Posts by HXO 70 publicly visible posts • joined 13 May 2025
Yeah, but does that mean AI is active? I have no AI account (anywhere or attached to FF), and have *zero* indication that AI is active. The best I can tell, those (and other) switches are just defaults for when a user activates AI on the main switch. Again I do not think this is wrong for ordinary users. (Apart for the underlying LLM part.)
I do not understand the shouting about FFs addition of AI. When FF asked if I wanted an AI thing integrated, I clicked No, and have not heard from it again. (FF 147.0.2 now, mostly Windows.) Compared to other SW, that is OK.
And all SW will present new features: Ordinary users do not go looking for unknown features on their phones, computers, cars... Technical users may have read about the upcomming features or gone exploring for it. Ordinary users will only know if shown.
Still, the LLM AI experiment on the whole needs to end.
That kind of signage is banned here, except if on the land where your business is operating. And there are still restrictions. Except some counsils give themselves exceptions. I very much hate animation that will distract. Anywhere.
Speed 2. Had to look it up. Worst movie ever. Saw the first 15mins, and the next day I think someone sent it overboard.
AFAIK only Finland have what seems like a final solution for the waste:
https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/viden/klima/450-meter-nede-i-klippegrunden-mener-de-de-har-loest-atomkraftens-stoerste-problem
And where are the fuel coming from?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#/media/File:World_Uranium_Mining_Production_2021.png
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are in shooting range of Russia.
Niger have kicked out France and are friendly with Russia.
Australia, I think, have discussed closing uranium production?
Namibia?
Canada? For home market and now China?
IT people as well.
Having an engineering background where tool use are the norm, so comming to IT I assumed all technical people could use at least handtools like screwdrivers, wrenches, sockets, multimeters... I learned I was wrong, and that some IT peoples hardware skills came from maybe changing the ribbon in a type writer. Personal toolbag for me from then on.
I have joked that 'tool intelligence' is missing from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences
Former POE had a well developed ERP implementation were all this planning was done largely automated.
But in some departments there were people (including managers), that would extract data to paper or spreadsheet and fiddle it manually.
Why? Lack of understanding, knowledge, training, smarts... And then buy other SW solutions or build incomprehensible things in Excel, claiming how efficient they now are without the ERP.
Oh, congratulations. Three days production runs have to be scrapped, because one of the raw material batches had tested bad, and the ERP would have blocked it, but your data from last week did not have that info.
My point is, new (not always young) people at all levels really like to put their own prints on the work, AI just being the new Excel.
I am in the EU, and for years, when buying from fex AliE or (until ~1 year ago) Amazon.com, VAT and duties are included in the price and collected by the seller, and payment and paperwork is handled by the shipper.
So no, the seller/exporter does not pay VAT and duties, it handles it for the buyer/importer to keep shipping expedient.
As I read the article, the guests have an expectation of areas with data (keys) that are secret from the host. But the host can ruin that expectation by changing this bit. So telling the host admin to disable SMT is as effective as telling them to not change the bit, no?
Things I have learned to do:
SW/OS change on server or labPC: Shutdown. Remove power. Leave to cool for as long as possible, at least a tea break. Power on. Check that HW and old SW/OS is still fine. Then do your changes and finish with an OS restart.
Programming: Before making even a trivial change, see that the application builds as is, so you can tell if someone elses change broke the build.
Has a client or colleague blamed you for a problem you didn’t cause?
Oh yes. There are ignorant people in all industries. And that is one of the big reasons to stay with a manager (or group), that is intelligent and has technical understanding. In BigCorp even official root cause analysis was finding the first and easiest 'victim' for demerit and firing. Some frustrating fights over the obvious, and *never* a 'sorry', when the real cause was eventually accepted.
Create Generation 2 VM (UEFI support).
Add second 8GB HD Boot Disk.
Set boot order with Boot Disk first.
Disable Secure Boot.
Do not start VM.
Mount and FAT-format Boot Disk in Disk Management.
Copy zip content to Boot Disk.
Unmount Boot Disk.
Boot VM.
Install guest OS.
Change boot order.
"Have you any idea how much heat servers produce?"
Yes, easy to look at the power measurement on the UPS output. All of it has to be removed.
"You have to have air conditioning"
No, just cooling.
