Posts by Sampler 1062 publicly visible posts • joined 16 May 2007
Because you don't just wang $500m at a University already sitting on a ton of cash.
Sure nothing will come of it though, as consequences are for the poor.
When businesses are caught doing shifty shit like this, the entire C-suite should do time, that should motivate them to be a tad more motivated to not break the law.
I recently replaced the thumbsticks on my nintendo joy-cons, I'm a bit lazy, I didn't want to, but no where sold the grey joy-cons that came with my launchday console, a bit annoying, happy to pay the $110 AUD as lefty had developed a bit of drift over the years but all I could buy is the gaudy coloured versions (not even the plain whites that comes with the oled unit).
In my search for my colour preference though I came across the hall-effect replacements for a fair crack under half the price I was going to pay, figured what the hell, it's my only option to keep the colour I preferred.
Replacement thumbsticks came with all the parts needed, spudgers, drivers etc.. to get in to the units and they were fairly obvious on how to disassemble and rebuild that I didn't watch the youtube video link in the box.
Now I have fixed joy-cons, I spent a lot less than if Nintendo were still making the colour option and they're technically better than the originals (hall-effect sensors have a much smaller deadzone than traditional thumbstick designs) and it didn't even take me that long, like five minutes with each controller.
So, good guys Nintendo, a hardwearing product (six years of use is pretty good mileage for the twiddling these sticks have done) that was simple enough for this idiot to repair, avoiding stuff going to landfill and doing all this at potentially lost profits. If only more companies were like you.
You're lucky, I have third party cookies disabled too and come across a situation about once a month where it fails and they need to be enabled for that site (or I go elsewhere, which happens a good third of the time).
So I feel it'll be an interesting time coming up, whilst the laggards finally do what they should've done years ago.
I actually paid the subscription service.
Was a long time user of Google Music, I loved being able to upload my music to the service and be able to stream it at work or my phone on the go. Eventually I ponied up for the premium service as it was worth $9.99/m (AUD) for access to pretty much every record that wasn't in my collection and hey, free YouTube Red thrown in (when it started) so good bye YouTube ads, nice.
Then came the push to YouTube Music, an absolutely crippling of the UI to make it more like Spotify or whatever (which is a tech trend I still don't follow, you have program X, you're doing ok, program Y comes out, it's popular, so you redesign your service to be a half Frankenstein of it, no one will switch to you because it offers nothing more than what they already have, existing customers leave because it's no longer what they wanted). Eventually my uploaded music disappeared altogether and I'm left with the poor Spotify impersonator.
Now they want to up the fee to $16.99 a month (AUD) from the $9.99 I was paying, yeah, nah, feck off.. I was already disgruntled, now you've pushed me out. Just like Netflix when they stopped me sharing my account with my friends, hey, I wasn't really watching it, but happy to pay it so my mates can, now they can't, well, that's a subscription you've lost (and the top tier 4k one at that).
I went off and found Plexamp, ironically, it gives me access to all my media on the go, at work or stream to my phone, and, with a $10.99/m (AUD) subsidised Tidal subscription, I have access to all the albums not in my collection - so now I'm back to what I wanted, paying about the same, and Google can go fuck themselves, it's not like they're sitting on billions and actually needed to up the price in the first place.
Sounds like what sonos do with their speakers - or are they omitted from reach of the patent because they limited it to tv's and not just devices?
Given Sonos were founded in 2002, I think they probably pre-date this.
Also, I guess a little irony of Google running in to a similar problem they did with Sonos..
I might be old, but even a bit over a decade ago I'd've thought it fell in to the "obvious" category.
I mean, I didn't need it as I already had an athlon pc hooked up to the crt with an s-video cable all the way back in 2001 so any "phone" content was already easily accessible on the tv, but the idea of screen mirroring should've failed the patent test on the obvious clause a decade later...
I'm fairly certain Logitech make most of the microsoft branded gear, so I'm going to say like I do every time this topic comes up, re-release the natural desktop 7000 kit - for my RSI there's no mouse come close to the one bundled with that, I'm stuck using a trackball after my last two died (one due to the duracells leaking which was quite galling as I'd bought "premium" batteries in hopes they wouldn't) and my two remaining 4000 keyboards and going (the home one's not too shabby, but the office one has no key markings on half and the leatherette padding is more duct tape than leatherette).
