So you think your last talk with tech support was hard? Think of the guy, who spent almost an hour on teleconference with five technicians, while flying a plane that was unable to land, but all too eager to enter “ground operation mode” in mid-air.

F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before fighter jet crashed in Alaska

(spoiler: the pilot survived, the plane did not and finally chose permanent underground operation mode, so to say)

Configure Dillo Browser for High Dots Per Inch (HiDPI) Displays

Improve the web browsing experience by learning about solutions in configuring the web browser Dillo for High Dots Per Inch (HiDPI) monitor displays.

https://www.adamsdesk.com/posts/dillo-browser-configure-hidpi/

#blog #DilloBrowser #HiDPI #TechSupport #RetroComputing @rl_dane

I like to scroll through Mastodon with my phone’s browser but I’ve noticed, with the new update, that I can’t tell when videos have alt text anymore. Is anyone else experiencing this?

#techsupport
#FediQuestions

User: I sent in a ticket last week about not being able to get into my email.

Me: I responded to it. I was about to close it since I hadn't heard back.

User: I can't get into my email to read the message.

Me: You can log into the same site you made the ticket on, to see the status-- nevermind. What happens when you try to get into your email?

User: I get some sort of error.

Me: What does it say?

User: I didn't read it. Something about a password.

Me: -rubs my temples-

Running the Mac OS 26 beta (I know, I know), but running out of hard drive space. Turns out the reason is that half of my drive is full of "System Data".

Internet searches are not very helpful in terms of how to reclaim this space. I've tried booting into safe mode and back, but wherever these files are isn't visible to anything like DaisyDisk to check further and/or persuade them to go away.

Does anyone clever have any thoughts? #macos #beta #techsupport

Anyone updated a very standard debian desktop install to Trixie, finding it unable to resolve (yes, it _is_ DNS!).

DNS servers manually input in (stupid) default network manager graphical configuration tools (also manually set in stone in /etc/resolv.conf) can be pung... but no resolution happens...

#techsupport #itsDNS #debian #trixie #fcksystemd < in advance

Photo gear question:

I have some faded old photos that I want to restore digitally. My crappy scanner isn’t producing very useful files so I will be setting up a camera on a tripod to photograph them. Problem is, old photos are not always lying flat so I'd like to put them below a glass surface of some kind.

Any suggestions on what type of glass / plexi will behave best in this use case? I'm most worried about adding reflections of the camera itself and the light sources.

Thanks!

https://www.europesays.com/2304179/ Canada’s growing tech industry and workforce highlighted in new CompTIA report #business #Canadá #CompTIA #jobs #LeadingGlobalProvider #tech #TechSupport #technology

Urgent Android help! SOLVED using @decibyte’s advice: I used Pixel 9a spoofing profile in Aurora Store. Thank you all!

I must install the Interrail Android app in order to to activate my Interrail ticket, but Aurora Store tells me the app is not available for my device. How can I get it? I could maybe download the APK from Apkpure, but I’d use it as the last resort, since I don’t know how trustworthy it is.

I’m using a Fairphone 5 running CalyxOS 6.8.21, and Aurora Store v4.7.2, downloaded from F-Droid all features are enabled in MicroG. Already tried uninstalling and reinstalling Aurora

Parental #TechSupport is like staring into the Abyss.

And the Abyss stares back and whispers: "This will be you, in thirty years!"

What network situation leads internet speed-test sites think a T-Mo 5G broadband connection in New Mexico is best tested with a connection to an Illinois server? (And it is — download speeds 7x faster than an Albuquerque server.) #TechSupport

My reservations and criticism re: #Signal are not just valid, but the reality is even worse than I thought:

• The fact that @signalapp requires not only their shitty #Android #App, and a #PhoneNumber but literally won't allow people to use their shitty #Desktop-App unless they have an Android device with a camera pointed at it makes it utterly unuseable for certain users who don't have a fucking #camera in their Android…

Seriously, do they expect folks to deal woth that shit? It's already worse in terms of #UX than #telgram and #discord and that too makes #XMPP+#OMEMO clients like @monocles / #monoclesChat & @gajim / #gajim easier and faster to onboard #TechIlliterates onto.

