Dave Miller Blog

Author: Dave

  • The Evolution of Email Headers

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    Dave
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    Early email messages contained a few simple header fields that recorded the sender, the recipient, and the path the message took through one or more intermediate email servers. Occasional spam was not yet a big deal. Here are all the email headers from a spam message I received in 2004: Received: from 137-34-50.adsl.terra.cl (200.50.34.137) by…

  • Security Risk in Microsoft Word normal.dotm

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    In Microsoft Word, by default, recently defined paragraph and character styles are automatically added to your normal.dotm file and then silently copied into new documents that you create. This can leak private information about what you have been doing or who you have been corresponding with. Here’s an example of the privacy and security issue.…

  • Mimicking human functional intelligence does not imply consciousness

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    Because ChatGPT and other large language models mimic some of the functionality of human intelligence, some people propose that the machine must be conscious. Let’s examine that.

  • AI Wars

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    ChatGPT and other large language models are accidental reasoning engines because the structure of reasoning is embedded in the structure of language. Hackers are going to use it for nefarious purposes.

  • Linux and ThinkPad X13 Gen 3 AMD—A Perfect Match

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    The short story is that Linux Mint 21.1 (based on Ubuntu 22.04) runs remarkably well on a Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen 3 AMD. Thermals and Kernels Reportedly, AMD added power management for the Ryzen “Rembrandt” mobile processors in the ACPI Platform Profile for recent Linux kernels. I couldn’t determine for sure what “recent” means, so…

  • Linux backups on a Synology NAS

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    The Synology NAS products work well for backing up or sharing media files and documents in an informal home environment. However, a Synology NAS is not well suited as a general backup device for a Linux computer. The problems below can be overcome by archving your Linux files with tar or an equivalent archive manager,…

  • Self-directed online education

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    This article describes how you can use free online resources to enrich your education in almost any subject.

  • Evolution: a simulation

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    This is a video report of a software project that created the conditions for evolution in an attempt to learn something about how evolution works in nature. This is for the programmer looking for ideas for interdisciplinary programming projects, or for anyone interested in how evolution and natural selection work. 56 mins. It’s available on…

  • Linux Mint 20 runs on X570 Aorus Elite motherboard

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    Linux Mint 20 Beta is performing surprisingly well on a Gigabyte Aorus Elite X570 motherboard.

  • How we got involved making word search puzzles

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    A colleague gave us a $100 gift certificate for Digital Ocean, provider of cloud computing and storage. The certificate was good for 60 days — use it or lose it. Our first use of the gift certificate was to set up a virtual server for some of my wife’s domains. That server has been humming…