Posts by williamyf

What to do once your Surface Hub v1 becomes an 84-inch, $22K paperweight

¿Do you mean professional 84 inch touch displays in Jan 1, 2016? Ooooooook...

You are absolutely right. That's what happens with an encyclopœdia that "anyone can edit".

Having said that, WinServer2022 does not mandate a TPM2.0 (is optional) and does not need a 8th gen Processor, so... perhaps a better option than junking your Hub v1, or buying a new compute module for your V2 (and junking the V2 module), or using it as a monitor, or even (gasp) using Linux. Especially if one wants/needs to use Teams and Office on the device...

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/hardware-requirements?tabs=cpu&pivots=windows-server-2022

Some TV channels (mostly news, sports and weather) bought them at launch, and that gave them a huge advantage over tv channels that did not. I am not 100% sure, but SkySportsF1 is using something similar, even to this day...

I know, niche user case, but this thing is niche anyway, so...

I agree 100% withyou that the compute part was crap at launch. But ¿are you sure that a comparable 82" screen with such touch acuracy (like the Iiyama you linked ) was available 10 years ago? ¿And cheaper?

Perhaps installing Windows server 2022 +desktop experience could do the trick.same codebase as normal Win10 (so drivers should work) and teams and office will be supported there until 2029. As for the cloudy part working... I do not know

«I recommend a software refresh out of Micros$t's walled garden.»

Pray tell, ¿where outside microsoft's walled garden can one find an 84" quality TOUCH screen + Computer that works more or less seamlessly, AND supported for 9 years (more in the case of V2 and V3)?

«It sounds as though the thing has a regular computer in it. Can that run Linux?»

Yes, most likely, the computer part can run linux. Linux being able to more or less seamlessly handle an 84" TOUCH screen is another matter entiely.

Microsoft is redesigning the Windows BSoD to get you back to work ‘as fast as possible’

OLEDs consume less energy when blacl

So here is microsoft saving heaps upon heaps of energy, and thinking of the environment.

modern monitors can display much more info...

¿So what about showing the emoji andthe QR code for the less computer saavy , and a really ussefull error message (that does NOT make you go to the error log manager in the next boot to figure the exact details) for the more saaavy?

Now THAT would be a usefull feature for Win11 25H2

multicolured xSoD

On Win3.x (and IIRC 9x too) the colour of the BSoD could be channged by .ini file.

BRING BACK THE CAPACITY TO DO SO. Now THAT would be an usseful feature for Win11 25h2, compared to the other stuff.

Sadly no. This was athing in the 3,x era, and I suspect in the 9x era too. But on the NT branch, is fixed

Re: Hey Microsoft

Aren't HVCI and MBEC supposed to mitigate that, and get more security guarantees too.

currently, on Win11 you can turn off HVCI. Waiting for Win12 to make it turned on permanently...

Nvidia's latest AI PC boxes sound great – if you're a data scientist with $3,000 to spare

These will be great as a company wide (or even department specific) AI server so that your queries do not leave your premises. SMBs that want/need this will be delighted

Also useful if you want to re-train/refine your models with propiertary data from your business.

Ubuntu 25.10 plans to swap GNU coreutils for Rust

I was around at the time, as I am 50+ now.

What I saw at my neck of the woods was people using the USB advent to replace crap PS/2 foam keyboards and Crap membrane PS2 keyboards with less crap membrane keyboards, using the USB part as an excuse to justify the switch. Doubly so if the Crap foam/membrane keyboard used an AT->PS/2 adapter.

Ditto, people with decent PS/2 foam/membrane keyboards with "ergonomic" USB keyboards.

Also, people sick and tired of decent PS/2 Keyboards with no-windows-key carrying over from build to build (again, doubly so if said keyboard used an AT->PS/2 adapter) using the USB advent as the justification to get a keyboard with the Win Key.

Also, people that wanted "special keys" (say, media keys), getting USB keyboards to justify getting them.

