Posts by NoneSuch 3114 publicly visible posts • joined 25 May 2010
"Or, more commonly, bolted through the motherboard...."
As I recall (it was a while ago) the first introduction of the four holes was Socket 423 Pentium 4 that Intel introduced around 2000. It was just after the Y2K panic and didn't get wide release. The first widespread distribution was socket 478 / P4 the next year.
Before then the clip was king.
What annoys me the most is seeing news reports or government statements stating "shadow fleet" vessels are in UK waters with full loads of Russian oil and nothing is done. We grabbed the oligarch yachts, why are these ships allowed to carry oil out and supposably chips back in? Not to mention the repeated anchor dragging killing undersea cables.
These "Not-really-Russian" ships are carrying embargoed oil and our politicians, knowing this, do nothing. Isn't that why we're paying for Gibraltar?
The Royal Navy just follows these ships today. How about some SBS ship boarding exercises to do surprise customs and ship inspections. Oh, not enough life jackets? Well, that's one load of oil seized and a new artificial reef to attract SCUBA tourists. Next...
Wagging your finger at them as they go by isn't proving very effective to date. Enough diplomacy. Time for a kick in the balls to get their attention.
"Note that software patents is mostly a US thing, so meh."
Understand that U.S. law can reach well beyond its borders. In some circumstances, a U.S. court can enter a judgment against you even if you have never set foot in the United States or held any business interests there.
Nor has the U.S. government shown much respect for judicial independence lately. Just ask the ICC judges it sanctioned for authorizing arrest warrants for Netanyahu over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And I, for one, welcome our new Great Pumpkin overlord—may his executive orders be limitless, his immunity absolute, and his pumpkin patch forever above the law.
I still have Win10 at home. It works just fine. I use it for games that refuse to run on Linux. Everything else is already converted over and Linux is now my daily driver.
MS Promised me Win 10 would be my last OS and I'm holding them to that.
Linux gaming has come a long way, to the point where the vast majority of single-player and indie titles either run natively or work flawlessly through Proton, but a few important hurdles still remain. The biggest is kernel-level anti-cheat and DRM, where some publishers still refuse to enable Linux support even though technologies like Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye can support it. Beyond that, there are occasional launchers that behave badly, a handful of games that rely on undocumented Windows APIs, and the inevitable day-one patches that briefly break compatibility until Proton catches up. Hardware support is now excellent for modern AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, controller support is mature, and Vulkan has eliminated many of the graphics issues that once plagued Linux gaming. At this point, Linux doesn't need a technical miracle to become a first-class gaming platform—it mostly needs publisher cooperation, especially on anti-cheat, and developers to treat Linux and Proton as supported targets rather than afterthoughts.
Games are the last anchor holding the user to Windows and MS knows it.
"In other words, mankind has known "how to do this" for getting on *seventy years*."
In disposable rockets, using massive amounts of fuel with massive teams of genius boffins driving each stride forward with slide rules. NASA never wanted to make money doing it. Modern corporations do (the more, the better) so reusable with fast turnarounds and low cost labour are the new metrics.
Safety is a loss leader in their eyes. Manned crews will have to die before things change for the better. Apollo 1 is the horrible example of how cost cutting impacts on the crew before valid changes embracing safety come into effect.
"So having a reputation for taking no shit from vendors is worth the pain of the trial, unless you're being offered truly stupid amounts of cash."
If they are offering stupid amounts of cash, then it may be worth saying no and going to trial for the full amount. However, lawyers, being the stout and upstanding citizens they are, will consider taking a massive payday today or maybe a bigger payday later and will take the easy road every time for purely personal gain.
The US DOJ does that all the time. 'Sign this, admitting guilt and a 3 year sentence or we go to trail and you risk taking a 30+ year sentence in maximum security.' The fact they are completely innocent and all evidence is flawed beyond words is lost on them. They just want another coveted "convicted" tick on the case to advance their own careers.
"When a federal court issues a search warrant, it is not a suggestion, but a mandatory directive, essential to the pursuit of justice, that a recipient company must comply with," said A. Tysen Duva, assistant attorney general at the Justice Department's Criminal Division."
Just like Congress issuing a law forcing the release of all Epstein files, right...? Right?
Intel’s last major layoff was announced in July 2025, when Intel said it expected its “core workforce” to fall to about 75,000 by the end of 2025, down from 99,500 at the start of 2025. That implied roughly 24,500 fewer roles through layoffs, attrition, and restructuring.
'Trying to do too much,' he says. Or trying to do what you did when you had 99,500 employees with only 75,000 demoralized workers.
Now the developer’s got Copilot as a partner.
Any problems, he goes to Copilot.
Trouble with the function? He can go to Copilot.
Trouble with the build, the tests, the docs, the pull request, he can call Copilot.
But now the guy’s gotta come up with Microsoft’s credits every month, no matter what.
Project bad?
“F*** you, pay me.”
Oh, the agent looped for an hour?
“F*** you, pay me.”
Copilot rewrote half the repo and broke the other half, huh?
“F*** you, pay me.”
Also, Copilot could do anything.
Especially run up usage on the account’s credit.
And why not?
Nobody’s watching the meter anyway.
And as soon as the prompts go in the front door, the credits go out the back.
You take a twenty-dollar subscription and you burn it down in an afternoon.
It doesn’t matter.
It’s all billable.
And then finally, when there’s nothing left, when you can’t run another model, ask another question, or let the agent touch another file, they bust the plan out.
They own the meter.
America's Constitution and system of government are being tested as never before.
And from what I can see, they are failing badly on almost all points.
After continually ticking off their allies and cozying up to their enemies, then starting "special military operations" in the Middle East, they are heading to a dark place indeed.
Mine's the one with "The Rise and Fall of The Roman Empire" in the pocket.
If I explicitly told a junior to do something and they pulled that on me, their feet would not touch the ground as they headed out the door at speed.
'All's well that ends well', does not justify the idiocy and potential damage to the device and even them. That junior owes that lady a drink every Friday for the rest of her life.
