Posts by Maya Posch

Wow, fancy that. Web ad giant Google to block ad-blockers in Chrome. For safety, apparently

Pale Moon/Basilisk

I moved to Pale Moon from Firefox over a year ago, and couldn't be happier. Unlike the Firefox 'devs', the people behind Pale Moon are users like you and me. They want a fast, efficient browser that's free of bugs (in so far as possible) and not cluttered up with features nobody uses. They like XUL extensions, NPAPI plugins and so on.

Pale Moon and Basilisk are proper open source browsers. Firefox and Chromium are tainted due to their commercial involvement. They should not be used when possible.

Google now minus Google Plus: Social mini-network faces axe in data leak bug drama

Totally agreed on the hopping between Hangouts. It was the one thing which made Google+ so incredibly social to me, much more than the posts did. Removing Hangouts from G+ was definitely what killed the network, as it removed like 90% of the social interaction overnight.

I haven't looked at Diaspora or such alternatives. Mostly just went back to using IRC, forums and Twitter. Would be nice if one day something like G+ with Hangouts could exist again.

I for one will miss Google+

I was one of the lucky ones who got an invite for Google+ when it was still brand-new in 2011. Over the following years I would build up contacts via the network, spend hours in Hangouts with often the same groups of people, sometimes with strangers and generally found Google+ to be a very social social network. Looking back, I basically only have positive feelings for Google+, because of the people who helped shape it.

Google+ isn't a Facebook-killer. It never was. It was shaping up to be something much more, something better and more social. Not this eternal 'look at me' setup with posts in a timeline, but with people actually hanging out and chatting in video chat rooms, holding various sessions and even tying Google+ into local TV broadcasts (like me appearing live on a Missouri TV station a few years back to talk about the topic of intersex).

To me it feels like Google didn't understand what they had there when they took away this Hangout functionality and made it into its own thing, disconnected from Google+. That was the moment when things started drifting apart and I didn't spend nearly as much time on the service as I used to.

I will miss Google+, but fortunately we will always have IRC :)

Russian rocket goes BOOM again – this time with a crew on it

Could ask the Chinese

It's painfully ironic that just when China is making headway with its own space station program (third, permanent one to be launched soon), the ISS has found itself on the verge of being scuttled.

Unless the ISS can be made to pull through, a few years from now it'll be the Chinese space station that welcomes European (ESA), Japanese (JAXA) and other international guests.

Or, you know, ask the Chinese to please, pretty please help us out with a manned mission to the ISS to save it. Only a few decades too late, though.

On the third day of Windows Microsoft gave to me: A file-munching run of DELTREE

Re: @Maya Posch - Like you, I will hang to Windows 7

If I had been holding my breath for the 'Year of the Linux Desktop', I would have long since expired.

It was supposed to happen in 1998, when I bought the full CD set and manual for SuSE Linux 6.3. Redhat Linux was going to change the world. Linspire and kin were going to make it a snap. Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint... I used them all and found them lacking.

My most recent experiment saw me installing Linux Mint (18.3) on an older laptop that had previously been running Windows XP. I had even doubled the RAM in the system and installed a much larger and faster HDD. This worked okay for a few days, but then out of the blue the Cinnamon WM started crashing. I couldn't fix this and ended up installing an alternate WM.

I need to use multiple input methods for typing English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Something which just works on Windows (until 7), but which has relatively poor support, and ultimately kept breaking down so that I had to keep tweaking it and went back and forth between the two main IME systems that currently exist for Linux.

As I was doing translation work (English to Japanese) on the system at the time, this was incredibly frustrating. The worst part came I found out that I could not switch input methods on some (Qt5) apps for some reason. I could move to the app and hit the toggle button, but typing would not have the desired results. The app in question being the string translation tool itself (from Qt), this made me throw in the towel and use my other laptop (running Win7) instead.

On the Win7 laptop everything Just Worked (tm) and severely improved my mood.

This is typical of my Linux desktop experiments over the past 20 years, and I sadly see no sign that this is going to change any time soon. This is why I have a much better feeling about ReactOS as it seeks to replicate an experience which I know works, using a well-designed graphical stack and a singular desktop environment with everything standardised.

At this point I mostly regard Linux as a nice way to use the Bash shell and use the GNU tools, though MSYS2 and WSL (sadly only on Windows 10) are close to obsoleting even the Linux VMs I run.

Old-school Windows user here.

