Canceling CPS energy "Special Products and Services"

I'm trying to cancel a long list of subscriptions, donations, etc, that were made by automatic payments.  These continue to be incredibly difficult if not impossible to cancel.  There is never any online means of doing so.  Often you make a call to a number which never answers, you leave a message, and they never return your call.  That was the case with Texas Organizing Project (TOP).  I emailed and called for them to cancel my donation, and they never replied and it never got cancelled.  Finally I asked my credit card to cancel it, and they refused to do so.  Finally I just let the credit card expiration date hit, I never gave TOP the updated date (though I got an automatic email asking for one) and it finally stopped.  Strangely some subscriptions I've had in the past automatically updated the expiration date somehow, so I worry about even this method.

To cancel XM radio in the early 2000's, I spent 3 hours in 3 very intense phone calls to their offshore "customer service" before it got done.  There had been at least another 3 hours of preparations, getting all the relevant information.  And there had been an entire month of agony, just thinking about it.  I was gratified when XM radio was bought out by Sirius.  I had previously found Sirius much easier to cancel than XM.

To cancel my ADT service (which was running $90/mo) I had to make two phone calls taking a total of about one hour.  They gave me a list of proposed rate reductions to keep the service, and I refused them all (knowing from past experience that rates are jacked up the moment any rate reduction offer expires).  That wasn't too bad, as these things go.  To cancel my AT&T landline, it took one phone call and about 40 minutes.  With both ADT and AT&T, they stuck me with an additional month of "service" but I was glad when it was finally over and I didn't see my checking account hit with the automatic montly charges anymore.

Currently I'm trying to cancel my "Windtricity," which is a contribution to the development and deployment of wind power in Texas, managed through my utility CPS.  When I signed up in 1997, Wind Power was barely a thing in Texas, now it's huge.  I've done my bit, and now I can't afford any extra subscriptions, so I'm trying to cancel it.

The easiest thing would be if they provided a website tool to cancel, but they never do.  IMO this should be a requirement.  I could cancel the automatic payments of my entire bill, but not the Windtricity charges within it.  To cancel that, it tells me I need to email a special department in CPS called "Products and Services" 

I emailed products and services on September 25.  In two days I had not gotten any response, and it looked like I might have used an incorrect address because my Yahoo email reduced the address to a token so it was hard to figure out where the message had actually been sent.  So I sent a second cancellation email.  Now it used the same token, and I was able to figure out that it was going to the correct address after all.

On October 7, I finally got an email from Products and Services which said my Windtricity contributions had been cancelled.

But my bill dated October 17 still showed me being charged the full amount.

Needless to say, the CPS customer service line is useless.  Then have endless menus and options, none of which apply to Windtricity.  This is typical of automated phone answering systems, they never have an option which applies to you.  If it were something simple, like the options they give you, you would have probably handled it already.  And there is never any way of talking to a real person anymore.  I tried pressing 0 and that did not work.

Yahoo AI deleting emails if you complain about it

 I got an urgent letter from my credit union today.  In order to best process it, I tried to print it out.  I got just two lines instead of the entire message.

I looked at the onscreen message, and seeing the AI on top, I decided it was the fault of AI.  (That was incorrect.)   I hate those redundant AI summaries as a general rule anyway, they waste space and I'd like to turn them off, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

So I gave the AI Summary a Thumbs Down.

A dialog came up for the AI, and I entered nothing in the explanation box, I just pressed Submit.

The message went away and I was back at my inbox where the original message had disappeared.  I checked my Trash folder, and it wasn't there either.

Fortunately, I had replied to the message, so I still had a copy in my Sent folder.  I tried printing that out, and once again I got just two lines.  It was at that point I realized that the original problem, the two line printout, was because the message was really a link or something (which still doesn't explain why it didn't print out).

From the sent message, I then cut out the text that I needed, copied that to a file in Emacs, and printed that file out.  So finally I got the text I needed.

But now, the Sent message disappeared from my Sent folder.

None of the messages show up in my Trash or in a Search either.

It seems like if you complain about Yahoo AI, it destroys all evidence of that by deleting the original message and your reply to it.

Diabolical.  I never asked for AI and hate it too.  And I thought I had already turned off message summaries.

I asked Google again how to turn off message summaries.  Google AI said:

To disable email summaries in Yahoo Mail, open your settings by clicking the gear icon or More Options icon, navigate to Viewing email, and then toggle the Dynamic message (or Message summaries) setting to off

But in the Viewing tab, I already had the Dynamic Message feature turned off, and there is no Message Summaries.  It turned out, that is in a different settings tab, the one called Appearances.

 My advice would be: unplug all those AI datacenters right now.  It seems like we've landed on Forbidden Planet already.  One AI covering it's tracks and the other misdirecting for it.

Will anyone read this?

MacOS 15 Finder is Broken Shit

When I upgraded my 14 year old Mac Mini to the latest Mac Mini Pro this year, I was expecting everything to get faster and mostly better.

But one thing has become slower than molasses.  And that is Finder with large folders.  And I'm not talking super large, like >32k files.  Just a few thousand files can slow Finder to a crawl when loading folders.

Apple says you shouldn't have large folders?  WTF???  I remember when folder sizes became virtually unlimited in Unix, and that was like 50 years ago.

In addition to that, the new Finder display modes are virtually useless too.  My old system did gallery displays with thousands of files virtually instantly, and I could quickly zero in on an image I wanted.  Now it's useless, and I'm better off using some other application like PictureView to scan files for one I want.

I waited about 10 minutes for Finder to load a folder of 3000 files.  Finally I gave up and rebooted the system.  It wouldn't reboot the first time because Finder was stuck and needed to be terminated.

Fortunately this doesn't seem to be true of the underlying file system.  I can work on folders with large numbers of files just as fast in Terminal as ever before.  That's getting much closer to the system functions, which may be OK.  It's just Finder that's been broken.

Yahoo Mail scrolls past message while you are reading it

 Ever intent to direct your reading habits away from deep reading and thinking, Yahoo email now automagically jumps to the next email when it decides you are done with the present one.

As advertised, this only comes into effect when you have reached the end of an email.  But many times today I've seen my message switch when I'm nowhere near the end in a long message.  Somewhere between 60 and 80 percent.

Theoretically you can turn this new misfeature off by disabling "Dynamic Email."  But I have turned that off, and the same behavior persists.

Now I can scroll to the end of the message and nothing happens.  But if I'm in the middle of reading a message, 60-80% done, and turn the scroll wheel a bit too fast, it jumps to the next email.

This is usually a problem more with long emails, but I've seen this happen in relatively short summaries from Washington Post.

Recent complaints

My iphone had been endlessly asking me if I'd allow notifications from the Toyota app.  I'd be in the middle of doing something else, or nothing at all, and get one of these popups from the Toyota app to which I had to respond before I could do anything else.  But I had all the Toyota app notifications already turned on.  Finally I got tired of all these popups and simply turned Toyota app notifications off.  That's helped but not completely.

One thing the Toyota app always reminds me of is when I leave doors unlocked.  After so many minutes it sends a notification about this.  But I normally park in my private locked garage with the car doors unlocked so I can conveniently add and remove stuff from the car.  There is no way to specifically turn off the "door unlocked" notifications or add geofencing to them.  (It would be fine to remind me about unlocked doors somewhere else.)

