Posts by Grunchy

Abstract, theoretical computing qualifications are turning teens off

Re: Something is definitely wrong !

“I asked what are we talking here - Megabytes or Megabits ? To which he replied in all seriousness 'Why, they are the same aren't they ?'”

This was me, trying to figure out “baud”.

Because 300 baud is “approximately” 30 cps (characters per second), yet each character is 8 bits (or maybe 7 bits, or maybe 5 bits).

It’s due to this peculiar thing they called “8b/10b encoding,” in which telecommunication requires 10 bits to transmit 8 bits of data. Well there might be other overhead such as parity bits, stop bits, etc. But anyway lets suppose 1 is distinguished by “a change,” and 0 by “no change.” How many consecutive zeroes can you telecommunicate before you lose track of the number, or suspect the line has gone dead? And yet computer science LOVES to transmit megs and megs of sequential zeroes. So if your telecommunication can, at best, only (reliably) distinguish between 1 zero and 2 zeroes, then the only way to telecommunicate arbitrary digital data is with this intermediary encoding such as “8b/10b”. This is what the UART chip does.

(I had a similar issue figuring out GCR encoding on a Commodore 1541 disk surface. I never did figure out tape drive storage, which is supposedly like the modem, except the Commodore never actually had a UART? As I said: I have only a “partial understanding” of what means “baud”.)

Re: Today's Novelties

"[Awk] Programs often look like line noise"

That’s regex for me (“regular expressions”).

Any time I see something that looks like line noise, it’s time to dig out the regex handbook and start deciphering…

I remember “self-teaching” C++ and I got up to the object destructor and that’s when I threw in the towel.

I had no problem with anything in basic, fortran, machine language. C itself I considered as much more approachable than a pure assembler.

Funny thing, I had an opportunity to participate in a “full stack” class a few years back for C#, we breezed right through objects, constructors, destructors… and that was it!

It wasn’t such a big deal, after all.

Panasonic brings its founder back to life as an AI

Lister: “He’s still just a smeg-head”

Yup, half of that thought-leader crap on LinkedIn is indeed AI scribbled

I have the LinkedIn presence, sort of the shame of the unemployed. They have this peculiar feed of notifications that arises from all these people that seem to frequent the site: this unending stream of consciousness that demands attention without providing anything “actionable,” I guess I would describe it. What’s interesting are some of the individuals, who I know to be real people, who are participating in it.

“Why,” well one such individual has stated there, on the LinkedIn, that he is on a mission to stamp out “why”.

(I know what he’s talking about, there is a current trend of “idea bankruptcy” in which you can’t think of anything worthwhile to say, so you take old, vapid, formerly-trendy ideas and now you disclaim them as discredited or disproven, for example the “Five Whys” junk philosophy of yesteryear. It has a real strong “feasting on your own feces” musk about it.)

Telco engineer who spied on US employer for Beijing gets four years in the clink

Re: "Ping Li, a US citizen and Chinese immigrant"

None of us know what the motive was, could have been money, ideology, lulz, affections of Chinese lady spies, blackmail, boredom, stupidity, extortion.

This one time a pastor “stole his community’s church” (sold it, bought a bmw convertible and ran away from the money). What for?

None of us know what the motive was: money, ideology, lulz, affections of Chinese lady spies, etc.

I can’t find the original story from 20 years ago but here’s another.

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-orleans-pastor-stole-900k-from-church-debts-car-doj-2022-10

RHEL 9.5 debuts alongside AlmaLinux, Rocky, and Oracle updates

WSL never worked for me

Back when I ran Windows and WSL came out, I thought: sure, I’ll give it a try. I’m curious what you can do with Linux.

It never worked. Sure, it downloaded all sorts of stuff, and a gigantic installation story went whooshing past, but whatever it was supposed to do, it didn’t do. It sure gave me a lot of inscrutable error excuses or whatever. Used up a whole huge part of the hard disk, too. But whatever mistake it had made was seemingly irreversible. I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of the WSL quagmire, it just became this thing on there you never ever touch because it looks like it’ll never work right. It might even scramble the Windows itself.

