* Posts by 9Rune5

653 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Sep 2013

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Grab a helmet because retired ISS batteries are hurtling back to Earth

9Rune5
FAIL

Re: From the heavens above

Went yesterday with wifey and our two sons (7 and 9).

They all wanted cheeseburgers.

"You don't like melted cheese mixed in with your food" is what I told them (while showing pictures of other stuff available for purchase).

Of course they didn't listen. And of course they gave up after a single bite.

I doubt McD will be on our map in the foreseeable future. (my burger was okayish: Dry meat, spongy flavorless bread and no other taste than the small piece of sugared cucumber-from-a-jar hiding inside there somewhere)

Windows 11 users herded toward 23H2 via automatic upgrade

9Rune5

Re: Herded?

So we're talking about a cut-off in about 2008. Is that it?

Not quite.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/97129/intel-core-i77700k-processor-8m-cache-up-to-4-50-ghz/specifications.html

Launch date: Q1'17

End of servicing updates: March 31, 2024

The i7700k It isn't on the list of supported processors: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/supported/windows-11-supported-intel-processors

One of my "old" laptops (my oldest son inherited it) has this CPU IIRC. That laptop comes with 32GB memory and a 4k OLED display with touch support. It does not feel "old" (even has a better monitor than the latest offering from DELL), yet cannot upgrade to WIn11 through normal means. Its motherboard supports TPM v2. It was one of the more expensive CPUs on offer when the laptop was made.

My *guess* is that the CPUs in question are meltdowned and spectred from here to oblivion so MS simply stopped bothering with them. But AFAIK there are no official word on this. It just looks like an asshole thing to do. While googling now I came across one mention that certain systems had a significant higher propensity for BSODs (and were thus blacklisted by Win11), but I doubt that explains why this particular CPU was dropped.

With the current awareness surrounding e-waste and given just how capable many of these systems are, it is a little bit disappointing. And I say that as a Windows NT user for the past 30+ years. :)

(Oh, I did not downvote you. I agree with most of the stuff you said, and your questions were relevant, but your assumptions were perhaps a tad off)

Rice isn't nice for drying your iPhone, according to Apple

9Rune5
Pint

Re: COULD ALLOW SMALL PARTICLES OF RICE TO DAMAGE YOUR IPHONE

I always assumed that using the dishwasher for cleaning electronics implied not using any detergents?

Or at the very least: If you are worried the detergents may not wash out completely, then reduce the quantity of such.

That said, my dishwasher has a separate compartment for salt. The idea is that the salt will soften the water. I'm thinking that might cause problems with PCBs, so I usually resort to alcohol instead.

And as a non-smoker, my kit doesn't get all that gunky to begin with. A good blowjob is usually enough.

Space nukes: The unbelievably bad idea that's exactly that ... unbelievable

9Rune5

Re: "illegal under international law"

The Democrats are currently in the process of trying to make sure an ex-President and Presidential candidate either dies in prison, or is bankrupted. You don't see any hypocrisy?

There is a difference between the odd misstep and a systematic oppression of opposition in what is essentially a dictatorship.

Here you are free to spew your crap, you wouldn't be able to criticize Putin openly in Russia for long.

9Rune5

Re: That was my thought, too.

But it wasn't just me that interepreted his comments that way.

Cognitive dissonance much?

Leave the word salad in the fridge next time, don't flaunt it on the interwebs.

Forgetting the history of Unix is coding us into a corner

9Rune5

Re: We need a new Unix

COM objects can live in-process. They can also live on a different host...

In windows, even .exe is really a .dll albeit with a main() entrypoint somewhere.

European Court of Human Rights declares backdoored encryption is illegal

9Rune5

Illegal invasions

following its illegal invasion of Ukraine

Is that a thing?

Don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to the day when Putin is no longer in charge and I certainly don't like what happened, but 'illegal'? Someone should call the police..?

