Posts by LVPC

To 'Infinity' ... and beyond: MX Linux 25 has arrived

Re: What was that about APPLICATIONS???

People don't get computers to run an operating system - they want to run applications

And Linus is clear in this video that rule #1 is DON'T BREAK USER SPACE! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc&pp=0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD

And yet every distro update concentrates on changes that break stuff, in the name of "improvements" .

And then they wonder why there's no "year of the Linux desktop." It's because you keep breaking user space.

Got 2 new 24TB hard drives last night, so I can remove the 2 4 TB drives I had "borrowed"from the 8x4tb mx Linux box which will now be upgraded to freebsd. So my game box will be a 2TB nvme, 3x4tb hd, and 2x24tb hd.

Been using Linux both at work and at home since slakware 3x, but even at work FreeBSD was easier to maintain.

In the future, if someone asks about Linux I'll tell them to wait until next year and get Valve's upcoming Steam Machine. 40,000 Games AND a full desktop experience, no futzing around, no breaking used space. Because every distro insists on "improvements" that take away features and add get another way to do the same thing, but differently, breaking stuff.

And this definitely includes MX, which failed hard at updating a year ago. Even Windows 10 is better now that it's out of support. No more updates that break things, and it runs the programs I want. Because it was never about the OS, but about the user applications.

Tablet market stalls because there’s not much new worth buying

>> But in the domestic market - If you've got a decent phone and a laptop/PC - where does a tablet fit in for most people?

1. Bigger screen so easier to read or show other people.

2. People with various handicaps, such as low vision, who don't want to scroll around with a screen magnifier

3. People who want to occasionally use a mouse and/or keyboard

4. A lot easier to pass around a tablet during a meeting than a phone

Re: Resolution

10" , 1920x1080, $150 Canadian on sale, 3 years ago. Not 1280x800.

Re: No Great Loss ... 100% Correct.

This post is written on a 10" Amazon tablet they were on sale at a local regaled for $150 Canadian, so I bought 2, even though I had never even held a tablet before). Bought 2 Bluetooth mice for $20 each, two Bluetooth keyboards for $17 each 2 stands for $7 each. Great for doing email and browsing.

What do you want for less than $200? It's good value and does the job.

As for storage, threw a 256gb mini SD card in one. The one problem is auto correct screws up stuff, but that's pretty much pad for the course everywhere.

Superintelligence probably not happening, but AI will still reshape society, expert panel says

>> I predict that, by 2026, AI will be responsible for 95% of all garbage spouted by experts

Have an upvote, But ...You're being too optimistic. The self-styled "experts" have never needed any sort of intelligence, real or artificial, to produce their garbage. It's all grifters gonna grift.

Starts off with a false assumption

>> Those surveyed see no end to the spending:

Line always goes up ... until it doesn't. It's toast by the end of 2027.

Altman sticks a different hand out, wants tax credits instead of gov loans

Re: US had previously played a role in critical infrastructure build-outs

Why? AI doesn't work, and throwing more money at it won't make it any better. If anything, AI should have a "stupidity tax" added to it. Like any form of gambling, where the house takes a percentage.

Phishers try to lure 5K Facebook advertisers with fake business pages

Sleep with dogs, wake up with flees*

Use Facebook, get scammed. The worst part is that we now know Facebook deliberately allows scammers, just charges them more to advertise.

* My dog sleeps with me and we're both flea-free. But you KNOW Facebook is a flea infested dead carcass - there's really no excuse.

Techie ran up $40,000 bill trying to download a driver

Re: Implausible to say the least.

I'm guessing they never heard of kermit, or by the late 80s, telix (xmodem, ymodem, zmodem, sliding download buffers to retransmit bad packets, etc). If you ran a bbs, one of the first uploads you would direct people to was telix. Basically eliminated bad downloads.

Musk gets approval for bumper Tesla payout but, unlike his robot, there are strings attached

The board has no choice

>> I wonder if they've worked out the impact of how much they lose if Elmo only hits the trivial targets like $2trn market cap? Over ten years that'll be achieved purely through inflation.

