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Mathwiz

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Everything posted by Mathwiz

  1. Mathwiz
    @roytam1: Weird that it works for you and @Skorpios but not me. Serpent 55 always brings up the captcha for me, left-click or right-click, and then doesn't pass the challenge. Maybe it is the user agent that Cloudflare is balking at, as @AstroSkipper suggested earlier. R3dfox also brought up the captcha, but I just pasted the URL, so there wouldn't have been a referer. That's probably why. (I know "referer" isn't the correct spelling, but it's how Mozilla spells it.) Bringing up MSFN in R3dfox, signing in, browsing to this thread, and then clicking one of the links might have worked, but I just wanted to get the file. R3dfox passed the challenge of course. Since my wget batch file is working again, it doesn't really matter to me now.
  2. Mathwiz
    @VistaLover's suggestion worked My .bat file has been repaired! @AstroSkipper, I didn't say I had a static IP address. I said "I don't really have an option to change my IP address though." Well, that wasn't entirely correct. I do have such an option: power-cycle the router, so it negotiates a new IP address with my ISP. This, of course, would disconnect all devices in the home, so it's not really practical unless I do it in the middle of the night. The IP address Cloudflare sees is, of course, my home network's external IP address, negotiated between the router and ISP. Changing the internal address my PC is using with the router would make no difference to Cloudflare whatsoever. Luckily it's now clear that such a thing isn't necessary anyhow.
  3. Mathwiz
    @Skorpios, no; I didn't think that a right-click followed by "Save Link As" would lead to different results than a left-click, which invokes the captcha. I guess XP users have a way to download the latest version after all. Edit: Just tried it. Right-click and "Save Link As" didn't work for me. I got a 6 kB file. Maybe it's that "referer" Roytam mentioned, but.... @roytam1, all my "referer" prefs in Serpent 55 are at their defaults. A standard left-click on the link brought up the captcha. I haven't yet tried the right-click and "Save Link As." @AstroSkipper, perhaps telling wget to use a Firefox UA along with Roytam's "referer" suggestion might do the trick. I don't really have an option to change my IP address though. I just couldn't imagine Cloudflare leaving such a gaping security hole! @VistaLover, check this out: https://blog.includesecurity.com/2026/06/the-smart-tv-in-your-livingroom-is-a-node-in-the-aiscraping-economy/ Sneaky devils! I don't (and as long as I can get away with it, won't) own a "smart" TV, but I do own a Roku streaming box. I wonder if any of its "apps" are letting folks use my Internet bandwidth without my knowledge.
  4. Mathwiz
    I just got bitten by this thing. Normally, when you log in the site sets a cookie that will keep you logged in. As long as you connect often enough, you never have to log back in again. But I guess I went too long, so I had to log in again. Problem is, my browser remembered my user name, not my email address. (That's how long it had been since I logged in last.) And I couldn't remember which email address I had used when I originally signed up! So I was forced to just guess. Luckily, I guessed right (or you wouldn't be seeing this post). But that's a problem. I've had several email addresses over the years and some of them aren't even valid any more. Mutemail.com went belly-up and clear.com got bought out and shut down by Sprint (before Sprint themselves got bought out and shut down by T-Mobile). From the above, I take it the change was made to deal with spam (although I'm not clear how it helps with that, but evidently it does). But there needs to be a way to deal with forgotten email addresses. Perhaps a page where you can enter your user ID, password, and your current email address (maybe with a captcha), and get your old email address emailed back to you, or a link to reset it to the current one. Otherwise you're stuck creating a brand-new account and losing all your settings.
  5. Mathwiz
    I'm back. R3dfox worked, but good grief. I had to click the stupid "I am human" box. No more automated downloads. What really bites is that I had a nice .bat file that would automatically download the list of files from the appropriate directory at o.rthost.win, find the newest, automatically download that file, back up the old version, extract the new one, and apply all my browser customizations, all with just a few keystrokes. Now that's all been thrown out the window!
  6. Mathwiz
    Ultimate irony: the Cloudflare security checks block me from downloading Serpent with wget any more. I just get "403 Forbidden." Nor can I even use an old Serpent version to download the newest version! Apparently I'll have to use R3dfox to download Serpent now...? At least I'm on Win 7 and can use R3dfox, but what's an XP user to do now? Have I mentioned lately how much I hate AI? Not because I don't find it useful, but because everybody and their God damned dog is trying to scrape the entire World Wide Web to train their damned AI, necessitating all these damned security checks.
