Today we’re thrilled to announce the release of 1Password command-line tool 1.0. We’re excited to highlight some of the features the team has worked hard to build.

This tool makes your 1Password account accessible entirely from the command line. It gives you robust ways to interact with and manage your 1Password account.

Working with items

The command-line tool makes it easy to create a new item in 1Password with op create item:

op create item server title=Staging username=admin@example.com url=sftp://staging.example.com

The new op edit item command allows you to update an item directly from the command line. Now you can update dozens or even hundreds of items at once with some simple scripting.

op edit item “Personal Visa” pin=8910

You can also get specific field values from items using the get item command and the new --fields option. This is super convenient when you want to use information that’s stored securely in 1Password in your command-line workflows.

op get item GitLab --fields password,token

This 1.0 release also gives you the ability to generate a strong password with the --generate-password option. It works with create item and edit item commands. You can even customize the password recipe to adjust the length and character types to use.

op create item login --vault Streaming title=Petflix --generate-password

Taking command

It’s just as efficient to perform administrative tasks in the terminal as it is to manage items. With a single command, you can add, confirm, or remove users from your account, as well as assign users access to specific groups and vaults. Running op create user adds a new user to your account and the add user command can grant them additional access. You can also specify a user’s role within a group using the --role option.

op add user paddy@1password.com Directors
op add group Directors Financials

The new op list users options, --group and --vault, allow you to see who has access to what and make changes that align with your organization’s access policies.

op list users --group Directors

That’s just a sample of all of the administrative commands you have at your disposal. Take a look at our documentation for a full list.

And even more

We’ve also added a bunch of new features to keep things running smoothly:

• Link directly to items within your 1Password vaults. Use get item --share-link to generate a link that points right to items.
• Easily confirm new users. Use op confirm --all to confirm all pending accepted invitations.
• Learn at your leisure. The command-line tool documentation provides a complete list of every command and option available to you..

And there are even more features that we haven’t mentioned here for you to discover in the newest release!

Version 1.0 is ready now

The latest release of the 1Password command-line tool is available to download now.

For more details, read the full release notes. And don’t forget to let us know what you think on Twitter, and the 1Password Support forum.

Milwaukee has come out with a new cordless M12 radio and charger, 2951-20.

As far as we’re aware, this is the first 12V-class jobsite radio with a built-in charger. Milwaukee has this to say about it:

This new jobsite audio solution delivers unmatched versatility for its size, allowing users to charge up, hang up, and turn up the sound with a full range speaker, a tweeter, and multiple hanging options.

The radio can be powered via M12 battery or AC adapter, with the same 12V DC barrel jack also powering the battery charging feature.

There’s also a built-in USB charging port with 2.1A output.

Here’s a closer look at the rear ports. As minor a feature as it seems, I like that there looks to be a solid plastic port protector, rather than the typical flimsy rubber insert.

Milwaukee emphasizes the radio’s support capabilities. You can, for instance, loop rope or scrap wire through the tubular handle, allowing it to be hung from a variety of hooks or other implements.

Or, you can simply place a large hook through the handle recess.

Finally, there’s also a self-centering keyhole built into the top handle.

Milwaukee 2951-20 M12 Radio/Charger Features & Specs

• Bluetooth 4.2 for streaming music
• 100 ft Bluetooth range
• Full-range speaker and tweeter
• AM and FM radio tuner
• 10 Radio presets
• 6′ AC adapter
• 2.1A USB charging output
• IP54 water and dust resistance
• Dimensions: 5.39″ x 9.21″ x 5.67″
• Weighs 3.68 lbs
• “No-interference battery charger”
• 10 hrs runtime with CP 2.0Ah battery

Milwaukee says that the radio has an impact-resistant exterior, serving to protect the internal components from drops, impacts, and other such tough conditions.

The press release also mentions the “no-interference battery charger,” which is definitely worth mentioning. I have used some other cordless jobsite radios in the past, and radio sound quality has almost always suffered whenever the battery charging function was used.

Streaming via Bluetooth seems to be more popular these days, but it’s also nice to be able to tune into a radio station. Plus, the charger is a big selling point. It’d be nice to be able to take advantage of the charging capabilities and radio tuner at the same time. Otherwise, you can save money and go with a Bluetooth-only jobsite speaker.