I'm not (yet) spending the $15/mo to get Toyota navigation, thinking I could just use my phone like I always have.  But on my first trip, after setting the destination in the Maps application on my iPhone, and pressing go, I wasn't getting any verbal instructions.  I pulled over several times and tried to turn the audio on.  I turned the ringer on, I turned the volume up to max, I fiddled with the audio buttons in the map application itself.  I tried turning up the volume on my Toyota infotainment screen.  Nothing helped.  Inevitably I got lost and had to make a huge detour to get back on route.  Finally, after I arrived at my destination, I discovered that I could get the audio for Maps back on simply by turning Bluetooth on my phone off.  I never told Maps to use Bluetooth, and it should have indicated Bluetooth was being used and allowed me to turn it off through the app.

I was hoping the phone should actually display maps from my phone on the infotainment screen.  I've heard of other cars doing that, but I have found no way to do so on my new Toyota.

Supposedly I can show notifications on my iPhone from the unlocked screen by swiping down from the middle.  Instead, it shows me some kind of "shortcut" screen.  Supposedly I can expand the notifications from that screen by swiping up.  When I swipe up from the shortcut page it puts me right back in the normal page.  Why can't they just give me a button to see notifications?

The iPhone camera app is so full of fiddly buttons now I can hardly take a simple photo without engaging some weird mode by accident.  Particularly troublesome is the long slider at the bottom of the image which selects different camera modes.  I often touch that by accident when I'm trying to take a picture.  I long for the camera app of my iPhone 3 which was so easy to use.

It's nice that the bright/dim controls for the Prius displays have separate modes for daytime and nighttime.  But the dial brightness control on my 2006 Prius was much easier to use and more reflexive than the push button Up/Down controls on my 2026 Prius.  Sometimes you have to turn the lights on even when it's more or less daylight, then the display is too dim and it's nice to quickly bump it up then and bump it down later when it gets dark.  It's terribly inconvenient to do this with the push buttons.

My TigerSECU security DVR started making noticeable and annoying disk drive seeking sounds every few minutes.  I just replaced the drive about 3 months ago with the quietest 3T drive I could find, and normally it is very quiet.  So I went into the TigerSECU menu and turned off motion detection in every single zone.  I don't use motion detection anyway.  That fixed the problem.

But I couldn't turn off motion detection in every zone with the TigerSECU remote.  Even when I navigated to the channel selector pulldown, it wouldn't work from the remote.  I had to attach a mouse to fix zones beyond zone one.

If a SimpliSafe keypad is installed in a location where you can't clearly hear the alarm, you might set off the alarm without knowing about it.  During an alarm, the keypads should give some kind of sound so you know an alarm is happening.

Every serious Mac user should know about and have Macs Fan Control installed, or it should be standard.  By default my M4 Mini was running quite hot but I got it cooled down easily with Mac Fan Control set to 1687 RPM.

It's nice that Toyota lets you control various key modes from the settings screen in the car.  But weirdly you cannot control how the door unlock button on the remote works.  It always takes two presses to get all doors to open.  I'd change it to one press but that's the one thing that can't be changed.

The default of unlocking all doors when you engage Park is stupid.  I engage Park when I'm waiting for my garage door to open, and in similar situations.  Then the doors re-lock when I shift into drive for pulling into the garage.  Fortunately I was able to turn auto door unlocking off.

It's incredibly stupid how the Mac interface ties menu bars to the docking strip in a concept called 'Spaces.'  I have three displays and run VLC in one of them.  If I have "Displays Have Separate Spaces" turned on, then I can access the menu bar for VLC in the screen in which VLC is running full screen by moving the mouse pointer to the top of the screen.  But then frequently the dock will also appear in the VLC screen, being stolen from the main display.  So when I'm doing things on the main screen, whenever VLC starts a new video the dock is stolen again and I have to mess around by clicking on windows and moving the mouse where the dock is supposed to be to get the dock back to the main screen.  If I turn "Displays Have Separate Spaces" off, then I can't access the menu bar for any application running full screen in a non-primary window in that same window because it always moves to the primary display.  (I have an explanation why Apple has chosen to screw things up like this.  It's a way of ensuring you buy a Mac for every room rather than sending displays from the Mac to other rooms the way I do.  It's similar to how Tivo made pairing an RF remote virtually impossible so you were forced to use remotes only in the IR mode...forcing you to buy a Tivo for every room.)

It's stupid the way my old DiscoverCard has a half circle drawn at the top of the card.  It makes it look as though you are supposed to put that end of the card into a card reader, when it's actually the other end (which has the visible chip).

Good and Simple

One good and simple idea is worth more than a solar mass of approximations.

Why Prius ?

Ever since I bought my first Prius in 2001, I was hoping my next vehicle would be an electric car.  Then I got 2006 Prius, which lasted until now, so I got a 2026 Prius.

What happened?

Well I did put a deposit on a Tesla Model 3 back in my working days when I made enough money to pay for one.  But then when they actually came, I found 3 major issues for me:

1.  It was nearly 10 inches wider than my Prius, which was already difficult to get into my narrow garage.  (I've recently heard that Teslas might be able to do this automatically, maybe it could squeeze through narrower openings than I can.)  And then there's getting around the car once it is in.  The 2026 Prius is about 3 inches wider than the 2006, which is just about the limit in my garage.

2.  No standard instruments in front of the driver.  I considered this a modernist fascist design flaw.

3.  Too high back window (that's a bit of a problem with the 2026 Prius too).

So I canceled my deposit.  Then I retired early, and wasn't putting too many miles on my old car anyway.

But, what about now???

Well, the standard Prius LE (the lowest trim level) is already stretching my income to the limit.  I could barely think about a Plug In Prius, let alone a Tesla model 3.

I'm now into affordable cars, and the Model 3.  I see two EV's I could have bought:

1.  Nissan Leaf

2.  Fiat EV

But above all, I wanted a reliable car like my last Prius.  I was very used to the size, format, and luxury features of a standard Prius too, including especially automatic climate control, and the size of the hatchback loading area (which is little different on the 2006).

EV's simply haven't become widely available enough, cheap enough, to make the exact model I need at the price I need.

And, there's actually a good reason for this.  There simply isn't enough lithium to make all vehicles EV yet.  Only a small fraction.  (And lithium mining is horrible, toxic and all that, though lithium is fairly ubiquitous.)

Given that there isn't really enough lithium to make EV's for everyone, what should be done?

Well, plug in hybrids would be one thing.  And nearly all cars should be hybrids simply to save gas.

Sadly, plug in hybrids aren't as reliable as the non plug in types (yet).  And the larger batteries are far more expensive to replace (come 15 years or so, and I hope I get more than that).

Smaller EV's with smaller batteries would be another thing.

Limiting EV to cases where it could do the most good.  That would not apply to me because I hardly do any driving anymore.

So it ultimately made the most sense for me to simply have a regular non-plug-in for long term lowest mechanical costs, though perhaps somewhat more fuel cost, but that simply wasn't much a factor for me.

2026 Toyota Prius

I have finally replaced my 2006 Prius with a 2026 Prius.  The speedometer board on my 2006 Prius was failing, a $1100 estimated repair (if they can actually get the parts) which nudged me into doing what I had been planning to do anyway, and no better time than now it seemed.

