Tag: ff0000

one reason i stay away from windows

whbeebe

I have a license to run Parallels Desktop. I started using the application three years ago because I needed to have instances of several Linux distributions conveniently available while I was working on my 2019 MBP. Later I installed an instance of Windows 10 as a virtual machine in order to support C# development within Visual Studio Community. The version of VS available for macOS at that time was a poor cousin to the same versions running on Windows, and to add insult to injury Microsoft wouldn’t provide a community version for macOS. Thus the least expensive route was to pay for a yearly license of Parallels Desktop and install an instance of Windows 10 Pro provided by Parallels.

That worked well until January of 2023 when my last license expired and my local copy of Parallels stopped working. Late last year I finally decided I needed to purchase a new license, so when Black Friday rolled around Parallels had a less-than-half-price sale on a yearly license ($56) and I sprung for it.

When I powered up all my virtual machines to check them out and update them, that included the Windows 10 VM. Except, Parallels automagically updated my Windows 10 installation to Windows 11. Not much of an issue, except when I decided to uninstall Microsoft Edge. So when I went into Settings and then Apps (applications), and went hunting for Microsoft Edge, the dropdown showed only Modify was active, not Uninstall.

There is no reason why I should be blocked from removing Microsoft software, especially the browser. This gives me flashbacks to the late 1990s when Microsoft was being sued for its placement of Internet Explorer among many other monopolistic behaviors. Right now I work entirely within Vivaldi on Windows 11, but it would be nice to get rid of Edge because it’s my VM on my personal computer, and as the saying goes, my computer, my rules.

By the way, on the Windows 10 Pro installation on my other computers (the computers that can’t upgrade to Windows 11), I have removed all Microsoft browsers and installed Vivaldi everywhere. There is no reason to reverse browser removal policy on Windows 11, except that Microsoft is just an absolutely shit company.

Update

This article from The Verge is interesting. Basically, Microsoft has until March to provide the European Economic Area the ability to uninstall Edge and disable Bing search, among other things. If EU Windows users are allowed to do this, then why the hell not US Windows users?

The EU will finally free Windows users from Bing — https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/16/23963579/microsoft-windows-11-eu-digital-markets-act-feature-changes

wireshark 4.2.0 running on macos 14.2.1

whbeebe


A year ago, January 2023, I posted that there was a problem running Wireshark on macOS 13 (see link below). I figured out a solution that lasted about four months (I believe), until one day when I just clicked on Wireshark’s icon, it started normally. Wireshark’s been running normally ever since. I never did determine what happened, but I strongly suspect it was with the application, and not macOS. Since I’ve been getting some hits on that old post recently I decided today to write this follow up post.

Some personal history: I’ve been using Wireshark since it was called Ethereal, all the way back to the very start of the 21st century, when I was introduced to an early version I used to examine a workplace network issue. Wireshark’s strongest feature is its ability to capture everything and then decode the packets it finds. I’ve been able to solve more than one seemingly intractable problem with Wireshark after all other attempts at problem solving failed.

In the screen capture above you can observe all the various devices on my home network sending out network messages. For example, you can see one of my Espressif boards (an ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1-N8R8) sending out an address resolution protocal (ARP) message. The lower windows show a packet I selected for further examination. It’s associated with one of the Amazon devices I have running in the house, and I do have a few.

The device I’ve been searching for recently is my Ring doorbell camera. I want to find it, then associate it to a fixed IP address within my WiFi access point, then trap all communications to another node within my home so I can enable all the features it can support locally and then shut down my monthly payment to use this device. I don’t need the service Amazon provides, but more specifically, I don’t want any more surveillance video flowing out to Amazon to be used by “law enforcement.” This is the start of my drive to discover all information flowing out of my home, and to curtail as much of it as possible. I’m done being a part of surveillance capitalism.

Wireshark Installation Note

This is installed via Homebrew. If you install Wireshark, then make sure to use brew install --cask wireshark in order to pick up the GUI frontend. If you perform a brew installation without cask, then you only get the command line portion. If you try to pick up the GUI with a following cask installation, it will fail, forcing you to remove the initial wireshark installation and starting over with cask.

Links

problems running wireshark on macos 13