Even if, after the purchase, they had to use the newflanged USB keyboard for a while using the USB->PS/2 dongle that was included with all USB Keyboards at the time...

What I saw was USB used as an excuse/way to get/justify* something else that was desirable, not a means unto itself.

*Justify to yourself, justify to your parents, justify to your significant other, or justify to the accounting/IT/Purcharses department...

Or, perhaps, future proofing a HARDWARE purcharse, that can not be changed after the fact...

busybox is GNU

So, alpine moving from coreutils to busybox is a non issue, license wise.

The OG author of busybox is working on "toybox" , an analogue set of utilities, but BSD licensed.

I am surprised that cannonical jumped on the bandwagon BEFORE redhat, as a MIT lisenced set of coreutils would be a boon to their efforts of curtailing theclone makers by restricting code sharing.

Microsoft isn't fixing 8-year-old shortcut exploit abused for spying

Correct, but "PRECISELY" is server 2022 the one that goes out of support in 2033 ;-)

If they fixing for Win11, backporting to Win10 is trivial. If they wait for Win12 to fix it, they may have a chance not fixing it for Win10 or 11. And please remember that Win10 remains supported in one form or another until ~ 2033

Google says it's rolling out fix for stricken Chromecasts

Re: Too Bad

Not really, the device in in Google's "vintage supported" list at google's own volition.

They are fixing it because they promised to fix it as long as it is in that list.

Expect it to drop of that list a few weeks/months after this is fixed.

PSA: The chromecast 1st gen was dropped out of the supported list a few months ago.

Re: Too Bad

This is weird, as my 1st gen CCast is running fine as we speak.

third party apps

While VLC does work, other third party apps like synology video station,and the PLex app running on synology can not cast, so there istwo more datapoints

Re: Too Bad

The thing is 10 years old now. warranty ran out a long ago, and unlike the 1st gen chromecast, the 2dn gen is still on "Legacy support". I suspect a snafu, more than something deliberate.

And I have some meat on that barbecue, as I have a 2nd gen myself.

Apple has locked me in the same monopolistic cage Microsoft's built for Windows 10 users

Yet another option, give ms U$D 30 to microsoft, and enjoy another year of security updates/patches.

yet another option, if you use $Something365, move to Microsoft365 and enjoy 3 years of complimentary security updates/patches for Win10.

There are other options, but those involve a lot of sailing, or bending the license into a pretzel. Some people's moral compass does not allow that. Other people's moral compass allow it, but they are forced by higher authorities not to do it.

Google begs owners of crippled Chromecasts not to hit factory reset

Re: The two achilles of current encryption

Going from FF114 to FF115ESR should not be a big ask. And you will do yourself and the wider internet a favour by using a browser which is actively patched for security vulns.

One patch every ~ 4 weeks that bring no new features and no interface changes, just security fixes sems like a nice compromise.

I write this on FireFox 128 ESR, by the way

Quad goals: Meta proposes QLC SSDs as a new storage tier in datacenters

And while they are at it, start using dual actuator tech

At some point, if they continue using normal HDDs, the tranfer rate per TB will be unbearably slow, since Meta is already messing with the storage architecture, they may as well mandate the use of Dual Actuator HDDs for the backing storage of tranfer rate per TB sensitive workloads...

That way, they will not find another crisis just as soon as they finish "fixing" the current one with QLC flash.

The only draewback is that, only 2 out of the 3 HDD makers have dual actuator tech. But since they are willing to go to a single provider for QLC SSDs, that should not bother them much.

And extra level of cache is not usefull if you are not able to get the data to and from the backing storage fast enough.

C++ creator calls for help to defend programming language from 'serious attacks'

I am not a young bloke. I learned C in 1991 (and was teacher's assistant too). Since then I've heards call to increase meory safety both in C and C++. And I suspect those calls were even older than that.

I read time and time again in BYTE Magazine and Dr Dobbs proposals for memory safety and garbage collection for C and C++

The standards bodies did not pick up any of those. And no compiler vendor presented a propiertary solution (but plenty of propiertary solutions for other stuff).