The 2026 Prius has morphed into something like a sports car.  It looks the part thanks to styling which may well be the best I've ever seen on a car (and I collected car models for quite some time).  It's a Lamborghini, a Ferrari, and a Porsche all rolled into a gas saving Toyota.

It grips the road way better than before, even in LE trim with the 17 inch wheels.  (The 19 inch wheels with 50 series tires are sports car territory.)

Downside there is more road noise and even some road and engine noise at times, something rarely as obvious in the 2006.  Ride however is generally smoother and it absorbs big bumps better.  (My 2006 shocks were probably shot.)

Biggest Downsides

So far the biggest downside for me is that they took off the climate control adjustments off of the steering wheel.  It used to be so wonderful to nudge the target temperature up or down a degree or two.  That would also affect fan speed and everything.  You could also control the recirc from the steering wheel.

The 2006 Prius automatic climate control system was very sophisticated too, including ambient light into it's calculations.  It worked very well, but sometimes needed a slight nudge up or down.  The 2026 system might be even better.  As much as I'm complaining about the controls, it might not need them as much as before.  "74" seems to work just fine so far.  When I ride in my friends cars which never seem to have automatic climate control the AC is always doing something wrong and no adjustment fixes it for long.  I just don't get how most people don't see how important it is to have automatic climate control with a thermostat just like you have for your house, and that most cars don't actually have this feature.  I was looking for it in car brochures in the 1960's, and was jazzed when my first new car--a 1986 Mitsubishi Galant--had it.

It's not as if the steering wheel isn't littered with all sorts of other controls, many of which don't seem to be the kind of thing you would use on a daily basis.  It's just that whoever designed this doesn't appreciate the world in the same way I do.  When you are driving a car, there are two key things: driving, and the air conditioning.  The infotainment stuff can go hang (I haven't used car infotainment much in 15 years because I nowadays prefer to focus all my attention on driving).

Power Outage and SimpliSafe

My power went out at 3:00 am and wasn't restored until 11:00 am.

Less than a minute after the power went out, my SimpliSafe Base Station started announcing network trouble.  Ok.  But it kept announcing network trouble about every minute and I was trying to get to sleep.

I took out my phone and opened the SimpliSafe app in order to turn off the voice completely.  (I've already had door chimes and entry announcements turned off as those get annoying as heck.*  But I didn't mind the Armed and Off messages, which are in the "Status" category, which sadly also includes the endlessly repeating network trouble messages.

It wasn't easy to get through to the base station.  I figured that was because the wifi router was down, and it only worked with direct communication from my phone to the base station when it would try to use the router first.  But eventually I did get through and shut the messages off.  And was able to get back to sleep.  (I was in deep panic for about 10 minutes worried that somehow I would not be able to do this, but persistence paid off.)

(*One of the curious but unfortunate things is if you have door chimes or announcements enabled for any entry sensor, you have to get some announcement or chime (you can choose which) for every entry sensor.  So I couldn't just have an announcement for the back door, which I hardly ever use and might like to have such indication, without also having an announcement or chime for the front door, which is what gets annoying as heck.  I tried just having a chime on the front door and decided that was little less annoying than the announcement.)

To avoid having this situation happen again, I'm going to have to keep all the voice messages off, and I miss some of them. 

Blinking LED strips

A few years ago, I discovered that lighting up my 'home office' (which is actually...my kitchen) with ambient lighting in the dark corners helped avoid eyestrain late at night.  I've taken it as a requirement since then to be sure there is background lighting for ever screen in the house.  Watching video in darkness is bad for your eyes because of unnatural light changes.

Around one corner, above the refrigerator and near my electric vent, where it's always dark, I used an LED strip, placed on top of the sound absorbers.

So far, two of these LED strips have failed.  They work fine for about two years or so, and then something happens, and they start blinking.

I've always noticed that when the blinking starts, the power supply is quite warm.  Online sources often say you should check the power supply.  But none of the power supplies have gone bad.

Instead, what seems to happen is that the strip draws way more current than it is supposed to.  As it heats up, it draws more and more current.  That then forces the (fully working as intended) power supply to shut down for awhile.  About a second later the power supply fires up and tries again.  But the same thing happens.  So...blinking.

Now actually putting one of these LED strips on top of my (fire rated, acrylic) sound absorbers is a non-standard usage.  And I just lay them there without removing the paper backing.  Possibly because of that, they are generally running too warm and eventually develop an issue as described, a thermal runaway.

These lights have never given me problems actually attached to a TV or monitor.

Anyway, clearly strip lights are not good here.  What I've been successful with before are mini LED spotlights.  I have not needed to replace those, even though they are also installed on top of the refrigerator (but not on top of the sound absorbers).  I can aim two of them to fill in the two walls in the corner behind the refrigerator, eliminating the eye straining darkness.

Now, there are larger ambient light products that all look interesting.  But most of them suffer from a fundamental flaw.  They are operated by push button or app or remote control.  That's OK maybe if you have one.  But if you want the whole room lit up, you want to have them on the same power strip or whatever is needed to turn them all on and off at once.  But I also don't like the idea of having an app that powers them "all" because that presumed you bought "all" once and forever at the same time.  Instead, what organically happens is you keep adding to a growing set of lights to achieve the full desired effect.

Honestly, I just keep all my kitchen ambient lighting running all the time.  I probably shouldn't, though I think it's a trivial amount of spent electricity for making my life much more convenient. 

So generally the best idea is for ambient lighting to have no switch at all.

The mini LED spotlights have no switch at all, they plug into "USB" power and draw only 1 watt.  (It's best to say 1w or below so they don't get hot.)

Much Greater Risk of Buying Wrong Item with Digital Media

 Today I was searching for the acclaimed documentary No Other Land.  Amazon first said "Currently Unavailable" but I realized that was DVD and looked for other version in the main search results.

I cannot retrace my steps at all (the history was completely expunged by Amazon and Google somehow immediately after my purchase was final) to see page where I made my mistake, but I could have started from a page for a different movie not realizing it was a different movie.  I somehow thought I was on a page for No Other Land, and it only offered to stream or buy, which seemed to make sense.  I chose buy, figuring then I could download it.  It took me to a page warning that I would not be able to view the movie in 4K because of my device (ok, 2k would be fine by me) and there was a "view" and a "download."  I repeated selected the "download" and nothing happened.  So finally I started to view the video through Chrome and all.

Only then I realized that I had ordered the wrong movie, after watching 2 seconds.  But two seconds two late because all digital media sales are final once watched, no matter how little.

I then tried to retrace my steps, but the only history prior to the movie window was the the Amazon search results.  Digital movie purchases show up in a different folder within Purchases and Returns and the only option was to review.

If I had ordered a Blu Ray, as I would have preferred to do, I would have caught this error in 10 different ways before it was too late.

It would show in a purchase screen (not a "viewing" screen).  It would show up in my email to be checked a few hours later.  It would be delivered and I'd see the name on the sealed disc package.  And then I could have returned it.  If somehow I had opened the movie, I might not have been able to return it, but I could sell the disc and recover some amount of the cost, or donate it.

