Posts by bombastic bob

Wubuntu: The lovechild of Windows and Linux nobody asked for

2D FLATTY FLATASS FLATSO look still there - **WHY**???

You know, if the UI were to look like Win7, WinXP, or even Win2k, it would be a WHOLE LOT BETTER...

But NOOOOoooo. By "cloning" the look/feelz of Windows Ape/10-nic/II they've TRIPLED DOWN on Sinofsky's BULLSHIT FLATSO TIFKAM UI, once again.

When is 3D Skeuomorphic (what people REALLY want) going to be the DRIVING FACTOR again?

Remember Windows 2.x, vs 3.0??? 3.0 was SKEUOMORPHIC and THAT was *THE* revolution!!! I call THAT "PROOF"!!! 2D FLATSO FLATTY FLATASS is a REGRESSION!!!

Musk and Trump to fall out in 2025, predicts analyst

Re: Shocked

yeah the TDS venting in the comments is voluminous AND entertaining!

SO funny when none of "that" happens and DOGE gets to trim >$2TRILLION from annual gummint expenditure.

Elon can put factories wherever he wants. 10:1 he puts the new ones in Mexico, Canada, or inside USA with Musk-bots doing most of the work. CCP China is a passing FAD when it comes to manufacturing. Trump de-regulating will allow US minerals and energy to dominate again. We do NOT need the CCP to supply critical minerals despite their takeover and/or coercion as they corner markets around the world. Before long, they'll be BEGGING for US companies to consider them RELEVANT.

Environmentalists won't complain about how CCP and 3rd world nations RAPE the earth for minerals, leaving open pit and strip mining scars and other environmental damage in their wake. If USA mines its OWN minerals, AND Canada, and maybe even Mexico, it can be done WITHOUT the environmental damage if NOT over-regulated into non-profitability, and THAT is the point.

Truth: pollute and rape the land "over there" and use SLAVE labor to do it - THAT (CCP) model MUST go away, swapped out for COMMON SENSE regulations in places where we CARE about such things.

It'll work. You'll see.

Bluesky keeps growing, and so do its problems

B.S. worst kind of echo chamber

Having not bothered to go there, I do not know. However, SOME evidence seems to indicate this is so.

For example, I have seen a couple of videos where someone signs up for B.S. (Blue Sky), then enters his first post with something frequently said on X, such as "there are two biological sexes", or "man made climate change is a hoax" (or similar).

Within 30 seconds an algorithm of some kind flat-out bans the user. [I cannot imagine what they'd do for a PRONOUN violation]

So if you like "safe" environments in which nobody argues with your politics and/or opinions, B.S. may be for you.

(Personally I call that *BORING*)

Win a slice of XP cheese if you tell us where Microsoft should put Copilot next

Copilot collar for Lemmiwinks

Copilot collar for Lemmiwinks

Seems to be one of the most appropriate uses

Both KDE and GNOME to offer official distros

daily-drivable general purpose OS.

Article: I would like to turn GNOME OS, GNOME's home-grown distro for testing and development of the GNOME Desktop, into a daily-drivable general purpose OS.

OK. Here ya GO:

* Stop forcing everyone top use ADWAITA (it SUCKS)

* Default to 3D skeuomorphic look, preferably "TraditionalOK"

* Put panel back the way it is in Mate (gnome 2 functionality)

* Fully support GTk2 and GTK3 existing simultaneously

* STOP IT with 'HAMBURGER' MENU ICON

* stop it with "moving targets" i.e. a STABLE API

* Screw Wayland, standardize on X11

* FULL SUPPORT of "NO SystemD" SYSTEMS!

Basically become Mate/Cinnamon, and especially default to 3D SKEUOMORPHIC and *NOT* that RIDICULOUS GOOGLE/MICROS~1 2D FLATSO FLATASS LOOK!!!

Trump tariffs transform into bigger threats for Mexico, Canada than China

Re: You keep using that word...

"Written on the back of a McDonalds napkin in black sharpie?"

I get my best ideas at the strangest times.... so a napkin with a sharpie could actually be a CROWNING MOMENT of BRILLIANCE!

(don't knock the napkin).

One day when I'm working in an office the supervisor, the manager, and the marketing guy were discussing ways of solving a basic mechanical problem, right behind me, while I was working on firmware. Existing solutions were less than adequate. I got a brilliant inspiration from nature and sketched it out on a notepad with "here ya go". They adopted it. Worked pretty well, cheap plastic sheet stamped into the right size and shape, less than 10 cents each, helped to sell the $$$$.$$ solution (several thousand of them). The system itself even has a patent [I had to put that hat on too, the original writeup for the lawyers and a half dozen review/edits], though I think the plastic sheet design just has a copyright. Yeah the fun things!