And now, after 34 years of innaction (from my perspective, I am sure the total innaction time is even bigger), ¿NOW they feel threatened and want the stadards bodies to pick up the pace?

Cry me a river. At least C is mildly ussefull, C++ can die in a (dumpster) fire.

¡Real Memory Safety from the ground up (instead of bolted on memory safety after the fact) for the win!

AMD looks to undercut Nvidia, win gamers' hearts with RX 9070 series

If you run "native 1080p" on a 4K display "something" has to do the upscaling. Most likely, the hardware upscaler of your monitor...

And believe you me, FSR, XeSS or DLSS will do a much better job upscaling from the 1080p of your native rendering to the 4K of your display than the upscaler of the monitor...

My monitor is 1440p and 165Hz. I use XeSS extensively on my 8GB 1070, and if I am able to hit 70~80FPS, enable framegen too...

Profit slide at HP can only mean one thing: Hammer time

¿what happened to El Reg's traditions?

The Reg had a habit of using HP ink and HPe to reffer to both companies.

aside from extracting a chukle from the audience, one knew from the get go which companywas the article about.

instead, here one had to read to the second paragraph to know, and only if you remember that Llores is the CEO of HP ink. If not, you need to read even more.

Pretty please El Reg, ¡enshrine the mandatory use of HP ink and HPe in your style manual!

Trump tariffs forcing rethink of PC purchases stateside

opportunity knocking

Any PC/Laptop/tablet/AiO purveyor that can rejig their supply chain and divest some of the PCs they produce in India, Mexico, Brazil and other non-china places fromtheir current markets to the USoA will make a killing in terms of $ and in terms of market share.

The % of those PCs that that were divested tothe USoA from their natural markets can then be supplied by china, as those countries hardly have tariffs...

JM2C YMMV

Microsoft's drawback on datacenter investment may signal AI demand concerns

Re: The AI "Bubble"

In the begining people said that 386 desktops were a waste of time because 386 DX were way too costly, and if you were to buy a 16Mhz 16bit bus SX, for less money you could buy a much faster 286@25Mhz from harris. Look how that went.

in the begining only a select few wanted/needed math coprocessors (while my 8087 went with the machine, the box is still with me as a keepsake). Even microsoft and intel told you to save a few bucks and get a 486SX. Look how that went.

in the begining world + dog tought that SIMD instructions on x86-32 were a gimmick. Look how that went.

In the begining, many people said AI was a gimmick and a passing fad. Let's see how that goes.

Re: nah. It's the tariffs

¿Selective quotes? Ok.

"or it may be that Redmond is concerned by the uncertainty that actions by the Trump administration are causing in the global marketplace."

"While we may strategically pace or adjust our infrastructure in some areas, we will continue to grow strongly in all regions."

Simply stated, MS re-alocated investment to the USoA BEFORE trump announced tariffs to semiconductors.

while trump announcing tariffs was expected, the tariffs on semiconductors specifically were truly something out of left field...

Re: Err...

Not really, apprentices do not scale as fast as AI, they need rest, fall ill and threaten to unionize.

I am not saoying that training apprentices is better or worse, just pointing out why the peoplewith the money (I.E. capital) may preffer the AI, even if inferior and more costly at the moment.

Re: The AI "Bubble"

The article refers to demand for TRaINING AI, which can mostly is done in datacenters.

meanwhile, things like copilot rely on INFERENCE, which can be done either in the cloud (like microsoft's data centers), the edge (say, a shared AI inference server for the whole organization in their own datacenter, or device-side either on your NPU or GPU.

so. Copilot is not relevant to the article.

