I was given a Kindle Fire 8HD for my birthday. It's a beautiful device. I love it.

That's the Good news.

The "bad news" is that it's supposed to come with Alexa, which I cannot get to work. At all.

The device is a Kindle Fire 8HD (7th Gen) running FireOS 5.4.0.0.

I've tried several things to get it to work, but it's just not going there.

I long-press the Home button and nothing happens. I've tried to go to Settings > Device Options, but there's no "Alexa" option to enable.

Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? It isn't exactly a show-stopper if Alexa never works, but if it's not going to work, I'm going to start looking for ways to remove Alexa-related software.

If it matters, I do not have a Spot or anything like it. This Kindle is it.

Suggestions would be appreciated.

Shock, actually. But good. Hoping for more.

Hi world,

I'm currently trying out a new behavior trait: "going back to the way it was before." Sounds exciting, huh. Color me Facebook-less since 1.5 months and frankly, this is the first time since I feel the need to actually share something.

My idea was this: what if I would write down and re-visit the steps that lead up to that decision to leave the largest social network in the world? Why? Well, for one thing, I think the idea to go back to earlier practices (such as writing a full blown more than 140 character journal) is going to move slowly back into the center of our collective conscious over the next 5 years. People will start to realize it's the sane thing to do, or so at least that is my guess. But let's look into the dynamics of how I got there.

Many of us remember the so called "browser wars", the epic "os flame-wars", or even further down the burning question wether gnu or unix would be preferable, wether java would be worth it compared to c++, etc.. 30 or 40 years ago, these discussions were of a technical level and nerdism that few can aspire to imagine today. These discussions, much like today, were full of noise, trolls and the occasional insightful remark. These wars were fought in obscure IRC channels and BBS forums, but there was one thing pretty special about them. The technological limits were the only roadblock that stopped our brains from dumping their content in 7 or 8 bit streams that could be shared and read by our fellow peers and friends (and foes). After the browser war came the Napster incident, the BearShare and KaZaa incidents and many systems that predate our current torrent / tor p2p sharing infrastructure. Curiously, I never read about social network wars, which of course also happened. A quick look at the Wikipedia page shows a whopping 208 unique social network websites that attempt to capture our attention, every day life, pictures, personal data, emotions, furniture, love for smiling shit and everything else in between. Not every single one of them survived of course. Who remembers Myspace? Bolt? MS LiveSpaces? or Hyves? So yeah there were wars, but the concept of war was never prominently played, things just "evolved".

So there I was in December 2016, pondering if I still needed facebook. I struck me that I had refrained from posting personal things. In fact in multiple runs, I had slowly started to remove personal data, simply because it increasingly looked ridiculous. Would you start yelling your city of birth and birthday just about anyone in the street? Your marital status? Would you show all the pictures of all your travels and everything else to complete strangers? Of course not. Sure you can spend endless hours 'managing' all that information. Such fun. So much to re-post, so much 'news' to share.

Until you've had it with the latest policy change. Until you realize you are again indicating people they are sharing fake 'news' or hoaxes. Until you realize all your friends posts start with 'OMG'. Or that you can't include 2 images in one post that blatantly refute each-other, because, hey it's facebook. Until you realize that all posts shared say: "look, this is *really* interesting, but I'm just going to dump it here because I'm tired of pretending my shit is more interesting than yours. eat it or die."

Ego needs a cookie. I did truly post some interesting stuff. Stuff about stock markets that are indicative of how defunct our world is. Stuff from NOAA that says how fucked up our climate has become already. Stuff in research papers that tell something about the very structure of our universe. Stuff about brain functions, important findings on cellular level to fight disease, etc, etc.. Not that very many people ever reacted to 'my' shared crap. At best, people reacted because I reacted to their posts first.

On Januari 1st 2017, I stopped playing that pathetic me-me game, and went back to my previous behavior: I traded facebook with sleep. I read books. I started to play FinalFantasy again. I still check my news channels, but you know what.. somehow I'm getting better at finding new resources, new pointers. And I'm looking at much more meaningful content. See back of this post.

The date is not coincidental. On December 31st 2016, we were out for new-years-eve at my parents-in-law. It was a fairly modest get together with nice food, cozy dinner, and a bit of fireworks on TV. In Belgium and The Netherlands, there is a tradition to watch comedians that recount how they saw the past year, such as Wim Helsen or Michael Van Peel. Comparing them to John Stewart / Daily Show would do neither party any favors, but in my book they're equally good. In fact they're all best in their class.