Price: $119 for the bare tool (2951-20)

Buy Now via Tool Nut
Buy Now via Acme Tools
Buy Now via CPO

Discussion

While the new jobsite radio is priced higher than Milwaukee’s Bluetooth-only M12 wireless speaker, it’s less expensive compared to their other offerings, including the M12/M18 Bluetooth speaker.

So far, this looks to be a fully-featured new jobsite radio. The IP54 water and dust resistance rating is welcome, and it of course has AM/FM radio tuners and M12 battery charging functionality. These days, USB charging ports are the norm, and even essential.

We’re checking on the charging rate/time, but it’s generally expected that a product like this will be slower than a standard standalone charger. You buy a jobsite radio with built-in charger for the convenience, not the speed.

It might not sound important, but I think the box-like geometry is a plus – the lack of a fancy roll cage or odd shape means the new M12 radio is about as compact as possible.

I think it’ll be a winner.

Related Posts:

New Dewalt Tstak Bluetooth Radio and Charger New Dewalt Tstak Bluetooth Radio is Now Shipping New Makita XRM09B Cordless Jobsite Radio 18V/12V CXT

I posted about Harbor Freight’s Icon tool boxes the other day, and how Harbor Freight has significantly slashed their prices. I haven’t asked for an official comment yet, and still don’t know whether this move was planned or in response to low sales of their new premium-featured (and high-priced) tool storage line.

According to a January 2020 investor fact sheet, Lowe’s has 1728 store locations in the USA, and 249 in Canada.

Home Depot, according to their corporate website, has more than 2200 stores in the USA, Canada, and Mexico.

At this time, Harbor Freight has “1000+” stores in the USA.

There are two Harbor Freight stores closer to me than the nearest Lowe’s store, and a third just beyond that. All this is to say that there are a lot of Harbor Freight stores, and they’re within reach.

Have you been to a Harbor Freight store recently? They’re big, and they’re mostly filled with tools, plus related equipment, accessories, and supplies.

From a numbers standpoint, would it be fair to say that Harbor Freight is more than half the size of Lowe’s, and closing in on half the size of Home Depot? This seems possible, from a number of store locations standpoint.

Since Harbor Freight is a private company, there’s no sales data, information about growth, or details regarding in-store vs. online sales.

Still, we can conclude that 1) Harbor Freight is a large company, and 2) Harbor Freight is a successful company. Companies don’t grow and add retail locations without making money.

Sears used to have the largest tool departments, with huge amounts of floor space committed to Craftsman tools and other brands. That is no longer the case.

Yes, home improvement stores also have a lot of floor space dedicated to tools and related products. But Harbor Freight is all-tools.

To me, this gives Harbor Freight great potential to be a fiercer competitor.

Right now, there’s a lot of chatter about Lowe’s “closing the gap” and catching up to Home Depot. But when it comes to tools, everyone seems to forget that Harbor Freight is an increasingly big player.

While a lot of people scoff about Harbor Freight tool quality – and I can say I used to be in that group – Harbor Freight sells a lot of tools to a lot more people.

I bought a whole lot of Harbor Freight hand and cordless power tools a couple of months ago. Some of them are abysmal, others are quite usable and in fact I might even consider them competitive.

Personally, I think Harbor Freight’s marketing could stand to be shifted a little, but it seems to be working for them. Harbor Freight compares many of their tool offerings against higher priced alternatives, but in a lot of those cases they’re not quite apples to apples comparisons.

It can be said that you don’t go to Harbor Freight for quality, and that you go their for cheap and even disposable tools, but that seems to be truer for critics and not loyal return customers.

Harbor Freight’s Icon hand tools appear to be quite popular. When I asked about Hercules cordless power tools, and when they’d get more in stock, I was told many customers were asking the same questions.

A lot of people are happy with Harbor Freight tools, and continue to buy more.

Harbor Freight has been striving to innovate and not just compete against higher priced tools but build up brands of high quality and strong features.

When a big box home improvement store wants to bring new tools to their stores, they have to make space for them, and there might be other parties involved in the discussion. Harbor Freight doesn’t need to tip-toe around corporate agreements, they can shift things around as they please. I’d think this gives them greater power to deploy new tools and product offerings.