I finally found the film through YouTube which actually linked to the movie on Rumble.  The Rumble version appears to be the genuine article, but only standard definition (480p), or perhaps less, some kind of lowered resolution copy.  It does not appear to come from the producer but from some blogger with 11 followers.

There seemed to be another version in high definition on Youtube.  But if you look carefully at the title, and the description, you see it isn't the movie at all, but a "Review" of it which consists basically of endless junk such as pictures of the DVD package and the producers appearance at Cannes and various logos with various disparaging fades.  Nearly two hours of junk which profits from YouTube royalties which value time watched and how many, so for each person sucked in (especially if they download the film) they could get some royalties for junk, scamming off the original title.  (And in the search results there are many similar other "reviews" just with slightly different titles.)

Here's the actual Title at YouTube from the one I looked at.

No Other Land (2024) Movie ‧ Oscar Winning Documentary | Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra | Review & Facts

Well, obtaining that was not as bad as my mistaken purchase at Amazon anyway, though I hate the fact I subsidized scammers.  Sadly I doubt the producers get any royalties from Rumble, and I guess that's the whole point of being "locked out by Hollywood."

Another version even added "Full" just before the "Movie".

Selecting CD metadata

Whenever I "rip" my CD's to my harddrive, I first must select the metadata.

My preferred ripper, XLD, doesn't have the biggest metadata collection, so I've always let a native Mac application (which used to be iTunes, now it's Music) identify the metadata first, then I run XLD to rip it.

Generally I'm presented with more than one possibility for the metadata.  You can already gleen some differences just by looking at the list.  Some are exceptionally wordy (I don't like those, my Roon always knows all the details anyway) and others not.  Some are in languages other than English (but 95% are in English).

But there really isn't enough detail in most cases to figure out which would be the preferable metadata (or, at least, the one I would prefer).

It would be better if you could explore each metadata option, to see how they label each song rather than just the whole disc.  But I have never seen such an option available.  Instead the only thing that I can do is select one version of the metadata and see what it's like then.  If I really don't like it, I can undo it and start over, but this gets complicated especially if I have already ripped the disc.  Not only do I have to delete the ripped disc files, or quit and restart the XLD application, sometimes I've had to reboot the computer.

4K Monitors on Macs

I got a new 55 inch 4K monitor (well, actually it's a TV, but it's a nice TCL Q6 LED TV) for my Mac.

But it appears the 4K quality of the monitor (which I sit about 4 feet in front of btw) is essentially useless.

When I switch to 4K everything becomes half as big.  Text in most app windows becomes nearly unreadable.  I have to go through the apps one by one to change the default font size, which usually fixes the app completely as the apps generally resize themselves to fit their own text.  Sometimes you have to change 2 or 3 font or other size settings in each app.  It's a pain in the neck I would have never expected, but it's doable.  There's no global way of just making everything bigger.

There's a preference panel Desktop & Dock which nicely has two different sizing controls, and they allow a nice continuous range of sizes so it can be set just right for your monitor, distance, vision, and the number of apps you usually have open.

But there is one thing which simply cannot be changed enough.  And that is the size of the menu bars at the top of the screen and perhaps elsewhere.

That is controlled by a very hard to find control:

System Settings->Accessibility->(Vision) Display->(Text) Menu Bar Size

It has two options, Default and Large.  On my 55" monitor, in 4K mode, 4 feet away, the Default setting is microscopic and the Large is still barely readable.

In 1080P mode, Small and Large are both useable by me, but I prefer Large (given my distance and old eyes).

Now when people complained about this with previous OS's, the advice given was to go into the Display settings, and "correct" your monitor size.

As of Sequoia 15.4.1, that option does not appear in Display Preferences.  I thought I saw it previously, and it simply could not be changed.  It had been fixed to 27 inches (and I previously had a 40 inch display).

So it seems you are not given any control over what the Mac sees the monitor as.  I imagine this works correctly if they are connected via USB which communicates such information, as does HDMI (though I wonder if it's universally supported over HDMI).  Now in my case, I have my monitors connected to my computers and other video sources through an HDMI Matrix Switch, so it's possible that information is not communicated correctly even if the TV supports it correctly.

But even then, I was thinking, suppose the Mac incorrectly believes for some reason that my connected monitor is 27 inches when in fact it is 55 inches.  Well, it would then tend to make the menu bar larger than necessary it would seem to me, which is probably what I'd like, and instead it's making it far smaller.  So WTF is going on anyway?  Screen Size miscommunication may not be at the root of the problem after all.

What's needed is full user control of the Menu Bar Size with a very wide range, as offered for the Dock size.  (Or better yet, a global control over the sizing of everything, so you don't have to reset the font size in each and every app.  Or somehow keep everything the same size when switching from 1080P to 4K.)

I feel like I'm being persecuted for not having a direct monitor connection,  I'm persecuted for old eyes, and not having a Mac monitor.

Somehow, you would think, that the Small and Large Menu Bar Sizes would be just perfect on a 4K Mac monitor (though maybe not still from my distance and eyes).

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255096501

Sequoianoia

I'm happy that I've been able to move on with updates to all my key applications from 2014 with my new Mac Mini Pro with M4 Pro processor.  But system security, what I sometimes call securianoia, has been the main thing I've had to struggle with.  (I'm happy at least that in every case I've eventually been able to find the solution, though sometimes it's taken quite awhile, and I would have been completely stumped had I not been able to scour the internet for answers.)

Frankly I'd turn most of the security off, and I have whenever I can.  I really don't care much if people are watching me, etc.  In 44 years of personal computing I've never had a virus, worm, or serious trojan horse.  (My one and only rule: I avoid stuff that looks iffy, and especially stuff telling me I've been infected, etc.).

Meanwhile I've had endless problems with add on virus protectors, and now system security "features."  And going forwards.  (Though I appreciate that Macs don't seem to "require" external virus protectors like PC's do, so I suppose a little bit of pain might be worth it.  I'd still prefer less pain, though.)

I had to struggle for days to get both Roon and Sonos S1 working on my new Mac, mainly to find just the right combination of permissions for them and their background servers.  With each of those permissions hidden behind a different set of Settings panels which are often infernally misleading.  Such as "Network" doesn't really control everything related to Network.

Today another routine Roon update made it impossible for Roon to see any of my external audio devices again.  I'm thinking this happens every time now.  I couldn't quite remember how I fixed this last time, and I scanned through the Network and Privacy and Security pages to find anything useful.  Indeed both Roon and Roon Server had permission to communicate with devices on my network, which is found in:

System Settings->Privacy and Security->Local Network

But the story is that after an update, you have to un-check and then re-check both Roon and Roon Server, then quit and restart Roon.

Well, I did that, but it didn't fix the problem.  So I progressed to the usual thing I do (which helped fix inexplicable internet loss a few days ago too), I restarted my Mac.

It was then that I realized that although I had quit Roon, I had not quit Roon Server, because for a moment Roon Server blocked the shutdown.

Well, the combination of the restart and the checking and unchecking cured the problem, but perhaps just the restart would have done it, or if I could have restarted both Roon and Roon server.  I'm noting this here to jog my memory next time.

