Posts by Sampler

Ninite to win it: How to rebuild Windows without losing your mind

Great article, been using it for over a decade, probably from reading one of the earlier articles, have told every tech I've come across to use it and no complaints.

RIP, Google Privacy Sandbox

Re: Do we even need cookies?

I've had a few little problems where I've needed to re-enable third-party cookies for a site (such as getting my Telstra discount on Event cinema tickets back when they offered that) but outside such things it's been pretty plain sailing having third party cookies disabled.

Developer scored huge own goal by deleting almost every football fan in Europe

Re: It never gets old

Back when I worked at HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland, now Lloyds) there was a guy in UAC (User Account Control) who went to delete an account and accidentally started deleting every account, (alphabetically by surname).

It's been a few decades but I believe he got a good half way through the alphabet, at least past H for Andy Hornsby, the CEO of the time.

Best bit of the story is though; soon as he realised his error, he didn't tell anyone, just picked up his things and walked out, knowing it was probably the last thing he was doing at the company anyway..

New SSL/TLS certs to each live no longer than 47 days by 2029

Re: Why not...

Why not just do it themselves, why does it have to be a rule for everyone? If Apple want their certs. to expire every five minutes, that's on them, why should I be forced to arse about?

Meta's AI, built on ill-gotten content, can probably build a digital you

Re: Caprica

But surely information taken from social media has, let's politely say, a bias?

People are not their authentic selves online, there's nuance to understand, that just chucking their post history in to an LLM isn't going to understand.

I look forwarded to this expensive experiment flopping as hard as most meta products.. (may be we can post about it on threads..)

Introducing Windows on arm. And by arm, we mean wrist

Re: Windows on Arm has been around since the Surface RT

So you're saying... developers?

Developers..

Developers.

Developers!

DEVELOPERS!!

Microsoft to kill off Defender VPN this month

Re: Well there's your problem

I like to think of myself as fairly tech savvy - I even did a bit of search recently for a vpn solution for an need I had (went with Tailscale, simple set-up across platforms; linux, android and even, indeed, windows, can't fault it, especially for the price of nothing) and even after reading many articles, forum suggestions and searches, I've never heard of Defender VPN...

Tesla's numbers disappoint again ... and the crowd goes wild ... again

Re: Car sales, an entirely unscientific survey

I've said this before, but we're heading towards the end of car ownership.

When they get robo-taxis working well enough that the profits outweigh the lawsuits then the cost benefit of ownership erodes.

$120k for a car becomes hard to swallow when it spends most of its life on a driveway, you can pay a few bucks to robotaxi anywhere you're going (as the driver's the most expensive bit). More and more people making this switch means your local dealership folds and the mechanic as robo-taxi services will have in-house, so cost of maintenance goes up along with purchase price with fewer competitors. As fewer people drive, the cost of insurance soars with less people to spread the risk and more people switch away. Driving instructors can't afford to stay in business so the cost of entry climbs, cutting off the next generation.

Then comes the pivot, when the robo-taxis claim all their accidents are caused by the humans in the other cars and their cars would be better without them (whether true or not, statistics can say what you want), when enough people are in tobo-taxis and few left actually owning a car it will no longer be political suicide to outlaw driving because "won't someone think of the children" (and their pac) and you're toast, whoever owns the biggest fleet of taxis simply uses this position to monopolise or cartel with a few like minded to have the air of accountability and we get America ISP level of service in car form..

This is what Musk is salivating over, every trip you take is money in his pocket, selling your tracking data is the cherry on top..

People have called me a pessimist for saying this in the past, but, we're heading towards it - I've not owned a car in eleven years, as renting out the parking spot in our apartment has yielded more income than I've spent on rentals and taxis each year (partner's an accountant, there's benefits to dating someone who's even more of a nerd than I am. they do the math every year, each year we are over a thousand of dollars up..), if you really look at the cost of car ownership vs the driving you do, you may come to a similar conclusion before the floor falls out of Uber and the eliminate all their "ride partners" for "AI"...