Let’s sum it up:

Harbor Freight has 1000+ stores.

Harbor Freight presumable doesn’t have to make decisions based on corporate agreements with other brands.

Harbor Freight has a huge customer base.

I would presume that many Harbor Freight customers are loyal or at least returning customers.

We need to take them more seriously. I realized this in recent years, but I don’t think a lot of people realize how large and capable Harbor Freight has become as a company.

I would agree that Harbor Freight has been too complacent with their public opinion, but they are trying to change that and push forward with new higher quality and more featured tools and brands.

There’s more that they could do. If a brand like Tekton can refresh their public image and steadily introduce value-priced USA-made hand tools, why can’t Harbor Freight?

Harbor Freight isn’t flexing their power as well as they can, but that doesn’t mean they should be underestimated.

Harbor Freight is only going to get bigger, and with that potentially more influential.

Right now, a lot of Harbor Freight’s flagship products seem to be copies, inspired by other brands’ leading products. How long before Harbor Freight starts pushing boundaries?

They have acquired new talent in recent years, engineers and product designers who are honing their skills developing products inspired by the best other brands have to offer. That’s okay, it’s what a lot of tool brands do.

How long before Harbor Freight runs with some ideas and focuses not on lowering prices, but on making something better?

The big focus on most of their tools, even the new higher-quality ones, is on “hey look, ours is just as good, but lower priced.”

Will this change? Perhaps, but possibly not. Why break a business model that has been working just fine?

But if, and that’s a really big “if,” Harbor Freight flips the switch on a small sub-section of their offerings – just one brand even – that’ll be a big and disruptive shift to the industry.

Sears and Craftsman used to dominate the consumer steel tool storage industry, and I doubt that’s still true. I bet Harbor Freight has scooped up a lot of that market share. What other tool-related segments will they take appreciable bites out of?

All I’m saying is this – don’t underestimate Harbor Freight Tools. They are a goliath with many stores and a huge customer base.

They’re not making as many waves in the industry as they could right now, and the ones they are making are largely going unnoticed.

Harbor Freight is growing and strengthening, and their potential to influence the tool industry is gaining steam.

Do you think Harbor Freight is content with the way things are now, or are they working towards building something different?

Related Posts:

Harbor Freight Looks to Make Serious Push into Pro Tool Market Harbor Freight Icon Hand Tool Pricing Compared to Other Brands Sears Craftsman Sues Western Forge, USA Tool Supplier, Also Releases More Imported Pliers

Today we’re releasing Arq 6! We’re really excited about this. It’s been 4 years since Arq 5 first came out (although we’ve shipped 155 updates to Arq 5 in the meantime).

Our goal with Arq 6 was to make it work with the latest operating system features and the latest cloud storage options, make it more secure, and add the features people have been asking for, all while keeping it very simple to use, with smart default settings. We used our 10+ years of backup experience to try to make it the best backup app out there.

Perfect Backups

We worked with Apple to get access to the APFS API, so Arq 6 has native support for creating and using APFS snapshots.

This is great because it means Arq’s backup will be a perfectly consistent view of your files at a point in time, even if you’re modifying files as Arq is backing them up.

This is super useful for backing up things like virtual machines that are in use, for example.

On Windows, Arq 6 now uses VSS for the entire volume in order to achieve perfect backups.

More Power

Arq 6 is more powerful in a bunch of ways:

• Arq 6 can run multiple backup jobs in parallel
• Arq 6 scans and uploads files in parallel for faster throughput
• it auto-mounts network shares on Mac for reliable backup of NAS data
• you can limit the scheduled backups to certain days of the week
• you can limit the transfer rate to certain times of the day and certain days of the week
• Arq 6 has powerful new rules for selecting which files are included and excluded from backup
• Arq 6 has time-based retention rules in addition to budget-based rules
• you can optionally keep deleted files in subsequent backups for easy locating of deleted files
• you can configure it to alert if there have been no backups for a certain number of days (instead of after every aborted backup)
• Arq 6’s new data format eliminates the need for reading metadata before browsing and restoring from other computers’ backups

More secure

Arq 6 has a new password feature. You can set a password to prevent others from opening Arq and deleting backups.

It also switches to using SHA256 for checksums instead of SHA1 which is less secure.