They know that Feels autos are now seen as outdated poor quality vehicles, and that sales are one a one-way trend - down. So they have no choice but to keep the hype cycle / grift going or they lose everything. They're going to start slowly divesting while the hype is still working. Once they've got their money, they won't care, same as Musk.

OpenAI's Altman and Friar walk back remarks about federal loan guarantees

Re: Wow, this is going quick

It's a trial balloon to soften people up to the idea.

Famed software engineer DJB tries Fil-C… and likes what he sees

Re: Type checking and compatibility

On a side note, Boolean types are defective by design. In real life, they should be TRUE, FALSE, UNINITIALIZED, and ERROR. It's only two bits, but it avoids making stupid assumptions. Just my two bits.

And an example of how a language construct can be made less error-prone.

Started doing that decades ago. It works.

Uncle Sam wants to scan your iris and collect your DNA, citizen or not

Same old story

>> to prove or disprove … biological sex

Trans panic. "We want to know what's in your jeans and what's in your genes."

" None of your damn business " is no longer an option.

Oh for the good old days of "papers, citizen!"

From Intel to the infinite, Pat Gelsinger wants Christian AI to change the world

Re: Reverend Lionel Preacherbot

>> Not content with AI enshittifification they want to add in religion so even the computers believe in sky fairies,

Entirely logic - the belief that LLMs are some form of intelligence IS based on faith, not fact, same as any other religious belief.

Linux vendors are getting into Ubuntu – and Snap

Re: Oh, look, another systemd moment

>> shared libraries were and still are developed for RAM's sake, not for storage's sake.

RAM is also cheap. Just max the sucker out. No need for a swap file.

Also, shared libraries are great for enabling a supply chain attack, or screwing up existing programs that "well, it worked until I did an update.."

that's why static linking is so great. Unless you recompile (and why would you unless its to add new features) a statically linked binary will just work.

Re: Lies, can lies, and statistics set But #1

Shuttleworth was VERY specific - the Windows DESKTOP market share. Not cellphones. Not tablets. Not IoT. Not TVs.

He failed. Bug #1 has NOT been fixed.

One of the reasons is crap hardware support. My latest pc cannot run Linux - too new, too much fancy hardware. Tried 10 different distros, including slakware, mint, ubuntu, suse - none of them support 3 gpus.

And it's the same with everyone else - solving 95% of an individual user's needs is not enough. And so many people have a different 5% of tasks where Linux doesn't work for them. So for them, it's either Windows or Apple.

My older pc (4 years old, still able to run the latest Windows, i5-12400K 128gb ram, 8 x 4TB hard drives, etc) couldn't run mx-linux properly, and fails to update, so while I haven't used FreeBSD in almost 2 decades, I know it will still do what I want, or I'll just buy another Windows license, because Linux might be ok for an old machine, it sucks when you push the envelope. It was better 25 years ago when it was my daily driver both at home and work. Even Delaware 30 years ago was better. Sure, might have to edit lifelines or modify a network driver for a new card, but it worked. It wouldn't undo any fixes on reboot.

Because it doesn't matter if Linux runs on PCs that are EOL - if it can't do what I want, on my hardware, then it is useless to me.

And I'm far from the only one in the same situation. And that's why bug #1 will probably never be fixed.

Re: Oh, look, another systemd moment

Or just statically linking your binaries. Disk space is $15/th - no need to try to save storage space by using a loadable SHARED library.

Re: Lies, can lies, and statistics set But #1

Remember Numpty Dumpty? "When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less"

You don't get to redefine terms / move the goalposts and say "mission accomplished." But this is EXACTLY what Shuttleworth and his apologists are doing.

It reflects poorly on everyone.

Valve's bazzite will probably surpass any other distro in terms of end users within 10 years. Because games, ease of installation, and compatibility mean more than a crap Gnome UI.