Azure, Microsoft 365 MFA outage locks out users across regions

Re: Don't put your tackle on someone else's chopping block.

I'd love to, but all the ones all the monkeys are trained to use won't sell them to me anymore without a cloud subscription to make things less reliable with fewer updates as they don't need to innovate a new feature to upsell me to the next iteration...

Shackleton's Endurance sets sail for polar peril in Lego

Re: The Joy of Assembling

I recently got an off-brand Johnny 5 with full remote control, it was a lot of fun to build and I loved that film as a kid.

It has just sort of sat on the kitchen table since though, need to find a nephew to hand it over to (and a copy of the film).

OpenAI plans to ring in the New Year with a for-profit push

Re: Don't worry about it dear investors...

Open* AI*...

^{*terms and conditions apply...}

Police arrest suspect in murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO, with grainy pics the only tech involved

I wonder

If he'd disposed of the incriminating evidence, if they would've had enough to hold / prosecute him?

Hey, you sorta look like this grainy video pic wouldn't have gotten far with the type of lawyer one would expect a guy of his background to be able to afford.

Seems like a bit of a dumbass thing to do (especially if the 'ghost gun' is homemade and therefore replaceable) - to have gone to some good lengths in the plotting to commit, but not what to do to stay out after the fact?

M4 MacBook Pro shows Apple is still glued to the idea of unfixable laptops

Not a lot of pros for the device on the whole, but my Surface Pro 9 is thinner and has replaceable storage (under a magsealed cover, so only one screw holding the ssd in needs removing).

This is just so Apple can straight up gouge customers on the different prices of drives (same as MS did with the SP9 - I bought the 256gb model and a 2tb sabrent drive for the price of the 512gb model...).

Not that I'm the target audience for Apples consumer electronic devices disguised as computers, but I'd never buy a device without being able to at least be able to replace the storage (as it fails - ideally the battery and RAM too, but given I bought a Surface, clearly not as staunch on that stance).

I also don't see why everything has to be so thin, phones included, we're long past the point where it was useful to be smaller, these days I'd be happy if they gained a few mm and I could have ports and more battery, but especially something like a laptop, it's not like being more svelte is going to help a 17" device fit in my back pocket...

JPMorgan Chase sues scammers following viral 'infinite money glitch'

Exactly, if you absolutely have to allow cheques to be drawn instantly, it should at least be a capped amount until it clears - some people may be minorly inconvenienced, oh no...

Australian e-tailer digiDirect customers' info allegedly stolen and dumped online

That explains it - started getting spam calls since mid September, and I do shop with them a bit (either they or Georges tend to have the best price in Australia for camera gear and have a physical presence you can go and talk to someone about if it has problems).

Shame the shitty way they've dealt with customers..

SuperHTML is here to rescue you from syntax errors, and it's FOSS

Re: HTML still works.

Because universal search which will push sites you visit regularly to the top of the results?

Or for actual users trying to find information who've never heard of you before?

The billionaire behind Trump's 'unhackable' phone is on a mission to fight Tesla's FSD

Re: What's the point of a secure phone for Trump?

Yeah, sorry, I'm not proud of myself...

...I mean, it won't even be true, to 69 you'd have to do something for someone else and we all know the orange one ain't doing that..

Re: What's the point of a secure phone for Trump?

ivanka69?

Critical hardcoded SolarWinds credential now exploited in the wild

Re: Hardcoded credentials? Really?

Ubuntu: Turns out distro is actually just Windows Vista with a few custom themes..

And I guess that explains why there's no comment section on xkcd...

Uncle Sam accuses Aussie AI startup boss of financial fakery that duped investors

Re: For the record

But would international readers know what a VB is? Or a Coopers for that matter..

CrowdStrike apologizes to Congress for 'perfect storm' that caused global IT outage

"Perfect Storm"

Of us making boneheaded coding practices combined with little in the way of update testing? That sort of perfect storm that absolutely no one could see coming?