Ultimately, the solution was to get a PCIe x1 port extension (to fit in my last x1 slot between the video cards), plus a M.2 NVME PCIe adapter, to mount the legacy windows repository, and meanwhile install a new NVME device for A New Hope: Ubuntu.

(Well, I said I didn’t know a dang thing about Linux, after all!)

So anyway, I don’t know if Windows WSL ever became anything useful. But I did go down the Virsh pathway and have happily set up all sorts of weird VMs to run as Linux Apps. I’ve got Win10 in there, Win7, plus honest-to-goodness Solaris. Also macOS Ventura with a synthetic serial number so I can play with x-code. Kolibri OS, naturally. I have Ubuntu Server set up on some Proxmox clusters I put together elsewhere. Is there anything at all compelling about WSL? Well for me I doubt it. I run Microsoft and Apple as legacy things, they’re really dead ends as far as I’m concerned.

(The absolute NICEST thing about Virsh: I can clone one of my Win10 VMs and try out WSL again, and whether it works or not, it makes no difference! I can always recover a snapshot or scrap the clone, and absolutely no harm done, ever. I have literally zero susceptibility to being disadvantaged whatsoever, no matter how badly Microsoft messes up.)

Techie left 'For support, contact me' sign on a server. Twenty years later, someone did

Only 20 years?

One of API’s rules is that load path components be designed to last “minimum” of 20 years. So I’m accustomed to be looking at drawings and technical documentation sometimes even on good old blueprint copies, and many rigs predating the 1980s.

Going back to my internship at a roofing manufacturer, one responsibility they gave me was to sort out some file cabinets of technical documentation. I learned that while the paperboard rolling mills were well over 100 years old, the mechanical alignment governor (one of those real primitive “whirlygig” type) was nearing 150 years old! Absolutely stunning. And of course the original manufacturers were still in business and still had support parts, etc.

I dunno what the big deal is. I scored a pair of HP Z800s not long ago, granted they only date back to 2009, so that’s just 15 years old. Both work like a humdinger, well, what’s going to kill them now?

Microsoft flashes Win10 users with more full-screen ads for Windows 11

Re: Ten years ago

“There's still custom, Windows-only software that holds people back, and as good as it is, Wine isn't a panacea, so Windows isn't going anywhere.”

Yes, this. People email me their Office 365 Word.docx documents, and so I have a Win10 VM with my old Office 2007 Professional license on it that I use to open and edit them. It’s not “perfect,” turns out there are some subtle differences between Office 365 and Office 2007, but it is a darn sight better than the Libre Office trying to be compatible.

(Any time I need to make new documents I make sure to use the modern Libre Office suite. Microsoft still “works,” but it’s such a PITA in comparison that it’s just plain obsolete. For example, programming new macros is light years ahead in Libre Office.)

Re: Win11 isn't that bad...

Debloater, interesting. I installed Ghost Spectre versions of both Win7 and Win10 as virtual machines. Not only are the installations heavily “debloated,” they are minimized to eliminate as much unnecessary background demons in order to maximize video game performance. Hey, that suits me. Not only are updates eliminated but so too anti-virus.

Well, as a VM anti-virus is completely irrelevant. Not only are these VMs cloned several times over, they also have “snapshots” for perfect recovery no matter how severely they get hacked (still never happened).

I put all my actual data on the Ubuntu host OS, and back up on NAS servers that none of the VMs have any idea exist anywhere.

What makes it truly optimal is the PCIe forwarding of a dedicated gaming video card plus USB controller. Did I mention the Ventura Hackintosh, with the same setup?

Yep.. same as the Windows.

My cup runneth over!

No Updates

I got the advert too, on one of my Win10 VMs that is granted network privileges. There’s a few: the Consigno one, the Steam one, etc. All of them are a clone of one original Ghost Spectre installation I did a couple years ago that doesn’t have Microsoft updates. Nor anti-virus. Also, since the VMs never run concurrently, they all have the same license.

Well, if something gets hacked, big deal. Not only are they all clones, they also have their own snapshot recoveries that I can roll back to at any second. Plus full backups on a NAS, what the hay.

The irony is that, ever since I have asserted complete dominant control over Windows, I barely have any use for it any more!