Samsung TV keeps trying to connect to new neighbor's bluetooth and won't take NO for an answer

I don't regularly use Bluetooth, though sometimes I have to turn it on for some new gizmo.  I thought that's what might have happened when my 9 year old Samsung TV popped up a message box asking me if I'd like to connect to a Bluetooth device named RTS TU.

WTF.  I've never even used Bluetooth with this TV except while using 3D goggles, and I haven't done that in 5 years so the batteries in all my 3D googles are dead if they haven't been turned off.

I wasn't even sure whether it was the TV or the computer that was giving this message.  But I dug up my Samsung remote (which I haven't used much in years either, because I keep my TV connected to an HDMI line connected to my computer) and using an arrow button I was able to select the "NO" option.

But 20 seconds later, the same dialog popped up again.  I turned it off again.  And 20 seconds later, the dialog popped up again.   And this kept going on for the next 45 minutes it took me to figure out how to stop it.

Finally I think to myself, maybe it's the new Asus monitor I bought for a "second monitor" in the bedroom.  That's the only thing in my bedroom that has changed recently.  The Asus monitor had not even been taken out of the box yet, but perhaps there is a remote or something in the box.  So I moved the box to a distant room in the house.

Nope, the Bluetooth connect dialog still kept appearing.  Now I'm beginning to think it has to do with the new neighbor next door who moved in yesterday.  And I really don't want THEM to be connecting to my TV, which carries an audio signal from my computer which could be anything.

So I tried the "MENU" button on the Samsung remote, something I also haven't used in a long time (I prefer acessing menu features with another remote for reasons that will become clear.  But for some reason I couldn't find my other remote right now, so I had to use the actual Samsung remote, which has only a few visible buttons which are often "overloaded".)

When I press the Menu button, it puts me on a number key in a number pad on the screen, and there's a bar at the top of the screen with things you can do like change channel.  At the very far right of that bar at the top there's a button which says Menu.

So what I have to do is first press the menu button on the remote, then navigate 2 positions up and 1 to the side to press the Menu button on the screen, THEN I can actually access the Menu options.  If I press something else by mistake, I could be stuck for quite a while trying to figure out how to get out of it.  (I basically never use all these extra features of the TV and personally I wish they hadn't included them because I'm only ever selecting them by mistake and then trying to figure out how to get out of them, which often isn't easy.  All I really want ever want to do is use the actual Menu, but the Menu button doesn't go there directly, it seems like it first wants to show me the wonderful extra functions of this TV which I mostly wish they hadn't included.  Speaking of which, there's something actually called Extra which was apparently discontinued 4 years ago.  But there are other extras in addition to that one).   If I don't navigate to the Menu button on the screen fast enough, everything goes away.

Samsung screen after "Menu/Hub" pressed on Remote

Well, before I could figure out how to do all that, the Bluetooth dialog appears again so I wasn't navigating the menu anymore, but the arrow buttons only allowed me to say YES or NO, and by the time I've done that all the Menu/Hub stuff on the screen has disappeared and I have to start all over trying to Navigate over to the actual Menu button.

If you don't know exactly what to do, and I didn't at first, you might never get to the actual Menu button on screen before the TV gives the Bluetooth dialog all over again.  You have to press the button fast before the Bluetooth dialog appears all over again.

As the minutes passed (I wasted about 35 minutes on this issue, when I'd been trying to go to bed) I finally mastered the remote well enough so I could navigate to the actual Menu screen, then look at at a menu option or two, before the Bluetooth dialog appeared (every 20 seconds) and I'd have to start all over.

And doing this one bit at a time, then answering the Bluetooth dialog and starting all over, I managed to progress through the Menu options, one bit at a time.  But I didn't see anything like "turn Bluetooth OFF" anywhere.

So finally I go to my computer in another room and start asking Google some questions.  It seems like many other people have experienced this "My TV keeps trying to connect to neighbor's bluetooth" issue with their Samsung TV's and running into roadblocks trying to stop it.

It seems that Bluetooth is typically used by the TV to connect the sound to external listening devices like headphones.  (I never use headphones and basically hate them.).  So to keep the "Would you like to connect to Bluetooth Device" dialog from popping up, you have to go to the Sound options, and turn it off there.

So I went to the sound options, and it showed the RTS TU bluetooth device, and I pressed on it which brought up a pull down menu with a DELETE option.

The moment I pressed that DELETE option, the dialog "would you like to connect to Bluetooth device RTS TU" reappeared.

After again saying NO to that, I figured I hadn't selected the DELETE option fast enough, so I tried it 2 more times, starting with pressing the menu button on the remote, but each time the same exact thing happened, as soon as I deleted RTS TU, the dialog asking me whether I'd like to connect reappeared.

Somewhere in this process I finally decided that since this was sound only, I'd go ahead and let RTS TU connect just this time, and that would buy me more time in navigating menus as I wouldn't have to start all over again each time the dialog re-appeared, and it wouldn't bump me out of the menu navigating and changing process all the time.  Overall this was so difficult I wondered if my TV had been hacked, and the hackers figured out how to keep me trapped because I'd never get anywhere in the menu fast enough to change it.

What finally seemed to fix the problem was that I turned something called "Multisound Output" off, and selected one of the other Sound output options (Speakers, which I never use, or optical output, which I always use.)

Or maybe I could have accomplished this without turning "Multisound Output" off but merely by selecting one of the other sound options.  But since I've always had one of those other options selected, how did this even happen?  I must have had Multisound Output on, because I've always been able to use the speakers AND the optical output at the same time.  Then I never had any problems, because there weren't any bluetooth headphones nearby.  Then a new neighbor movied in.  So now I can't use Multisound Output anymore because it will be constantly asking me if I want to connect to those headphones.  There should just be a way to turn off the Bluetooth...even just the Bluetooth audio (if they wanted to keep bluetooth available for 3D) without affecting the ability to have multisound output generally.

Note: I love my Samsung flat panel tv's (I didn't love their CRT monitors) for their high performance, durability, and longevity.  But I've long felt their menu interfaces left a lot to be desired, though it was useful that they were generally so complete, though in this case it seems Samsung doesn't want you to be able to turn off bluetooth generally.

A good general rule is that such things should be shaken down with a lot of real life experiences before being unleashed on the public.  And then every problem should be fixed, and shaken down again.  This is what I have always tried to do, being the first user of my own programs.  But it has often seemed in big commercial products, that is not the case.  I could give endless examples.

Apple generally gets a lot of things right, though securophobia has made it increasing difficult with the Sequoia OS.  You have to find the right options behind the right menus to enable just the right things to get anything to work.  Apple's general problem is that they limit choices (Samsung generally does better) and make everything very opaque.

But in this case, Samsung really is limiting your choice (just turn bluetooth off dammit) and being very clumsy about it (No means No dammit, don't make me keep saying No forever).  Many would have returned the TV immediately as defective if they experienced this problem in the window.  It takes some clever operations and understanding to get it properly disabled to avoid having one's TV made useless by a neighbor just doing his thing.

This TV was from 2016 and one would hope this bug has been fixed by now.  Or maybe it's even, gasp, an ageing issue.

 

Digital Rot Economy

I deeply admire Ed Ziltron's critique of the Digital Rot Economy, and his other essays.

Local Chapters not sending me their emails

I'd been a member of national DSA since 2008, but around 2015 I let my membership lapse a few years until 2019.   Since then I have had automatic payments ever since at $60/year (and they keep asking for more, of course).