You can see the insane prices the second hand versions of these are going for funded by those of us who have found nothing that comes close to prevent the agony of "non-specific lower limb pain" (which is a stupid name to swtich RSI to, given, let me tell you dear reader, it's pretty fucking specific where the lower limb pain is..) - logitech would make bank releasing these again, I'd straight up happily buy a stack to horde for the rest of my days..
(especially if they had more modern conveniences like be rechargeable than having batteries, but keep the form factor..)
Agreed, I think by v9 it's a bit odd to spend half the review complaining about the form factor.
Can't think I've had cause to use my on my actual lap but have found it fairly simple to use in tablet mode when sat on the couch and not enjoying the missus taste in tv and not too heavy (but then I use 600mm lenses on a full frame camera for recreation, so my basis for heavy might differ to some). I haven't really noticed the heat issues either, but then I'm not really taxing it when carrying around, mostly a bit of chrome or office.
Fair point in the review on connectors, I guess I can kinda see the point from MSs pov of keeping the surface connector for the surface hubs they sell (and market higher than the thunderbolt or usb-c hubs you could now choose instead) but from a user pov, it's not really needed and I do like the options having two thunderbolt 4's has but would've appreciated more connections (but that seems de rigueur on most laptops these days, to do away with ports) - personally a full size SD Card slot would be great (as a CFExpress A is unlikely as most sensible companies (ie, not Sony) use B - or even a framework style slot to fit a port of your choice, problematic as the form factor would make that, but seeing as I'm already in to ideal dreams that'll never eventuate, why not dream big). Or even having one of those USB-C / Thunderbolt4 connections being on the other side for choice of set-ups.
As a small, light, portable windows machine, I find it great. I have an actual desktop for real work, and this does great when out and about.
Yes it's expensive, some of that can be mitigated by not paying their ridiculous tax on SSD's, for less than the price delta between the 256gb and 512gb models I got a 2tb ssd to replace the 256gb one so now have a model with twice the capacity of the top of the line they ship for less than the middle option, but, end of the day, it is good at what it aims to be. Fucked if you need to fix anything though, as only the SSD has an access hatch and presumably also is the only thing to not come soldered to the motherboard underneath a glued on case.
I have a 48" OLED monitor, if TV's become so annoying, there's alternatives.
That said, hoping the laser 4k 100" projector in the living room will have a fair bit more life in it yet so be a while before I'm shopping a new TV.
I hope no one buys this and it shuts down not only LG but anyone else who thinks riding their coat trails is a good idea.
I have an actual NUC at home, but I received it from work (or was that relieved it..) but quite like it, the tiny form factor made it a great little HTPC back in the day before 4k chromecasts were a thing, but it's still sat there, hooked up to a UHD blu-ray drive (that's ironically got a larger footprint) for the times it's needed.
Was even contemplating getting one of the newer models so I can use the UHD part of the blu-ray drive (as the rather old i5 in it doesn't support the security instruction set needed, which is a bone-headed way of preventing people from legitimately purchasing your products that can already be ripped and shared on the internet anyways..).
Not to mention the price of the components or the tools Apple says you have to use making it practically pointless to actually do it yourself (once you've bought the part, rented the tools and taken the time to see if it'll fix it, you might aswell have bought the new landfill device).
I accidentally washed (and driered) the "Galaxy Buds Live" that came with my last note as a pre-order bonus, ear buds survived just fine, but the case no longer holds a charge (will charge the buds through it, but its own battery has had it).
Ended up buying a replacement as the weird little things fit my ears perfectly, never binged one out and the sound is a reasonable approximation to what it should be given the size and comfort - but it's a little ironic the free bundled earphones have (technically) outlasted the phone they came with as I now use them with my Xioami 12S Ultra.
These A40's do look interesting though, may be I'll try them if these ever end up in the spin cycle again...
If your official app is what you want people to use, but they're willing to pay for third party apps (whom you claim are profitable), then make your app as good as the others, don't lock them out - you've got direct access to everything unlike they who had to reverse engineer from the API, you're the step ahead.
Your userbase is your content, it's what drives the forever growth you'll need to achieve for your "investors" (ie, masters) going forward, the internet's a fickle bunch and they'll soon go elsewhere as you find your technology isn't all that, half of what Reddit does could be replicated in phpBB from the early two thousands..
Come now Simon, it's not just the deadly creatures, but the deadly fauna too (gympie gympie I'm looking at you), the deadly sky and then when you want to cool off the deadly water (rips) and its contents (sharks, jellyfish, stonefish, rays etc..).
They should advertise it to techies as "Want to level up? Come play on hard mode.."..