Just nostalgia I guess.

BASIC co-creator Thomas Kurtz hits END at 96

Just a collection of sub-programs

Every command or instruction in any computer language is just another program.

Even “machine language,” in which the instructions are programs that had been encoded with logic circuitry.

https://www.dartmouth.edu/basicfifty/commands.html

Basic has 15 main commands, 5 arithmetic expressions, and 10 numeric functions. Basic also has variables; arrays; string variables (just a special kind of array, with a handful of string-specific functions); plus user-defined functions.

All told, basic is a collection of probably not even 100 core sub-programs (none of which are all that complicated).

One thing that ticked me off, you could never do something cool like A=10:GO TO A, instead you could only do something like ON A GO TO 10,20,30 etc.

Apple hit with £3 billion claim of ripping off 40 million UK iCloud users

Re: Not going to defend Apple on this one.

"Nonsense. When you disable iCloud it asks you whether local data shall be retained or deleted."

User: please turn off iCloud.

Apple: you mean, delete all of your data?

User: uhhhh, what?

Apple: Look, it's not like this is some kind of threat or anything. We are just trying to figure out your intention. Now: reset your device and delete all your data, are you sure that's what you said?

User: um what's going on here?

Apple: We think this is perfectly clear what's going to happen when you disable iCloud. Now again: proceed with deletion of all your data?

..etc.

Re: Who do I trust most? Cook, Bezos, Zuckerberg or Nadella?

I trust my personal NAS far more than any Cloud service. Well, you guys never heard of businesses going broke or spontaneously changing terms and ending service.

You've never heard of game companies shutting down game servers out of the blue, "what, you expect us to run this forever?"

We had electronic stores aggressively selling layaway plans right up until the eve of shutdown, which funds are exempt once bankruptcy starts.

I have a NAS with full-blown Apple Time Machine backup facility, it has 20TB of HDDs that I assembled myself for $200, can I put my iPhotos on there instead of iCloud?

NO!

NEVER put any data on the Cloud under somebody else's control, especially an aggressively criminal organization like Apple Computer.

Apple is a criminal organization

I bought an iPhone SE and stupidly accepted the Apple "iCloud" freebie offer, they would hold up to 5GB of photos that I could then access from any other connected Apple device. What followed was DAILY harrassment demanding that I start paying for the free service because I had taken more than 5GB of photos. More than daily: all you need to do is take a photo and Apple is telling me to start paying, sometimes $80 per month. Then I'm like "ok I will turn off stupid iCloud then," Apple says not so fast: you are going to be losing 5GB of photos. Which photos? Supposedly you could log into iCloud and surf through 5GB of photos and figure it out. What you need to do is buy an Apple Mac computer, log it into iCloud, and it will "sync" all of these photos. Except no, it won't. First thing you get if you dare try this is "Volume Hash Mismatch," Apple is telling me I need to reinstall MacOS onto the hard drive. I just installed it? Nope, format it clean and start all over. Once you get past that one comes the "fake import," where it syncs about 2500 iCloud photos, you turn off the iCloud and it says now it's going to delete several hundred of them because you didn't give it enough time to sync and the Mac only downloaded low-res versions. This is after several days left online while it does this "sync" in the background, with zero feedback to you except to warn you never turn off iCloud. There are 2000 more photos on the iPhone itself that were not able to be synced. You go to import these 2000, it takes THREE DAYS before it finishes. You go into the Photos app, where are my 2000 photos? Well the fact is it never imported even ONE of them, you still have 2000 to go! What you need to do is press Command-Control on the keyboard while you open Photos so that it can run a Repair database routine and make the import function work again. People are saying, at most, you can import a handful of photos at a time before you have to Repair. Once you're done they are liable to hit you with Volume Hash Mismatch and cause everything on your computer to be wiped out, they can do this at any second.

Apple is AGGRESSIVELY broken, they are doing absolutely EVERYTHING THEY CAN to threaten to destroy your kidnapped photos if you don't pay the ransom.

Apple is a CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION.

Mozilla's Firefox browser turns 20. Does it still matter?

