Rich's Tongfamily (Richtong.net add-on)

There are so many different things that can go wrong when connecting drives, my buddy Dean had a huge problem when he tried to plug a USB Drive into his M1 Mac, it caused kernel panics. The problem I’m diagnosing now is similar, I’m having startup and speed problems. The machine configuration is very odd:…

OK, I’ve been running the same Raspberry Pi 4 with the Homebridge image for the last three years and I finally had an issue with it. Homebridge is a node application, so it requires regular updates to pick up new Nodejs versions and also updates to the Homebridge itself and then all the plugins, so…

OK, I couldn’t help it, there was a 50% off sale on the OWC ThunderBay so I had to go out and get it. Basically, I got an enclosure for the same price as eight 12TB drives which is quite a deal. They shipped very promptly (sorry Dean that yours is segment faulting, I’ll help…

Man, the world has changed a lot since my days learning about silicon fabrication. Back then things were pretty easy, if you had a 10-micron process, that means you made a transistor with wires that could at most be 10 microns wide. Well, hold onto your hats, the world has gotten a lot more complicated,…

So it looks like there are going to be some big changes coming to Apple and this could signal that the relatively slow updates to the Mac line are ending (and don’t get me started on the dog breakfast that is the iPad). But at the top level, the way to think about this is…

Well, there are some discounts that seem to be coming on and off. With all these price increases from NetFlix to Apple One to Disney, it’s nice to be able to save some money. As a reminder, there are historically low prices for SSDs and hard drives right now, so if you need them it’s…

OK, there is this new idea of a passkey that is rolling out and you can look here to see if a site supports it, but the big ones are amazon.com, Best Buy, Google, GitHub, eBay, Instacart, PayPal, Shopify, Tailscale, Synology, Uber. The idea is pretty simple, just as you can FaceID unlock your phone…

Wow, Gestures are the coolest and most hidden feature in MacOS Sonoma, but basically, if you are in any kind of video call (Zoom, Meets, etc.), there is an application-independent way to get gesture recognition. Enabling it is nearly impossible when you start your video camera, there is a green icon in the menubar and…

Uh, I thought I had been pretty careful keeping Cruft off of my Mac, but I started getting these scam notifications saying “You have been infected”. WTF! Basic Hygiene: Look for SYSTEMALERT in Safari > Settings > Websites I know exactly what happened, to get a great deal, I had to turn off my many…

Well, I can’t quite believe it, but it feels like it is 1999. Temu has the most incredible triple-stacked deals, here is how it works: Net, net, just with the credit card stuff, you are 36% off and then you add another $20 off with the $20+$60 or 25% off, so that’s definitely not bad.…