Adobe Photoshop Lightroom doesn’t support Adobe Photoshop files

I need a ‘facepalm’ category apparently.  There’s been a lot of that lately. You cannot import, let-alone work on, Photoshop files (“PSB” file extension) in Lightroom.  It flat-out doesn’t support them.  That’s such a weird limitation & oversight, for a program that Adobe now officially names ‘Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’. See also this six year old… Read more

iOS Family Sharing users cannot mix authentication schemes

Apple supports two styles of two-factor authentication, that they call (and distinguish as) “two-step” vs “two-factor”.  “Two-step” is their older method, though functionally they’re basically equivalent. If you have multiple accounts on a Family Sharing arrangement, and some use “two-factor” while others use “two-step”, you’re in for a bag of hurt. For example, any time you change… Read more

EXIF metadata stores random gibberish for dates & times

Warped clock face spiralling ever inwards

I hadn’t ’til yesterday realised that EXIF metadata doesn’t actually store dates & times correctly.  Whoever came up with the spec all those decades ago clearly didn’t know how to work with dates & times correctly.  This is immensely frustrating since now we have countless images taken with timestamps that are collectively gibberish. The problem is… Read more

Building John The Ripper Jumbo for macOS Sierra

It’s quickly apparent that John The Ripper Jumbo doesn’t build out of the box on macOS, and probably hasn’t for a long time, due to its complaint about missing OpenSSL headers. This guide was almost helpful, except it’s out of date – e.g. the Makefile.in patch it provides no longer applies cleanly – and simply doesn’t… Read more

Silent data corruption

Alternate title:  Apple’s file system engineers are sadly naive. I was quite disappointed to see that APFS isn’t even trying to provide data integrity.  Data integrity is kind of step 0 of any file system, and checksums or use of ECC is pretty much standard in modern & leading-edge file systems.  APFS doesn’t want to… Read more

Lightroom’s flaws & limitations

I’m attempting to switch to Lightroom, from Aperture, given lack of better alternatives. I’ve attempted this switch a couple of times before, without success. I’m finding that it’s still kind of annoying.  Here’s the start of my laundry list against it: It’s very slow.  I am already so very tired of seeing that blasted “Loading…”… Read more

Why I cancelled Backblaze

This is the feedback I sent to Backblaze shortly before I cancelled my account with them. For the additional context – the restore failure I alluded to was basically that: So, the departing ‘support’ ticket I filed with them (#167833): Maybe this’ll help your future would-be customers. The main reason is that when I tried… Read more