* Posts by RAMChYLD

809 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Nov 2010

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Google: How to make any AMD Zen CPU always generate 4 as a random number

RAMChYLD

Re: 'likely a reference to XKCD'

Yeah. Its sad tho. I looked up to him until his true colors as a magat trumpet came out. Actually it turns out that a few people I held in high regards prior are magat trumpets. I'm really disappointed in their delusions and disappointed at myself for thinking of them as great people.

Memories fade. Archives burn. All signal eventually becomes noise

RAMChYLD

Re: Long term digital documents

> fit on a single USB stick

The problem here is USB sticks uses Flash NAND just like SSDs. And Flash NAND suffers from bit-rot if it's powered down long enough. Usually there's some form of error correction that ensures that the file is still readable somehow, but it's not perfect and sticks that have been inactive for decades will potentially have gathered enough bit-rot that the data is irrecoverable.

Microsoft builds open source document database on PostgreSQL, suggests FerretDB as front end

RAMChYLD

Re: MS SQL Server?

Knew I had something going when I decided to make Postgres my new application's backend instead of SQL Express!

OpenZFS 2.3 is here, with RAID expansion and faster dedup

RAMChYLD

No Kernel 6.13 and 6.14 support out of the box tho?

Surely that's a bit shortsighted?

WINE 10 is still not an emulator, but Windows apps won't know the difference

RAMChYLD

Re: Soooooo....

It's still better than Evernote tho.

Bugger increased price by a whopping 600% on me, from RM50 annually to RM300. All of the sudden. Told them to sod off.

And btw, Office 365 apparently can run on Crossover Office. Not sure what they're holding back from the community Wine release, but it can be done.

Linux rolls out the welcome mat for Microsoft's Copilot key

RAMChYLD

My IBM PS/2 Host Connected 122-Key keyboard has F1 through F24...

RAMChYLD

I'm hoping it can be mapped to Hyper.

Because we have not enough modifier keys on the keyboard. Only Shift, Ctrl, Super and Meta (Alt) at the moment.

Microsoft tests 45% M365 price hikes in Asia-Pacific to see how much you enjoy AI

RAMChYLD

Price rise in Asia Pacific

> Micro$oft announces price increase, takes effect in a month

> Lotus's (FKA Tesco's) selling prepaid cards at a discount due to Shopee sale just weeks before the price hike takes effect

> /me smart, /me buy prepaid card from Lotus's before price hike takes effect even if subscription renewal is still some time away.

> /me applies prepaid card after price hike and subscription is due for renewal, getting one more year at the old price thanks to hoarding a card.

> /me laughs in Micro$oft's face

Be smart like /me.

But yeah, most likely /me be leaving Micro$oft's 365 ecosystem after next year unless I can continue getting these prepaid cards on the cheap. As much I like Onenote (Evernote just freaking increased it's price by a mad 600% this year. I was subscribed at RM50 a year, they suddenly wanted to jack the price up to RM310. I cancelled my Evernote sub and migrated to my seldom used Onenote account due to the fact) and OneDrive (Google Drive has been cutting down my storage significantly for several years now, and dropbox started putting unreasonable restrictions on how many devices can use an account). But eh, Microsoft is now demanding RM400 which is unreasonable, I refuse to pay more than RM200.

SvarDOS: DR-DOS is reborn as an open source operating system

RAMChYLD

Re: SVARDOS and Windows 3.11 Hang

At the moment, MS-DOS 6.22, although at one point I was running DR-DOS 7.02 and it has the same issue.

RAMChYLD

SVARDOS and Windows 3.11 Hang

About the hang... Are you sure it's a hang? I run Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on an actual PC (Pentium II with 256MB of RAM, a SiS 6326 AGP GPU and an unholy combination of a SoundBlaster AWE64 and a Gravis Ultrasound PnP, but also a overkill Realtek RTL8169 NIC from EdiMax. The motherboard was specifically chosen for it's insane combination of AGP, PCI and ISA slots) with the NDIS2 drivers, and the machine will appear to freeze for a minute or two as it tries to resolve DHCP or something. Eventually it would come around and proceed into the Windows 3.11 desktop with a ludicrous 256MB of RAM and gigabit ethernet.

Apple Intelligence summary botches a headline, causing jitters in BBC newsroom

RAMChYLD

Useless

Told it to generate an image of Bluey. It declined on the grounds that the dog is copyrighted.

Right, a copyrighted materials blacklist. So that makes it almost useless already.

I then told it to generate me an image of a coin operated horse ride. It instead gave me rocking horses.

Intelligence? More like stupidity.

Xfce 4.20 is out: Wayland support lands, but some pieces are still missing

RAMChYLD

Re: Still?