While the evening shot past mid-night, we all wished each-other happy new year and stayed up for a while until the inevitable sleep and early morning came around. Nothing very shocking, but little did we know that at that very same time, somebody had cracked open the front door of our house and was going through all our possessions, stealing laptops, cameras, my bike I use daily with mounted child-seat, golden jewelry, and possibly other stuff, making a huge mess in the process. We were literally 100km south.

We arrived home at 7PM, found some people in front of our house gesturing at the break-in. After the initial shock, my cool kicks in. The first thing to do was to verify the house, call the police and go through the whole procedure. Yes, it's nerve wrecking and sleep-inducing at the same time. Our hope that the police finds the culprit is virtually nil, while at the same time you're supposed to be angry and mad, hopeful and rational. I can't do that emotion very convincingly. I just kept going until everyone was asleep.

When I finally sat down for a few minutes (or hours - the door was badly damaged, so I kept guard the whole night in freezing temperatures) I had time go over all the events. Time gives me oxygen. I'm slow like that, I step on the brakes when I'm going too fast. Given that laptops had been stolen, I decided it was time to change passwords. We still had our phones after all, android, so pretty vulnerable if they could hack into our stuff first. And then it suddenly occurred to me that selling this 'event' in my life on facebook was really the last thing I ever would want to do. Much like all the other important events in my life which I did not share. And so I dropped facebook and Google+ overnight. I'm searching with duckduckgo now. I haven't had a single moment of regret. I sometimes am curious of what is going on there of course, but I imagine it's just the same shit again and again, in different colors.

So what makes me share all this here then, you wonder? Well, all of this is old news, it's also much more digested, no images, no screaming. It's a wall of text full of close to logical long sentences. Those looking for quick fixes will be off running to their click pools after half a paragraph. Those reading this will probably not care and never comment. So who is left? It's me. And that's just fine.

Much in concordance with my earlier post, I pledge for us all to go back to earlier times, pick up things that were loved but lost in the fabric of spacetime. Let's go back and be ace at it. Hello world!

Greets, .i

ps: Forget Trump, check this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEwuGHFF7qE&t=10s&index=1&list=LL4dYPyntjgFh1JxPMFxCOsw

My watch has bought the proverbial farm. Usually this means that the strap has broken in a way that makes it difficult (if not impossible) to repair. In this case, the strap was part of the body and it tore straight through.

Do not feel bad for my watch, as it has served me well for several years. Considering how things are made these days, I see this as a Good Thing. It is not unusual for me to replace my watch every three to five years.

At any rate, I'm on the market for a Smart Watch. I'm aiming for the US$150.00 price range. I understand the maxim of "you get what you pay for", so the el Cheapo $20 ones from China are out of the question. This being my first Smart Watch, I want to get a good idea what they are capable of doing versus what I'll actually use it for, so I don't want to drop $200 or more on it.

I'd like something that lets me change the face (analog or digital display), maybe weather updates and/or text notices are a plus.

If it matters, my phone is an Android.

Do any of you have any suggestions that I could consider?

I realized that I had not topped up my /. subscription in some time and went to do so. Saw this:

"Please Note: Buying or gifting of a new subscription is not available
at the moment. We apologize for the inconvenience. This downtime though
does not effect your current active subscription in any way. We will
keep you posted on the latest"

Any idea what's going on? Are they sticking to a pure ad model (all blocked anyhow, but I did like to subscribe as I like the ol' barn.)

BÃ go maith, a mhuirnÃn.

I've been hopping Linux distros since I decided (for reasons of my own) against intentionally using systemd-based distros. I'm not interested in systemd flame wars, so don't bother here.

At any rate, I've come across SalixOS, and so far I think I like it. It's a direct Slackware derivative, which I find quite interesting because Slackware is the first distro I ever used.

Waaaaay back in the early-to-mid 1990s, my dad sent me a box of 3.5" floppies. On these floppies was Slackware Linux. I don't remember the version, but I think I have most of them kicking around still, so if I felt the need, I might dig them up and see if I can install enough to get a version number from it. What I do remember is that it had kernel version 0.99pl10 on it.

Since my introduction to Linux on Slackware, I've used Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS (professionally and personally), Debian/Devuan, Arch, and Aurora (a Red Hat derivative for use on the Sun SPARC platform), in no particular order.

It's interesting, having to find all the dependencies again and having to re-compile kernels to get something newer than what comes in the box.

I don't expect anything from this site, this post, or you.

The only thing I offer is a gentle "Hi."

Yes. 2 more years of silence. I'm sure that time brought you various experiences of the short span of time we get to enjoy on this blue sphere, as it did for me. Like solving a giant puzzle game, with the solution running away in ever more dimensions with every step you take. Frustrations, yes, but no regrets, and rewards that warrant the journey.