  7. Mathwiz
    Re: Forcibly reinstalling uBO, I agree with NHTPG. Unfortunately the author appears to have missed the point: Re: the first point, I would too! On today's Internet, I'd never browse without an ad blocker, and uBO is the best IMO. But there's a difference between installing uBO by default, and reinstalling it if the user intentionally uninstalls it, effectively making it an unavoidable part of the browser! I don't think the author fully appreciates the gravity of forcibly installing a third-party's add-on, no matter how good that third party may currently be. What if some hypothetical company (which I'll call "Poogle") makes gorhill an offer he can't refuse to exempt Poogle ads from being blocked by uBO? Or what if gorhill gets hit by a truck, and his heirs aren't software developers, have no interest in continuing uBO development, and just sell it to Poogle outright? (As for having uBO always available when testing, the author could add it to his own policies.json; that doesn't mean it has to be in the distribution for everyone.) As to the second point, editing a .json file is a bit beyond the ability of the average user. There needs to be a way for non-techies to do this. But in any case, it appears the author has no intention of addressing this issue.
  8. Mathwiz
    Conspiracy theory (meaning, don't take this seriously): Google has a secret agreement with CloudFlare to force users to update to the latest Chrome by breaking older browser versions as soon as Google releases newer ones. Happens to affect Chromium too, but most users are on official Chrome or ChrEdge.
  9. Mathwiz
    I understand you weren't addressing me specifically, and your general observations may well be correct. Yet, I think it's rather telling of a person's character when they let something little like "Micro$oft" get them riled up. To be clear, I use many Micro$oft products, and I actually like some of them! But I haven't found much to like in Windows versions beyond 7 (well, 8.1 wasn't too bad). Unfortunately, neither 7 nor 8.1 is supported any longer. I have no problem with that - few companies can afford to support decades-old products - but M$'s business model depends on them not giving me the choice to remain on an unsupported OS, even though I knowingly accept any security risks from doing so. Thus, I choose both to visit sites like MSFN, in order to keep Win 7 going; and to mildly protest M$'s attempts to force me to pay them for an OS I strongly dislike, with that little dollar sign.
  10. Mathwiz
    Thanks. I actually thought it might have something to do with the fact that the initialism ICU, when read in English, sounds like the sentence "I see you!"
  11. Mathwiz
    What is "ICU" anyway?
  12. Mathwiz
    Finally! It was so simple too. Just change the UA and it works! I could've used this years ago! Unfortunately it comes too late for me. My workplace has a new "security" admin who refuses to authorize any app other than M$ Outlook. (Well, he did relent and authorize GMail for phones.) MailNews looks like Mozilla Thunderbird. Thunderbird is perfectly fine from a security standpoint, but he's not going to unblock it because "why do I need to use another email client besides Outlook?" Still, it's nice to know that it's at least possible on XP again.
  13. Mathwiz
    @roytam1 already told you no: ... so, given that response, I was only trying to help. I'm sorry if you find it too "inconvenient," but you have a workaround now. And you only need to inconvenience yourself once for each add-on you install.
  14. Mathwiz
    I just stumbled upon a curious issue with R3dfox ESR. I tried to update from R3dfox 139 to R3dfox ESR 140, and none of my profile settings were migrated! It was as if I was starting over with a clean profile. A little investigation revealed the R3dfox ESR profiles were in a different directory: "R3dfox ESR" instead of merely "R3dfox." So my old profile was still there; R3dfox ESR just uses a different profile directory. OK, I thought, I'll copy my old profile to the new "R3dfox ESR" directory and switch to it with the profile manager. But when I tried to "create profile" and browse to the copied profile directory, it acted as though it wasn't even there! All it would show me was the new, clean profile it had created for me. The copy of my old profile was definitely there, but R3dfox ESR wouldn't show it. I was forced to give up and install a regular "R3dfox" version (I picked 142 for now). This did work and all my bookmarks, passwords, add-ons, and the like came back. But WTF? Why can't I migrate a R3dfox profile to R3dfox ESR? Is this a new Mozilla thing or an Eclipse thing? Weird! Another anomaly was that R3dfox ESR offered to migrate my settings, but not from MS Edge, as "regular" R3dfox had done; rather, from Internet Explorer! What good is that? I haven't used MSIE in years and years! I don't use Edge any more but it's still installed.
