I recently refurbished an old IBM ThinkPad z60t to make it usable and suitable for donation. This involved two areas of work:

• Installing Linux
• Upgrading the firmware

Upgrading the firmware

The ThinkPad has two different firmware upgrades:

• BIOS
• Embedded Controller

ThinkWiki’s list is pretty comprehensive, and pointed me to BIOS 1.24 and EC 1.18.

Because this machine is so old, it does not offer .iso files (to put on CD or USB drive) or Linux-compatible firmware. There are diskette versions (for putting on floppy disks) and non-diskette versions (run running manually).

The non-diskette .exe file cannot be extracted using The Unarchiver, unzip, or innoextract. It won’t run on Windows 10, and won’t run under DOS mode. (I tried installing FreeDOS on to a USB stick, too.)

Using Virtualbox and a Windows 10 VM, I installed AOMEI Partition Assistant and tried to create a Windows 7 to Go installation on a USB thumb drive. That got all the way to the end before erroring out.

At this point, I decided to pull the hard drive, install Windows on a new drive, and use Windows to update the firmware.

The BIOS updater runs on Windows 7 (despite not listing that as a compatible option), but the EC updater does not, and gives this error:

DeviceIoControl() returns 24 Please restart your operating system and execute the BIOS or Embedded Controller update utility again.

At this point, I had to find a sketchy Windows XP ISO, burn it to CD and install Windows again.

Once I had XP installed, the EC updater ran as expected and the update completed successfully.

Readers: if you know how to install the diskette version version onto a bootable USB drive, please share how in the comments.

Installing Linux

The z60t uses a Pentium M, which is a 32-bit processor. Most current versions of Linux (such as Ubuntu 20.10) only support 64-bit hardware. I chose Linux Mint 19.3 “Tricia” with Xfce, as it was the least resource-intensive.

After using Etcher put the installer on a USB thumb drive, I was able to easily install Linux Mint on the laptop.

After installation and rebooting, most things worked — except for Wifi. I spent an hour or so googling around and reading about rfkill and trying different commands:

• sending enable to /proc/acpi/ibm/wan and /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth
• adding blacklist ideapad_laptop to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
• adding option thinkpad_aacpi dbg_bluetoothemul=1 bluetooth state=1 to /etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad-acpi.conf
• Turning bluetooth/WiFi off and on in the BIOS.

In the end, the solution was much simpler. There’s a hardware slider on the front of the machine, by the headphone ports. Sliding it enables the radios.

I’m a huge fan of Carla Lalli’s Music’s pancakes (aka Bin It to Win It Pancakes aka Cosmo’s Power Pancakes). We make them a bunch, and have fed them to appreciative family and friends.

Carla initially shared the recipe in a Bon Appetit video from April 2017. The recipe was approcumented by a sketchy recipe blogger and a revised version was printed in Where Cooking Begins.

There’s only one problem with this recipe: it calls for 1.5 cups of buttermilk, and buttermilk comes in quarts. Rather than have the buttermilk go to waste, we, of course … make more pancakes.

Unfortunately, the combination of legacy heirloom units and odd fractions leads to some weird quantities, like ⅓ x 2 ⅔ = ⁸⁄₉ = 0.88578 cups of coconut oil.

Being both Canadian and someone who is used to weight-based baking recipes, I knew there was a better way.

With the help of the King Arthur Ingredient weight chart and my handy scale, I converted the recipe to metric and multiplied by 2.66.

I present you with an easy way to use your scale and a whole quart of buttermilk to make a lot of pancakes. (They freeze well.)

Ingredient	Unofficial	Video	Metric	Multiplied out	Where Cooking Begins	Metric	Multiplied out
Coconut oil	0.33 cup	0.25 cup	79ml	210 ml	2 tbsp butter	28g	113g
Oats	0.33 cup	?	30g	80g	0.33 cup	30g	80g
Buttermilk	1.5 cups	?	354 ml	945 ml	1.5 cups	354 ml	945 ml
AP Flour	1 cup	1 cup	120g	320g	0.75 cup	90g	240g
WW Flour	0.5 cups	0.5 cups	57g	150g	0.75 cup	85g	225g
Baking powder	1.5 tsp	1.5 tsp	6g	16g	1 tsp	4g	11g
Baking soda	0.5 tsp	0.5 tsp	3g	8g	1 tsp	6g	16g
Salt	0.5 tsp	?	1g	4g	0.5 tsp	1g	4g
Sugar	1 tbsp	Little bit	12g	33g	1 tbsp	12g	33g
Flax	0.25 cup	?	35g	93g	2 tbsp	17g	47g
Chia	0.25 cup	?	61g	162g	0.33 cup	81g	216g
Eggs	2	?	—	5	2	—	5

Directions

Tools needed

• Medium and large bowls
• Scale
• Whisk, spatula, scoop
• Skillet or griddle
• Microwave- or oven-safe measure to melt coconut oil

Prepare

• Measure and melt the 210ml coconut oil
• Heat a skillet on medium heat and grease with additional coconut oil

In a medium bowl

• Soak the oats in buttermilk

In a large bowl

• Combine the dry ingredients: mix all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, flax and chia

In the medium bowl

• Add eggs and melted coconut oil (to buttermilk and oats)
• Whisk together

Combine everything

• Pour the wet ingredients in to the large bowl
• Stir with spatula to combine

Cook

• Cooking time is approximately 90 seconds per side, depending on the size of the pancake. Adjust your cooktop temperature if they’re cooking too slow or too fast.