Nevertheless, the local chapter San Antonio DSA has only very intermittently had my email on their email list.  When I re-upped my membership in 2019, I got a few emails that year.  Then they opened a Slack, and I got that, and then no more emails

I've asked at several local meetings, even writing my email down.  Nothing happened.

I got an email on October 2024 asking if I'd like to be put "back" on the email list.  I quickly responded yes, adding that I had never asked for my email to be taken off the list.  They immediately replied that I was on the list.  That was the last email I received before the next meeting I attended (because a friend told me about it) in February 2025.

At that meeting they said that members would be receiving an email for the DSA local chapter election, and if we didn't get that email we should let them known.  I searched for existing emails from DSA only to re-affirm they'd sent me nothing since October, when they told me they were putting me back on the list.

So I sent them another message that I'd like to be on the list.

I'm not holding my breath.

I've had similar luck with JVP.  I pay them automatically every year, and the local chapter stopped sending me emails in 2022.

Both of these organizations seem pretty well organized to me, with hundreds of members, local boards with all positions filled including at-large members.  They do multiple activities every month.  I know how hard that is.

But why no emails?

Homebrew and Bash on Mac

 Fans of gfortran (that's the Fortran I've used most in my life) on Macs say you should install Homebrew first, then it's easy.

Homebrew recommends installing BASH before installing Homebrew.

BASH recommends installing Homebrew before BASH.

This is the kind of issue that drove me from open source systems to Mac.

Fortunately, there's now a pkg installer from Homebrew for Apple Silicon macs.

(I wonder if they could have worked out a command that would work in zshell.)

Update: The solution is that there's a pkg available with sh.

 

Migration Nightmare followed by Success

In three days, record time for me, I migrated to my new Mac, the first one in 12 years.  (It's a Mini M4 Pro.). This was a bigger job than any previous migration by far, and it went very well but only after I abandoned the official Apple way of doing it:  Migration Assistant.  Apple should rename their Migration Assistant app "Migration Nightmare."  Basically it doesn't work well (or at all) over Ethernet and requires a direct Thunderbolt connection which is only easy if your old Mac has Thunderbolt 3 or higher, which came out in 2015.

One guy tried to do a migration similar to mine and it required 5 attempts which took him 3 days in all.  He carefully documented all his steps.  Ultimately he abandoned Ethernet completely (even with a direct Ethernet cable between the machines, it still crashed) and used a hodge podge of 4 different adapters to make a direct "Thunderbolt" connection (from Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 5) between the Macs, and that worked.  He managed to scrounge up all the adapters at "work" (which I can't do anymore).  He concluded that Migration Assistant simply doesn't work over Ethernet (in addition to being about 10-20 times slower than it should be...it said my Ethernet was clocked at 109MB/s but transfers were only occurring 6-35MB/s and mostly less than 10MB/s).

I've now had my two 8 hour attempts to get it to work over Ethernet, and now I'm planning to simply restoring my files the "old fashioned way" I've always done in the past using ethernet and scp (or at least that's what I tried first, and after it failed and I realized it wouldn't have been a good idea anyway, I used Finder.)

Each time I ran Migration Nightmare it crashed in the same weird way.  The New Mac says it is trying to reconnect, the Old Mac is back on its starting page asking me what kind of migration I'd like to do.

At that point, the ONLY option I have on the New Mac is to cancel migration completely, and there does not appear to be any way a canceled migration (which may have run for a whole day or more) can be restarted.  If I only restart the migration assistant on the source Mac it does not continue the migration at all, the Migration Assistant on the new Mac doesn't notice it being available again.

Then, I'm presented with the option to RESET the New Mac to factory settings.  I first tried NOT doing that, and I discovered that despite having copied a million files (over about 5 hours), NONE OF MY FILES WERE EVEN VISIBLE!   So I ended up having to reset the New Mac from an option in Preferences (which I didn't even know existed before, and I didn't see it until I pulled down the scroll bar, my scroll wheel not even working yet).

This is the kind of crap I would have expected from Microsoft.

The first time the Migration died, I presumed it was because it detected an issue with an old Logitech app (which I haven't even used in ages, if ever).  It had reported that error beneath the "Trying to Reconnect" dialog.

Before I actually tried it, I had figured that Migration Assistant would either (1) nicely tell me I could not use these old applications and/or refuse to copy them (but not summarily abort the whole process) or (2) nicely guide me through the process of obtaining newer versions (now I'm sure that would be dreaming, but that was indeed the kind of thing I thought about when I worked briefly in Software Migration...indeed I wrote a program that translated scripts written in the old CAD language to scripts written in the new CAD language).

But reading other horror stories of users attempting to use Migration Assistant, it appears my issue probably was not related to the Logitech app at all, it was just coincidence that Migration Assistant had warned me about that sometime prior to hanging up.   Funny it didn't warn me about any others.

The second time, I disabled the Migration of apps altogether, only including My Files, Other Files, and System Settings.  But it still died the same way (and I still saw the warning about the Logitech app too, but it was more clear to me now that was just a warning and not necessarily why it failed).

I was thinking of trying a 3rd time, just asking for migration of My Files, but seeing other reports online, even that probably won't work either, so I didn't bother.

I found out later Apple does make a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter for the princely sum of $49.  That, plus a regular Thunderbolt 2 cable could connect my two Macs.   But Apple no longer sells Thunderbolt 2 cables.  You can get a used Apple one for around $49 on ebay (I think that was list price) or a number of cheaper ones.  There are single cables with the right connectors on both ends, but they are only intended for mini displayport and not lightning 2 (though the connector looks the same).

*****

After wasting a day and burning a lot of stress calories over Migration Assistant, I decided to do it myself "the old fashioned way" just as I have migrated to new systems all other times during my 55 years in computing.

Pretty much everything about that was fine if not better than I've experienced before.  Generally I'm still a happy Mac camper.  Migration Assistant was an exception.

Not that I necessarily recommend doing this sort of manual migration to others, especially computer neophytes or the easily spooked.

Basically I just used Finder.  I connected to my old Mac via the "Connect to Server" option under the "Go" menu tab.  (Not entirely intuitive but I've done this before.)  But in order for that to work, I needed to turn on File Sharing in the Preferences under Sharing on the old Mac (which I'd never done before, though I'd done it for earlier Macs so I could access their files on the old Mac back when it was the new Mac).

I had also previously turned on remote logins thinking I'd use ssh and scp to do the copying, but then I remembered one major flaw of using "scp -rp".  The scp command unhelpfully follows soft links, which I use a lot these days for "virtual playlists" for dumb programs that don't accept .m3u playlists.  Following soft links a lot of junk might be copied over and over.  The regular "cp" command has an option to NOT follow soft links, but "scp" apparently does not.  This is a major flaw in scp (and in cp itself, IMO, I believe soft links should be treated like text files whose data should be retained exactly). 

And actually, if I had tried a mass "scp -rp" into the home directory, there may have been many other issues, as I discovered using Finder.

I did first try selecting everything in my old home folder and then dragging it to the new home folder.  That failed because Mac doesn't want me to write over certain previous folders, including especially Desktop.  (Perhaps I could have used the option+drag to do a "copy" instead of a "move" but I didn't think of that.)

