Antergos Bites the Dust

In the past I have written about Antergos Linux. A great distribution based on Arch Linux. Well, it’s no more. Sadly, Antergos has been discontinued.

Most Linux distributions are maintained by volunteers. Linux distros are largely free operating systems created and maintained by volunteer enthusiasts who know a lot about Linux coding. Often, as with Antergos, the developers run out of time to maintain it and the distribution gets continued.

Over the course of history of Linux distributions, many well known distros have fallen by the wayside, only to be over taken by yet another Linux version.

Antergos developers plan to keep their forum and wiki open for about 3 months more, but eventually they expect the bulk of their community will have moved on to other options.

I used to run Antergos for awhile, but now I’m pretty much settled on Arch Linux. The last few times I tried to install Antergos I ran into install errors, so I could tell the project was running into problems.

Good luck to the developers and community at large! We’ll be sorry to see you go!

When will the next Super Blood Moon be seen in the U.S.?

So you know what a blood moon is? It’s when the moon moves into the shadow of the earth (a total lunar eclipse), which causes the moon to grow fairly dark and at the same time pretty reddish as the image below shows.

A red moon, sometimes called a blood moon, takes place during a total lunar eclipse when the moon moves into the shadow of the earth and turns red color and quite dark.

Next, do you know what a supermoon is?

The moon has a slightly elliptical orbit around Earth. Sometimes full moons are further away and appear slightly smaller from Earth. Sometimes full moons are slightly closer to us and they appear larger. When the latter happens it’s a super moon.

The moon’s orbit around the earth is elliptical. The closest approach is called the perigee and the farthest point is the apogee. If there’s a full moon during the perigee, the moon appears larger and is called a supermoon.

A super blood moon simply means when the moon is slightly closer to Earth because of it’s elliptical orbit and it passes into the earth’s shadow. The last one was on January 20, 2019, and will be the only one in 2019.

The next total blood moon lunar eclipse won’t be until May 26, 2021, but it will not be visible from the United States or North America. North and South America won’t see a total lunar eclipse again until May 16, 2022. It will not, however, be a super moon at the same time. For that you’ll have to wait about 19 years.

Do you know if NASA has evidence of alien life?

Yes, I do know the answer to this. It’s no, NASA has no evidence of alien life to date. We only have theories and speculation, but without evidence there is no proof of alien life anywhere else in the universe other than good ol’ Earth.

That being said, most scientist believe life probably exists elsewhere in the universe, but until we actually find even a fossil of a microbe of alien life, there’s no evidence to date.

If you were on the ISS, would the view of the stars be completely clear with the lack of atmospheric distortion and light pollution? If so why aren’t there more pictures of it from their pov?

You don’t understand cameras, do you? Well, a quick lesson then. In cameras (other than cell phone cameras), there’s a thing called aperture. When there’s a bright light the aperture has to be small, to let less light in, so you can photograph something like the Earth. This avoids overexposure of the bright objects in your photo. In space, this blacks out the stars.

However, if like the Hubble Telescope, you just look away from Earth at the stars, you see a whole lot more of them than we can see here on Earth.

Here’s a photo taken of the Hubble Telescope from the point of view of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Notice, because the Earth is so bright, we don’t see any stars.

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) floats gracefully above the blue Earth after release from Discovery’s robot arm after a successful servicing mission.

On the other hand, since the Hubble Telescope points away from the bright light source coming from Earth, we can capture images like these.

How to Get Firefox to Play Amazon, Netflix and Hulu Vidos on Archlinux

The main reason I always install Google Chrome on any linux distro I happen to be running is that Chrome will by default play videos from Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu without a hitch, whereas Firefox will not. In fact, neither will Chromium.

This is because Google has built proprietary flash graphics inside of Chrome.

However, after listening to several podcasts about how Google is sharing our information and how tracker cookies are being placed on our machines without our knowledge or consent by Chrome, I decided to have another look at the problem of getting Firefox to play online video content from the above mentioned providers.