Musk dreams of launching five Starships to Mars in two years

Re: I'm pleased to hear this!

Given the ships current record, it'll be a guarantee - though one feels somewhat the opposite of a titanic sub..

Intel frees its Foundry biz – and that's just one of many major shake-ups today

Accounting for changes

Is the fab side of the business massively unprofitable simply because of how Intel reports profits? If it's making it's own chips and counting the profits in the chips column not the fabs, then the fab's going to appear costly, once gone solo the chips team's going to look worse as they're now paying for them...

Elon Musk's assassination 'joke' bombs, internet calls for his deportation

Re: To Mars!

Eww, I was eating those peas...

Intel Arrow Lake to be made elsewhere as 20A process node canned

Re: had been powered up and operating systems booted

For one chip in a thousand, sure...

If every PC is going to be an AI PC, they better be as good at all the things trad PCs can do

Re: But what...

To answer this I recently watched a Hardware Canucks video youtube lobbed at me and the first half was just him telling me how bad the Lenovo laptop was from a regular laptop perspective (shitty keys, erratic touchpad, paint peeling after only a few weeks etc..), testing out the "all day battery" that got him to about two in the arvo and then he started to cover the AI bits I was interested in, for all of thirty seconds as it covered four things, Recall which he can't review because it's been, well, recalled, an image generator which was just downright shitty compared to chatgpt and let's face it, they're downright shitty to start, the output looked like an n64 graphic.. then there was something about the webcam that he kinda glossed over and I've already forgotten the fourth thing since I watched this twelve hours ago...

I turned off at that point, as it appear "What makes an AI pc" is the marketing they put on the box to justify a few extra hundred bucks on a mediocre machine...

Tired of airport security queues? SQL inject yourself into the cockpit, claim researchers

Re: "TSA has procedures in place..."

No, they have procedures in place.

The adequacy of such procedures was not part of the question...

HMD Skyline: The repairable Android that lets you go dumb in a smart way

Re: Xiaomi, to pick one example, could learn a lot ...

I have a xiaomi, but it's a flagship model, and get no ads or other bothers - I think it's because I actually paid for the device, rather than one of the lower tier phones that people seem to have trouble with, where the advertising offsets the purchase price..

Smartphones sales bounce, Xiaomi biting at Apple's heels

Re: Riddled with ads

Small irony, my >2year old 12s Ultra had no problems like that, but both my Note 8 and Note 20 Ultra's Samsungs did around the two year mark - along with failing USB ports and battery life that dived off a cliff even though I take a cautious approach to charging (ie, at work, not leaving them on constantly, letting them run down, but not all the way etc..).

Re: Riddled with ads

Don't know why you felt it necessary to post this multiple times, but it's straight up not true, been using them for a few years moving from several years of Samsung (and HTC before that) and they're great handsets, better than Samsung in being able to disable the included cruft (and their base apps aren't bad, I use the Notes one heavily).

Re: Xiaomi FTW

I have had 12s Ultra and now on a 14 Ultra - haven't seen a single built in ad and the non-removable apps are about on par with what I had with Samsung (Note 4. 8 & 20 Ultra), in fact the 14 is pretty good in being able to remove most apps I'd say it was better than Samsung in my experience.

Plus, neither device as developed a USBc port problem like both the Note 8 and 20 Ultra have.

The 12s was a China rom and that came with limitations - not having goolge by default meant no android auto annoyingly (though I'm not sure why it cant be added and has to come bundled, but that's more a question for google), also had trouble setting up a google watch - though google wallet worked just fine, occasionally I'd have to dip in to some non-translated menus and guess my way through the Chinese (though a second device to google lens it would probably have made it easier, I feel I've spent enough time with tech to guess what button does what). But in terms of issues, that was it in two years of daily usage, thing still looks virtually brand new even though I took the case off for the last eight months of use in the hopes of damaging it so I had an excuse to get the latest shiny shiny without the missus complaining, I just bought it anyways as it had no sign of dying on me.

