I needed a way to generate a TOTP secret using a fairly locked-down Mac. No Brew. No NPM. No Python. No Prolog, COBOL, or FORTRAN. No Internet connection. Just whatever software is native to MacOS. As I've mentioned before, the TOTP specification is a stagnant wasteland. But it does have this to say about the secret: The secret parameter is an arbitrary key value encoded in Base32 according to RFC 3548. The Base32 alphabet is pretty simple. The upper-case letters A - Z, and the numbers 3 - …
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I've never "got" the appeal of a Mac. But I have to use one for work. Here's a partial list of everything I cannot do on a Mac, but I can do on Ubuntu. These are all objective facts. These are things which either are impossible, or require adding unsupported 3rd party software - sometimes at a cost. Resize the system font I find the menu bar at the top too small. The only way to do this on MacOS is to lower the resolution of the entire screen! < p> Change the system font I know…
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Apple's attitude to usability is... complex. The general attitude of "you're holding it wrong" seems to be prevalent across all their products. I like having a large mouse cursor. I find it easier to see on my large monitor, especially when sat at a safe distance. But, if I use a large cursor - I can't see the tool-tips underneath it. Annoyingly, Apple don't include the larger cursor sizes when taking a screenshot. So you get the joy of me pointing a camera at my screen like some kind of…
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Being mostly notes to stop me getting frustrated. Based, in part, from this excellent forum post. I've always run Linux on my Mac Hardware. I love the physical aspects of the Mac line, but I really can't be bothered with their Play-doh infested software. Let's assume you have a nice, clean, freshly installed OSX 10.10 Yosemite sat on your MacBook Pro. I'll also assume that you may occasionally want to boot into OSX, so we'll be dual booting with Ubuntu 14.04. Partition In OSX, open the …
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