Lies, can lies, and statistics set But #1

>> During the project's early days, Shuttleworth filed Bug #1 in the Ubuntu bugbase with a description that began, "Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace. This is a bug which Ubuntu and other projects are meant to fix."

And yet here we are, where Microsoft STILL has a majority market share in the new desktop PC market.

Changing the goalposts by including cell phones and tablets and declaring victory is typical fanboi boosterism. It's also dishonest. Valve has already done way more to fix Ubuntu's Bug #1 than Shuttleworth will ever do.

VodafoneThree to offshore UK network jobs to India

Re: Isnt this what people want?

>> But if they make owning a mobile too much of a chore then people wont bother with mobiles. I cant see that happening though

Had a billing problem with my mobile provider a few months after I ripped their garbage cable modem out of the wall and sent it back because it wouldn't work when it got cold outside. 7 working days later had gigabit symmetric fibre.

So when they screwed up my mobile billing, just started using my iPhone as a mini ipad.

Both iMessage and Facetime kept working off my Wi-Fi and as an added bonus, no scam calls, no spam (anything from the IN tld,, gmail, and outlook.com email all deleted - not sent to spam or junk.

Everything else, you have to send an email to one of my domains. Think of all the scammers who are thwarted by not being able to call and say they are a bank inspector or law enforcement or grandkid.

Phone numbers, and the ability to spoof them or steal your identity with a sim swap, are the weakest link. No phone number makes it impossible for their scams to work.

"What about an emergency?" you say? If you have an emergency , why are you calling me? If I have an emergency, I'll can damn well tend to it myself.

Re: Isnt this what people want?

Customers always have the final word. I've been boycotting McDonald's since the end of the previous century. My arteries, general health, etc, are better for it.

And it actually works out cheaper.

O2 cranks prices mid-contract, essentially telling customers to like it or lump it

>> Being on a cruise ship with nothing but ocean in every direction for hundreds of miles with a blazing fast internet connection made me feel like my first Compuserve disk had arrived again.

You're on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean and what floats your boat is an internet connection? Couldn't find ANYTHING else to do?

>> Would you care to suggest a non-Nazi sattelite ISP with the same or lower prices?

Since when is a satellite internet connection a "must - have"?

Microsoft just revealed that OpenAI lost more than $11.5B last quarter

Re: In other words...

>> FFS guys the word is "buses"!

FFS, it depends on where you live. What next, getting all pissy because some people write colour instead of color?

Microsoft Task Manager now tasking PCs with running multiple copies of itself

Job security

>> But then again, this is Microsoft, and the company has a particular reputation when it comes to quality control, as many an administrator looking glumly at their Azure management portal this week will confirm.

On the bright side, it's good job security to have. a job fixing those bugs, what with all the layoffs to help fund not-really-AI

Canonical CEO says no to IPO in current volatile market

Re: Linux on the desktop ? You 'aving a larf ?

Gnome, wayland, and systemd are NOT virtues. And keep in mind it was Shuttleworth who started the whole wayland mess.

The Chinese Box and Turing Test: AI has no intelligence at all

Re: Someday AGI?

>> Experts on human & animal behaviour have only found vocabulary, not true language among animals.

And yet animals have individual personalities, likes and dislikes, and reciprocal emotional attachment with both us and other animal species.

Something no LLM will ever be able to have, no matter how much they can take it for horny lonely incels.

MPs urge government to stop Britain's phone theft wave through tech

Re: British Fascism

>> Apple and Google don't do it currently because it involves doing something with the user's data that doesn't involve adding it to their advertising profile

They don't do it because if stolen phones were perma-blocked, there would be way fewer thefts, so fewer replacement phone sales. Line must go up, screw the customer.

The manufacturer would lose sales because theft rates would go down if stolen phones can't be reused. Follow the money.

Over a million laptops are lost every year at airports. People don't reclaim them - easier to get the insurance pay for a new one. Especially if the airport is in another country.

Re: Repairable? or Theft-Proof?