So what I did was copy the home files in batches around each of the built-in folders, then I copied all the files within the old built-in folders to the new ones.

I think the built-in folders were these:  Desktop, Documents, Download, Applications, (Library), Movies, Music, Pictures.

When I ran into conflicts with pre-existing files, I kept the files originally on the new Mac figuring the others might not be compatible.  There weren't many of these except for in the Pictures folder, and the Library folder which was invisible to Finder except when I tried to copy over all the files from my home folder.  (Library becomes visible when you show Hidden Files.). Then Finder told me I could not overwrite the Library folder (which I hadn't previously seen).  So I took a look at all the files in the Library folder and determined they were ALL files created by various programs I run or have run and that I'd probably better leave them alone. They may not be compatible with the newer versions of those programs I am installing.  When I re-install programs, they will re-install whatever they need in Library.  It's fine that Mac normally keeps this invisible and refused to write over it.

When all was done, I compared what was on the old and new macs generally using Terminal CLI command which I'll explain.

I first made lists of the files in the new and old home folders like this:

(On old mac):

cd; ls > allhomeold

(On new mac):

cd; ls >allhome

I then dragged the allhomeold file from the Finder window pointing to the old mac into the Finder window for the new mac.  Then I went back to Terminal and gave the "diff" command:

diff allhomeold allhome

For the home folders this was very simple.  Every file was there except a few I had skipped and some editor temporaries marked with #.  I repeated the process for all the built-in folders and it got pretty complicated, so I redirected the output to a file and examined that file in emacs (which was one of the first things I installed on my new mac), like this:

diff allpixold allpix >pixdiff

emacs -nw pixdiff

But then for the built-in folders I decided to be sure that no subfolders had been lost.  To do that, I used commands like this:

find -s Pictures >allpixold

I first tried this without the -s (sort) option and it didn't work at all.  Then I repeated it with the -s and it still didn't seem to be working, because was was mistakenly copying the new mac file back to the old Mac instead of the other way around.  At this juncture I might point out that I really like how the new MacOS helpfully keeps the shared folders open and accessible with tabs in Finder.  I don't remember it working that way in 10.13.6, shared folders only existed in one Finder window and when that window closed they went into limbo.  Perhaps I hadn't set the Finder Preferences to keep showing shared locations in the sidebar.

When there were differences, I decided what needed to be copied over and what didn't.

Because of poor planning, I ended up copying over one folder (alttunes--a folder I created for rock music) twice, once onto the home folder and once onto my expansion drive.  That made it easy to do a bit-for-bit test like this:

cd; diff -r alttunes /Volumes/X2/alttunes

I had previously tested the bytes used with "df -k" on both folders and was disturbed by the fact they were slightly different.  This recursive diff scan revealed the presence of .fseventsd files which added a few more bytes to one of them.  This was illuminating.  Other than that, there was noting else of importance.  No files I had deliberately placed were missing, just little hidden files that Mac adds.

That reminded me that I had overlooked the hidden files in the home folder itself.  Somehow I had never been able to remember the keyboard shortcut for that, but I looked it up and actually it's pretty intuitive: OPT-Shift-.  which intuitively means "toggle the dot hidden files option".

One of the key ways that doing the migration "by hand" was better than simply using Migration Assistant, other than the fact that it actually worked, was that I learned a few things (like .fseventsd) in the process, and since both systems were running during the process I could easy search for answers in an open browser, and I was doing a fair amount of that during the "by hand" migration.

Once I displayed the dot files in my old home folder, I individually coped the ones over which are still relevant.  Many of these I created myself (my program "mplay" creates a hidden file named .mplay for example).  Others were for software I no longer use (such as .Activeperl) so I didn't copy those.

Finder seems to be at least slightly aware of what files should not be overwritten (as when it refused to let me move over folders like Desktop).

Doing the deep scan with "find" command revealed that I had missed all my old Photos when I skipped over the pre-existing file "Photos Library.photoslibrary".  So I copied over the three old libraries from the old mac into a new folder on the new mac and then tried to import them into the new Photos application.  That worked for one of them, the iPhotos library.  But it did not work for the old Photos library from my old Mac.  Photos said the library was not compatible and the photos in it would have to be exported on an older Mac system.  So, on the old Mac, I "exported" all the photos into a new folder, which I then copied to the new Mac.  And then I could import that folder of actual photos (.JPG and .HEIC files most) into the photos application.  I'd actually never merged my older photos like this before.

I reinstalled all my programs by downloading them from authoritative websites, including the App Store.  This all went smoother than I expected.  I was especially afraid my slide viewing program Phoenix Slides would not be supported anymore since it's original developer abandoned it a decade ago.  But I found a new version at an authoritative website.

One thing however remains a big problem.  I could not install Java.  Every attempt to install Java ends with a Mac dialog showing "System Error 0."  I see lots of people online complaining about this but have not yet found a working solution.  Every posted solution I've tried didn't work.  It's as if Apple has a team dedicated to keeping Java off Macs, and Oracle doesn't give a damn about non-commercial Java users.  So that's at least one thing I'll continue to need my old Mac for, at least until I get it fixed, if I ever can.

I was jazzed by the fact that Apple still includes Tcl (tclsh) so all my Tcl programs worked without a hitch.  Apple has long threatened to remove Tcl, and when you start tclsh the first time under Sequoia it warns you about that.  I could always re-install Tcl just as I did for Emacs under Sequoia, but it's nicer for people who download my programs from Source Forge that they do not have to.

Another nice thing is that my favorite video editing app, the very simple Video Edit Pro - Video Trim still works on Apple Silicon Macs thanks to Rosetta, which I downloaded from apple.

I haven't actually migrated everything.  I also need to recompile programs I've written in C++, for example.  But I'm now using the new Mac as my primary computer, and as I'm writing this I haven't even logged into my old Mac in 10 hours, even though I'm planning on keeping it around for the foreseeable future for the things I know I'm missing and others I may not know about yet.

And there was also the usual logging in to websites.  I now keep a physical book of passwords.

I'm disappointed that Apple has removed the optical digital output from the Mini and other computers (I see it's not even available on the Studio).  It used to be so cute how Macs had an optical digital output built into the headphone jack.  Now I'm buying a KanexPro HDMI de-embedder to extract optical digital output from the HDMI.  This will mean one more box on my table and it cost almost $100 including tax and shipping.

Update: Java installed today, I did exactly what I did two times before, I downloaded the ARM version (bit identical to what I downloaded before, I determined later) and went through the usual steps.  This time, Java installed ok as I confirmed by the command "java -version". I have no explanation.  Perhaps the anti-Java team at Apple lightened up a bit.  I was prompted to try again after seeing an article that Google may now require it, but that can't be true I wondered later because Chrome can't even use it.

However I did get a "Privacy & Security" message saying Java was prevented from modifying apps.  I think I've usually imported Java into browsers when that was necessary anyway.  Chrome no longer supports Java directly anyway.  I later noticed there was an "allow" button and I tried it.  It opened the App Management tab in the Privacy and Security preferences where I could turn that on or off.  I turned it on briefly then turned it off.  No new applications appeared in my Apps.  Apparently Java also deletes its own apps if you haven't used them for awhile.  I don't like that, but I don't see any Java apps anyway.  My need for Java however is satisfied.  My Universal Devices launcher now connects to my ISY994i the way it should and I can edit my home control system.  So wherever it is, Java is there when I need it.  (I notice on Terminal there is a Java in /usr/bin.)