  15. Mathwiz
    Once again, learning a lot! I don't use R3dFox to watch DRM comment, so I didn't even realize R3dfox had disabled DRM. As you say, shades of Pale Moon. All the niche browsers combined aren't going to force YouTube et al. to abandon it! And I agree that the correct way to deal with the issue is to leave the DRM supporting code in the browser, and just disable it with a pref, which can then be re-enabled by the user if desired. Finally, I do consider VMP evil, and understand that niche browsers like R3dFox will never support VMP. But as long as there are sites that impose DRM but don't require VMP, we should still be allowed to access those sites. All that said, though, I still appreciate having R3dFox on my "ancient" Win 7 PC and will keep using it for the ever-increasing number of Web sites that flummox Serpent.
  16. Mathwiz
    Many US retailers do indeed offer a small discount for cash, to cover credit card processing fees. But transactions of thousands of dollars (to cover the cost of, say, a PC) are still quite rare, and that's what I meant by "large." The cost of a smart phone is probably "on the bubble:" large enough to be uncommon, but not impractical, and I do know of smart phone retailers who prefer cash. AIUI that's correct. Income of $600 or less (works out to $50/month) from any one payer need not be reported. (Disclaimer: I am not a tax attorney; this is just my understanding - and you're still supposed to pay taxes even on income that wasn't reported!) But if your "friend of a friend" is replacing a roof for $600 labor, I'd say he'd be better off charging the going rate, or just under, and paying the tax!
  17. Mathwiz
    I can't imagine that pref. doing anything at all if multiprocess move is disabled, so I strongly suspect either it is your imagination, or else you do actually have multiprocess mode enabled. The pref. you cited is not the only way to enable it: You can check whether multiprocess mode is, in fact, enabled by clicking Help / Troubleshooting and scrolling down to "Multiprocess Windows." If the first number is anything but zero, it's enabled. Already done: https://github.com/JustOff/moon-tester-tool (by the author of the Classic Add-Ons Archive himself) and https://github.com/Nebula-Mechanica/serpent-tester-tool. But to be fair, these extensions are themselves several years old, so they probably need to be updated. ... Any volunteers? @AstroSkipper?
  18. Mathwiz
    I agree - some Web sites work better if you report an older FF version than the default (128), as long as it's not too old. You may need to experiment with a Web site to find the "best lie" to tell it. To be fair to YouTube, I doubt they test with Pale Moon (let alone New Moon), so they probably don't know it works! The script runs slowly on New Moon/Serpent/MyPal, especially if you have an older PC; so the browsers time out waiting for it to finish, and give you that dialog. I'd try clicking "Don't ask me again" then clicking "Continue." You'll probably need to be patient waiting for the script to complete, and it still may not work. But at least you'll give it a chance!
  19. Mathwiz
    That is interesting, VL. I always learn something from your posts! Here in the US, cash transactions aren't quite so discouraged (thank goodness for privacy), but large cash transactions are nonetheless quite rare. Given the risk of theft or loss, I'd probably never plunk down $2000 cash for a new PC even if I had a money tree! I'd pluck those notes and deposit them in my bank account as fast as they grew.... I guess, for Eurozone residents craving privacy, there's still cryptocurrency, but that has its own headaches.
  20. Mathwiz
    The English word "some" is not limited to "fewer than ten," as you appear to insist on believing. As with most words in most languages, its meaning depends on context. I already made the point that "some" is not synonymous with "a few," but you omitted that part of my post when you quoted me. If one could pluck notes from a money tree as easily as leaves from an actual tree, it would be quite easy to pluck a dozen, or even a score, of them, don't you think? I find this argument absurd, tiresome, and pointless. You are hereby ignored.