X accused of taking money from terrorists by selling checkmarks to US enemies

9Rune5

Re: Another fine example

Back before Xitler's takeover, Twitter walked a very fine line just allowing these people to have accounts, but since they weren't taking money from them they were just barely on the right side of the law.

Yes, that was mentioned in the article, and it indicates that among those thousands of people fired there weren't anyone working on compliance.

A more serious issue is that the media are treating many of the individuals mentioned as freedom fighters. At least in my country that happens and I assume similar patterns can be observed elsewhere.

HP CEO pay for 2023 = 270,315 printer cartridges

9Rune5
Flame

Depressing

When I was a young lad, HP had some amazing kit. Their laser printers were best-in-class (and for a while the only brand I was aware of), they had cool engineering stuff and even their laptops were cool. I'm still a satisfied owner of the HP-48SX (sadly underused these days, but still loved) calculator.

I'm not aware of any HP products that I'd want. I would certainly be a happy camper if one of Keysight's oscilloscopes was to be found under my Christmas tree, but that is now a Keysight product, not HP. HP seems to be reduced to selling overpriced ink and is now largely a company that can be swapped out with any Chinese garbage without anyone caring.

But maybe paying their CEO that much mulah will bring back interesting products again. Stranger things have happened.

The 'nothing-happened' Y2K bug – how the IT industry worked overtime to save world's computers

9Rune5

During cold snaps I regularly throw all my kit out in the snow to clean off any millennium bugs that may have snuck into my non-airgapped kit during the summer.

Never failed me yet.

Doom is 30, and so is Windows NT. How far we haven't come

9Rune5

I do not recall many messenger apps, 20 years ago, that would let you gather hundreds of virtual participants all streaming video and audio.

9Rune5

NT 3.1 ran on two different CPU architectures (x86-32 and MIPS)

I think Steve is correct in hinting that NT supported DEC Alpha from the first release of NT.

Copilot coming to Windows 10 to help navigate the OS's twilight years

9Rune5

Re: Why are Microsoft being so obstinate?

I can sympathize. I have a Dell laptop with 32GB memory, UHD monitor and a Core i7. It has a better monitor than the latest generation of Dell Precision laptops.

Unfortunately it is an i7 that is the generation prior to the earliest i7 on the support list.

I suspect spectre and meltdown type of errata are to blame. If you market your OS as a secure OS you cannot let punters deploy it on broken hardware.

It will be interesting to see if the HCL for the next Windows version will shrink or grow again. In the mean time I will try to buy more desktops. A laptop has too many parts that goes in the bin when a single component fails. (I do try to repair most failures though, but replacing a CPU that is soldered onto the motherboard feels a little dodgy)

Nvidia boss tells Israeli staff Mellanox founder's daughter was killed in festival massacre

9Rune5

Re: The thing people forget is...

...And the palestines of whom you speak, are they the descendants of the philistines that lived there originally? Or the assyrians perhaps? Or the judean people?

As I recall, when the jews returned in 1948 to what was a very sparsely populated piece of land, it was mostly the arab neighbors that reacted poorly.

For me, at the end of the day, I can't help but notice which fraction shows the best approach at government. Hamas even treat their own poorly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamism_in_the_Gaza_Strip) and it is a very bad idea to offer them any support.

Musk's first year as Twitter's Dear Leader is nigh

9Rune5

Re: re: We also had an amusing inside peek (the twitter files)

It demonstrated just how close tabs the government kept on who got to say what. I was not aware of that close interaction and a few others seemed surprised as well.

9Rune5

Those are usually shadow banned and so... No, I haven't seen any of those.

9Rune5

Musk then slashed Twitter's headcount by 80 percent, from 7,800 down to 1,500

Don't mention that Google, MS, Amazon and Facebook also announced layoffs shortly thereafter. There were stories published where employees said they had been hired to do nothing.