I never cared for Chrome

Of course, I started with NCSA Mosaic on Mac and then dabbled with Emacs browser. I eventually bought my own computer, of course, and eschewed Internet Explorer in preference of Netscape Navigator.

Of course I’ve been using Firefox for 20 years. Tried Chrome, but was appalled at the memory hogging (and then just never tried it again).

Since I had switched to Ubuntu I mostly use Firefox, and occasionally fire up Thorium for problematic web sites (that are, frankly, distasteful).

I don’t see any practical use for A.I. at all: it’s a neat gimmick but it’s unpredictable and unreliable and just fundamentally useless.

And Then: most of my internet surfing is via Safari on my iPhone!

Killer app for AI is still years away, says industry analyst

Re: The killer app is crime

The killer app for crypto was actually rich people fleeing their home country. The “gotcha” was, sure you can leave, but you can’t just take your money and property with you: there is Departure Tax. But what if you emigrate safely away, leave behind all your possessions, then later arrange to have everything liquidated. You still can’t get money out of the country except by smuggling it, for which you are risking 100% seizure if not 100% theft. So this is why crypto is illegal in China and India, because people figured out an easy safe way to escape the oppressive regime yet keep all their ill-gotten riches.

If you want your mind blown…

…read what they were working on in 1982.

https://archive.org/details/omnibookofcomput0000unse

One guy was working on a mind-machine interface to create god-like genius powers.

I’d guess about 1/3 of the ideas haven’t come to fruition yet…

(I actually bought this book new back in 1982, but only got around to reading it recently; made some of my hairs raise! No, you can’t borrow my copy, come on. Download your own copy.)

Judge tosses publishers' copyright suit against OpenAI

Your comments are being slurped by AI

Since literally nobody learns to write except by reading someone else’s etchings it’s probably time to stop with the complaints already…?

Here’s Bill Kirchen doing EVERYTHING, maybe not intelligent, and not really that artificial either:

https://youtu.be/K2_Kp_q786g

(For wristwatches we discourage “counterfeit” in preference of “homage”!)

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

“The attack begins with a gaming-related lure...”

Sneaky! But what’s the lure?

Sadly, I feel like I might have been a victim. Many years ago, I succumbed to a gaming related lure: which would be space cadet pinball. And some guys used a 4-stage attack to take control of my pc. It suffered slowdown due to registry-fattening, spontaneous reboots and arbitrary updates. I felt helpless as days grew to years to decades! The latest virus doesn’t even play space cadet pinball anymore, you have to get an emulator or something just to launch that deadly gaming-related lure.

But that’s how I captured the virus, and control it. Once I started running Linux and Virt-Manager, I learned I could lock these viruses in nice little capsules. If they do anything mischievous I can shut them down and restore a snapshot.

Oh, don’t worry about the space cadet pinball. It still runs lo these many years gone by. Except now, the virus exists completely on MY terms mwa ha ha!

Canada closes TikTok's offices but leaves using the app a matter of 'personal choice'

Re: Trudeau the terrible tyrant

“ps: please restrain from ascribing US-style personality cults to Canadians.”

Counter-argument: Alberta Premiere Danielle Smith.

She’s about as pro-Trump, anti-vax wack-job as you can get!

Next Federal election who do we see, Poilievre (hate’im), Trudeau (despise’im), or Singh (don’t like’im).

Oh Rats another election where every single candidate is a terrible choice, why-oh-why can’t we allow voters to alternatively cast “negative votes” of opposition against their most despised candidate? It would have disqualified Trump AND Harris, but that’s ok, everybody hated both of em.

Yes I’m talking about r/PlebisciteBallot !!

Dangit!

Arecibo telescope might have failed because of weak sockets

Re: Failure in 3,2,1...

“No scientist is ever going there again.”

I wouldn’t be too sure. For example: I recently read a contemporary review of Darwin’s earthworm treatise, and am genuinely pleased to see on Google Earth that his sloped stony field behind the house is all still there pretty much as he had described.

