* Posts by Snake

1895 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Oct 2012

How a single buck bought bragging rights in the battle to port Windows 95 to NT

Snake Silver badge
Coat

Re: Nah.

This will certainly get me both bashed and downvoted, but with Windows I'm most fond of the version that allows me to get the job done.

For me, these last few years, that's been Windows 10. Yes, I know you guys hate it. But it is far more stable than Win7 and offers less compatibility issues because they've been worked out since Win7's time (remember how many times you had to use Compatibility mode?). I'm sorry, but I will stand up and say Win10 is the best so far because as a user you can pretty much just get on with it and do your job: hardware drivers are there, software compatibility is almost a given, stability is good. I don't understand the fascination with the Program Manager - ugh. Nice to visit in RetroLand, I don't want to live there for years.

Icon: mine's the asbestos version, thanksmuch.

Hyperfluorescent OLEDs promise more efficient displays that won't make you so blue

Snake Silver badge

Same color OLED

Note: as both a photographer and a techie, I know the human eye is actually most sensitive to the blue-green spectrum, see

https://sites.ecse.rpi.edu/~schubert/Light-Emitting-Diodes-dot-org/Sample-Chapter.pdf

(see page 8). This is why many systems changed from red illumination (remember when red dashboard lighting was popular?) - it actually is our weakest primary response.

The story does not give enough information to discern why the additional power needed for blue, but is may be logical to assume that the blue filter material is less efficient in transmission than the green and red.

FTX crypto-crook Sam Bankman-Fried gets 25 years in prison

Snake Silver badge

This morning's local news

On the radio they mentioned that SBF was going to add to his plea for a shorter sentence was the 'fact' that, thanks to Bitcoin's recent surge, 'people were making their money back and therefore losses were minimized'.

Nice of him, don't you think?

What Nvidia's Blackwell efficiency gains mean for DC operators

Snake Silver badge

Re: Liquid cooled or not

I wonder when the fab companies will start considering the need to make the substrate larger than the design's required footprint, in order to gain additional cooling surface at a (relatively) modest cost. They can't continue to push the designs into a smaller, yet hotter, package and expect cooling ability, especially in a dense server farm, to easily, continuously and economically keep up. Yes, yes, that means more motherboard real estate to hold that larger die package but conversely you gain the greater surface area needed to actually support that die's abilities to burn kWh like it's Steven Tyler on a cocaine trip.

Meta accused of snarfing people's Snapchat data via traffic decryption

Snake Silver badge

As I was reading...

I wondered when this topic would come up

"Dunne argued that on the evidence Meta/Facebook's actions should be considered criminal wiretapping. "

Don't forget wire fraud - you interfered with the electronic transactions of other companies, using the illegally-attained data to hike your own prices. That's FRAUD, people.

Sun Microsystems co-founder charged with insider trading

Snake Silver badge

the clause in the contract

..."and has also agreed to be barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for five years."

A public company. Giving him all the benefits of simply finding / starting a private-owned company, let's say a private mutual fund, and starting the entire cycle all over again.

Thank you, American capitalism. You've done it [to the rest of us] again.

Twitter's lawsuit against anti-hate-speech crusaders gets SLAPPed out of court

Snake Silver badge

Re: Let's adjust our pronunciation!

"The daily users of Xitter..."

Just realized: if we add an "h" after the "X" there, and use the Chinese pronunciation of the leading "X", it comes out just about right...

Snake Silver badge

Re: for me, not you

Seems to be the right's current playbook, sadly. When El Reg covers DeSantis' latest move, banning children's social media activities, you will wonder where that "small government" promise is.

It's only there when THEY want it to be. Otherwise you'll do what we tell you.

Musk's "freedom of expression" goes just as far - rules for me, not for thee.