Re: I have no doubt you blame Trump for not controlling covid....

The ridiculous "inject bleach" hoax

Debunked LONG ago... (DO try and keep up!)

Snopes link

Re: Good luck buying fruits and vegetables then

Look at Central California and Salinas Valley and say that again...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanimura_%26_Antle

(Yes their trucks DO say T&A on them)

And getting Taiwan to build them (assuming CCP does not conquer the island) would be a nice MIDDLE FINGER to the MIDDLE KINGDOM GUMMINT!

"2nd source" NOT in China should quickly become the NORM, especially after what CCP did to us during the VIRUS SCARE!

Windows 10's farewell tour – not AI PCs – set to drive laptop sales in 2025

Re: Looks like people are buying laptops without all that A.I. bullcrap...

I wonder where they get the idea that "Businesses want to move to AI PCs".

Big WIntel Marketing droids. They SAID so, it MUST be true!

Linux Mint

Yep! Maybe with wine you don't NEED windows at all.

how about using Linux or *BSD instead, and avoid the potential "breech" fallout? That assumes that OTHER necessary protective measures are being employed when it comes to data intefrity and security.

I bet RHEL is cheaper and would run on the older hardware. And Rocky Linux if you do not need paid support.

Will scout for used laptops on sites like e-bay

Once windows 10 laptops go EOL on the OS *and* can NOT run 11, I should be able to get a bargain price for something that works JUST FINE with Linux and/oe FreeBSD on it!

I might even find something interesting to use as a spare server or NAS, same idea.

RECYCLE those Non-11 CAPABLE BOXEN, please!!!

Trump appoints Musk associate Brendan Carr as FCC chair

Re: At least it's not Ajit Pai

when you draw attention to identity, and then treat people differently because of that identity, regardless of whether or not it is better or worse, it is STILL racism, sexism, or some OTHER form of bigotry.

That is what D.E.I. is: bigotry!!! (apologies for the thread decay)

Re: At least it's not Ajit Pai

Well the best news is that the D.E,I. will D.I.E. - it's ABOUT FREAKING TIME!!!

(That 'Afuera' video should be required viewing for DJT's new cabinet, etc. - when I first saw it I let repeat at least 3 times)

EU buyers still shunning pure electric vehicles, prefer hybrids

Re: Increased tariffs on imports from China are unlikely to help matters.

You sure they're not equipped with something like ATMOS? [obligatory Dr. Who reference]

OK CCP, not Sontarans, but still...

Re: Plug in hybrids

we probably need (needed) to think of lower carbon transport options

No. we don't...

Re: Plug in hybrids

It should be a trivial software update to make your preferences "sticky", but they probably won't

Gummint regulators forcing it on you anyway? Just a thought...

[also liability l[aw]yers may have influenced this]

LXQt packs Wayland punch with 2.1 release

Re: Third or Fourth?

defaulting to wayland is both IRRITATING *AND* unnecessary.. When you do embedded development it needs to be X11.

export DISPLAY=linux-workstation:0.0 <-- it's how work gets done

Rust haters, unite! Fil-C aims to Make C Great Again

memory safe version of std

perhaps all that is really necessary is a memory safe version of 'std', though memory safe headers that re-define common utils with memory-safe versions might also work.

Or people could just roll their own C++ objects with validation (where needed). Some of MFC classes could easily be written this way.

It makes me wonder if a new 'bounds' instruction (or modifier) might be useful in the CPU itself, to auto-apply bounds checking in the microcode and branch on fail (or set a flag in the status register, "bounds exceeded"). If you did this maybe you could do MOV (EAX),EBX BOUNDS base-address,size [or something like that]. Or a bounds register would have the base address and size, and you'd just mention it as part of an instruction so that the bounds check values are cached. Anyway, stuff for CPU designers to consider.

I had considered a sub-allocator to do this with pre-allocated chunks which reserved the first 4 ir 8 bytes as the chunk size.. Useful for string manipulation, for sure. Never implemented it, though.

Air National Guardsman gets 15 years after splashing classified docs on Discord

Re: First mistake

thread decay. Almost like Godwin's Law

Re: First mistake

you got someone living rent free in your head?

Re: First mistake

TDS detected. get over it.

China's Volt Typhoon crew and its botnet surge back with a vengeance

unusual (secure) SMTP activity in the last month or two

I've been seeing unusual (secure) SMTP activity from some specific IP address ranges. They connect as if to relay mail via the secure SMTP port and simply try to log in with dictionary names. For some reason fail2ban did not have a script that I could use to detect these, so I just block the IP addresses with firewall rules. One of the ISP's had several IP addresses assigned to it and is located in London [yes I did notify them]. One other is in the US but I haven't sent an e-mail about it yet. I do not know if this is anything connected with the group from China but appears to be searching for user/pass information on Linux systems since all it does is attempt to log in to relay mail. Could also just be a spammer. I was simply thinking that it is a possible side-channel attack, if successful at relaying mail, it might try ssh next.

though in my case I use FreeBSD, they are probably looking for a Linux system, my guess, like older Cisco routers and firewalls.