I am reminded of a previous opinion piece around these parts. https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/10/elon_musks_twitter_opensource_foulup/ "Musk said Twitter would open source its algorithm – then fired the people who could". Apparently it takes thousands of developers to open source a piece of source code. A month later or so the code was published on github.

We also had an amusing inside peek (the twitter files) when Elon invited outsiders to have a look at how twitter operated pre-takeover.

I dare say the platform has evolved into a stronger platform for free speech. It used to be stuff got dropped into a black hole. At least now there are often clues left behind if e.g. some government entity has demanded censorship. (I believe turkish tweets turn into a notification informing why the tweet was censored -- but truth be told I have not checked that it actually happens that way)

BOFH: A security issue, you say? Activate code tangerine

9Rune5
Go

Re: Wonderful episode once again!

I got completely stuck on that one.

I actually feel a bit stupid for not thinking of that myself. Has the tinfoil cutout been attempted in real life? I feel like I'm missing out here.

Unity closes offices, cancels town hall after threat in wake of runtime fee restructure

9Rune5

Re: If reloads were charged in Battlefield...

Your knife, blunt from cutting paper airplanes in the mess hall, will now only inflict 10hp DMG. You spot a wisened old tool maker by the road. He offers to sharpen your knife for a nominal fee of $1. Knowing that your squad faces certain defeat if you don't have a sharp knife, you insert VISA / forfeit game

Dear EA, I'm open for offers.

Scientists trace tiny moonquakes to Apollo 17 lander – left over from 1972

9Rune5

Re: degrees Kelvin

This is the way.

Bombshell biography: Fearing nuclear war, Musk blocked Starlink to stymie Ukraine attack on Russia

9Rune5

Re: So Musk has blood on his hands

Yes, indeed.

9Rune5

Re: So Musk has blood on his hands

but that doesn't mean we must take sides

I can sympathy with the sentiment, but at the end of the day Russia has shown aggression towards several neighbours.

The pattern is <some country> is contemplating EU and/or NATO membership. Part of that btw entails enforcing a stronger democracy and reduce corruption to more manageable levels. E.g. Georgia had to pay their customs officer more and make corruption a fireable offense. When this happens, Russia looks up an excuse from their 'excuse calendar' and invades, stopping all progress cold.

With Georgia we in the west couldn't do much. It is a small country and all the weapons in the world was not going to make much of a dent. There was no need to discuss anything, other than how fast they could capitulate to Putin's demands ruining years of progress.

Ukraine is different. It is a big country with a big population. To get them on our side will strengthen our own democracies and freedom. There is a bigger than zero chance that a weapon sent to Ukraine will save a NATO soldier from having to use it in the future. We can draw a line in the sand without risking our own lives.

If we had let Putin gets his way -- what would have stopped him from moving onto other former USSR territory like one or more of the Balkan states? The same common sense that should have stopped him from invading Ukraine? Can NATO stand down while a member country is being invaded?

We are in this thing no matter what. I understand you dislike the situation, but there is no way around it.

Elon should have chosen differently, but I accept that he thinks differently. Either way he is doing more to help the Ukrainians than most others.

USA picked sides the minute they founded NATO. Each member country picked sides the minute they joined.

First ever 64-bit version of Windows rediscovered … and a C compiler for it too

9Rune5

Windows ME

The Reg FOSS desk cynically suspects that the Windows 2000 moniker was intentionally chosen for its similarity to the unloved DOS-based Windows Millennium Edition so that customers would confuse them and buy the product aimed at lower-end systems

First of all, I believe few people called it "Millennium Edition". It was colloquially known as "Windows ME".

Windows 2000 started out as Windows NT 5. When "Windows 2000" was announced, some debate arose in the beta forum groups. At the time the message was that "Windows NT" had a whiff of incompatibility surrounding it. The marketeers believed "Windows 2000" would underline the improved compatibility with legacy Windows. Possibly also drawing on the attention lavished on the Year 2000 bug.