More storage savings

Arq 6 takes advantage of the latest ultra-cheap storage available from AWS and Google.

AWS’s Glacier Deep Archive storage option is only $0.99/TB per month!

Google’s new Archive option is similarly inexpensive at $1.23/TB per month, and with no delay in downloading your data.

New Arq Premium subscription option

Our new subscription offering is called Arq Premium. It’s $5.99/month for all the features of Arq 6 for up to 5 computers, plus:

• 1 TB of storage included
• Super-simple setup
• Secure web access to your backups if you need to grab files

Arq Premium is a great option for folks who want a simple, all-in-one backup solution.

Get It!

Arq 6 is a paid upgrade for Arq 5 users. Download it here or buy now.

If you purchased a “lifetime” license code in the past, use that in Arq 6. If you don’t have the license code handy, log into cloud.arqbackup.com and retrieve it.

As always, if you have any questions please email us at support@arqbackup.com.

Even More Features

But wait, there’s more!

• All-new, modern user interface (with the same great native Mac and Windows agents)
• Disk device tracking instead of path-based; multiple external drives with the same name are treated as separate volumes
• Faster object cleanup
• Faster validation
• Faster search
• System-level daemon on Mac so it can back up when you’re not logged in
• Destination-agnostic, portable data format that’s open and documented
• Progress bars showing percent complete
• Wake-for-backup option
• More informative SMTP test results — full SMTP connection log when an error occurs
• Proper connection pooling for SMB and SFTP storage locations with a configurable number of maximum threads — useful for SFTP providers that limit the number of simultaneous connections
• Option to start a backup as soon as a volume is connected to the computer

Next Steps

If you read this far, thanks! Head to arqbackup.com to see screen shots and download a free trial. Go

The post Arq 6: More power, more security, more storage savings appeared first on Arq Backup Blog.

Everyone wants to talk about the novel coronavirus outbreak right now, but you might hear YouTubers avoiding the subject — if they talk about it, they risk getting their ads shut off.

“For today’s video, I won’t be directly commenting on the recent health related news because A, I am not a health care professional, and B, I don’t need my video demonetized,” Linus Sebastian, host of Linus Tech Tips, says at the beginning of recent video about buying a new PC in this period.

YouTube has demonetized videos about sensitive subjects in the past. The company’s advertising guidelines state that sensitive topics — usually a recent event with a “loss of life, typically as a result of a pre-planned malicious attack” — are normally not suitable for...

Continue reading…

Dave Kitabjian:

But the real secret sauce of ScanSnap was the accompanying software that was centered around what you were trying to do rather than making you constantly fiddle with scanning parameters. Finally, a developer was thinking like a customer instead of a scanner! The combination of a simple user interface, intelligent defaults, seamless integration with external apps, and automation of the entire workflow created a user experience that was hard to beat.

[…]

Some months ago, Fujitsu sent users of older ScanSnap models email informing them that their ScanSnap software would not be updated to 64-bit and would therefore not run under macOS 10.15 Catalina.

[…]

If you want to do simple scanning, you may have a painless experience, writing JPEG or multi-page PDF files to disk, or using some of VueScan’s many sophisticated advanced features. And as such, VueScan may well rescue your aging ScanSnap from the trash heap.

But I ran into a number of issues that you should be aware of.

It seems harder to use and has problems with deskewing, color, streaks, and profiles.

Ron Risley:

Something not mentioned in the article is that Fujitsu states that their new (64-bit) scanning software will absolutely require an always-on internet connection in order to do any scanning. This is concerning on a number of levels. Usability and availability is one issue, but in both my work as a physician and as an IT security consultant, I regularly scan documents that absolutely must not be published. (If you think there’s a functional difference between “sent to the cloud” and “published,” then you haven’t been paying attention.)

[…]

I originally licensed VueScan because I owned an expensive flatbed scanner whose manufacturer abandoned the Mac. I feel rescued by VueScan again, and will be buying more licenses for other machines at my office.

A help page says that ScanSnap does work without an Internet connection, so perhaps the connection is only needed for the “active” version of the installer.

Previously:

• ExactScan Leaves the Mac App Store
• Apps Lost With Catalina
• ScanSnap 64-bit Software Update
• ScanSnap Cloud Licensing