Mozilla Foundation crumbles as third of staff cast off

Re: Wait ...

how much of that "fluff" was political donations in the recent USA election? Interestingly enough the announcement came a couple of days after the election was 'called' for the next US Prez...

[3 guesses on which candidates the "allegedly laundered" money might have gone to, and the first 2 guesses do not count, but being based in SAN FRANCISCO with satellites in Beijing, Toronto, and Berlin should give a pretty big hint...]

Moving to Texas or Louisiana or S. Carolina or similar would cut the employee living expenses in half, and because of "progressive" and state tax rates, Moz could reduce wages to 1/3 of what they were (for employees inside the US) without affecting anyone's net disposable income (after paying for necessities) - just sayin'. SF living expenses are some of the HIGHEST, ANYWHERE.

maybe Elon can fix it

Maybe Elon can fix it?

First, reduce costs to a fraction of what they were like he did with Twitter (now X)

Then integrate with X search, and call it the X browser with extra privacy settings, a PROPER UI, and maybe built-in secure VPN access for posters who do not want to GET ARRESTED for speaking out online...

Aaaand move the operation to TEXAS.

Re: RE: why?

(living/working in a tiny software-dev bubble world where customers cannot 'bother' you)

This is a common problem in software development, EPITOMIZED by Micros~1 since "Windows APE" and TIFKAM.

/me now goes off and continues working on a customer-requested mod that will take days' worth of my time, and costs the company more money than it earns from it, but preserves the business relationship... which is sometimes MORE IMPORTANT

My browser of choice is still Firefox, even though I preferred the GUI of many redesigns ago.

I very much wish it were not so...

Your first instinct was the correct one

If Mozilla were to fall apart, maybe we (developers) can TAKE OVER the project and do a retro UI and "feature freeze" and just keep it up with the CONSTANTLY moving DOM/CSS standards, fix bugs, and make "lean and mean" performance enhancements.

Too many too frequent releases, and "up"grading is HIGHLY OVERRATED!!!!!

Seriously, the ad/script/etc. blocking, add-on, and privacy features are WAY superior to chrome!!! OR is that why they're being (quite possibly) DRIVEN! OUT! OF! BUSINESS!!!???

If Trump gets elected, get your tech buying done asap

NOT paying the lazy to "NOT work" is a tax savings. If working they're no longer mooching from everyone else.

You want everyone working. That is enough in and of itself.

Re: chicken little was an optimist?

did not forget. I was totally serious. Well here it is so remind me of it next year if you think I was wrong. Trump got elected. If I'm right, next year we're ALL better off!

No need for doom and gloom,

Re: chicken little was an optimist?

you still get an upvote for the humor

chicken little was an optimist?

one year from now, the Trump economy will be making UK great again, too, along with the USA.

No worries. The sky is NOT falling.

"Don't Panic".

Japan's wooden cube-shaped satellite rockets to space

shielding can be estimated by "10th thickness", i.e. how thick to reduce radiation to 1/10 of what it was.

Thickness depends on radiation type. For alpha (He nucleus) and beta (electrons emitted by a nucleus) it's usually a millimeter or so.

For gamma it's about 1 inch of lead, 2 inches of steel, 1 foot of concrete, and 3 feet of water (if I remember correctly). Mass and density are major factors.

For fast neutrons it's different. You need hydrogenous and other light materials (carbon helps some) to slow the neutrons down so that they do way less damage. For water, it's about 1 foot. Plastic containing boron 10 reduces that down to an inch or so because boron 10 absorbs neutrons, but it depletes (becomes boron 11) so wears out over time.

So to shield gamma you need dense material, and to shield neutrons, hydrogenous material [like water, plastic, wood, oil, ...] and/or absorbing material (like boron 10).

Re: What sort of wood ?

Article: "The wood used in its construction is Honoki, a type of Japanese magnolia tree"

details like that are easily missed, though, and also they did not specify particle vs ply vs regular as far as I can tell.

wood is better at shielding neutrons, but you'd need it to be 2-3 feet thick to shield 90% of them...

However that may work out, a wood shell is necessarily thicker to provide equivalent strength as metal, so maybe THAT has something to do with it.

[/me cannot get wooden cyberman image out of my head]

Microsoft tries out wooden bit barns to cut construction emissions

Re: Hurricanes

Steel buildings are often prefabricated (in many cases that I am aware of), greatly reducing cost and construction time

Re: Cross laminated timber, eh?