(Makes one curious for a visit and dig around amongst the buried rocks for some of them Darwin Worms, best baiters ever. Perhaps next springtime?)

https://books.google.ca/books?id=GiIDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&rview=1&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Classic Outlook explodes when opening more than 60 emails

“…a part of me is of the opinion that if you open 60 emails at once then you sort-of deserve something bad to happen…”

I’m just wondering what kind of friggin gesture interface causes somebody to spontaneously bulk-select 60+ emails then execute some command, like “open,” on them.

This is the sort of modern ui baloney that causes my mom to call up and request I travel across the city and reverse/recover whatever disaster inadvertently happened.

It’s like, all you need to do is grip the screen in one weird way and it grabs all your email folders and forwards everything to Uncle Jake, or some damn thing.

Why we're still waiting for Canonical's immutable Ubuntu Core Desktop

I’m not a fan of ‘snap’

I “updated” from Ubuntu 22 to 24, and I regret it. They’ve enforced a lot more ‘snap,’ in particular the Firefox browser. Every bootup is “system error has occurred, share with Ubuntu?” I have no idea what the error is but I suspect it is ‘snap’. I use the Foxit pdf reader, and it is almost obscenely slow to respond. Even though Foxit is “tabbed,” each pdf opens in a new instance. I splurged on 128GB of ram so I could manipulate large data sets but I suspect the Ubuntu is sprawling large and wasting that resource. Another thing, the Nautilus file manager is becoming as buggy and unresponsive as Windows Explorer! There used to be a neat extension you could install and easily calculate Hashes for any file. Now Nautilus doesn’t even give you a file size in bytes.

I’m beginning to think I should switch to Debian, or Mint, or something.

The kicker was when I forced it to install the apt version of Firefox, and tried some of the hacks people are using to keep out the snap version, and it managed to undo all of that and go back to snap.

I have another chassis kicking around downstairs that I think is going to be trialling Mint if not Debian. Ubuntu 24 is definitely worse than 22 and I think cannot be undone, this descent into snap packages seems to be a bad direction. Thank goodness for alternate distros!

Relocation is a complete success – right up until the last minute

It seems to me Mr. Bean explored countless such scenarios.. Benny Hill suffered many similar mishaps but they were usually precipitated due to distraction by someone’s spectacular bosom!

Windows 10 given an extra year of supported life, for $30

"stop the useless patches"

I think I did this by installing the "ghost spectre," "Hallowe'en Edition" of Windows (both Win7 and Win10).

I don't think Microsoft can do any more updates? I'm not sure!

Anyway they are VMs, the 1st thing I did was take a snapshot and create numerous clones. I shared a folder from Linux via Samba, that's my transfer folder between sanctuary and all the Microsoft Wastelands. The Windows are isolated from the internet (and the network, for that matter): I don't let Microsoft go snooping around. If it sets off a self-destruct bomb, no sweat, I can easily restore the snapshot.

You know what, operating like this the last couple of years I have cheerfully forgotten how tyrannical Microsoft and Apple are. Because they aren't allowed to be any more, inside their tiny little cages!

US Army should ditch tanks for AI drones, says Eric Schmidt

This is what kills you

I remember the first solid-state accelerometer packaged as an integrated circuit. OF COURSE it was for military applications: inertial guidance munitions. Later it powered “It,” which became the self-balancing Segway. Then, the proliferation of hexacopters and remote-control drones.

This is the modern Terminator: defeatured, cost-reduced, minimized - automatic murder machine.

The US Armed Forces already has an autonomous anti-drone laser that can take out an individual flier in moments. But how big of a swarm do you need to overwhelm it? This is always the question regarding these “iron dome” technologies.

Russian spies use remote desktop protocol files in unusual mass phishing drive

They shut down the Calgary Library

Well, dunno if “they” did, but some Shit Head did.

It was a ransomware attack, evidently, which is interesting because it implies that the library had some stockpile of useful information (beyond the books themselves). The S.H. Gang may have been after passwords, or who knows. The library says they never got it.

What peeves me is they interrupted access to the shared “N.Y. Times” pass, which affects my ability to participate in the Wordle!

There Are Real World Consequences !!1!1 gosh dang it!

(Oh well I think I preferred the sudoku puzzles anyway, which are unrestricted.)

Apple quietly admits 8GB isn't enough in 2024, M4 iMac to ship with 16GB as standard

Just upgraded to Ventura!