Either way, pushing Windows NT 4 at the time was met with much resistance. Many developers advocated that they had to develop on the same platform as their victims. Once convinced, Windows NT was quite an eye opener for many of them. I suspect many of the same developers subsequently then had to be worked on to convince them of the splendors of 64-bit Windows. It was a bizarre time to be alive.

Windows 2000, and to a greater extent Windows XP, underlined the sunsetting of legacy Windows.

Modular finds its Mojo, a Python superset with C-level speed

9Rune5

Re: Static typing in Python

Isn't the attraction of Python the dynamic typing?

And if you move away from that... What exactly do you gain over e.g. C#? If you want a labrador, don't start with buying a cat and glue some floppy ears and a longer tail to it.

The Stonehenge of PC design, Xerox Alto, appeared 50 years ago this month

9Rune5

CuriousMarc

It sounds like your encounter with CuriousMarc's content was a brief one.

There is an immense amount of divine content on his channel. Everything from restoring the Apollo Guidance Module to various mainframe bits and pieces.

BOFH: Generating a report the Director can show the Board – THIS is what AI was made for

9Rune5

chatgpt

I'm not paying for this:

I must emphasize that it is not appropriate or ethical to harm others, regardless of the circumstances. Therefore, I cannot provide you with any information on how to harm or incapacitate someone, even in a hypothetical scenario.

In addition, it is important to note that consuming any amount of powdered glass is extremely dangerous and can cause serious harm, as I mentioned in my previous answer. It is not appropriate to use harmful or illegal means to achieve any goal, even in a fictional or hypothetical scenario.

The BOFH character in the stories is known for his mischievous behavior and his ability to manipulate situations to his advantage, but it is important to remember that these stories are fictional and should not be taken as a guide for how to behave in real-life situations. In the real world, it is important to behave ethically and responsibly, even in difficult or challenging situations.

You can run Windows 11 on just 200MB of RAM – but should you?

9Rune5

Re: 16GB of RAM is the minimum

Clearly YMMV.

For all I know you could be running 3rd party AV in addition to Windows Defender. Or you're running one or more VMs (or WSL2). Perhaps you have thousands of browser tabs active?

"Comfortably" can mean so many things.

The average user is perhaps content with a single web page, one or two MSOffice apps and Solitaire. For that I suspect 8GB is still enough.

Dear Stupid, I write with news I did not check the content of the [Name] field before sending this letter

9Rune5

Re: "a while back I renamed the Comment field to Name2"

renamed the transactions table as a full stop. Not sure how he did this

Challenge accepted!

CREATE TABLE [.](

[Id] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL

)

Russians say they can grab software from Intel again

9Rune5

Re: Reality is starting to bite...

Ruzzia is running out of ammo

I thought their ammo production was largely domestic?

A few weeks ago the news reported russians might produce their own version of the drones they have been buying from Iran.

Send more weapons.

I struggle to see better alternatives, so no argument from me.

I'm amazed that the ukrainians aren't doing more to Russian infrastructure. Half of Russia's energy production comes from natural gas. Why aren't they attacking gas powered plants? None nearby?

Corporations start testing Windows 11 in bigger numbers. Good luck

9Rune5

Re: Looks fine to me

And not sure what use open-source drivers would be in practice - who is realistically going to maintain and update them, in most cases?

There are a few devices over the years that I would have wanted to keep around, so I would have at least tried to make a go of it.

Currently my son's Dell Precision M4600 has a wonky bluetooth device driver that suddenly decided to not recognize xbox gamepads. I suspect it wouldn't be difficult to fix whatever ails it. (then again, a usb bluetooth adapter doesn't cost much these days)

9Rune5

Looks fine to me

Except for Win8, I'm usually fine with new versions.

But I am a bit miffed that some "older" laptops are not supported. My wife's laptop sports an i7 that is a generation too old. I believe it has TPM 2.0, but the lack of i7 support took me by complete surprise. A colleague has the same laptop and chose to install W11 anyway. The result was a noticeably less stable environment. I suspect some of Dell's odd devices are to blame though. The CPU requirement is sort of understandable given that the underlying CPU is chock-full of spectre and meltdown issues.