Re: Tech gets smaller

Ever since etherium went Proof of Stake, mining's energy footprint has sligthly lowered, compensating the slight increase of AI. So all is well

nah. It's the tariffs

That datacenter has to be filled with AMD processos made in taiwan, with nVIDIA cards also madein taiwan, with memory made in corea (samsung and SKHinix).

all that stuff is subject to tariffs. Better to cancel the USoA datacenters, and ramp up datacenters in mexico and canada to serve USoA companies that do not need their workloads/data to remain in USoA soil. After all, these are cloud workloads, they can be moved on a whim, and latencies would not affected too much.

TL;DR: is not lack of demand, is tariffs making it more expensive to acquire the computing power to fill up them datacenters

uBlock Origin dead for many as Google purges Manifest v2 extensions

if you want chrome/edgium/chromium

Then uBlock origin lite it is. Coupled at home with either pi-hole or an ad-blocking DNS.

is not as good as OG uBlock, but is decent.

or, you know, move to firefox (ESR) a browser with a market share > 1 and that still supports manifest v2

(and the ESR changes shit once a year, instead of every ~10 weeks, for some of us, that is also a plus)

How's that open source licensing coming along? That well, huh?

If you choose the right FOSS license, and extra terms from the onset, all is well with the world.

So many companies choose the GPLv2/3 because it is "trendy" .

but if your company is contributing 90% of the code. Maybe a permissive license (MIT/BSD/APACHE) is better suited.

Or, a GPLv2, but you only pull commits if license ownership is transferred to the organization.

Anywho, only tiime will tell with these 3 projects

Why did the Windows 95 setup use Windows 3.1?

Re: Marketing

Re: Marketing

> Win 2.0 took some of the things DOS did, and started doing those itself in 286 (or 386) protected mode

Not really, no.

> Win3.x Took even more things away from MS-DOS

Kinda sorta ish. Really only anything very significant with Windows for Workgroups 3.11, not before.

----- PErhaps that's why I said Win 3.X and not 3.0 or 3.1 ...

> ditto for Win95(SE),

Doubly no.

1. Win95 had a fully pre-emptive OS kernel of its own and didn't really use DOS for anything any more.

----- ¿Then how come I coud use things like MS-DOS NDIS drivers with cards that did not have native Win95 drivers inside Win95? (And when I say I did, I do not mean "one did", I mean "I" did)

2. There was no "Win95 SE".

Your timeline is wrong.

----Sorry, it was called OSR2, not SE. My bad... But yes, win95 had a second edition, wich brought things like USB (1.x) support. While it mostly came with new machines, world + Dog used a "pirate" OSR2 to re-install their original Win95, because downloading the patches to make OG Win95 do what OSR2 did over dial-up was a PitA

> Win98(SE)

Did not really do anything 95 didn't in this area.

> and WinMe.

Removed the ability to boot to, or exit to, DOS. That's no replacement; it was a simple disablement.

> So, each iteration sheded more and more of MS-DOS

No.

> With the advent of WinXP, MS-DOS was completely exorcised from the consumer OS.

No. XP was nothing new. It was NT 3.1 which did that, a decade earlier. The "consumer OS" thing is marketing BS. Never believe the marketing lizards.

----- Every reader of "The Reg" knows that XP is nothing new and descends from NT 3.1... But many of the things consumers like to do could not be done on 2000 at launch. many of those related to WinG, DirectX and hardware with VxD drivers only instead of WDM drivers, as well as some weird 16 bit software that needed shims that were not available in 2000. That's why I say DOS was completely exorcised from the consumer line with the advent of WinXP.

Re: Marketing

Following that logic, Novell netware (3.11 and 4.1 in particular) ran atop of DOS, because they needed DOS to boot, and you could exit from them to DOS.

The reality was that Win1.o depended heavily on MS-DOS. Win 2.0 took some of the things DOS did, and started doing those itself in 286 (or 386) protected mode. Win3.x Took even more things away from MS-DOS, ditto for Win95(SE), Win98(SE) and WinMe. So, each iteration sheded more and more of MS-DOS

With the advent of WinXP, MS-DOS was completely exorcised from the consumer OS.

Huawei to bring massively expensive trifold smartphone to world market

status symbol.