I came across IP Webcam during lockdown, our weekly board game group couldn't meet in person, but, with enough cameras hooked up to OBS, I could still run a game remotely.
All the old phones and tablets came out the drawer and I could tell the wife "told you so" that there indeed was a use for a 2013 Sony Xperia that needs to be permanently wired in to a power source...
Figure this could equally be useful, given OBS's virtual webcam output, you could simply switch from your webcam to the ipcam running on your phone and point it at the necessary body part. No cables required, we are, quite, living in the future..
Get well soon Simon!
I bought a Surface Pro 9 recently as I wanted something portable and don't really need the umf (though, I did buy the i7 version) but, for less than the price difference between the 256gb and 512gb models I could buy a 1tb ssd (even in the oddly small format it has), so I did, got the i7, 16gb, 256gb and pulled the drive and stuffed in the 1tb (especially as the v9 finally has a handy hatch to access the ssd).
What would be nice now is if I could find a small enclosure to put the old 256gb in and have a spare USB drive for my keyring, but the only one I tracked down (aliexpress) doesn't seem to fit the keying of the drive..
An annoyance of the Surface, related to a mention in the article about the macbooks ethernet on power adaptor, is there's a USB socket on the powerbrick for the Surface, but, it's power only and doesn't pass through to the unit (presumably so they can sell you their vastly overpriced docks instead), would be quite nice to have a couple of usb's and an ethernet on the powerbrick with passthrough, for those that don't need a full dock for screens and such, but keyboard and mouse on their home desk, would be ideal for my partner for instance. Even my chromecast has a functional ethernet port on its powerbrick, if they can do it on a hundred dollar (aud) dongle than a few grand laptop shouldn't really have an excuse.
You may, but, as sites that've dropped personalisation have found, click-throughs go up without it.
Because, shockingly, when you've bought a toilet, you're unlikely to want to buy another for a while, but if all your ads a naval gazing then they're not going to show you something you may be genuinely interested in..
This "echo chamber" of personalisation web giants seem to push for are terrible for business, and for people, I'm sure if many americans weren't in closed groups being reinforced with the same idiocy every day and could see outside their bubble the country would be in a bit of a better place..
Plus you could ensure needles aren't shared and offer rehabilitation services to those that need it in your government sanctioned, free drug clinics, you know, like they do in the Norway..
All whilst having specialists on hand for when any one OD's and they can sort them out.
Definitely feels like it's an issue for getting the higher end chip in it, I have a five series i5 (iirc, it's at home under the telly so can't check right now) and it's quite as. Originally got it for work to drive a large 4k display and when the company was bought out it found its way under my tv where it's happily sat for the years since, the logitech keyboard with a built in touchpad makes it a perfect little htpc as it's whisper quite and smaller (in footprint) than the USB blu-ray drive plugged in to it.
Have contemplated upgrading it, one issue with it being a five series (or however old it is) is it lacks the UHD blu-ray security on the chip, so a newer model would let me watch the two discs I have, but given how much chromecasts have moved on, the need of a htpc is starting to decline too, especially as mobile phones have improved enough to browse the web without having to break out a desktop means I don't need el'reg projected at a hundred inch..
When I was complaining about my frustrations with sharepoint, someone I was boring said to view it as a minimal viable product, microsoft pinches it out and bundles so businesses will use the one they're "already paying for" rather than getting something better. It only being good enough to get in the door as microsoft has no real care for it, just care about you not going elsewhere.
It's honestly helped my mental health a lot to think about it that way, even if my day to day is still a frustrating hell..
I'm typing this on my third and final. The left ctrl and shift keys are worn anonymous, c,s, o, l & p (strangly enough) and quickly following them. The faux leather on the bottom left is now black duct tape, there's enough beard droppings for a small mammal to make a nest below the keys and, and I can't find anything to replace it.
I've bought several, some a substantial outlay (I'm looking at you Lenovo Go, your cork trimmings may feel comfortable and look the part, but your layout and key travel are left wanting) - but nothing has come close to my aging, creaking Natural 4k. If only Logitech (as I'm fairly certain they actually make most of Microsofts equipment in this space, especially as they don't even bother to rename the software supporting app for it) would rerelease it, they could charge an arm and a leg, they'd still make bank from those of us who've seen such riches and cannot live with the literal pain inducing competition.
In any case, if you're a long time fan of Microsoft's ergonomic keyboards, you may want to stock up while supplies last.
