Samuel Ye's IT Blog

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  • Fix WordPress 5 Live Preview Hijacked to Some Domain Ad Website

    Just upgraded to WordPress 5.0 and found a strange problem of theme customize live preview showing some domain Ad website instead of my own site. 

    Googling around shows nothing useful but quite a few sites have similar domain advertising site description listed in the Google search results, which means they got hijacked too.

    By disabling the plugins one-by-one, it turns out that Akismet3 is the culprit which shows version 3.9.9 from wordpress.com without “view details” link. Don’t know how it got installed. The official one should be Akismet Anti-Spam, version 4.1, from Automattic, and with “view details” prompting the plugin introduction. 

    December 8, 2018
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  • Switch to VSCode from Atom

    Atom as a code editor just becomes slower and slower with the burden of massive plugins, requiring near 15s on my MBP to initially display file contents. In comparison, VSCode with similar extensions just takes 5s to show text upon launch. There must be some underlying architectural issues in the Atom startup process, as both are based on Electron. The memory/cpu footprint also has huge differences as this old post shows. Atom sometime even stops responding and asks to wait for editor window to run.

    VSCode Editor
    yatsusimnetcojp / Pixabay

    While speed performance is important but tolerable, all kinds of mysterious long pending bugs are indeed killing Atom. In my scenario, the vertical scrollbar sometime just turns into a white bar. The git interface cannot stage lines for files with unicode filenames, but only stages the whole file. The nuclide file tree is unusable because it constantly steals focus from text editor area! Lots of issues are reported, analyzed, and never reach a fix. Such problems have been long existed nuisances and should no more be born with.

    Fortunately, VSCode now enjoys the affluence of extensions. Almost all of my Atom plugins find their counterparts in VSC. The only advantage of Atom is the beautifulness in contrast to the VSCode default theme’s coarseness (the blue status bar is horrible). Hopefully the Atom One Dark theme and keymap extensions are the cure.

    Just after Microsoft bought Github, it seems the right time to switch from Atom to VSCode after all.

    November 1, 2018
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  • Disable BTT accessibility popup

    Just updated BetterTouchTool to V2.645, finding that the accessibility permission popup cannot be dismissed. The close icon at the right corner of the popup panel is just missing. Luckily, BTT can work well for touch/click functions without those accessibility permissions.

    After some searching around, one github issue comment has the way to diable the popup:

    defaults write com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool BTTDisableAcccessibilityCheck YES

    Update: It’s only valid for High Sierra and previous OS X versions. Mojave will require enabling accessibility for BTT.

    October 1, 2018
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  • Workaround MX Master pairing with High Sierra

    Apparently High Sierra has well complained issues with bluetooth. My Logitech MX Master mouse also suffers from random disconnection. Today when I tried to disable bluetooth and reconnect, the mouse just won’t connect.

    So I deleted it from MBP’s bluetooth devices, and found out that MX Master cannot pair any more again. Just like some other guys’ video shows, it keeps connecting and disconnecting when pairing.

    My old tricks in Yosemite did not work again,  resetting the bluetooth module and remove all devices got no help after restarting the machine. Finally a glimpse of some words in some forum threads googled just saved my morning: complete shutdown, not restart.

    Oddly enough, after a shutdown and fresh booting, my 10.13.6 High Sierra successfully pairs with MX Master!

    August 20, 2018
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  • Workaround PyDrive in Google DataLab

    Encounter a strange problem to load PyDrive in Google DataLab:

    --> 141 @_helpers.positional(3)
        142 def run_flow(flow, storage, flags=None, http=None):
        143     """Core code for a command-line application.
    
    AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'positional'
    

    Of course, no apparent results and solutions in google. But after a few trying, there is a workaround to load it properly: change the kernel type and change it back. What a weird problem!

    June 14, 2018
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  • Fix to delete time machine backups for no-responding finder

    My MacBookPro was forced to upgrade to High Sierra, because XCode 9.3 is only available on 10.13 to support development for iOS 11.3. The new operating system looks quite the same, except the ridiculous wordings of the Chinese translation of system UI.

    As usual, I made a Time Machine backup before the upgrade. Since my NAS disk was quite full, some old backups should be deleted after the system ran smooth. Well then, the Finder just turned frozen during the Time Machine deleting process, locking in the Time Machine tunnel interface.