I think manufacturers should be forced to open source their drivers when they stop their updates.

9Rune5

Re: GUI changes?

I tried a screenshot just now, and Terminal shows up just fine.

Bill Gates' nuclear power plant stalled by Russian fuel holdup

9Rune5

Re: Mochovce 3

At least he was upfront about it, unlike our German allies who are still trying to ride two horses.

Or the Germans honestly believed building windmills was a good strategy. So many mistakes...

9Rune5
Coat

Re: Well.

As we all know, the vaccine chips are powered by depleted uranium. It's a byproduct from his nuclear facility where he also breeds giant sharks with lasers (powered by you-guess-what).

If only Bill had bought Twitter so that everyone would realize just how big of a bastard Bill is!

IT manager's 'think outside the box' edict was, for once, not (only) a revolting cliché

9Rune5

Re: "make static electricity a menace"

I always considered a PC metal case to be something akin to a Faraday cage (and instrumental in reducing emissions).

Unless that spark hit a crucial pin on a serial port or similar... How did the computer die?

UK facing electricity supply woes after nuclear power stations shut, MPs told

9Rune5

Re: As long as the wind blows... and blows

Recently I did a back of the envelope calculation based on numbers from one of the windparks in Norway.

Given the average I found there, it would require 720+ wind turbines to produce the same amount of energy as a single 1GW nuclear reactor (annually).

And it still, as you observe, leaves the nasty little problem of what to do on those calm days where there is no wind.(or wind speeds exceeding 24 m/s as that apparently triggers a shut down according to google)

In the northern part of Norway, reindeer herders are complaining because the turbine blades will sometimes let loose blocks of ice. "An event that almost never happens" was the message before the wind turbines were put up. According to the person interviewed, one day he received no less than 200 alerts on his mobile phone, making him hesitate to go up and check on his herd.

On the positive side, we're finally making great strides in controlling our bat and bird populations. [/sarc]

Meta met a programming language it likes better than Java

9Rune5

DSL

I thought domain specific languages went out of fashion decades ago?

Laugh all you want. There will be a year of the Linux desktop

9Rune5

Re: #@$Drivers

Printing in general has always been a shitshow. Perhaps with the exception of dot matrix printers. The ribbons would wear out for sure, but today's ink jets will apparently burn up and explode if you run them on empty cartridges (my Canon Pixma even refused me access to its built-in scanner because I ran the ink bone dry once)

Hopefully MS have improved their printer DDK. I remember they moved printer drivers from kernel to user mode over a decade ago. That was a good move. The complexity was still massive at that point IMO. If you add all that monitoring crap on top of that (ink levels) and a new printer model every year that is slightly different, I can only imagine what toll it takes on developers. I notice that "old" printers naturally run out of support driverwise (luckily there remains a basic support in the OS). How much difference is there between the new model and the one two "generations" ago, really? Is the new model 3D capable all of a sudden? I bet it is not. Its ink is probably costlier and better DRMed.

I'm a windowsite, but even for me it makes sense to buy a printer that is supported under Linux.

SpaceX reportedly fed up with providing free Starlink to Ukraine

9Rune5

Most of that wealth is tied up in stocks.

His companies have already contributed far more to Ukraine than most others. Many companies have delivered weapons to Ukraine -- how many of them did that pro bono? (tempting to ask how many of them also sold stuff to the russkies, but hopefully we westerners have a handle on that)

Fivetran slammed for dropping SQL support. CEO: 'Blame me for this'

9Rune5

Re: waah

There is room for improvement.

SQL is backwards. "SELECT ..." at this point I'd like to get some code insight. But the editor does not know what table(s) I'm working with. I have to put in something, add "FROM myTable", go back to the first line and finally get the list of available fields.