Unless your iPad is also on your person, the thief has plenty of time. Your computer? Same story. 15 minutes is more than enough time to put your phone into a faraway metal box and one reset later they have phone ready for the foreign market.

Turns out the end of Windows 10 is good for something: The PC refresh cycle

Re: Time to move on

>> Please do not attack the human race by recommending proprietary software to people.

If those pushing restrictive licenses are the enemies of the people, so is toe-jam eating mooch and defender of paedophilia Richard Stallman. For example, read why he had to resign from MIT (https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2019/09/18/mit-richard-stallman-resigns-epstein/).

That sort of stain doesn't come out in The laundry.

The GPL is way more restrictive than the BSD license. So the GPL according to your logic is also a crime against humanity.

There is nothing inherently wrong with proprietary software. A lot of software would never get created it people couldn't earn a living coding. Not everyone wants to live like a homeless bum sleeping in a computer lab with no bath or shower for weeks at a time (how do you think his toe jam accumulated? He has bad personal hygiene).

Most of the posters here paid their bills writing software - and most of that was proprietary. Obviously you never worked in the industry.

Re: Amazing, really...

>> Free as in beer and free as in freedom TO YOU. FOSS in a nutshel

I've never seen free beer in ANY store. And the GPL (and thus linux) license is a lot less "free as in freedom" than the BSDs.

I would pay extra for a CPU without an NPU. Give me more cores I can actually do something useful with.

AI investment is the only thing keeping the US out of recession

Re: Chaotic???

>> Look at the Big Beautiful Ballroom. Isn't it beautiful and big? It is costing $250mn all paid for by Trump's supporters. It is Trump's main priority.**)

Now it's up to $300 million. Wanna get none of the structural steel has been ordered yet (you need blueprints for that, and there are none).

Re: They have a Plan B.

>> If Trump can bully other governments to invest in US tech, he can beggar his 'allies'

Good catch putting 'allies' in quotes. The US no longer has any allies. Literally. Oh what a difference a year makes.

Irrational exuberance

Irrational exuberance strikes again.

The sooner it all collapses, the less long term damage, but of course you can't expect the scammers promoting this crap from acting rationally. Cuz grifters gonna grift.

High-stakes poker scam used rigged card shufflers, X-ray tables, and special glasses

Same old story ...

If you don't see the pigeon/mark, it's you. But people never learn ...

Microsoft drops surprise Windows Server patch before weekend downtime

Re: Context, wot's that?

>> However Microsoft's message to administrators is clear: switch to an alternative like its cloud-based Intune service.

People still use Microsoft for servers? What sort of insanity in this day and age!

Trust the AI, says new coding manifesto by Kim and Yegge

Re: "Vibe coding is just autocomplete"

>> Not at all. Vibe coding is more akin to asking someone who knows nothing about writing software to get pieces of code from all over the internet, put them together, and hope it does what you want it do

Unfortunately, even before LLMs, bosses tended to push this sort of crap approach. Every time I read garbage like "give coding", I'm more relieved that I'm retired and don't have to push back against such unprofessional stupidity.

Who knows, maybe in my 80s or 90s it will all have fallen apart so badly that it might be tempted to show the retards (see Marching Morons by Kornbluth) how to do it right. On second thought, nah.

A simple AI prompt saved a developer from this job interview scam

>> What happens if there's a fake applicant for the fake job?

So a Nork hires a Nork. Where's the problem?

Re: "the faker posed as the chief blockchain officer"

It's a sign of desperation to agree to do a test. Shows just how low the industry has sunk.

If you're even thinking of doing such tests, it's time to take a sabbatical from the industry, and to do other work for a year. This has always been true, because IT is cyclical, and has been forever, same as any other industry.

Windows 11 update breaks localhost, prompting mass uninstall workaround

Re: The new testing team

Applies in spades who bought flight simulator 2024. Still in alpha.

Feeling lonely? Microsoft Copilot can now listen to your every word, watch your screen

Just one more reason not to "upgrade" to Windows 11

Seriously, it's too bad Microsoft wasn't broken up into 3 during the antitrust trial.