The finality of the whole is gently setting in on me, which is probably why I came here to say hi. Take a break. It seems I often say hi without any finality involved..

I'm sure some neurons in my head are having a party now, as I'm typing in this old familiar all too often endlessly ranting journal. This is funny. To read my own age-old reflections again, I mean. So comforting.

Re-discover, then re-build once more. Embrace the change ad infinitum.

Wishing you the same, and kindness to all,

Little Darkness / Andr0meda / proud dad / loving husband / mad scientist / code dreamer

As most activity has gone away here, I often don't remember what real username maps to what person. It's fine, that is how this social media thing evolved.

What I do know, is that I knew Ryan Ryttie, from slashdot. Today, I saw a post from his sister that he passed away (Link to Facebook is public). No, I do not know the circumstances.

I know he stopped using his original username here. Ryan was a friend, sure he had is daemons. but he was a friendly and authentic person.

I post this in a journal, for others that may still wander here and may have known him.

May Ryan rest in peace.

[Edit: Ryan was known as kesuki on slashdot]

I'm writing this here, largely because I don't trust Facebook to not remove the post when someone gets all butt-hurt about the subject matter.

If you're going to read this, I encourage you to read through the whole thing before you decide to trigger off of one or two phrases I choose to use.

That said...

I have one simple reason why people (in the US) should vote for Donald Trump: he's a white man.

I don't mean that in the raaaacist sense. Consider this:

• The President of the United States can be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors". The details are pretty-much up to the House of Representatives to decide what constitutes "misdemeanor". This could be evidenced as recently as December 19, 1998, when Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives.
• If Hillary were elected, nobody in Washington would even dream of attempting to impeach her. Who wants to go on record as being the one to initiate impeachment proceedings against the first woman president? Seriously, that's the same mindset that has protected Obama-- There have been lots of people trying to get the House to consider impeachment proceedings against him for any of several dozen actions he's responsible for, but nobody wants to have that hanging over their head in an election year, especially if the impeachment failed to pass. A win for Hillary would give her permission to do whatever the heck she pleased, with absolutely no concern for repercussions. It has worked for Obama, it will work for her.
• If Trump were president, there is not a soul in Washington that would not hesitate to attempt to impeach him if he messed-up. People in Washington hate him so much, I'd be surprised if he finished his first term (remember that first point?). Even if he did finish it, the likelihood of him performing well enough to justify a second term is pretty slim at this stage of the game.

In short: Nobody wants to take the blame for attempting to impeach the first $CHARACTERISTIC president. Trump has no characteristic that would possibly protect him if he screwed things up: he cannot play a race card or a sexism card. He's got nothin'.

He's got everything to lose by getting impeached and everything to gain by doing the Right Things.

First thing: I see that articles and Journals on /. now have icons to facilitate sharing said articles on other sites. How would one request adding others, like Voat?

Second thing: I got myself a new computer, an Alienware Alpha. The system I have has the i7 processor. It's been in my possession a couple days and I have to say that so far, I am quite happy with it. It's not a top-of-the-line system, but for the price point (less than $700, and I had a discount on top of that), it appears to be worth every penny. The only thing I'm not thrilled about is that it came with Win10, but there's not much one can do about that these days.

The end of an era

Well, it looks like I'll be teaching one of my kids how to program.

To an extent, he's already familiar with some programming, as he's figured out how to program a TI calculator (not sure of the model, but it's in the 80s). Whether he understands the instructions he gives his calculator or not, I don't know. He'll know far more when I'm done. :)

I've decided to go with Python instead of any of several other languages available. One thing that I thought was important is that the base installation (in Linux and in Windows) has a module called "turtle". If you're old enough to remember learning Terrapin Logo or Karel (by way of Apple Pascal), then the idea behind turtle should not be foreign to you.

The idea is that you have a "turtle", a cursor that represents where all the action is going to happen. You give it instructions and depending on whether the pen is "up" or "down", it will draw as it goes. Tell it to move left, right, forward, or backward, and off it goes.

turtle is cool because its programs are really Python, whether the student realizes it or not. New functions (methods) can be created. What is drawn by the program is displayed with no hassle.

In all, it's pretty cool. I'm actually looking forward to playing around with it as I teach it to my son. Maybe one or both of the other two will become interested as well? Only one way to find out. :D

...to me, at least.

Does anyone else have experience with keybase.io ?

I was given an invitation to it. I've signed in and set up a couple things, but I haven't had much else to do with it so far.

I'm curious to see what others think of it. Your thoughts?

Solas agus Ãilleacht duit, a mhuirnÃn, an là seo agus gach lÃ, cibé a bhfuil tÃ.