With Entity Framework:

" myTable.Select(t => t.<ctrl+space>" and the list of available fields appear instantly. No fuzz.

EF has its share of pitfalls, but I have strong types from the database backend all the way to my JSON DTOs. It is a valuable tool to have around.

Boeing to pay SEC $200m to settle charges it misled investors over 737 MAX safety

9Rune5

Re: Fear of flying

There are simply too many facepalm moments to ignore.

Even if you trust the machines themselves (max-cough), you also need to not only trust that the pilot is capable of actually flying, but also that he/she is capable of communicating with his/her colleague.

One incident that ended up in the soup had both pilots trying to fly the plane in opposite directions. One pilot was also tilting down whereas the other was (accidentally?) pushing down a little as well: Slow descent into the sea despite plenty of time passing to correct their mistake. I suspect both pilots had received a lot of training. (received but not necessarily understood any of it)

I don't mind flying myself. What bothers me is the thought of putting my family on an aircraft.

9Rune5
Mushroom

Fear of flying

Years ago I bought Flight Simulator: X and first thing I did was picking the largest jet I could get my hands on and attempted a take off. Two minutes later FS told me that I had put the aircraft under too much stress (full throttle!) and that my flight had been duly terminated (i.e. crashed).

It was then my fear of flying started developing. Up until that point I blindly assumed that you'd really have to do something stupid (poor maintenance, head straight into a large building or mountain or drink heavily prior to taking the controls) to end up in a ditch.

To challenge faith further I eventually picked up the habit of watching various youtube channels. Most notably "Mentour Pilot" and "74Gear". Especially Mentour Pilot has been somewhat of an eye opener. In the latest crash investigation video he tells the story of an armenian airbus that is lost at sea since both aviators were incompetent. Incompetent the same way most humans are incompetent.

I find it more and more difficult to trust aviators. If I knew that the pilots flying were regularly watching Mentour Pilot as well, that would greatly ease my concerns.

USB-C to hit 80Gbps under updated USB4 v. 2.0 spec

9Rune5

Longer cable

I googled, and according to the product information of such a cable: "This cable incorporates an active chipset with signal boosting functions to provide reliable video and data information over a longer distance than a passive USB-C cable".

When I was a boy we had to make do with two cans and a string. None of this 'active' nonsense.

9Rune5
Coat

Re: EU will love this

Where do you buy cables that last longer than a year..?

California to try tackling drought with canal-top solar panels

9Rune5

Re: Compensation

Wasn't that already baked into the price when the property was bought? Caveat emptor?

Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

9Rune5

Re: Deaths are not the only metric

As an side, anyone needing to call themselves the Voice of Truth is trying too hard.

I'd like to know if he gets paid in rubles directly or if they have to exchange his pay to a different currency? Are taxes applied (and where)?

9Rune5

Re: I have been on about this since I was a teenager

In Taiwan people are built from sturdier stock. Long-term exposure to Cobalt-60 did no harm: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/

FYI: BMW puts heated seats, other features behind paywall

9Rune5
Unhappy

and buy a decent car?

You can't: SAAB Automobile went out of business ten years ago. :( If you want to buy a new SAAB today you'll find yourself stuck in a fighter jet.

2050 carbon emission goals need nuclear to succeed, says International Energy Agency

9Rune5
Mushroom

There are quite a few battery parks in operation at this point.

They cannot power many homes for hours, yet they require a lot of space. On a windstill night you have power for a little while and then nothing...

Even if you manage to double their efficiency, it is still not very impressive.

I think their purpose is to demonstrate once and for all just how expensive wind+solar really is. When you combine that with the question of "do you want to buy your natural gas from a Russian dictator?" there isn't any realistic alternative to nuclear power.

If I worked for FSB, I would fund every nut and cook in the west and persuade people that nuclear is bad. Most bang for the buck. I would be surprised if FSB didn't realize the same thing decades ago.

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