  21. Mathwiz
    Accidents happen, but cell phone insurance and repair shops exist, so I'd say that if you're (a) so chronically careless with your phones that you're repeatedly breaking their screens, and (b) using that as an excuse to buy a new phone rather than getting your old one repaired, methinks you really wanted a new phone all along. So evidently, they can afford a new phone after all (or at least, they think they can). I think I figured it out, at least in the US. Here, new phones are often sold locked to a service provider, and paid for over a 2 to 3 year period. So instead of having to shell out (say) $1200 for a new phone, it's $40/mo for 30 months on top of the cost for cell service. Once you're used to that scheme, it's tempting to just get a new phone and sell the old one once it's paid off, rather than keeping the old one and pocketing the $40/mo savings. Also, both Apple and Google make it easy to upgrade without losing apps, data, etc. (at least, as long as you don't want to switch between those two platforms!) I suspect those factors go a long way toward explaining why we Americans are so willing to throw away good phones every few years. But they don't apply to PCs, even despite the "Androidification" of Windows since Windows 10. It's still painful and expensive to move to a newer PC, still arrogant of anyone to suggest that those dealing with artificial blocks on older Web browsers should just "buy a new PC" (to get back to the original topic), and so there's still a reason for sites like MSFN and developers like @K4sum1 to keep working on projects like R3dfox for older PCs that run older OSes like Windows Vista or 7.
  22. Mathwiz
    I wasn't misleading anyone. I said "pluck some 100 Euro notes", not pluck ONE 100 Euro note," or even "pluck a few 100 Euro notes!" We're all well aware that the cost of a modern PC is more than a few 100-Euro notes. I figured the reader would know how many notes would have to be plucked! But quibbles over adjectives aside, I think we actually agree! My whole point was that there's no such thing as a money tree! Most of us actually have to work quite hard to earn enough money to buy a modern PC; thus it was quite arrogant for someone to respond to a complaint about a Web site being deliberately blocked from working on an older PC with "just go out and buy a new one," as if that were a trivial thing for anyone to do!
  23. Mathwiz
    Not me. I've never understood that. I'm still using a 10-year old 4G phone. People like you describe act as if they actually have money trees, throwing away an over-$1000 piece of equipment every 2-3 years just because there's an even more expensive version out! Because that's how the World Wide Web was designed to work, that's why! The original idea behind HTML was that, no matter how many fancy bells and whistles were added later on, a Web page should still look the same to folks using a browser that didn't support the new bells and whistles. The page may be slow and look like one of those ugly pages from the '80's, but it's still supposed to work. (And for the most part, the WWW really did work that way for its first couple of decades.) I know we got away from that ideal long ago, but I still think it's an ideal worth striving for, rather than Discourse (or whoever) shutting you out of their sites completely because your browser/OS doesn't support all the HTML features they think they might want to use someday. Someone once told me there's a difference between dealing with organic change like the shifting seasons, and the change forced on you by someone who is whipping you forward like a drover, toward a destination of their choosing, not yours. You misunderstand the situation. We don't get to choose whether to use "old school" or "new school" methods! If the Web designer used the "old school" method of sniffing the UA (e.g., chase.com), then we have to use the corresponding "old school" method of spoofing the UA just to get in! Of course, we often have to use "new school" methods as well, like those built into a Web browser like R3dfox or Supermium, or the site will likely not work well (see above) but that doesn't mean we can ignore UA spoofing just because it's considered "old school."
  24. Mathwiz
    I'd estimate that upwards of 75% of new CSS and Javascript features fall into that category. I wish I could say "unbelievable," but the arrogance of some folks is totally believable. Just go out to your money tree and pluck off some 100 Euro (or whatever your local currency is) notes, and hand them to your local PC dealer. Doesn't everyone have a money tree? And even if you're willing to spend the money, does anyone have any idea how much work goes into making your PC, well, personal? No, they want you to just throw that old PC in the rubbish and start customizing your new PC from scratch - with a new OS version that removes support for much of the personalization that Win 7 lets us do. You will have the Win 10/11 "look" whether you like it or not! Because Micro$oft says so!
  25. Mathwiz
    BTW, I do think PayPal is going a bit overboard here. Think about it: you (eventually) have to provide a correct user ID and password, then pass the 2FA challenge - so what's the point of a captcha? To make sure that, if anyone hacks into your account, at least it's a human? "Oh, thank goodness! All my money was stolen by a real person, and not a bot! What a relief!" And in my case, the captcha came up first, so all a hacker would have to do is solve the captcha and then turn on the bot! To be fair, perhaps the captcha comes up again after each unsuccessful login attempt, so that wouldn't work. But if so, you still don't need a captcha on the first login attempt! And it's not even one of Google's reCaptchas. If it were, I'd just guess that PayPal was getting paid by Google to put the reCaptcha up and help Google train their AI. I think some of these sites think that the more "security-adjacent" hurdles they throw in your path, the more "secure" they are - or at least, the more secure you'll think they are (security theater) - when in fact all it does is make them more inconvenient to use.
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