Maybe it's just me going senile,but across a few decades of Windows 3.x, NT, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7, I cannot remember Microsoft ever having this level of SNAFUs going on. Sure, there were the occasional embarrassing moments, and we still don't talk about Windows ME, but this level of OS-destroying, file-erasing level of FUBARing?

Having used Windows 95 (SR2), 98 (SE), 2000, XP and 7, I have had my issues with moving to a newer version of Windows (except for 98 to 2k, which was hands-down better), but after a bit of tweaking I was able to settle into the new environment.

That all ended with Windows 8, though. It was too different, too alienating, removing essentially the entire UI that had made Windows 95 into such a success. I was happy to stay on Windows 7.

Then MSFT came up with Windows 10, and all hopes of things going back to normal quickly got dashed as I prodded and poked at the developer previews. This wasn't the Windows that I had gotten to like and wanted to use. Even while using it on my work laptop I did my best to try and settle into this version of Windows like I had done every time over the years, yet without luck.

Sure, there were some things which I liked about it, such as WSL (which is pretty awesome), but as a whole, the UI felt broken, unfinished and glitchy. The newly organised and highly schizophrenic control panels are a disaster. Not having much control over Windows Updates and settings for it changing all the time with updates is horrible. I had keyboard layouts change spontaneously on me, and configuring Windows 10 to use multiple input methods with IME is fundamentally broken (despite having used it in 2k, XP and 7 without any issues).

Then we get issues like this current one, and I wonder whether this is truly the end of me using Windows. I don't see how I could get onto the Windows 10 rolling release bandwagon. Not when it is such a miserable experience. I'm happy on Windows 7 right now, but in a few years I'll have to decide what comes next.

Linux is obviously out. Virtually none of the software I need to use runs on it, and years (since '98) of trying to use desktop Linux have led me to believe that it'll always remain this disorganised, Windows 10-like buggy and glitchy mess. I don't want that either.

Maybe the salvation is open source Windows, in the form of ReactOS. By pitching in the coming years to help the project out, maybe it'll become at least the equivalent of Windows 7 today by the time that the latter's support runs out and continuing to use it becomes impractical.

What the heck happened to MSFT anyway?

NPM not tied in knots over Yarn rival project

Doesn't fix the fundamental issue with NPM

Having done a few years of professional JavaScript development (*twitch*), including NodeJS (*double twitch*), I have come to realise that most people acknowledge and yet accept NPM's overwhelming design failure.

I still fear the npm_modules folder to this day because it would often grow to such enormous sizes (500+ MB sizes were seen in many projects) that one would risk crashing or hanging whatever file browser one was using to take a peek at one of the hundreds of dependencies that get drawn in.

Yet that's not the problem. The problem is that NPM is dumb. Like, really, really dumb. Instead of actually being a dependency manager, it's merely a downloader for JS files. That's it. This results in each node_modules folder being full of sub-sub-sub-sub folders containing the same 120 kB JS snippet 'library' that is present in 90 other folders, of which many sub-dependencies will also draw in that same snippet so that it feels like 90% of the node_modules folder is just duplicated content.

Oh, and having to install many dependencies both globally and local (like 'Gulp'), or else stuff cannot be found. More duplication. More cruft.

After a few years of that Hellscape I'm now happily back with C, C++ and similar projects where I get to use Apt, Pacman and kin to manage dependencies. I feel that one day soon I may perhaps feel like I can smile again.

Just my $0.02 :)

Python joins movement to dump 'offensive' master, slave terms

"Male/female connectors not including an intersex variant?"

As already noted, there are 'hermaphroditic' connectors. Personally I happen to be a hermaphrodite ('true hermaphrodite', a hermaphroditic intersex person). There are some people who insist that 'hermaphrodite' is offensive, and that I should not be using it.

Instead I should be using the wonderful term 'DSD', which used to standard for 'Disorders of Sex Development', but has been euphemistically renamed to 'Differences of Sex Development' because of intersex people being somehow upset with being associated with a medical disorder. Especially since almost all of us are perfectly healthy individuals.

In my experience there is nothing gained by going all SWJ on words like 'hermaphrodite' or 'intersex. Just use them. They're not offensive, nor is their etymology. Just like for 'master/slave', which only came into use around 1900 for machines and the like according to the sources which I could find.

A slave device is not subject to slavery, sold into slavery, won't have its children sold into slavery and stopping using it makes as much sense as insisting that we stop calling a black car 'black', because it might offend someone.