But there's still some hope - the breakup of Google might provide a template. (Mind you, Google is doing a great job on its own shedding customers. When your only customers are the clueless, and you've killed off Google search all by yourself, a breakup might be a relief).

Microsoft's OneDrive spots your mates, remembers their faces, and won't forget easily

>> Unlike Google sotrage I can't separate out my photos from OneDrive

You can delete OneDrive. And OneNote. And Office.Did it years ago, problem solved. Same as I banished everything Google and Facebook. And all free cloud services, except iMessage and Facetime. For everything else, I lease server space for my own domains.

Though I might check out Discord. Retirement leaves time for indulging in games.

Re: Mac v Windows

>> Why would anyone continue to be a proprietary serf when they can install GNU and have freedom, all for the low price of 0£?

Because systemd is spreading. I'm nuking my mx-linux box and installing FreeBSD because I want an OS whose direction isn't ultimately subject to the diktats of IBM (IBM owns RedHat, and. MX-Linux has already started the move to systemd)

And my Windows 10 box had its final update last night, so I expect it to run just fine in the future. And if something bad happens, that's what backups are for. And Linux doesn't support 6 x 4k screens on 2 video cards with load-sharing. And it never will.

For me, October 14 was freedom day (yes, all my hardware is new enough it supports Windows 11. No, don't want it, same as I don't want LOL crap or the "free as in you're the product" cloud spyware. Or anything google or facebook , for that matter. Too OLD for that shit.

Re: Mega

People, stop being cheap clueless sods - a 5 terabyte external drive is cheap and you won't have to worry about losing access.

Re: It might be someone else's photograph ...

>> Microsoft can assume ..

Not if they're a minor. Minors can't consent. And parents really need to stop posting their kids pics online.

Californian man so furious about forced Windows 11 upgrade that he's suing Microsoft

Re: Compootition

There is no forced upgrade.

If the machine is working fine today, it will be working fine a year from now unless you are doing something stupid, like not having backups, opening random emails, or going to questionable websites.

It's not like Microsoft updates are all that safe to begin with. Re-enabling stuff that was supposed to be permanently disabled by group policies, removing existing functionality, adding crap nobody asked for ... why the rush to update?

The only reasons to stay on 10 are (1) software or hardware not supported by 11, (2) games, and (3) convenience. Tried 11 twice, it's not happening here.

Getting enough points to get a year of free extended support is easy if you also use your computer for gaming. Launch the Xbox app, launch a game from the app, play for 10 minutes, get 10 points. It was easy to accumulate 10,000 points. But I probably won't use them for anything. Not even extended support.

As for my Linux box, it will probably be swapped to one of the BSDs. Too much cruft and drama in the Linux world nowadays. And a few (imho) bad design decisions.

Your CV is not fit for the 21st century – time to get it up to scratch

Re: Ultimately it's all BS - might as well polish a turd

I would suggest that there's more to life than just work, and retirement gives an opportunity to grow in New directions. Took me until 69 to figure out that retirement is not the same as "being put out to pasture."

I do what I want, no deadlines, it's all in all a much healthier lifestyle not being tied to a desk 8+ hours a day, or having to deal with other people's stupidity just because work forces you to be in proximity to them.

And it would have been inevitable - checked last week, and my last two employers went belly up some time ago, so looks like I got out of both of them while the getting was good.

Nobody wants to be remembered as someone who focused on work to the exclusion of everything else.

Re: Ultimately it's all BS - might as well polish a turd

I get it - nowadays 60 is a hard barrier to landing a new job. That's why so many people retire at 60, opting to start their pensions early. Or they change from "career mode" to part-time simple work to pay the bills internet hit 65.

Sometimes their health makes the decision for them.

But the goal at 60 is to basically hang on until your old age pension kicks in. Because in IT, it's been a sea of layoffs for the last 3 years, and it's going to get much, much worse before it gets better. And it may never get better. This may become the new normal for decades.