t asking for a monthly or yearly sub and has horizontal app drawer as an option! Both of which are getting to be more rare these days. I couldn’t see where to make the drawer scrollable on Lawnchair, so I skipped it for now.

As a Gen X member who is 50 yrs old, a grandparent of two Grand kids, I never touched a computer until I was 12 years old (1986), this, I think gave me a head start into the computer world with an old Radio Shack Color Computer II (hooked up to my TV) with a Tape Drive to load programs with. With some of the older Gen X group starting to reach retirement age, I think we will probably have a larger portion of the population more adapted to computer than the Boomers before us. That’s not to say that during the 80’s and 90’s everyone was into computers though. The important thing was that schools had Timex Sinclair computers and mostly Apple II computers which were the workhorses even into my high school years in the early 90’s, so exposure to computer basics such as copy/paste and Word processing were certainly well know then!

I say all of this to mention that while right now, some of the older generation generally knows how to copy/paste, isn’t scared of breaking the computer and pretty much get a long fine with them. I’m more skilled than my peers in a lot of areas but that’s because I’ve used them non stop for so long and the others used them only in school but never saw the value until around Windows 98 or Windows 2000.

I believe there will be a shift of more computer literacy as the Millennials and Gen Z’s reach my age and older. The writers then may say that compared to the previous generation (ours), that they are miles ahead in their skills and literacy. Even my Grand kids are growing up with exposure to tablets and phones (VERY SPARINGLY), but also live out in the rural country so are getting great life exposure to great outdoors. :) (Ages 2 and 6). One can only dare to imagine what technology we may have 40-50 years from now when they reach my age range.

Hands down, Bitwarden app on phone and in browser. Vaultwarden self hosted. Since I host it at home, I know it’s always in my server. The winning thing for me is that Bitwarden Supports Webuathn now, you can use it as it’s own webuathn key you authorize to log in with, so basically go the site you want to login with and when it asks for the webuathn, you can either have Bitwarden use the credentials you stored for it or your own biometric or hardware key instead.

With this, I sign into Authentik for my SSO just by clicking one link, and Bitwarden prompts to log in and I click the option. I’m auto logged into my server and no UN/PW passed to it.

I’ve tested others and nothing quite comes close except for KeepassXC, but for me, it’s a matter of personal preference on my side. I’ve been with Bitwarden since the early days.

Some examples of using Tasker:

• When a specific contact sends a text message, it alerts me using TTS so I can be aware they are trying to reach me. I have an older family member she lives closer to, so having an alert from her is important if anything should happen forbid it does. When I plug my phone in to charge, it auto silences the phone and keeps it silenced until I unplug it, built into the same task, if monitors for phone calls from my contact and a few others and overrides it.

When a specific phone contact or contact calls, it raises the volumes to max. This is useful if you went to an appointment, set your phone on silent or vibrate but forgot to reset it. After the call has been completed, it returns the phone to the original volume you set.

• When I scan a NFC Tag, i have it send a webhook to my August lock to unlock it. As an apartment dweller, if I go down to the car to unload groceries, the door by default auto locks. This means I have to pull the phone out, unlock it, open the August App, and then tell it to unlock the door and sometimes use the biometric to do so. Having the NFC tag do this means I can put it in my wallet and when I put my phone in the same pocket where the wallet it is, it triggers the door.

• When connected to my computer only, it keeps the screen on all the time.

• When I launch certain apps, it keeps the screen on until the app is closed. Very useful when you are at the grocery store working within a strict budget and want to see how much you have put in to the cart!

• I have a widget on my screen which toggles my Private DNS on/off. This allows me to disable the adblock dns I use if I encounter a public wifi which insists I disable it. (I usually stay away from those, and use my mobile data, but sometimes it’s unavoidable when there is so much interference your 5G goes to NONE and you have to be there for a while.)

• Likewise, I have a widget which toggles my Tailscale connection on/off which comes in handy as well. Again, if the Wifi spot rejects custom DNS’s and I’m in the scenario above.

• If you have a Google Account (Sadly, this is the only way). You can view the list of profiles/tasks which other people have built. It’s a growing list. https://taskernet.com/shares/

• Using third party software such as Wake on LAN, when I come home and connect to my WiFi, it wakes my computer. (Or really any condition I set to trigger it).

I will say that the dev is very responsive and active in releasing updates and new features.

With that said, it has a slight learning curve which he(the developer) is working on to help simplify things and modernize it more. Since taking over the project from the previous owner, it’s really grown.

I admit though, I used to have a lot more tasks and profiles, but it seems that Android is starting to bake those functions in so it’s not as used on my end. But don’t let it it sway you. Your imagination is the only limit with what you can do with Tasker.

Generally, for less than a cup of coffee, it’s worth the purchase price. :)

I have a TCL ROKU TV which is way too chatty on my network. It sends every single keypress on the remote to their servers (just look into the dev console which is easy enough to see what is logged). I have an adblock dns server on my network

These are just in the last 23 minutes of the hour. As I understand, it’s not always doing this if they are not blocked, but when you block them, it starts to panic!

The advantage of doing this is instead of having the ad on the right side of the home menu, I have a nice translucent adbox with nothing in it… Also, if you look up the secret codes for Roku menus, you can also toggle the ad server they use so sometimes if some slip through, you get some in house tested ones which are sometimes funny. But that’s extremely rare for us.

Our next TV will probably be a display or offline only and be a streaming box with custom firmware such as Librelec or something else when the time comes.

Anxiously waiting for ARCH to update their repos, they YANKED it from the unstable repo so I can’t cheat and download it early. :)

I test installed it in Proxmox in a Debian 12 LXC for the sever part, it was fairly easy, just run three commands. The client was as well, but failed to do something with the email during registration. It has a while longer to go I think. But I put it in my bookmarks to visit every so often as well. :)

I lost my respect for Asus when I had a Zenwatch 2 (I still have it), and they promised at the time Android Wear 2.0 in front our faces for months promising it would be released, but refused to even give an estimated time of release to OTA. This was well after WearOS 2 was released. Their online forum staff members were rude sometimes about it and other times, never responded to passionate asks about when it would be made available. The fact that they didn’t reply and care about giving any updates or indication at the time, was enough to push me far away from them.