Here’s what I discovered: It’s an easy fix.

First of all, I recommend you to install yay, which is an alternative to yaourt. Do do this simply go to the command line and type in the following:
$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
$ cd yay
$ makepkg -si

Once yay is installed then you need to install flash as follows: yay -S flashplugin
$ sudo pacman -Syyu firefox

Next, if you haven’t already, install Firefox as follows:
$ sudo pacman -Syyu firefox

At this point, I needed to reboot and/or logout and login. I then loaded Firefox and navigated to Amazon Prime videos. Try to watch a video and it will give you an error, but you’ll notice in the upper left corner of Firefox a little message will appear that says something like “Enable DRM content?” Click yes, and from that time on you’ll be able to watch Amazon Prime videos, Netflix and Hulu all from withing Firefox.

Now you can ditch Chrome. They’re tracking you.

Will our military save us from alien invasions?

Definitely not. They will be completely incapable.

Knowledge of the speed of light, however, will save you.

Light speed cannot be exceeded in a vacuum no matter what. In fact, for aliens and Earthlings alike it would take thousands of years just to travel to our nearest star system. To travel from distant stars to ours would take thousands or millions of years, as it would take us to travel to them.

Fortunately, there will be no alien invasions. In fact, we may or may not know of any alien civilizations out there. So far we have discovered none.

Which Linux Distro is Best?

Archlinux is best, but difficult. It’s what I run.

I didn’t install it with the Arch Wiki. I used YouTube videos. It worked, and I’m inside Arch writing this article. I’ve been using Arch for awhile now. I like it.

I’ve used ’em all. Mint, Antergos, Manjaro, Ubuntu (all the flavors), Zorin, everything else you can read about on DistroWatch.com. I first started before the turn of the century in the late 1990’s.

Eventually, I managed to install Archlinux by watching YouTube videos on my phone, and that’s what I’ve been using for the last year and a half.

The next step would be Linux from Scratch, which I don’t think I’m interested in trying. It definitely should not be tried by someone who is not thoroughly advanced in Linux.

If you don’t know Linux, or don’t like command line interfaces, then the recommended Linux Distro would be – I just hate to say this – Ubuntu or Manjaro.

Just my opinion.

Crappy dirt, hot Serrano

The universe is full of mystery. A garden in a not so ideal place is producing surprising results: hot Serranos, jalapenos, red and yellow bell peppers, tomatoes and zucchinis (pictured above).

They are close to the north side of the house, and receive only marginal sunlight because of that, yet they are growing profusely.

Sarranos are hotter than jalapenos. I picked one and chomped down on it, and it was so hot I had to sip ice water for a half hour.

It’s mysterious. The ground is crappy – clay and mud. The sun isn’t as much as it should be. The vegetables are growing out of control.

Did I mention the pumpkins that sprung up in the back yard without planting them?

What do you think would happen if the entire internet would just suddenly resets itself and all the data vanishes?


When I was born, and when I grew up, there was no Internet at all. We had cars, and even (eventually) color TV. We had landlines, albeit party lines (you had to share your phone number with an unknown partner).

We sent a man to the moon.

It would be idyllic if shutting down the Internet would just revert to the good ol’ days.

Unfortunately, that would not be the case. Now days we’ve become so dependent on the Internet in so many ways, shutting it down would be catastrophic and lead to a total financial and political collapse.

If a person fell from a plane and could land feet first on a steep downward slope could the person possibly survive?

In the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana, a woman and a kid jumped from an airplane in an inflatable raft, inflated it while going down, landed on a steep slope, and survived.

This premise was tested on Mythbusters and found to be feasible.

Now, your question is whether you could do it with your feet depends on three things. 1) That you land feet first, 2) the speed you are falling at the time of impact, and 3) how steep the slope is.

This takes it to a whole other level. I wouldn’t try it personally. It’s not likely you’d survive, but there is, undeniably, a very slight possibility you might.