> but if it ain't broke why fix it?

Because X is designed for over-the-network use with thin client X Terminals instead of locally. As a result there are plenty of layers to contend with, and thus incurs latency which isn't great for gaming (in theory, but in practice I couldn't really tell the difference except games tend to cause my screen to fill up with garbage for a few seconds when launching).

Wayland is designed for a more traditional local hardware use. So the latency should be way less.

Open source maintainers are drowning in junk bug reports written by AI

RAMChYLD

Re: re: Just like social media.

> Some people can't ignore social media:

Agreed. Bad enough my mom buys up Mainland China-generated BS that is circulated to her WhatsApp and WeChat accounts regularly, but then tries to force it onto other members of the family.

Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz

RAMChYLD
Linux

Re: Maybe Microsoft should go back to making just an O.S.

> and a paid for version for a nominal fee, say $30, which has no telemetry or adverts, no requirement for an MS account, and you choose which browser(s) you want to have installed

They already do that, except the nominal fee is USD1500 per seat with a minimum of five seats. It's called Windows 11 Enterprise.

Penguin because that is still the smarter choice.

Public developer spats put bcachefs at risk in Linux

RAMChYLD

This is going to be sad

Given how much issues there are running ZFS on Linux right now (a kernel upgrade can and will break your module), BCacheFS looked like a solution. But nope, things has to go wrong.

Sad.

And no, A kludged together solution like running btrfs on top of bcache and LVM is not the answer. Too many points of failure that if one occurs, you can't really work out what failed.

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

RAMChYLD
FAIL

Re: I still have no idea...

The day Framework starts selling internationally is the day I will stop hating them.

Not only do they not ship to most of Asia, they threaten those who dare to try to use dropshippers or forwarding companies with ban and cancellation.

BASIC co-creator Thomas Kurtz hits END at 96

RAMChYLD
Pint

Re: Thank you

I cut my teeth in BASIC.

Did a lot of things in it. Point of Sales programs, budget management, art, music, even crude information retrieval systems (anyone here remember DataQuest? In those days there were so many BASIC dialects that programs written for one computer will NEVER run on another, either partially or at all. To my dismay DataQuest was never available for IBM BASIC, which is a shame since the PC had a nice 80 column, 16-color text mode display. It was also the most common type of computer in Malaysia. So I took it upon myself to write a PC equivalent). I even had a crude CLI shell going at one point. Lots of good memories.

Sure, the jump to Pascal was a shellshock (no GOTO damn it!), but it made me what I am today.

RIP sir. Thank you for the music.

O2's AI granny knits tall tales to waste scam callers' time

RAMChYLD

Re: Only a matter of time now

And then there's telemarketers who're basically recordings played back when you answer. And these aren't new, they've been around for decades. Will the granny AI be able to detect that it's engaging a recording and terminate the call accordingly, or would we just end up with noise going both directions?

RAMChYLD

Re: Didn't....

Yeah, but theirs are tied to a much simpler chatbot model (Eliza) tied to voice recognition with specific word sequences triggering an offensive mode where the chatbot will then make you sorry you said what you did to it. And uses a TTS modeled on the voice of the PFY.

Edit: Story here => https://www.theregister.com/2000/05/19/bofh_discovers_voice_recognition/

24 years. Where has the time gone?

The sad tale of the Alpha massacre

RAMChYLD

Re: Installing programs from C:/

Unless you're using a cheapo no-brand SoundBlaster clone, usually the Address is 220H, IRQ5 (unless it's an earlier issue SoundBlaster card which uses IRQ 7 which does conflict with the sole Centronics port in the system), DMA 1, and full-duplex cards like the SB16 and SBPro 2.0, HDMA 5.

No pilot? No problem! EHang's autonomous air taxis take off in Thailand

RAMChYLD

Thailand truly is living in the future...

It's the year 2567 in Thailand.

Winos4.0 abuses gaming apps to infect, control Windows machines

RAMChYLD

Re: Ah, gaming

> Powerful rigs

Powerful rigs often have powerful GPUs...

Sysadmin shock as Windows Server 2025 installs itself after update labeling error

RAMChYLD

Re: "paying for the required license"

Or make Windows 2025 a free upgrade to Windows 2022 licensors, just like how Win11 is free to licensors of Win10.

Singapore to increase road capacity by tracking all vehicles with GPS

RAMChYLD

Re: Tracking people

> Maybe the entertainment system will show a bit of light porn just to get the mood at it's very best

Except that possession of porn is a felony punishable by jail time in this island country...

An awful lot of FOSS should thank the Academy

RAMChYLD

Re: bit hypocritical?

Also, given that they're speculated to be the very reason AMD GPUs can't get HDMI 2.2 on Linux...