The 14 is a global rom and I've absolutely no problems with it over the past three months, would recommend most to stick to global roms to avoid the above niggles if they'd be problems for you (though, appreciate not everyone needs android auto - or, like I did, can just use an old phone for the car).

Solid handsets, plain sailing on the OS side (when using a global rom) and an absolutely amazing camera (for a phone) so what's not to like? I'll be sticking with Xiaomi when it comes to the next upgrade I feel too.

Meta warns bit flips, other hardware faults cause AI errors

Just do everything four times

and take the average, that should cover you.

I mean, you'll need four times the compute, but it's a small price to pay for accuracy.

This post is brought to you by nVidia as we rub our shares together...

Australian billionaire wins right to sue Facebook in the US over scam ads

Re: "won the right to sue Meta"

Hey, that's not true, they'll sell out to big coal too, in fact, anyone who wants to dig up our natural resources and off shore the profits - hell, not even stop there, they can log trees we've previously flagged as protected or pollute waterways...everything must go in the land down under..

McDonald's not lovin' its AI drive-thru experiment with IBM

McDonalds will be happy come the day there isn't a single employee in a branch, machines taking orders, machines making orders, mopping the floors and emptying the bins..

That is their goal, extracting every cent from the process for the c-suite and not a penny more than necessary for anyone else, do they care if the product drops in quality, the past decades would say that's a resounding no, do they care the level of service diminishes? Again, past experience tellls us what to expect. They believe they can market it to us enough that will overlook the worsening deal, product quality is dropping to the point it's barely describable as food and prices are going up three fold, millions are still being served.

(so, given we positively reinforce their shitty behaviour, why would they change their self interested destructive ways?)

Thanks for coming to help. No, we can't say why we called – it's classified

The entry reminds me of back when I used to push buttons on server that weren't responding remotely to infrastructure team an hours drive away.

It was for a fairly large financial institution, the separated building you needed to show credentials to get through the fence between our building and there's, once in to reception you needed c-suite sign-off to get through the full height turnstile (once you've surrendered any mobile or other electronic device on your person).

Once in you're monitored by staff at all times via CCTV, my work order was for Hall B which I naturally assumed would've been the one on the right, sadly not, as I turned right and headed to the door (that would not have opened) I got a bellow over the intercom "Hall B is to the left".

Guess it's reassuring that physical security is fairly high on the bank's priorities.

Oh Sonos! App update borks users' favorite features and worse

Mine did that, then came back, went again, came back - so far we've been good, hopefully nothing auto-updates and borks it again (as I'm not updating anything whilst shit still works).

Sounds like another day for Sonos, I love the hardware I have, but the software is a bag of dicks and has only gotten worse.

The most egregious part is how the older speakers upstairs keep losing the wifi (a mesh repeater is in the same room some two meters away) and they are an absolute paint to get back on, switch off, on, try, nothing, off, on, try, nothing, off, on, try, maybe, oops, no, off, on, try....

Scarlett Johansson voices anger at OpenAI's unauthorized soundalike

Re: It sounds...

Sam claims to love the movie, did, did he not see it all the way through?

Dell customer order database of '49M records' stolen, now up for sale on dark web

ooh, that's gotta be embarrassing

Imagine your family and friends finding out you bought a Dell... I'd rather be in the Ashley Madison list...

Tiny11 Builder trims Windows 11 fat with PowerShell script

Given Microsofts own Windows N comes with problems

I'm not sure I'd enjoy using something that's stripped back even further.

Recently rebuilding my machine and finding out about Windows N versions it seemed like a nobrainer to go for the option without the bloat and cruft I'd never use.