I think this is just standard for any microsoft product, they'll all come to an end, I'm just sad I've burned through my stock. The mouse that came with the wireless natural 4k desktop combo (7000 maybe?) was also a sad loss when my third one gave up the ghost, I'm reduced to an mx1000 trackball now and an actual mouse for occasional gaming (occasional because it's too painful to do anything more).
Way back when I worked at HBOS, well, ComputerCentre, subcontracted, as is the nature, they had these awful Dell C610's which had an amazing design flaw.
The "little blue dot" human interface device, or, to give it's technical term with a completely straight face, nipple, on the keyboard had it's ribbon cable run over the primary ram slot before joining the motherboard. This ensured that after enough hard work, with the ram getting hot, then cool, then hot, then cool, enough times that the mouse would take itself on a jolly little wander around your screen; somewhat perturbing to the bean counters the devices were issued to.
Official fix from Dell was, you'll be surprised to hear, a brand new keyboard at a hundred and fifty pounds (plus vat) I thank you. The unofficial CC fix was to ask the user if they have ever in their life used, or had the inclination to use, the little blue dot on the keyboard to move the mouse? At which point they'd say no and four screws and a pair of snips later the cable was removed and the mouse was back to being compliant and well behaved.
We called these "nipple-ectomies" and I don't know why, but when explaining this to a user one day the words came out of my mouth "well, in solidarity, I'm going to have to take one of yours too", he just sat there, sort of stunned silence fell over what had previously been an upbeat and banter filled conversation. I never did repeat that jape on any further call outs.
One joke that did land though, maybe not with the user, was those lucky enough to have some aging Compaq desktops (well after Comapq had been resigned to the bin of HP purchases and guttings) were treat to what could only be surmised as attempts to summon a lesser demon. A fault with an IE6 update caused the audio driver to corrupt and then whenever IE was opened the machine started speaking in tongues, bidding it's ode to whichever nameless entity it was trying to resurrect.
The fix was straight forward enough, swap out the corrupted file for a known good, this could even be done over network and not require me to attend, however, as I was second line support and our contract stipulated I had to attend, I got a good walk around the office after technically closing twenty of these calls (before the keen eyed are like, why not the call centre? They were in-house, so we wouldn't get paid if they closed the call, and so far they hadn't worked out the simple fix).
Half way through my stack of call sheets I get to a floor and find an absolute a-hole berating a poor young lady over nothing (least nothing I could make out), poor love was physically cringing, it's a workplace, no matter what you've done, it can't call for that and I just knew, of course, the belligerent a-hole would be who I'm seeing, as it always is. Before I could intrude on the screaming fit he clocked me with a "ah, you're finally here, fix this shit" pointing to his pc (call log twenty minutes ago, btw), with out a word I walk over to his machine and popped my standard issue toolkit out my pocket and unzipped it.
Well, I say standard issue, there was one little swap I'd done, you see down the spine of the faux-leather bound tool kit was a plastic tube that I am, to this day, some two decades later, still to ascertain it's exact use, unless I'd nodded off in the induction where they mentioned we have to take urine samples as well as fix pcs. So, this useless tube had long since gone, and, as one of the senior engineers was a bit of a whovian, replaced with a childs toy sonic screwdriver, it even lit up and made the sounds.
Plucked from the spine of the toolkit, a flick of the wrist extends the sonic screwdriver and I run it up and down the side of the PC, giving it a little stare as a flourish (though I'm still confused as to why he always stares at something with no evident readout..) and let the user know "that should've done it, you can use your machine again". I'm fortunate looks can't actually kill, but it's fairly possible I may have been sucked in to one of the nostrils that flared so much if I was a step closer. Taking the silence as intended, I reassured him it was resolved, grabbed the mouse, opened IE and, nothing, not a bleep.
His face, forever seared in my mind, as I think I fundamentally broke something, deep inside. The rational part of his brain knowing full well my childs toy did nothing to fix his computer. Yet, evident to his eyes (well, ears) it was fixed with neary any other interaction. "Any other problems, just give us a call" I smile, turn, wink at his colleague and make my exit.
As it turns out, unbeknownst to I, the senior engineer was on the floor at the time, he corners me in the lift. "Never, ever do that again" he breaks "funny as hell, but never do that again, alright" with the widest grin. That sonic screwdriver's still in my toolkit (though, the one in the house, I don't think I'd be still living if I was on break-fix for two decades, the lure of cat5 cables and suspended sealing supports would've been just too appealing an escape from user queries...).