Linux admin asked savvy scientist for IT help and the boffin blew it

RAMChYLD
Pint

Man, those old network hubs are why I have trust issues. Connecting a older PC with a 10mbps card to a 100mbps hub knocks everyone else with a faster card down to 10mbps. This is why I keep insisting on switches with dedicated uplink and downlink ports nowadays. I know they don't have this issue anymore but deep inside I feel dirty for connecting a 100mbps NIC to a 1Gbps switch.

FCC fines be damned, ESPN misuses emergency alert tones yet again

RAMChYLD

Re: Broadcast licence?

I thought anything that transmits via satellite and cable constitutes as broadcast.

Nonetheless ESPN is owned by The Mouse. Who has his hands deep in the US' governments' pockets. Go figure.

Sysadmins rage over Apple’s ‘nightmarish’ SSL/TLS cert lifespan cuts plot

RAMChYLD

Re: Follow the money

> To make cert authorities more cash?

To upsell cert renewal automation software. So not really much to the benefit of CAs but cert automation systems.

Which is puzzling given that Certbot is a thing. Oh wait, Certbot doesn't work on Windows anymore...

Uncle Sam lends $1.5B to reignite Michigan nuclear plant in 2025

RAMChYLD

Re: Clean energy?

It's not clean unless it generates zero waste, or waste that is harmless to the environment. Unfortunately uranium waste is neither zero waste, nor is it harmless (it causes cancer).

So what are you going to do with the carcinogenic uranium waste that nuclear reactors produce then? Fire it at the sun? Who's footing the bill?

Windows 95 support chap skipped a step and sent user into Micro-hell

RAMChYLD

Ah yes. Winblow$ 95

The beast that needed to be reformatted every 6 months if you mess with a lot of shareware and stuff unless you are patient enough to wait 15 minutes for it to boot, and if a bad driver update didn't do it in first. Back in those days the common hard drive (Quantum Bigfoot) spun at 2600rpm and operated at IDE PIO-2 mode so you'll definitely be watching data crawl into the system.

Admins using Windows Server Update Services up in arms as Microsoft deprecates feature

RAMChYLD

I'd think they would have upgraded years ago. Setting up a mailserver is no longer an easy task. For one, you actually need to buy a domain name. And then you need to get all the certificate, MX pointers and stuff set up.

It used to be so easy, sendmail was all it needed.

RAMChYLD

Re: Yay

Yes it does.

It's called a package mirror. You just mirror a whole repo lock, stock and barrel and point all your internal computers to there. This one's the easiest to get going but relies on the entire organization running only one specific distro or you're going to have tons of mirrors, rsync cronjobs, and are going to need a lot of storage.

Kelsey Hightower: If governments rely on FOSS, they should fund it

RAMChYLD

Government Funding

But some of the biggest FOSS Projects do get government funding tho. GCC at least gets funding from DARPA and the US Military for maintaining the ADA compiler. NASA also funds a number of large projects.

FTC urged to stop tech makers downgrading devices after you've bought them

RAMChYLD

Re: Reminds me of TV sets

There are devices that convert HDMI to Component video. And many higher end CRT TVs nearing the end of the CRT era will have component inputs, even supporting 576P Progressive Scan. Failing that, you can further convert component to composite, and then push the composite to a RF modulator like a VCR so very old TVs can support it. It's an ugly chain but Technology Connections and Techmoan does it all the time so it works at least.

RAMChYLD

Re: Reminds me of TV sets

Last I checked, many companies use an ancient Linux kernel that is long out of support... that's littered with tons of proprietary binary blobs from their OEM supplier of the week. The Linux kernel may or may not also be violating GPL by containing code patches that never goes back upstream. Those suppliers are also almost always in Shenzhen or some other parts of China so enforcing the GPL on them can be a tenuous task.

RAMChYLD

Re: Reminds me of TV sets

A number of monitors also have speakers now. They're just as awful as those on TVs, but at least there's sound coming out.

RAMChYLD

Re: Reminds me of TV sets

Alternatively, desktop monitors. They don't have "smart" functionality, many have 2-3 HDMI ports like TVs, and usually they also have speakers now. So basically a TV without a tuner (which is also excellent for escaping the license in countries that enforce a TV/Radio license like the UK and Japan)

Malaysia's plan to block overseas DNS dies after a day

RAMChYLD

Re: A different take on "its always DNS" ;)

"Protect" is too optimistic a word to use here. Their true intention is to block LGBTQ content so they can continue to vilify the LGBTQ community- the home clown already made it very clear that he hates the LGBTQ for some reason I can't wrap my head around, since he confiscated those Swatch watches and threatened Apple that they're not to bring their Pride Month bands into Malaysia, and having been ripped a new one by The 1975.