• Whichever asshole decided that a replacement for #SMS should mandate #PII like a #PhoneNumber & not be natively cross-platform should be banned from doing any #tech in their life. Trying to circumvent this shit and helping folks with it makes me so fucking angry that I'm now explicitly refusing to support it!

FIX THAT SHIT, @Mer__edith, and if it means you need to kick some devs in their crouch then consider this a necessary "investment"…

OK, techies, what's the best way to migrate a MacOS Time Machine backup to a new drive? I outgrew my old drive (8TB) and want to move the backup history to my new drive (24TB).
#TechSupport #MacOS #Backup

I really need some help. I managed to #softlock my #Lenovo #Ideapad #Laptop, please help me!!

Details:
Ideapad 15 15ALC05

Tried enabling debug/advanced BIOS: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Lenovo_IdeaPad_5_Pro_14ACN6#Hidden_BIOS_menus

It didn't work, just a black screen. Now turning it back on normally, it won't post. Esc, power and NumLock solid on + fans spin up slowly.

I have tried: holding power, leaving it to sit with CMOS (?) + battery unplugged, NOVA button (gives double beep when held)

Please Boost
#askfedi #techsupport

Why software product support is (sometimes) a terrible job

Software maintainers can't help people who can't or won't read and answer straightforward questions, and some people who need help with software are incapable of reading and answering straightforward questions.

https://blog.kamens.us/2025/07/14/why-software-product-support-is-sometimes-a-terrible-job/
#FOSS #FreeSoftware #TechSupport

Ticket #394898

The computer tagged 0347, in the circulation area, is not responding.

------------------------
Response:

0347 not turned on. Powered up PC, tests fine.

Closing ticket.

What is the easiest way for me to self host a cloud drive that my phone and laptop can both connect to? But that is also secure?

I do not work in the tech industry and may lack the skills to do this but I thought I’d ask.

#techsupport
#cloudcomputing
#selfhosting
#cloud

Oh, great and powerful Fedimind! Surely there is a cross-platform software out there which would help me keep system logs of any USB device connection events, as well as any file copies going from the computer to said USB device?

I've dug into NXlog, Graylog, and SentinelOne so far, and everything seems very convoluted and requires me to learn a new configuration language to handcraft .conf files. I can't be the only employee who's ever needed to keep track of this stuff, right?

Fedi, I have a #ComputerScience (maybe #Linguistics ?) Question I need your lovely guidance for ​​

I have a design problem about grammar ambiguity ish stuff and want to find reading, resources or theory I can check out to come up with an elegant solution.

Particularly, I'm trying to find good alternatives to cases when a given word can appear in multiple parts of the syntax

An example problem (sorry it's very computery): I have two strings (or lists of tokens) I need to combine into a single string, separated by a delimiter, such that both strings can be retrieved again. But, that delimiter can show up in either of the two strings. The standard way to deal with this is to designate an escape token and prepend all instances of the delimiter within the strings with it (eg \"). The issue there is now is that any instances of the escape token need escaping too (e.g. \\).

Slightly less work is inserting a repetition of the delimiter any non-delimiting instances of the token. If the delimiter appears twice, it's part of a string, and the only non-repeating delimiter must be the real one. This can look ugly if the delimiter is long though.

Another crazy option would be interlacing the two strings so all even tokens belong to string 1 and odd ones are string 2. This would obviously look horrible, but maybe there are other solutions taking a similar thought process.

That's just the most basic case I'm interested in, there might be heaps of other strategies when you have more restrictions and guarantees on what the tokens might contain.

So yeah I'm looking for stuff like that so I can figure out good patterns for unambiguous yet elegant grammars. For a tad more context, I'm thinking about command line argument formats, trying to think of the most user friendly ways to handle complex data as a list of arguments.

Also please boost and let me know if there's hashtags I should include etc ​​ #CompSci #programming #askfedi #TechSupport #CompSci #programming #askfedi #TechSupport