There are SO many things wrong with this. I won't even start on the whole anthro-CO2-based climate scam [that deserves its own topic].

* Cutting down trees that eat CO2 to reduce CO2 - WTF???

* Building with wood when data center fire danger is "a thing"

* Increasing the level of manual labor and land surface needed to build when steel+concrete buildings can be made TALLER (and ought to last longer)

* anyone considering the effect of termites and moisture on the structure? No?

There are good reasons industrial buildings use steel and concrete. Micros~1 "pipe dreamers" need to stop staring at their "narrow mind tall/skinny aspect ratio" 4 inch phones and see the ENTIRE picture, and not just the tiny narrow "4 incher" view on a 4 inch phone screen!!! [those of us who see the world in 'wide screen' can more easily see the big picture]

Combustion engines grind Linus Torvalds' gears

Re: Dumb interviewers

"as China eats the legacy manufacturers' lunch"

Through unfair trade practices like dumping, child+slave labor, oppression of human rights (labor unions?), industrial espionage, and intellectual property theft.

THAT and "cornering the market" on worldwide sources of raw materials... including cobalt mined in open pits by CHILDREN.

(some lunch THAT is...)

Re: Dumb interviewers

EV's are (to some extent) a good idea in general, but NOT as your, ahem, "daily driver" or long distance travel. For most people, they are just impractical.

* On average an EV vs dino burner is around $10k more

* Battery replacement after 3 years, might as well get a new car

* resale value poor, used cars not wanted (see above)

* limited range, charge times too long

* Power grid cannot handle it if EVERYONE had an EV

* enriches CCP [where most battery materials come from]

When the battery tech GREATLY improves, or a hybrid "aircraft APU-like" power plant is shipped in every EV, they will become practical and (hopefully) affordable. But until then, I'll keep my dino burner, thanks.

Some day, probably. Just not NOW.

Fired Disney staffer accused of hacking menu to add profanity, wingdings, removes allergen info

Re: His attempts to hide his trail

What, no Toy Story jokes? Was he 'Buzzed' when he did it? Did it give him a 'Woody'? Was 'Sid' involved? Did he 'Etch' his initials someplace on the web site? Was he caught "Slinking" (ok a bit of a 'Stretch')...

(all those Debian releases from back in the day made me think of this)

Beijing claims it's found 'underwater lighthouses' that its foes use for espionage

Re: Does it go ping?

real sonar pings actually don't sound like "ping", though, more like whistling. If you've ever heard them in deep water they sound like whistling in a ginormous cave.

Re: Does it go ping?

SO close to Halloween, I now have Tim Curry singing "The Time Warp" in my head - my mind goes "ping"

[Don't touch the hair! Too late...] [Meatloaf again? We had Meatloaf LAST week!]

Re: The fools

And don't forget This old thing that's been around as long as ME

Re: A "seabed device" ...

and don't forget the barnacles and that "sea grass" you often see at the waterline of ships. Sea life grows on anything it can attach itself to, and does not take that long to show up. A few weeks even...

[these land-lubbers know nuthin' 'bout the sea! Haarrrrr!]

Alphabet posts big revenue and profit growth, just 1,100 job losses

Re: This would explain...

In a LOT of ways, it's the "CCP Model".

* Use super cheap [AI] labor capable of doing lots of repetitive tasks at low cost without complaint nor disrupting the status quo nor even making suggestions for improvement

* Have a handful of bureaucrat types spend all day nit-picking details but missing the big picture

* slap it together really fast, never mind proper testing [that's for the customer or end-user to deal with] or any kind of efficiency analysis nor "overall impact" analysis

* If it does not work right, just add more [AI] bodies, that'll solve the problem!!

nobody left that knows anything

" the CEO won't be so enthused once he realizes all they have left are script kiddies who can't code shit."

And biased algorithms from AI-written code could generate unexpectedky inaccurate search results.

How are those script kiddies gonna fix THAT, hmmm?

Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Re: Tell the bloke with his finger stuck on the 0...

try rotating the phone 90 degrees.

(this is an especially important step when taking photos and movie clips to be posted online)

Re: Ban them from everything, worldwide.

Carrot and stick approach works better than getting a bigger stick.

Your proposed solution stinks of CANCEL CULTURE...

Keep the stick, but offer a carrot, giving Putin a "way out" [whether perceived or real] and human nature will take over.

(You just need the right carrot)

The only alternative, if things continue as they are, is "see icon". You cannot expect a megalomaniac and slightly deranged dictator like "Pootie" to just BEND OVER AND TAKE IT. What do deranged dictators do when no other alternatives exist?