Truck-to-truck worm could infect – and disrupt – entire US commercial fleet

Snake Silver badge

Re: European truck sales

Probably in the smaller classes this is available, but European HGV trucks are cabovers which are highly unpopular here in the U.S. There's a legacy reason for this: the early design of cabovers, spring-ride (versus air-ride for modern designs) and limited driver space during long hauls gave them a poor reputation that they have never overcome to this day.

My own, first experience driving HGV was in a spring-ride International 7-speed cabover and let me tell you, when I switched over to a standard, cab-rear, air-ride International 9-speed it was like switching over to a Cadillac from a Yugo :D The 7-speed was a recalcitrant little biatch, plus add in the fact that the clutch rod was partial frozen in the bearings (and no one believed me until the mechanic's inspection), and the switch to the 9-speed air-ride was joy itself.

So, in America, it's still engine-forward, manual transmissioned (and no syncromesh) designs. Double-clutching is mandatory; many companies will fire you if they find you speed-shifting without a clutch, considered abusing the machinery.

Snake Silver badge

Re: threats

"Incidentally, switching an HGV to low speed mode while it's driving on the motorway was one of the threats they mentioned."

I'd like to know exactly how that would be implemented: automatic transmissions are comparatively rare in HGV vehicles due to long-term durability at the rated weight classes. Almost all HGV's in the U.S. are manual transmissions (usually 9 to 13-speed) and I believe it is the same in the EU. 'Switching' to 'low speed mode' isn't something that software can do :p Kick the engine into a retarded or 'limp-home' mode, yes, but shift a manual transmission?

CNCF boss talks 'irrational exuberance' in an AI-heavy Kubecon keynote

Snake Silver badge
Trollface

Ah, experience

Alas, the same could not be said of the malfunctioning registration system, which resulted in lengthy queues at the venue prior to the keynote.

So, they hired the same registration systems as furry cons, then?

Microsoft's first AI PCs Surface with Intel cores and a Copilot key

Snake Silver badge

Re: Emphasis on "if"

Also, Win + R gets you the RUN command, easy way to get RedEdit or a command line command executed.

Snake Silver badge

Indeed, I said this a month ago. Win11 will end up just being a test bed for Windows12; with Win11 being an 'odd' release in Microsoft's 'tick/tock' release system, Win11's days are numbered anyway (read: it will be ignored like WinME, Vista, and Win8).

Snake Silver badge

Interesting. I don't think I've ever used the right-hand CTRL key, I must admit to only using the left one (a la Caps Lock modifier).

UN: E-waste is growing 5x faster than it can be recycled

Snake Silver badge

Re: reasonable thing to reuse

I tried that years ago. I had a wonderful HTC M7 that lost carrier & software upgrade support so I 'downgraded' it to a home remote for my automation systems.

Worked OK...until the software devs updated the Android automation apps to no longer be compatible with the M7's Android version, and stopped allowing the old versions on their systems as well.

Bye bye, M7.

It was a nice phone. Loved the form factor and construction. But in order to lower recycling, thereby extending use, both hardware *and* software vendors would need to get with the program.

Uncle Sam, 15 US states launch antitrust war on Apple

Snake Silver badge

The DOJ's argument isn't that there is a walled garden, is that Apple intentionally damages interoperability and therefore the option of alternatives or leaving the walled garden. Apple intentionally prevents any competition within its own products - no alternative internet browser (in the U.S., anyway), no alternative messaging system, etc. And intentionally damages the interoperability of those locked-in systems to other, outside systems.

Apple could continue to have a "walled garden' yet still allow competition for its own designs - see: the EU. But here, in America, Apple refuses any and all outside access (see: Epic) and wants a slice of the pie for everything even if they really don't deserve it (again, see: Epic).

Why has Apple been allowed, for so long, to operate like this? America, of course. Land of Big Money = making the rules, or getting a side-glance as they look away. Americans have become so used to the corporatism that we became after Olde Fart Reagan that they don't even bother to argue or complain any more - anything for money, is GOOD!