I have practically no use for macOS, unfortunately. Well, macOS doesn’t “do anything” better, or different, than Ubuntu 24. Well, what the hay, another VM in the quiver, in case I ever feel the need to fire up “Xcode.” (Probably never.)

The open secret of open washing – why companies pretend to be open source

Re: OpenAI

I’m curious about just how many people here actually “use” OpenAI.

(Please downvote this post if you, personally, use OpenAI.)

Litmus test

It’s not “OSS,” it’s “FOSS.”

(If it’s not “free” then it’s not worth my while!)

Polish radio station ditches DJs, journalists for AI-generated college kids

A.I. Generated Story

“…though it looks like like a bid to save cash.”

Actually, it looks like like HAL-9000 got loose on the internets again!

(As if generative AI ever had the wherewithal to run it’s own pirate radio ! Shocking and appalling. I say good day to you sir.)

Woman stuck upside down under rock for hours after trying to retrieve dropped phone

Embarrassing

I’d get mad, then I’d go get my tool pouch, and then I’d get my gol-durn phone back.

It's about time Intel, AMD dropped x86 games and turned to the real threat

Re: Action at the eleventh hour

Shock surprise, ITANIUM II rises from the crypt.

Boo hoo ha ha!

Re: others' -> other's

I'll have an'other

..oo. hic ..

Biz hired, and fired, a fake North Korean IT worker – then the ransom demands began

Incompetent management

The company I used to work for was hit with a click bait virus, the virus got control of a workstation, the server was completely unregulated, the contents got scrambled over a weekend, AND the IT moron never heard of “backups.”

They got burned for $50,000. Also, the descrambling key didn’t work on everything (so a lot of CAD files were left corrupted).

But it was ok. Turns out the reason they had so much incompetence in management was because they were running their own “stolen intellectual property” scams. It’s hard to find competent staff that also has to be at least this much <======> unethical in order for your application to be considered.

(I blew the whistle with the association of professional engineers, now they are subject to frequent audit. Methinks “out of business” is their next play…)

WinAmp's woes will pass, but its wonders will be here forever

Foobar2k

Though I did appreciate Winamp being able to play MODs as well. Of course, I am referring to “Modplay” from the days of DOS.

One of the most “ear popping”, mind-blowing tracks would be Jogeir Liljedahl’s “Guitar Slinger,” which of course is (hopefully) immortal by now.

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_player&query=42560

(I don’t worry about “obsolete” software, with virt-manager I can run any old version of Windows in a completely isolated sandbox, with full GPU hardware acceleration, and from there can run any old Windows software… all completely within Linux. If I ever feel like running Winamp, I’ll just run good old Winamp. I don’t care about “modern” operating systems anymore.)

California cops cuff suspect in deadly drone-assisted drug deal

Zombies

Zombie movies are actually about drug addicts.

(There’s nothing else to “figure out,” that was the only puzzle.)

Tesla FSD faces yet another probe after fatal low-visibility crash

Re: What a shock

Driving instructor here… the “anticipation” is the “P” in “SIPDE,” which stands for scan - identify - predict - decide - execute.

Which is asking a lot from a robot driver. Sure, it can scan (if a bird hadn’t soiled the sensor) and it can identify (it might distinguish among a few known shapes).

But as Python had taught, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

(I feel like Tesla doesn’t have a clear idea behind its FSD technology: what is their vision, is it HAL-9000? Is it Christine? Maximum Overdrive? “The Car”??)

Guilty

As a young inexperienced driver, I had my first accident: driving directly into an extremely bright sunset. Well, the guy ahead went round the corner, so I glanced left, saw I could make it too if I treadled it, which I did, then turned to look forward again and saw .. shadow?! Yeah, he couldn’t see into the sun either. Crunk.

(I generally have “ok” eyesight but my brain seems to be constantly looking out for skirts, legs, bosoms, and cops.)

MotorStorm AI

How come my PS3 can simulate an entire 3D world track environment plus vehicle and semi-convincing physics, and with its leftover processing power can simultaneously pilot up to 15 competing vehicles? And Tesla, with far greater processing power, struggles to control just one single car?