I installed both Roon and Sonos easily.  The problems came in getting them to work right.

When I opened Roon on the new Mac, it warned me that it detected another Roon server.  But it gave me the option to exit the old server and create a new server on this machine.  Great!  That's the kind of handshaking I pay plenty to Roon for.

Unfortunately, the same did not apply to importing playlist files.  I used mplay, my playlist generating program, to create a new playlist and it did not show up in Roon.  But strangely, a bunch of previously generated playlists, from my last system in which I had the "itunes" folder on the main harddrive, were there and still worked.

So what gives?  I tried many things but apparently the answer was that the old playlists that worked used a path like this:

/Users/charlespeterson/itunes

Whereas the new playlist used a path like this:

/Volumes/XP/itunes

(Where "XP" is the name of my external drive.)

Well, it turned out the old playlist worked precisely because I created a convenient soft link on my home folder that links to the XP drive, so the old path "still works" through the soft link.  But the new one, which is technically more correct, didn't?

While I was first running Roon, multiple Mac dialogs appeared asking me if I wanted to give Roon access to my files, then access to my media, then access to my XP drive.  I said yes to all of these.

But perhaps the part of Roon which searches for playlists did not get this access?  I did not answer this question, instead I modified my playlist script to use SED to edit newly generated playlists back to the old path.

Later when I finally found the solution to the SONOS problem described below, I noticed that RAATServer had not been granted full file access.  So I gave it, but that still did not fix the problem.  Playlists seem to have to use the soft linked pathname rather than the real one that goes through /Volumes.  Though I'm suspicious this could be an example of Apple securanoia and/or a MacOS bug, but it could also be a bug in Roon and/or Raatserver.

After getting Roon to work with my playlists using the SED modification, I discovered that Sonos wasn't working either, even though at first I thought that it was.

Using the Sonos app on my Mac, I was able to add my four music folders to Sonos without much issue.  But when I updated my music library, no music appeared.

Before I discovered this problem, I mistakenly deleted all the music folders on my old Mac.  I went back to my old Mac, and found that the now obsolescent Sonos app refused to add the folders back in.  So I had screwed myself to the wall on this, either I get Sonos working on the new machine, or it doesn't work at all--the very sort of situation I'd been planning for years to avoid.

I tried all sorts of tricks, including using the soft links instead of the direct path.  Somehow Sonos figured out the trick, and always resolved it to the direct path, which didn't work.

Finally I read this thread and understood what was going on.  There's a new security preference called Full Disk Access which needs to be enabled for every application which needs such disk access.  After giving this access to Sonos, AND the SonosLibraryServer, Sonos on the new Mac was able to load my music.

Unlike Roon, Sonos seems to allow you to have multiple servers, but not on obsolescent machines.

I don't really mind securanoia in the form of hidden files, or dialogues that you have to approve various kinds of access.  The problem comes from when those don't work properly, and stuff doesn't run even though you have always said "yes" to every dialog.  It should not be necessary, IMO, to plumb all the depths of the preferences to get your apps to run.

I personally would prefer to have a slider, much as with the "Energy" preference, where you can select from "Most Secure" to "Least Secure."  Every time, I would choose the "Least Secure" option so that I could run all my apps and programs without secret (or hard to find) detention centers operated by the security czar.

I've been running computers for 55 years and never had a problem with viruses, etc, but endless problems (including those reported here) with software features intended to make me more "secure" (including essentially trashing one Windows machine because of the Virus Protector...I am totally opposed to third party virus protectors because such companies have an incentive to create more viruses).  I am also not worried if spooks and hackers somehow see my files.  As far as I'm concerned, you could consider all the files on my computer a giant blog for which the more exposure the better, as long as those spying on it would be too insecure to ever admit it to my face.  I don't believe there is such a thing as computer security anyway.  As Unix pioneers determined a half century ago, the place for security is at the entrance to a LAN, not so much between the computers within it (and even moreso their attached drives).

I have never believed that securanoia is intended to protect US.  Mainly it's used to protect the vendor, perhaps in some cases to give them CYA for other faults.  Also it's used in Desktop Warfare to make apps and programs made by others less useable if they can be used at all.  So as long as you stay within the fold everything is fine, but start loading stuff made by others, especially by the smaller operators and individual programmers, and you will pay, and not because of them, but because of rules which prevent them from running anymore.

Still, I have been able to solve all my most pressing issues within a matter of days.  So far, I haven't been prevented from running anything, though it may have seemed so for hours on end, eventually fixes were found.

Speaking of Energy preferences, I went to load a folder on one of my external drive, a brand new Lacie with USB 3.2 and a USB-C connector, was taking a long time to load.  Funny because I had already turned off the drive sleeping (another default).  This encouraged me to try the "most" energy setting, though it seemed to make little difference and I went back to "auto" and I'll see if I have the slow folder loading problem again.  I don't want my machine running hot.

Generally things seem a bit faster with the 13 year newer mac (a bit faster, but not ten times faster).  I know from past upgrades, that overhead is usually added to software (usually for greater cuteness or securanoia) that cancels out much or all of any change in "responsiveness" even when the hardware gets thousands of times faster.  Go back to old computers, especially without windowing systems, and you will see they are usually very zippy.  I'll be on the lookout for more things that seem weirdly slow on the new machine.  

(I notice that Apple now warns about having large folders.  They should fix their OS to work as well with large folders as with smaller ones.  There's no excuse for an expensive computer like this to not be able to handle large folders!). Whenever possible I change folders to list view (which should be the default, but even though I've tried to make it the default it doesn't seem to stay that way).   Apple seems to be intent on stuffing their cuteness (and securanoia) down our throats regardless of the cost in useability.

But it also shows that whenever you run into snags, it's useful to search the internet in fairly sort order, because it's usually likely someone else has already experienced the problem and found the solution.  (However that wasn't useful for Roon playlists since hardly anyone makes them the way I do.)

I live in constant fear that features I rely on today will be broken by the updates of tomorrow (and largely for cuteness or securanoia).  But so far I'm still rolling along, and I just underwent one of the bigger upgrades ever, spanning 12 years.  This is much better than the primary competition.

I'd love to be free from the yoke of corporate imperialism and go full open source.  That way, in theory anyway, I wouldn't be subject to corporate indifference to my concerns, I could carry on no matter what.  But my experiences down that road were much worse over shorter spans.  I couldn't get things to work for starters.

Update: It does seem to be picking up, and getting considerably faster than my 2012 mac.  Finder windows open snappy now, and web pages render quicker.  Initially there was a lot of indexing going on, both by Mac apps (like Spotlight) and other apps like Roon.  Also the security operations are more quiescent both visibly and probably under the hood as well, reducing overhead.   I've loaded nearly every app in my mind, that I use on any regular basis, and also XCode and the XCode command line tools.  I did Hello World in both.  Next I'm going to get Fortran, so I can recompile programs from my past.  There were snags, but this has gone well and better than expected, the first time I can remember that.