Snake Silver badge

Re: Android

NoRoot Firewall.

You're welcome :)

Snake Silver badge

RE: not quite the same thing

Doesn't matter in the eyes of Sherman anti-trust; market penetration does not excuse non-competitive or lock-in practices.

Euro-cloud consortium CISPE calls for investigation of Broadcom

Snake Silver badge

Not exactly true

"The American legal and corporate system pretty much mandate that a corporation maximize it's profits for the sake of the shareholders."

That was not always true. For many decades it was understood that the system should maximize the benefits to its stakeholders. There's a difference between 'stakeholders', which classically included both customer and societal interests, and 'shareholders'; the modern neo-liberal interpretation, which started to be pushed in the 1970's, meant exclusively shareholders' interests. For example

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2019/02/11/towards-accountable-capitalism-remaking-corporate-law-through-stakeholder-governance/

Big Business and the neo-liberal economists, notably Friedman, pushed the idea of shareholder-only business interests

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/corporate-purpose/from-there-to-here-50-years-of-thinking-on-the-social-responsibility-of-business

because it meant more money when you don't worry about anything else BUT money.

So greed won out. Big surprise.

Microsoft reseller Bytes says more than 100 undisclosed share trades linked to ex-CEO

Snake Silver badge

Training

"And it isn't just Murphy on the hook. There were also 15 additional transactions conducted on behalf of Murphy's wife, or so the filing claims."

I see. So the Murphys are gaining the experience they need to be politicians in the future, then?

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

Snake Silver badge

Re: small tech business without legalize

It can work both ways if you're intelligent about it. I doubt that a contract that hasn't been locked down by Big Buck lawyers had a guarantee of service reliability; the tech company could simply state that failure to support the required level of hardware to support their performance goals meant that any belief in "service" from their end was moot and they could only do the best they could, using the materials provided.

FCC ups broadband benchmark speeds, says rural areas still underserved

Snake Silver badge

Re: distances

You forget the distances involved with living in America

That is absolutely no excuse. There are things known as repeaters. And technical knowledge, which it seems your ISP is sadly lacking.

It has nothing to do with technical knowledge, ir has to do with ROI. When you're feeding a low population density area, will your infrastructure rollout costs get amortized across a reasonable return time?

Verizon wouldn't even do that for the inner city, delaying upgrades even after receiving millions of dollars in subsidies. The municipalities had to sue. They had the density but the roll-out costs were so high in the business districts that they dragged their feet until the law dragged them to their senses.

By that time we had switched to cable. When the Verizon rep finally came along to try to sell us on FIOS, after all these years of waiting whilst dealing with crap service in the meanwhile, I literally - not figuratively - laughed in his face. "Not happening. Have a good day."

Snake Silver badge

Re: I'll wait for it

Cool. Although I'm "rural" I am actually only an 18-minute drive from the medium-sized city. Still, only Spectrum cable (I guess I should be thankful for that?!).

I lived in the Big City and had to leave. Don't miss the zoo that is a city, I am not a city boy. Quite a distasteful way of living: dirty, noisy, super-expensive and crowded. The rent for 400sq ft. is more than my entire mortgage plus taxes. I just don't see the reasoning any more; 20 years ago, it might have made some sense. But with landlords charging mortgage rates for their often run-down apartments (and nice apartments *certainly* going for jumbo mortgage rates), when you don't end up with any equity after paying your landlord's tithe for 15 years, I just don't see the logic of it.

FWIW my "shithole" is 3+ acres surrounded by 3 protected, private reserves of several hundred acres total. My house is an ski lodge interior home with cathedral ceilings and a 520 sq ft master with 2-person Jacuzzi (yes, I really lucked out on this property). All for less than the rent on the 400 sq ft. city apartment in a building so run down that I couldn't use my own kitchen for 5 years because the utility shut off the cooking gas and wouldn't turn it back on until the landlord did the required repairs on the plumbing. Which, of course, he didn't, so the city had to sue and force him to do the repairs or they would do it for him and send him the bill.