I can see people buying this while having a super-small android or iOS phone on their pocket, purse or briefcase, redirecting calls to the triple-fold, and using things like messages.google.com and web.whatsapp.com to handle the day to day stuff, while the small device has all the Android/iOS specific stuff this phone can not handle.

Talkabout flex.

Re: F-Droid ?

TL;DR: yes, for the time being.

HarmonyOS 4.2 is not much more than AOSP 14, therefore, AOSP stores like F-Droid or Amazon APP store are super-easy to install.

If you want to re-introduce google play services, the process is much more involved.

Havingsaid that, HOS 4.2 is the last AOSP HOS. The next one, HarmonyOS-NEXT (or HarmonyOS 5.0) is NOT compatible with APKs. At least not for the time being.

I suspect the "country by country basis" rollout is to ensure the most relevant apps in each country (e-govt, banking, ridesharing, delivery, local chat and mega-apps) are ported, as it would be tanxing for Huaweito support 4.5.x and HOS-NEXT concurrently for a prolongued time.

Google's 7-year slog to improve Chrome extensions still hasn't satisfied developers

Re: Class action?

I feel your pain. A long while ago, I installed firefox (with all the ad-blocking goodness) in some very underpowered machines and told the duhsers:

Do not install chrome.

Do not instyall antivirus, windows defender is doing the work.

¿2 months later? Chrome with the google toolbar + 3 antivirus competing for supremacy.

I ask ¿how do you feel your machine? The answer was "sligthly slower than when you first gave them to us"

I wonder why....

Re: Chrome

I use Firefox ESR. And will keep using it until:

1.) It dies

2.) Another, better browser comes along.

But browser land is very dull, as there are only 2 rendering engine families:

The khtml family (khtml->WebKit->Blink)

The Gecko Family (Gecko -> goana && gecko to -> servo)

The other rendering engines are rounding errors.

The only browser that piques my interest is LadyBird (https://ladybird.org/) . It brings a novel architectural and security concept, as well as a new rendering engine, and license diversity to boot (BSD instead of the GPL of the others).

For now is to early to tell, but I'll be keeping a close watch, it'd behoove y'all to do so too.

Re: KDE

Blink (the beating heart of chrome) DOES NOT have to be compatible with the LGPL of khtml.

If anything, it has to be compatile with the (L)GPL of Webkit.

We do not know (and I am not going out of my way to find out, I'd rather play Robocop: Rogue City) if apple linked to khtml (and therefore the lgpl applied) or if they lifted the soruce code wholesale (and therefore, the GPLv2 applied).

Remeber blink is a fork of webkit, not a fork of khtml. As long as bllink is compatible license wise with webkit, all is honki-dori, it is webkit the ones that have to worry about being license-compatible with khtml.

Finally, I suspect that, if google were in serious violation of their licenses obligation by obfuscating their source code:

1.) the linux foundation would not have got an agreement with them, even with all the money they put on the table.

2.) Small companies such as microsoft, Brave and Opera would be protesting, as their browsers are based on chromium.

3.) Other small companies sucha as valve and Epic games would protest also (as their launches are electron apps, and therefore, based on chromium).

4.) Distros like GalliumOS, Deepin Linux, ZorinOS, eLive, Lubuntu, Knoppix would complain about it, because they ship chromium by default.

The fact that none of these four canaries in the mine has signaled anything, canaries that dela with chromium day in and out, much more than we do, and have entire legal departments looking into licenscing stuff, makes me heavily suspect that google complies with the licenses obligations of chromium well enough.

Re: KDE

Regarding browser maintenance costs and hardness, there are various types of changes that a browser needs:

1.) Self inflicted (for example, changing the UI for the sake of change)

2.) Evolving standards, the W3 foundation changes/expands/deprecate standards and functions from time to time,and some other standards bodies do to (like MIME, MPEG, et al).... someone has to implement said changes.

3.) Correcting bugs and security vulns.

4.) Soemone figures out a better/faster/more correct way to do things.