Pentagon stumped by mystery drone swarm flying over Langley Air Force Base

Re: the most sophisticated agencies on earth could not track them once they left

“The former commander of the the Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, has revealed an unidentified drone swarm buzzed the facility for 17 days last December.”

Possibly a flock of seagulls? First they buzzed the base then they ran, they ran so far away…

Hobby King

Somebody’s gonna buy a “fun fly” stunt plane from Hobby King, rig it with 1 gallon jug of fruit cocktail and a one-way GPS wayfinder and is going to safely and courteously make deliveries to deserving individuals. Look, I didn’t invent it. Some guy already tried to serve Maduro with court documents at a street celebration via similar technique a couple years back.

Digital River runs dry, hasn't paid developers for sales since July

Krazy Krazy

We used to have Krazy Krazy store here in Western Canada, who went bankrupt (of course), but even up until the night before they locked the doors they were going hard to sign up layaway purchases.

So you go to Krazy Krazy to buy a VCR and they have one you want, but you can’t afford it right now, so the salesman guarantees to keep one for you if you start up a layaway purchase agreement, in which you leave them some money, and keep going back and pay a little at a time, until the whole purchase price is paid, and then you get the VCR (if they still had one).

Except if they go bankrupt, at which point you’re just another unsecured creditor who is never gettin’ anything.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krazy_Krazy

Is the first European on the Moon in ESA's astronaut corps?

In your mad rush to get to the moon, then you get there to the middle of a vast sterile deadly desert where there isn’t anything to do except die pathetically.

(WORSE THAN THAT: sitting in the space suit waiting to suffocate, and you realize your nose is itchy.)

One-year countdown to 'biggest Ctrl-Alt-Delete in history' as Windows 10 approaches end of support

Windows as a Linux app

I run Win10 inside a container in Virt-Manager on my Ubuntu workstation, I actually have several of them in there for various purposes. What I did was I created one VM with the “Ghost Spectre” edition of Win10 which is pared down to the bone of upgrades, security, all that nonsense; then cloned it about 6 times. I have a single share folder that Windows can see, through which all data enters the Microsoft environments, and which I safely backup each time I ever fire up Windows (WAY less frequently these days). If some hacker figures out how to hack my windows and damage something I can restore the snapshot in about 30 seconds.

It’s funny, I finally discovered the perfect environment in which to run Microsoft, and now I barely even use it anymore! Go figure.

Why send a message when you can get your Zoom digital video clone to read the script?

Re: Max Headroom called...

FUNNY. But the first thing I thought of was Lister being bedeviled by several forms of AI as the ship computer Holly, his dead roommate Rimmer, and the one that can actually rip him to shreds, Kryten.

The only other living creature is "cat," which could be imagination fabricated by insane psychosis.

For instance: I got an offer from LinkedIn in which I could pay for their AI to write for me job application letters, which would be received by AI "human" resource reviewers, and presumably the more I pay the more favorably the AI letters are received. Then, I began to feel insane psychosis kicking in...

FBI created a cryptocurrency so it could watch it being abused

“Looks like entrapment”

It looks more like a bait car.

(Speaking of cars: I am surprised by the duration of the ongoing “crypto.com” sponsorship scam of Formula 1. I still enjoy watching the racing spectacle because of two rules: 1. Never pay any fee to anybody to watch F1 races, 2. Never transact any business with any company associated with F1 in any capacity.)

You're right not to rush into running AMD, Intel's new manycore monster CPUs

Accelerated obsolescence

I have not bought “new” equipment for many years now, to be honest I already have far more compute power than I will ever need. It is with immense pleasure I drop by the local recycling depot and peruse the latest & greatest industrial computational equipment from a few years ago, often selling for 1% original cost OR LESS.

Don’t mind if I do!

Office 2024 unveiled for Microsoft 365 refuseniks

Libre Office

It’s not very compatible, but for my purposes it’s good enough. If I need 100% compatibility I can fire up virt-manager, boot into Win10, and run my olde Office 2007 which still runs same as ever.

I hate Microsoft now, I’m not updating anything anymore. I’m going FOSS.