    After a hard rebooting and some googling, I found that the following steps might fix. It uses the command line to delete the dated backups and shrinks the size of the target Time Machine bundle :

    1. Connect to the target Time Machine Sparse Bundle file in the Finder
    2. Ensure that /Volumes/Time Machine Backup/Backups.backupdb shows in ls
    3. Delete old backups: sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/Time Machine Backup/Backups.backupdb/YOUR-MAC/SOME-DATES
    4. Eject the Sparse Bundle file in the Finder
    5. Shrinks the bundle: sudo hdiutil compact TARGET-SPARSE-BUNDLE-FILE
    April 6, 2018
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  • Fix MBP High Kernel_Task CPU in Sierra

    Just encounter a strange high cpu problem of kernel_task in Sierra on my rMBP. It means that the kernel_task process is having more than 80% CPU usage in the process monitor. At first, it seems like some software problems, especially when atom editor is opened with a super long starting time. After closing atom, it does lower the cpu for a period, but running another software afterwards will also boost the kernel_task cpu percentage to 80%. It strongly suggests some underlying hardware problems there.

    Comments in this post give a reason: temperature and fan control. Since it’s  now summer and super hot, the 10.12 OS X on my mbp is quite possibly reducing cpu speed for temperature compensation, causing the kernel task taking more cpu to consume. Resetting SMC in this article brings the fan control back and fixes the kernel_task cpu problem.

    And installing some fan speed monitor/control software is also a good idea to keep an eye on it.

    July 14, 2017
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  • Fix MX Master Mouse Lag and Freeze Caused By Stuck Thumb Button

    First thought is the bluetooth problem: tried everything related but not working at all. After a few trial and inspection, it seems that the thumb button of MX Master (located at side and pushed down by the thumb finger) is stuck, causing the mouse pointer not able to move smoothly.

    Disabling the thumb side button in Logitech Options won’t help. It turns out like a hardware interference not a software driver setting.

    This Inkandescent’s post and this operation guide will help fixing it. But the pull-up workaround in the first thread doesn’t work very well, so buying the T5 screw driver and loosing the thumb button board screws will be the final fix. Of course, the thumb button now won’t work anymore.

    June 16, 2017
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  • WinToGo 8.1 on rMBP mid 2012

    This blog has detail instructions to install USB WinToGo for Mac. But things won’t go that smooth on pre-2013 rMBP.

    Firstly, diskpart from Windows cmd within Virtual Machine seems to have limitations, especially for Win8.1. Partitioning can work sometime but formatting will probably fail. Therefore, diskutil in Mac is the solution for disk handling. But another problem occurs. FAT32 partition is tried but found to cause errors during imagex transfer due to large file size restrictions. But disktuil doesn’t support NTFS. At last, NTFS partition is formatted with diskutil with the help of Paragon-NTFS 14 in El Capitan.

    Secondly, “bcdboot /f ALL” will create EFI boot mode for usb drive, under which Win2Go can be successfully installed but instantly turns into black screen when installing bootcamp/nvidia drivers. It’s because that pre-2013 MBP is not fully compatible with UEFI crashing the graphics/audio drivers under EFI boot. The solution is to boot with CSM-BIOS mode. That means when booting MBP with alt, “Windows” is the only menu choice not “EFI”. Clearing the boot partition and “bcdboot /f BIOS” for BIOS boot mode section. However, the “none system disk” error shows when booting the “Windows” option.

    Finally, this article sheds the light. “bootsect /nt60 x: /force /mbr” to force using the win8.1 bootmgr will boot your MBP into Win8.1, with all bootcamp drivers ready to be installed.

    Enjoy the Win2Go, thanks for the almighty Google and a whole day of rebooting!

    June 29, 2016
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  • Rescue Black Screen Fusion VM

    My windows 2003 vm in vmware fusion turns into a black screen after an OSX crash. The guest system seems bootable but starts with total blackness. Fortunately safe mode works. Event log shows it’s unable to load vmx_fb.dll, which is the graphics driver of vmware tools.

    The paradox is that vmware tool is unable to install in safe mode, which will always fail even though MSI service can be enabled with this method. Then manually deleting vmx_fb.dll and vmx_mode.dll in system32 folder also not works.

    It seems the only way is to roll back vm to 2-month-ago snapshot losing all the intermediate stuffs. But this thread is the rescue. Additional vmx_svga.sys in drivers directory should also be deleted. Then the guest 2003 system can be started with the default vga driver.

    Now enter the vm, reinstall vmware tools, and make a new snapshot for such emergency case.

    April 20, 2016
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