Tag Archives: stupidity

uceprotect lists subnets that never sent mail

Posted on 26 March 2026 by stuff writer

uceprotect.net claims to provide a blacklist of IP addresses that send spam. SMTP server operators can query the blacklist, and know to refuse mail from these IP addresses. That’s the theory. But there’s a problem though: uceprotect blocks IP address … Continue reading →

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FRR says “Finite State Machine Error” for IPv6 BGP on Linux

Posted on 3 November 2025 by stuff writer

If you turn off link-local addresses for the interface (those horrible 169.254.50.231 type addresses, and also the IPv6 fe80::dead:beef:4:f00d/64 things), FRR goes sulky. In netplan, it looks like this: When FRR is sulky, it says it will advertise IPv6 subnets, … Continue reading →

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mysql_upgrade fails: Unknown collation: ‘utf8_general_ci’

Posted on 9 October 2025 by stuff writer

There I was, innocently trying to upgrade mysql from some version to some other version, and I ran into this beautiful bug: Turns out this is caused mostly by the stupid. Dependencies First, it wanted a bunch of new RPMs: … Continue reading →

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Publishing photos of criminal suspects

Posted on 28 October 2024 by stuff writer

The SAPS act of 1995 is widely rumoured to grant protection to criminals from being photographed, and from the publication of their likeness. This rumour is based on lawyers lying about the law. Imagine. The horror. Analysis of South African … Continue reading →

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Find my device or anything that saw it recently and has travelled 15km or so

Posted on 12 September 2024 by stuff writer

Google’s “Find My Device” function does a pretty good job of finding a device. It has a few mechanisms: That last method, bluetooth snitching, produces some interesting results. I dropped my phone by accident, and discovered it missing when I … Continue reading →

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Hannah’s three bullocks: yes, three.

Posted on 31 August 2024 by stuff writer

In the King James Bible, we read this: And when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, with three bullocks, and one ephah of flour, and a bottle of wine, and brought him unto the house of … Continue reading →

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2023: ABRSM theory exams are impossible

Posted on 20 July 2023 by stuff writer

For the Covid scam, music theory examinations by ABRSM switched from in-person invigilated to remote computer-invigilation. The price didn’t go down though – the tests were horrendously expensive, and the price just went up, if anything. There’s a small problem … Continue reading →

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Licences are a lie

Posted on 3 November 2022 by stuff writer

My wife and I have two cars. To drive these cars according to government rules, we need six licences: two for the cars, and two each for us (the one car is bigger). It is, however, well nigh impossible to … Continue reading →

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Plugin ‘SPIDER’ registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed.

Posted on 12 August 2019 by stuff writer

I fixed a stupid error which had me stumped. Here’s the answer for posterity: I was doing this on mariadb to install the spiderdb engine, and it was not working: The .so file was present, and there’s really no reason … Continue reading →

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Shoprite wishes you a very Halal Christmas

Posted on 24 December 2018 by stuff writer

We bought a turkey for Christmas from Checkers/Shoprite. It cost a stack of cash, but you know, Christmas – all about Christ, the Son of God, come to earth to save us from our sins – good tidings of great … Continue reading →

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