I figured this was down to the training data, I saw, for instance, in php it would recommend using "old fashioned" ways of interacting with SQL, instead of newer pdo with filtered parameters, the former open to sql injection attacks.
If you feed it's own code back to itself it'll gleefully tell you how insecure it is, but the original recommendation is probably due to the weight of information on the internet on how to do it the "old" way as it's been around longer (and a lot of code guide junk websites regurgitate this out of date information, so you couldn't even use article date as a filter) vs the smaller dataset of how it should be done, so, any AI worth it's salt is going to look at the greater volume as a sign of it being "more correct" information and spew that first.
So long as you understand what you're trying to do and have this assist, it's fine, if you don't know what you're doing, this is as dangerous as copy/pasting from stackoverflow..
At least you can turn it off, I rarely need prtscn default as I run multi-monitor setups most places, but alt+prtscn for a particular window is a massive timesaver and the majority of my needs, windows+shift+s for snipping tool when I don't need the whole window (or something overlapping) is somewhere in between (but closer to the times I need prtscn).
So, as long as we can have things how we like them, like ExplorerPatcher turns windows 11 into something more useful, then I'll be happy. I'm old, just let me have my things where I'm used to them.
That actually happened to me, I've mentioned this before so won't repeat here:
https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2023/03/13/who_me/#c_4635005
Tried to get in to everything at my current place, asking what was in the server rack, did we have a map, what was each bit's function but told to not focus on that as it's not a priority, here's other stuff to do, then a hard drive failed, data was lost, suddenly became a priority...if only someone had brought up "hey, what's the backup plan" and been told to not worry about it...mind you, least they didn't make me redundant, still busy with "other things" though to be allowed to get my teeth in to infrastructure that is now very much covered, honest...
I came in to a company who had no real understanding of there IT, I queried a server we were getting invoiced for (and why the invoices were for $0) and got told it's not a priority.
Eighteen months later I brought it up again when another invoice came across my desk, turning out the $0 is because another member had been paying it, some $80k a year, a sizeable chunk of my wage at the time, and this was an account cleared invoice (weird, but ok), so I brought it up again, how come we're paying so much for a server I had no idea about and what was on it?
Got access, found out it was a ton of personal identifiable information just publicly available to anyone who scanned it, secured it down, cleared it out and as it turned out to be for a service we'd dropped three years ago retired the service contract.
So I saved the company a fair chunk of money a year, prevented a possible data breach and untold cost that would ensue, my reward? Made redundant, turns out they don't need any IT type people...
I don't get it though, why share two to a desk, not just hot desk the lot, pretty much everyone's portable these days and if you're not in the office all that much you don't need a dedicated space, just book a desk the day/week/month before you know you have to be in for whatever reason, works for my partner where she goes in maybe once a week.
Then instead of halving the numbers of desks, you can go to a third, quarter, etc..
My job has about 10% of coding / scripting work, so, occasionally I have to try and remember how to do x in php or y in javascript and then thrown the occasional "can we do this in Excel".
Personal proclivities that if you're using Excel you're doing it wrong aside, the constraints of my role mean I have to try and keep a broad range of languages and what not in my head.
Over the years I've trained universal search so it usually serves me a relevant Stack Overflow page when I'm trying to dig out something on the fringe of my mind, the tip of my tongue I just can't quite put a finger on.
Chat GPT changes all this, I can through in a fairly natural sentence (rather than having to phrase to game the search engine) and it generally gives me the code example I need first time, couple of times it needs refining, sometimes it goes awry, but having some knowledge (I'm fair from an expert, in anything really) means I can spot this, but the code it chucks out is easily explained enough that I can refactor it to my needs.
So, as a big ol' search engine, it's quicker and easier to use then google, where I'm like, ah, not that, where's the result from a few months back that was exactly what I needed, maybe if I change this word etc.., it just sorta works it out, I like it, I don't think it's what it's being marketed as, but I don't think it's the fall of civilisation either, just another handy tool to make my job that bit easier (without threatening it).
Well, it's not like the rich can rob the poor any more, they're strung out for everything already, time to make the middle-class poor because the avarice of those who already have more than they could ever need, or their future generations, inexplicably can't stop themselves from taking even more..
Researchers using "A.I." as a big search engine, I'm shocked, shocked, well, not that shocked, given that's all ChatGPT is, a search engine.
Yes, it can parse natural language queries, and it displays the results in a conversational tone, but, all it is doing is filtering through it's giant dataset to find best matches to the input query.
Ie, artificial, yes, but not "intelligent" in at least how I define the word..
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