Oh yes, city living. I'm just DYING to return there o_O

Snake Silver badge

Re: never been to Europe

True, I've only visited the UK. But the last time internet speeds were spoken of around here (admittedly many years ago), America's internet "speed" was widely mocked. :p

Like I said, many of us don't live in the city. In the big cities you can get almost any speed you want and often from a choice of 2 providers (local cable and the telco, Verizon). 200Mbps was the lowest I could go and indeed is the lowest I can go on my rural cable - slower is only available for low income families that qualify based upon government rules (I tried).

Snake Silver badge

Re: I'll wait for it

Hmm. My first DSL service was in town, the run to the telco was still so long it was the best they could do. As the town abuts the river and ends at the small mountain ridge that separates this section of land from the balance of the eastern land, I wasn't getting anything better than what the local telco had.

Snake Silver badge

I'll wait for it

I know Europeans will say that this is ridiculous, 25Mpbs as "broadband", only in America.

You forget the distances involved with living in America. My own first broadband service was DSL at maybe (can't remember) about 5Mpbs and that's because it was the best they could do - the copper run back to the service terminal was so long that they couldn't provision a higher speed than that.

I am currently rural, with 2 lakes within walking distance amongst several hundred acres of private, reserved lands. Several state parks are within a few minutes driving distance, as is the local municipal airport. The family of black bears that walked though my property very much liked the locale :D

I now have cable service at 200Mpbs, higher is indeed available, but I have no idea of the cable run length to get it to service us. It's got to be quite a run. And, being that it is both rural and a very long run, I have my choice of my current cable provider...or my current cable provider. Beside satellite, no other provider services the area.

Oh, to add before I forget: cellular service is terrible. 1 bar for T-Mobile, I must use Wi-Fi Calling within my own home.

Bernie Sanders clocks in with 4-day workweek bill thanks to AI and productivity tech

Snake Silver badge

Re: bread

Yes, a full line of chalk breads (see 20:00 and after) were available to the Victorian-era workers.

How dare they expect better!!

Snake Silver badge

Next thing you know workers will demand that they have money left after buying bread & water from the company store! Damn communists!

Snake Silver badge

From the news report I am recollecting, they will bring the legal definition of a "work week" down from 40 to 35 hours and increase work that is considered "overtime". So if you want or need to work 40 hours you are still considered "full time", but if you want or can work *35* hours this no longer classifies as "part-time", therefore requiring full benefits and Social Security be paid.

They are trying to change the legal classification of a 'full' work week; it is up to the worker & the employer to decide if they want to take the 4-day week. If they do take the 4-day week, you are still a "full time" employee.

Snake Silver badge

""Twenty-eight-and-a-half million Americans, 18 percent of our workforce, now work over 60 hours a week, and 40 percent of employees in America now work at least 50 hours a week," Sanders said during the hearing."

Then American politics has worked. We've all been brought back to the design and ethics of the 1870's - heck, a few years ago they were trying to bring back child labor under the guise of "Freedom to work!".

I'm...pleased...that I am much closer to the end of my days than to [my] beginning. It isn't worth being here any more.

Caffeine makes fuel cells more efficient, cuts cost of energy storage

Snake Silver badge

Re: Caffeine makes fuel cells more efficient

I'm a heathen - I hate, and don't drink, coffee.

It's fun to watch the morning coffee addicts go about their addiction :p :twitch twitch: Cooooooofffffeeeeee :zombie apocalypse commences: heehee

I will admit to first using energy drinks during my (heavy) workouts last year. I try not to use them often but after a 14 hour-long day I sometimes need the pick-me-up for the gym afterwards.

Intel's $699 Core i9-14900KS turbos to 6.2GHz – assuming you can keep it cool

Snake Silver badge

Re: Looks like a lot of hassle for mostly minor benefits

There's pretty much one large market that high-mHz turbo processors are marketed to: gamers. Average Joe will not bother with a part like this but the RTX4090 owners of the world will be chomping at the bit for this part, I can see it.