Only somewhere, inside all that, is parts vital for the webcam to work with the new teams (old teams being fine, but not an option to run as it installs and switches to the new teams the moment you look away - I'm sure there's ways around that but I'm not in charge of the group policy in the office, surprised I got away with rolling my own install tbh). There are some packs you can install that bring it back, but then you're kinda making the original point moot.

So, appealing stripping even more crap out, but, what will stop working because of it (and what do I have no choice in using, like the aforementioned teams). Windows is a leaky ship to start with, let's not rock the boat...

Konica Minolta and Fujifilm ponder JV to cut costs of printer businesses

I thought that was tongue in cheek, it's been twenty years since I was a HP Certified Printer engineer and they're still exactly the same inside, we just got the "latest and greatest" from a client we're doing some work with and it doesn't do anything we weren't doing twenty years ago in exactly the same manner.

I mean mechanically, "cloud printing" from your phone app I count as natural progression..

Guess it does "Bob Marley" less often than back then, but, that's probably biased given I'd be only looking at a printer if it had a problem...

Microsoft lifts years-old compatibility hold for Windows 11

Re: Microsoft lifts years-old compatibility hold for Windows 11

Nah, you just download the ISO from MS and choose in the menu to forego CPU and TPM requirements and it'll happily install away...

Re: Those drivers have been available for ~2 years

I believe they call them users...

Microsoft unbundling Teams is to appease regulators, not give customers a better deal

Re: speaking as a Linux guy

My favourite part of 'new coke' is how it defaults to using edge as the browser to open links with - not your specified system default, oh no, why in heavens would you want to use the browser you've indicated and updated a setting to say you want, no, no, we've added another setting hidden deep down in the teams menu for you to have to find and update which browser teams will use... can't think why this is default behaviour - they should be slapped with whatever antitrust fines were on the cards prior to them making the browser option available.

It's quite funny as Microsoft popped up with one of those little surveys right in the middle of the red midst teams had evoked so I wrote a fairly detailed response, including the lines "we only use teams as it's built in, given the option, I don't think anyone would voluntarily pay for it" - couple of weeks later and here we are, let's see if I'm right.

Sadly we're not in the EEA (almost as far as you can get away from it), but I live in hope the decision comes over here and we can move to slack, which is slightly less aggravating for the features we utilise.

World's first Neuralink patient enjoying online chess, long Civ 6 sessions

Re: Still not doing anything you can't do with a headset?

But I have, it was non-trivial to use granted, but, I tried it for like ten minutes in a pub (weird bar that does neuroscience as entertainment, but I wasn't complaining, it was also dog friendly).

I found it certainly easier than you mentioned, and it was 2017, sure there's been a couple of updates since then.

With experience and training I'm sure it'd become easier too, if you were reduced to the quadriplegic state of our guineapig here, there may be additional benefits as with the neurolink, he mentions imagining moving his arm and the cursor moves, which he could still do with the same helmet I used (with the added bonus it can be plugged in, so he doesn't have to curtail his gaming session) given if I go to move my arm I'll be waving it around. (that reads harsh, I don't mean it be, just, you get the point).

Still not doing anything you can't do with a headset?

Yeah, let me know when it's able to deliver on something that you otherwise wouldn't need invasive brain surgery for..

Hardware-level Apple Silicon vulnerability can leak cryptographic keys

Re: I'm not sure it matters.

Yeah, that's just what you want us to think, isn't it?

Microsoft drags Windows Subsystem for Android into the trash

Re: Just another reason

Wouldn't that guarantee the death of any innovation if everyone followed such a fashion - product launches, no one bothers as they're waiting to see if it's a success, it's therefore not a success and dropped?

Electronic Arts frags hundreds of workers 'to grow fandom'

Re: Carry on regardless

Thing is, are they? I haven't heard anyone praise large open-world games, quite the opposite with all the gripes of tact on grind, online communities are toxic af because people and I feel Suicide Squad did a great number on underscoring all the faults with a live service.

If I were a shareholder I'd be pushing for a vote of no confidence in the board as he's clearly detached from reality..