5.) The world around the browser changes (win11 2xH2 is released, new MacOS is released, new Ubuntu LTS is released....)

Just to name a few.

That is expensive. Even if you eliminate 1 and four (and I would severely argue against eliminating 4), 2, 3 and 5 still there, and are still hard and expensive...

Re: KDE

The GPLv2 (i.e. the relevant license here) clearly states that if a company distributes programs in executable form, that company must give the source code to those people to whom they gave the executable, NOT to everybody, even people who are not customers... (i.e. world + dog)

¿You do not have the chrome executable? Then Google has no obligation to give you the source code, as you are not their customer.

¿You do have Chrome installed in your machine? The use that to retrieve the source code, no hoops.

Do not blame me, I did not write the license. Blame Stallman. Read the license and you will see.

Re: KDE

Google is in charge on Chromium in as much as most of the developers working on Chromium are google employees. Recently, the linux foundation set up a comitee to steer chromuim ( https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/10/google_linux_foundation_chromium/ )

From the article

«According to Sreekanta, Google last year made more than 100,000 commits to the Chromium code base, representing about 94 percent of the contributions. Google's hope is that other organizations building their browsers on Chromium will step up their contributions.»

Of course, Manifest V3 is a Google Initiative, If anyone wants "chrome with manifest V2 too", they are free to fork Chromium, but so far, no group of developers has taken on the chalenge, mostly because maintaining a browser is hard AND costly, and no group hast the £€¢¥$ and ammount of developers necesary to go at it. And we are talking about chromium especifically, not chrome. Brave browser, for example, is chromium based, with a few extra twists, but is not a "fork of chromium", ditto Microsoft's "Edgium"

Same thing with Android™, AOSP is the Open source part of Android™, Android™ is AOSP + a bunch of propiertary blobs, and services and trademarks that belong to google. Most developers working on AOSP are Google employees, so Google can steer the project any way they see fit. If some group wants to steer AOSP in a different direction, they can fork it, so far no group of developers have done so in a significant way. Many a phone maker (especially in china, where Google does not operate) releases AOSP phones, sand google's propiertary bits, and with propiertary bits and services of their own, but no one hass "forked AOSP".

Same thing with WebKit, most of the developers working on WebKit, are apple employees, so Apple can steer WebKit any way they see fit...

And all of this is allowed by the respective licenses, in particular the GPL, as long as you release the GPL source, you are golden. In 99% of the developers of the FOSS project work for you, guess who is the "community" in the first place, and who will steer the project...

In my country we have a saying: "The Golden rule is: S/he who has the Gold makes the rules"

Re: KDE

Chromium is the FOSS part derived from webkit. Crome is Chromium with added propiertary propiertary bits and blobs (+trademarks) that belong to google.

webkit is the FOSS part derived from konkeror. Safari is webkit with added propiertary bits and blobs (+trademarks) that belong to apple.

I skiped the drama

as I use Firefox since 2009, Firefox ESR as soon as it was available.

I also moved a few select non-computer literate people that do trust me (with ad-blocks to boot) and the experience was transformative for them.

As a matter of fact, I also have chrome (for chromecast related duties), and the difference between ad-blocking solutions is notable to say the least.

Having said that, is true that Manifest V2 had serious performance and security flaws that needed addressing. IMHO (and YMMV) the changes in Manifest V3 were done mainly to address those shortcommings, the extra difficulties for ad-blockers and privacy tools were a "possitive side-effect" from google's point of view. The "cherry on top" if you will.

Arm gives up on killing off Qualcomm's vital chip license

Re: Way to trash your brand!

Actually, qualcomm had produced datacenter chips before the aquisition, had an ALA for datacenter chips, and that ALA that was more restrictive than the ALA of nuvia.

This was more akin to ARM trying to double-dip.

Future start-ups would be wise to use RISC-V unless ARM offers even sweeter deals than the one offered to nuvia, to offset the posibility of similar drama down the line...