Notes

• Salt is based on Diamond Crystal kosher salt. If you’re using Morton’s kosher salt, double the amount of salt provided.
• For additional background, see Carla’s recipe notes and the buttermilk pancake recipe she used as a starting point.

• AAJA
• AIR (audio)
• Hacks/Hackers job email
• INN
• Inside the Newsroom
• IRE
• JournalismJobs
• JournalismNext
• Mandy Hofmockel jobs email
• MediaBistro
• NABJ
• NAHJ
• NAJA
• ONA Career Center
• Poynter’s Media Jobs Connection
• Public Media Jobs
• ONA
• SAJA
• Source

Mandy Hofmockel wrote up a good summary of job resources for Poynter.

When importing an old WordPress database, it may have tables in MyISAM. You can convert them to InndoDB in MySQL like so:

ALTER TABLE wp_commentmeta ENGINE=InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE wp_comments ENGINE=InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE wp_links ENGINE=InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE wp_options ENGINE=InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE wp_postmeta ENGINE=InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE wp_posts ENGINE=InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE wp_term_relationships ENGINE=InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE wp_term_taxonomy ENGINE=InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE wp_termmeta ENGINE=InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE wp_terms ENGINE=InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE wp_usermeta ENGINE=InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE wp_users ENGINE=InnoDB;

If you run into errors like this:

ERROR 1067 (42000): Invalid default value for 'user_registered'

It’s because of the SQL mode. You need to remove NO_ZERO_DATE from the mode. First, see what SQL mode you have set:

select @@sql_mode \G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
@@sql_mode: ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY,STRICT_TRANS_TABLES,NO_ZERO_IN_DATE,ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION

Then, set it to everything except NO_ZERO_DATE. In my case, that is:

set SQL_MODE='ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY,STRICT_TRANS_TABLES,NO_ZERO_IN_DATE,ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION';

This setting is temporary, and will go away as soon as you exit the MySQL client.

Now, re-run the ALTER TABLE statements above.

As of Ubuntu 19.04, you no longer use /etc/resolv.conf for DNS servers.

Instead, edit /etc/systemd/resolved.conf and add DNS=8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 (for example). Not this list must be space-delimited and not comma-delimited.

Then, run systemctl restart systemd-resolved.service to apply your changes.

In VIP Go’s mu-plugins, to update everything:
git pull && git submodule update --recursive --remote

With VVV, after setting up a site, to enable Query Monitor:
wp user add-cap wordpress view_query_monitor

To flush memcache:
echo 'flush_all' | nc localhost 11211

Many organizations have policies requiring you to change your passwords every 90 days. These policies are dumb, and make security worse.

The following material should help you fight back against this nonsense. You don’t have to believe Paul Schreiber, but you should believe NIST, the FTC and the UK’s NSCS.

NIST

In 2016, the National Institute for Standards and Technology came out with a new set of password guidelines. The formal document is “NIST Special Publication 800-63B Digital Identity Guidelines: Authentication and Lifecycle Management.”

§ 5.1.1.2 states:

“Verifiers SHOULD NOT require memorized secrets to be changed arbitrarily (e.g., periodically).

memorized secrets is NIST-speak for passwords.

Chester Wisniewski provides an excellent plain-English summary of all of NIST’s recommendations (not just password rotation).

NCSC

The UK’s Nation Cyber Security Center writes:

CESG now recommend organisations do not force regular password expiry. We believe this reduces the vulnerabilities associated with regularly expiring passwords (described above) while doing little to increase the risk of long-term password exploitation. Attackers can often work out the new password, if they have the old one. And users, forced to change another password, will often choose a ‘weaker’ one that they won’t forget.

FTC

Lorrie Cranor, the US Federal Trade Commission’s Chief Technologist writes:

I go on to explain that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that users who are required to change their passwords frequently select weaker passwords to begin with, and then change them in predictable ways that attackers can guess easily. Unless there is reason to believe a password has been compromised or shared, requiring regular password changes may actually do more harm than good in some cases. (And even if a password has been compromised, changing the password may be ineffective, especially if other steps aren’t taken to correct security problems.)

She has a formal academic paper on the topic, “Measuring Password Guessability for an Entire University.“