AC also means also adjusting humidity, and increasing temperature. The cooling units may look like AC units, and be called AC by laypersons, but are not.
"datacenter that is by definition well ventilated"
No? All server rooms I have been in have had air cooling (not air conditioning) but no forced exchange of air to the outside.
And levels of lockdown differed wildly between countries, AFAIR we never had to prove reason for travel, but as many WFH, it made for nice quiet roads for MC trips. Often for work.
There, thumbs down away, but:
https://www.thecut.com/2020/08/the-reason-comic-sans-is-a-public-good.html
And use
https://dtinth.github.io/comic-mono-font/
and
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Comic+Neue?preview.text=Whereas%20recognition%20of%20the%20inherent%20dignity&query=comic
in fex CSS for readability.
"with absolutely zero sense of humour clearly didn't want a single non-business email being sent whatsoever"
Or just a short joke in a status mail to my boss CCed to the rest of the project group, that spent 10 hours on a weekend, and had to roll back, because stupid big corp reason we could not control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfzlXcFbQ9I
(Not that exact link; Firefly "that went well".)
Most responded with [smiley] or [thump up]. Except the PM sent a nastygram to my boss. Who had already sent me [smiley] (*).
(*) "The post contains some characters we can’t support". Like unicode?
I have a few XP VMs which seems to be permanently activated.
I have a physical Win7-Pro, that I build myself with an OEM license. It only had a few small hardware changes since 2010(?), but I have been wanting to change the system disk (clone to SSD), in which case I suspect Windows will want to re-activate. Does anyone have any experince with that in 2025?
(Yes, it could have moved to Win10, but that is mooh now anyway.)
(None of these are normally near the internet.)
Many options like these are available as Group Policies on non-Home versions of Windows.
So you can find and change them there.
If you need the Registry settings for Home or a just-click-this.reg:
Get Sysinternals ProcessMonitor from
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/
and watch Registry changes as you change GPs.
"I refused to do this because it contained my digitial life."
Good. As already mentioned, this is another reason for drive encryption.
"but have no idea how to do so securely."
If your adversary is *not* KGB/NSA/MIx:
Get a hammer and punch or screwdriver.
If the drive is covered (SATA) pop the cover off.
Punch and crack the center of each chip.
For mechanical disks:
Same tools, but prefer something like a centerpunch. From the soft side (the thin stamped cover, not the cast chassis), punch one or two holes in the disk platters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive#/media/File:2019_Rozebrane_dyski_twarde.jpg
making sure you get as far in as the chassis.
No need to take the cover off, you can make out the structure from the outside
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive#/media/File:Hard_drive_label_side.jpg
All drives have the same layout.
"partially encrypted"
BitLocker encrypts the drive (maybe still excluding the UEFI partion with no user data?). AFAIK similar goes for Linux and Android and iOS?
BitLocker keys are default stored in OneDrive for private devices, but that is easily changed.
But I have known corps, that for 'historic' (aka we forget why) reasons used third party tools, that may only be partial.
"Has your IT manager lacked IT skills?"
Not really, but I had one that was much better at handling non-technical users and politics than the rest of our department.
Walking into the office, I would sometimes warn him to "Put on the red shoes.", or congratulate with "You really had the red shoes on today."
He did not care for the IT Crowd reference.
I would, and not complaining, but...
My 4G/LTE modem apperently uses proprietary QMI, and the help is really only 'good luck'. Which I might try if I had a spare. Also, some network operators may need special configurations, which modem manufacturers provide.
My 'router' is not supported: "You might receive the successor Archer C6 v4 which looks identical from the outside but won't ever be supported due to a new kind of CPU being used and the flash being too small." It does get updates from TPL (most recent last month), and IPv6, which I rely on, 'just works'.
I am always looking for open alternatives (more configuration options), but IME TPL gear lasts long, and have just enough options.
'App Lounge' (an anonymous front for Googles store) on eOS, has for each application a link to its report page on
https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/
Also handy if one were using Googles store.
I use very few applications on phones, so have little thought put into this:
1. I think for the vast majority of users, this (registrering developers, so they do not pop up again the moment they are banned) will be a good thing. No, it will not be a full solution, but everything helps; remember that few (even in IT) understand security.
2. For the 1‰s will there not be an option in the 'hidden' dev/debug menu to allow sideloading?
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