Claims emerge that Citrix has doubled price of month-to-month partner licenses

Snake Silver badge

Re: "flexible monthly model introduces [..] uncertainty into the business."

"Deal with it, or get a government job."

This is American corporatism run amok. We've become so bad that corporations are quite intentionally gouging customer (food, medical, and now IT)...because they can. Because it looks good to Wall Street. Because it's all about the stockholders.

Somehow only the stockholders are "shareholders" in today's MBA-trained world. Customers are disposable liabilities that get in the way of Wall Street's expectation of never-ending growth.

-----------------------------------

It will only get worse from here.

Oh look, cracking down on Big Tech works. Brave, Firefox, Vivaldi surge on iOS

Snake Silver badge

Re: woke fascists

In comparison to ultra-right fascists??

BOTH sides are beyond help and the rest of us have had just about ENOUGH of them. Whilst a conservative would most certainly call me "liberal", as a (classic, middle of the road) moderate-liberal I got my first deep, true experience with a 'woke-head' last year - and I am fully behind labeling them a radical group of reactionary fools.

But don't go thinking that the ultra-right get a free pass in this!! If anything, thanks to Reaganism / Thatherism, it is extremely reliable to say that they caused the outbreak of the woke ultra-left, as The Old Man / Old Woman certainly came decades before. And the fundamentalist ultra-right is arguably even worse than the woke-heads...and that's saying an awful lot!

Snake Silver badge

Re: Privacytests.org

I wouldn't trust their results. Conveniently, on Brave Android, they somehow 'forget' to mention Brave itself contacting computer.amazonaws.com, 93.184.215.80, nya.yahoo.com, wikimedia.org, 151.10.45.16, 151.101.210.206, fbcdn.net, akamaitechnologies.com and cloudfront.net at every restart.

Snake Silver badge

Re: "make their websites dependant on Google's proprietary features"

Great post, but don't go pointing fingers just at MS whilst giving so many in the FOSS community a pass. Broken FOSS UI's, 'features' that are inane, and design bugs that get in the way of user experience, aren't just MS programmer exclusives.

Snake Silver badge

Actually getting (all) websites to work on Firefox would be a great thing...

(Firefox user here)

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

Snake Silver badge

Re:2FA

I guess your reading comprehension is a bit off today? He said the SIM card was cloned, meaning they had ACCESS to SMS 2FA requests as well.

Snake Silver badge

Re: running your own email server

Dynamic IP DNS still costs money. And email on dynamic IP has never been an acceptable idea

https://www.xeams.com/how-to-run-email-server-on-a-dynamic-ip.htm

So no, you shouldn't run your business email servers on a dynamic IP address.

Snake Silver badge

Re: running your own email server

But that requires a permanent, static IP address, which is an extra upcharge usually attached to top-tier speed provisioning. Which not every business wants, or needs. Then add the server itself, plus the tech support to administer it.

Of course you can always get a cloud instance to run your email server...but that doesn't solve any problems, now does it?

Snake Silver badge

Re: drag emails between providers

How will that be accomplished if your IMAP provider is your ISP, and the reason you are losing the old IMAP service is that you are also switching ISP's??

Just did this a few months ago.

How are you supposed to drag emails from an ISP that you are no longer a customer of, and therefore your access is denied?

Snake Silver badge

Re: POP3 is horrible

Note that I personally don't give downvotes, but still note your ratios here. There's a reason for that.

"Sure, you are reliant on your email provider with IMAP..."

And THAT'S the huge issue. If you change providers (change ISP, for example), you lose your emails, don't you? With IMAP, unless you make a local repository and manually copy all your emails to those folders, you lose your emails, correct? If you downloaded with POP3 it is already done, or if you wish to sync with a POP3 client it is a single operation rather than manually selecting and copying possibly thousands of emails.