I do feel offended by people referring to 'white people', though. As a ginger person I feel that only people like myself have the right to call ourselves 'white people', courtesy of our translucent skin and super power to turn red within 30 minutes of stepping outside into the sun during the summer.

Now you can tell someone to literally go f--k themselves over the internet: Remote-control mock-cock patent dies

How does this patent make any bleedin' sense?

Essentially this pitiful excuse of a patent is for 'a device that can be connected to via a network, receive data and activate actuators depending on said data'. The reason for this should be irrelevant.

The amount of prior art for such implementations (in less NSFW settings) date back roughly since computer networks exist, conceivably before the invention of the transistor.

Stuff like this is a reminder of why it might actually make sense to ignore the US market for one's products, so as to avoid such ludicrous patents.

Micron-Intel 3D XPoint split: It's not you, it's m... nah, it is totally you

On the bright side...

Realistically speaking, it's not as if one day NAND Flash got released and conquered the world by storm.It's only over the past years that an SSD has become a standard feature of new laptops, and even then at rather pitiful capacities at exorbitant prices.

Of course, it's not as if new technologies and products cannot be fumbled so badly by Marketing that they die on the vine. Considering XPoint's promises and performance so far, I really hope that this split creates the competition and variety of products that XPoint needs to find its course.

One big benefit of XPoint has been that it has given Flash manufacturers a reason to look nervously over their shoulders. That alone makes it a net positive for us consumers :)

You wanna be an alpha... tester of The Register's redesign? Step this way

Re: Setting cookie already takes JavaScript

Thank you, it's a relief to know that I don't have to change my habits to keep using this website :)

As for ads and the like, I have made it an absolute rule years ago already that the adblocker remains enabled, and JS disabled unless I can be absolutely certain that a domain is safe. This on account of JS and ads in general being the primary attack vectors for malware and kin on the 'net, as you may be aware.

Thus I'm afraid that barring text-only and simple image-based ads, my usual assortment of witticisms and smart-ass commentary will have to suffice as my contributions to this website :)

Setting cookie already takes JavaScript

Let me guess, with the new design I will have to enable JavaScript for the The Register domain, a CDN or two, and half a dozen AWS domains or face a completely blank page?

I don't mind redesigns (that much), but the drive towards JS-only websites is rather infuriating.

And no, I haven't tried the new design as setting the cookie is too much trouble :) Screenshots look nice, though.

H.264 video codec stays royalty-free for HTML5 testers

Software patents

It's a good thing this only affects the US and other crazy countries with software patents. Long live the EU, AKA the country of the free ;)

Mozilla should release two versions of their browser, one with AVC support and one without for the US. Somewhat like the inverse of the encryption exportation regulations the US has/had.

Teen discussed suicide plan online 12 hours before webcam death

All too common...

After a cousin of mine committed suicide to the horrible things an uncle of her had done to her, the family of that uncle protected him and pretended he had done nothing wrong (even though she wasn't the first girl he had abused...).

I've been struggling with thoughts of giving up the past years (still am). Having to live with a physical condition which the doctors can't seem to put a label on which fits, yet which makes every day life quite difficult causes a lot of emotional stress and pain. Eventually one begins to see just one way out the situation. When I mentioned this on a number of forums there were indeed people who encouraged me to do it, others said I wouldn't do it, that I was just faking it, and so on. This article is therefore almost a carbon-copy of what I have experienced (minus the suicide of course, so far I haven't succeeded yet, let alone on cam).

Yet it's not just the internet... people will happily walk past someone who is getting beaten up in the middle of the street. Imagine holding a knife to your wrist while in a public place. Will anybody give you any attention, let alone help you? Doubtful.

Worst part is of course when nobody who does want to help seems able to do something. Even if this guy had lived, would he have recovered and lived on to die of a natural cause many years later? It's always tricker than it seems.

Site guesses your sex via age-old web flaw

I'm too much of a nerd...

0% Female, 100% Male.

I should stop browsing tech sites, I guess :(

(hint: I'm female :P )

Final beta of Firefox 3 available now

Nightly Tester Tools

@Alan Parsons

If you install the NIghtly Tester Tools addon, you can make Adblock Plus compatible with Fx 3. It actually works just fine on Fx3, but the version check in the ABP addon just says it won't.

I just installed Fx 3 Beta 5 and will try it out after I restart Fx. Wish me luck!