RAMChYLD

Re: A different take on "its always DNS" ;)

They were outright trying a MITM redirect attack on those using DOH. Many reported error messages saying that Cloudflare's DOH server were practically returning the certificate for Telekom Malaysia's DNS servers.

RAMChYLD
Black Helicopters

Re: A different take on "its always DNS" ;)

The problem is there are rumors that VPN blocking was also being considered. In fact, some ISPs like Maxis and Yes were already blocking VPN (I see a lot of complains on Lowyat.net about Maxis blocking VPN, and I was using Yes WiMax and experienced the blocking firsthand. I couldn't connect to PPTP endpoints and L2TP endpoints caused the modem to disconnect from the network and reboot).

And yes, they were blackholing DNS over HTTPS and DNS over TLS. After the announcement people on Maxis, Yes and Time started getting DOH certificate errors.

In either way I am already very frustrated with these clowns running the country and their lies. Unfortunately when the opposition is worse than this...

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

RAMChYLD

Re: 3 years of updates ?

64-bit Windows can have 16-bit software support reinstated if you use WineVDM tho. It's not perfect, but it works flawless enough that even games like Full Tilt! Pinball works.

RAMChYLD

Re: 3 years of updates ?

I had a Priv and loved it. I'm currently on a Vivo X100 Pro but retained the Blackberry Launcher and many other Blackberry parts because it turned out they can be installed separately, although a subscription has to be paid to continue using it. Sadly however the launcher and other gubbins have been earmarked as end of life and won't be receiving any more updates up until the day they stop working.

Kinda sad really. Blackberry's launcher has this really neat functionality that I've become very reliant on - swiping down on an app icon actually launches an impromptu instance of the app's widget if it has one. For me, this means quick my start screen is not cluttered with annoying widgets while I still get to use the widget.

As for three years of updates, that was far more better than Asus. I feel cheated as my ROG Phone 3 only received a single year's update and then that's it. Really rotten of Asus. I'm also surprised as to how many Asus circlejerkers there are out there- many of them were dismissing me with excuses that "Asus is a small company" and that I "should buy a new ROG Phone anyway because the old one is now too weak to run new games properly".

Do look up! NASA unfurls massive shiny solar sail in orbit

RAMChYLD

Wasn't this called the Lightsail project or something?

Mentioning it because I was one of the original backers of the project.

Zen Browser is a no-Google zone that offers tiling nirvana

RAMChYLD

Tiling Web Browser

I remember when we could tile webpages with Opera. Sadly the feature went the way of the dodo about two decades ago...

Rust for Linux maintainer steps down in frustration with 'nontechnical nonsense'

RAMChYLD

Re: xBSD Waiting

There's also illumos...

Microsoft sends Windows Control Panel to tech graveyard

RAMChYLD

Re: It is too bad programmers are like dogs

You don't use the touch screen when you configure the computer. You use a keyboard and a mouse.

You only use the touchscreen to draw, or play games that have been ported from mobile platforms to Windows.

RAMChYLD

Windows 11 sucked so hard.

Control Panel back in the days alows you to configure MIDI like a madman.

Windows 10 did away with MIDI settings completely and now Windows 11 made things worse.

MIDI is NOT dead. Apple included a whole new utility to configure MIDI. There is no such functionality since the Sound control panel got decommissioned in favor of the simplistic settings screen. In fact there is exactly ZERO way to configure MIDI settings in Windows at this time.

LibreOffice 24.8: Handy even if you're happy with Microsoft

RAMChYLD

> Other than that, I note that compatability with MS .docx has been improved.

It definitely has, in leaps and bounds too. I've noticed how a lot of the formatting no longer runs since a year or two ago. A far cry from 2018 where every other cry at one of my former workplaces is that they want Microsoft Office back because Libreoffice mangled their intricately hand-crafted form that they did in Microsoft Word (they were trying to cut costs and so reduced the subscription of Microsoft Office Enterprise for many people who aren't in Managerial or Executive positions to E1).

BOFH: Videoconferencing for special dummies

RAMChYLD

> the wireless connectivity standards field has more cowboys in it than a line dancing event at a denim factory

Good grief, you read my mind!

Why these conferencing systems can't just use the industry standard, Miracast, is beyond me! These conferencing systems need you to install a silly little app on your laptop that practically does nothing other than connecting it to the device over WiFi.

On that note, Simon is also smart to not point out Wireless connectivity. The one in the conference room where I'm currently working at has nasty latency and frame rate issues if you connect wirelessly. I presume the manufacturer thought it's good enough for powerpoint presentations and simple display of spreadsheets, but well, try to hold a Zoom call or Teams meeting and watch the image degrade to a sloppy mess.

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