"Using POP3 is just asking for your emails to be spectacularly wiped in a catastrophic event fueled by fear and regret, if you care about your email archive you should avoid it like the plague.

I've seen people lose all of their data, and companies go out of business because of POP3."

Data is data is data. If they lost their emails then they lost data in general - which means their backup plans / systems SUCK. If they lost their quarterly reports do you blame their lack of backup solutions or their HDD which finally failed after 6 years of continuous operation?? Everyone who is anyone in tech knows that backups are *your* responsibility. POP3 data is just another thing that is necessary to back up; if you didn't make a local IMAP repository copy, and the email server at your ISP dies and takes down all your saved emails with it, will you be just as happy as blaming IMAP for not saving those copies??

I use IMAP across almost all my devices, except one. That's the POP3 client. It gets synced via POP3 occasionally and then I have permanent, local copies. It also serves the purpose (because I have it set that way) to purge all that old email flotsam that's accumulated, I don't need rapid access to 2 year-old emails, thank you very much, but I also don't want to risk them disappearing into the internet ether, either.

Snake Silver badge

Re: I need classic outlook

"I don't mind losing POP3...

Well, I certainly do. With IMAP your client only 'reflects' the data that is on the server. Sounds OK...until that email server decides to change their terms of service. Say, only keeping old emails for 2 to 3 years or so, or even change / lower the storage space limits.

POP3 downloads and keeps a permanent copy of the emails on your system. Not theirs.

I usually use IMAP, but then every so often (irregularly, sometimes with large intervals) I use a POP3 client to truly download and archive my emails on my own system.

I am NOT going to depend upon ANY service to [believe they'll] keep copies of my emails until the end of time / when *I* am ready to purge them.

US Congress goes bang, bang, on TikTok sale-or-ban plan

Snake Silver badge

Re: Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act

But remember: America is all about free enterprise. Businesses are people, too!

Except when are, conveniently, NOT.

The hypocrisy of the vote is sickening. America won't regulate their own Big Business but are more than happy to snap the gavel on a foreign business when it seem they are doing better than they should.

Or, here, getting personal data that really should be going to an American business in the first place!

'China is a threat'. I seem to remember the UK making the very same statement about the U.S. when, during the Industrial revolution, U.S. agents were stealing industrial secrets. Et tu, Congress, et tu?

Exchange Online blocked from sending email to AOL and Yahoo

Snake Silver badge

Yep

Yes indeed, happened to me just this week with a client. Finally got them to send me an email from their Yahoo account, to which I could respond.

Rancher faces prison for trying to breed absolute unit of a sheep

Snake Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Martial arts

some kind of martial arts lamb chop.

[cymbal crash]

Snake Silver badge

I believe it can happen when the hunters have the same mental capacity as the sheep they 'hunt'.

This story disgusts me.

Microsoft decides it's done with Azure egress ransoms

Snake Silver badge

Re: Wankery

As an American I get to make this point:

"American society is [now] a for-profit corp with multiple stock exchange listings. They have to attempt to transfer as much money from customers and pop it into the pockets of investors as is possible."

FIFY

Microsoft calls AI privacy complaint 'doomsday hyperbole'

Snake Silver badge

Re: Not surprising

You are blaming Borkzilla, without laying blame & waste to the rest of the tech industry for doing the exact same thing??

You know, like Samsung, Vizio, Apple, Ford, Google, Snapchat, Facebook, Uber, Amazon, Twitter, NewRelic, Akamai, LinkedIn, Verizon, Tesla, Waymo...

I mean, just to name a few... -_-

Fedora 41's GNOME to go Wayland-only, says goodbye to X.org

Snake Silver badge

Re: Wayland only

I'd like to know the decision of going Wayland only is so easily justified in a [Linux] world that constantly hypes "user choice!"

Are the users actually making this choice themselves??