Posts by Roopee

Both KDE and GNOME to offer official distros

Re: daily-drivable general purpose OS.

A charismatic leader is definitely what is NOT needed - a leader with leadership skills and logical intelligence is needed; cf Starmer vs Trump (or pick any cult/religion).

Re: "text editor", you'll find three

> Distro curators should try to pick ONE tool for each job and default it.

Precisely, that’s the whole point of having a distribution isn’t it, and I think is what Liam is getting at. Then if you don’t like a certain pick, you should also be able to choose an alternative that works better for you. Most distros I’ve tried do do this.

When an app has a very popular combination of features, it will become a very popular app, provided that it CAN be installed (easily, conveniently) by anybody on their desktop. That proviso is yet another can of worms...

Unfortunately leadership is a rare skill, and ego is an all-too-common trait amongst technically capable people, and leadership with ego isn’t generally a good combination IMHO - but occasionally it results in disruptive innovations (Steve Jobs...)

Mine’s the one with a Ventoy drive full of distros I’ve tried and rejected in the pocket...

Intel: Our finances are in the toilet, we're laying off 15K, but the free coffee is back!

Free Trainers

Would like to give you a second upvote for thinking free personal trainers are some sort of footwear!!

Clearly you should get out more, especially to a gym...

Dow swaps Intel for Nvidia leaving no index free from wild AI volatility

More Chips...

Are you suggesting that he’s overweight (as well as over-valued)?

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

Gartner

Wouldn’t it be great if every time Gartner publishes a prediction, they were required to publish the actual vs prediction as soon as the relevant date arrives...?

Icon - my guess at what the majority would show!

EU charges Corning with antitrust violations over Gorilla Glass dominance

Not heard back?

Maybe they’re too busy in crisis meetings wondering how badly they’re going to be affected by the coming trade wars...?

Microsoft has reached $1M giveaway levels of desperation to attract users to Bing

Re: Sure quacks like a duck

I would guess that the majority of Bing users are people on corporate PCs who aren’t allowed to change the Edge default search (and aren’t astute enough to make a bookmark), and/or the other extreme - DDG users using it anonymously.

Re: At least...

Amazon, Shein and Temu have just as (deliberately) useless search engines, designed to expose users to as much random junk as possible...

Re: Marketing? Really?

FetLife would be a good place to start - it even has a Kinktionary to help explain it, though it might boggle your mind even more, depending on your proclivities/experience! At least there’s no AI and the adverts are very unobtrusive (though these will take you to interesting shops...). It’s actually a very effective social network with millions of members, not a normal porn site.

Speaking as an active member of the community - I’ll grab my mac on the way out (had to get a computer angle in somewhere)...

Windows 11 continues to creep up behind Windows 10

And...

And, if only there weren’t 50+ of them!

SuperHTML is here to rescue you from syntax errors, and it's FOSS

Re: I dunno. . .

> it’s Microsoft

Use the MIT-licensed version called VSCodium instead - still MS but without all the telemetry etc (which is added after, by MS, to produce VSC.

+1

...for mentioning BDSM :). FetLife is a nice social network site to use, and some of it is open source and on GitHub, and all of it is open-minded! The devs have a sense of humour too.

After we fix that, how about we also accidentally break something important?

Re: The Rules

Agreed - isolators have only one job, and if they sit there unused for a decade until you decide to replace the washing machine, they will fail to do even that one, simple job...

Re: hmm , am I a hoarder

I’m guessing she had an ulterior motive, and wasn’t planning on being with him by the following February...

Re: hmm , am I a hoarder

Much better solution!

Re: No good deed …

I contracted in East Kilbride for over a year, at Scottish Electricity Settlements. Their office was in a tower block over the local shopping centre at the time. The village itself, where I shared a flat with a colleague, was rather nice - the rest, not so much.

Freebies included a works outing to a distillery :)

If Dell's Qualcomm-powered Copilot+ PC is typical of the genre, other PCs are toast

Re: Function keys on a touch bar?

And no speel-chicker!

Re: "Whatever x86 apps I threw at it just ran. Swiftly."

> To eBay

Around a dozen years ago I inadvertently bought 2 fake copies of Office 2007 Home & Student on eBay - genuine packaging but the holographic CD surface was a sticker and the CoA was clearly non-standard, so I followed MS’s instructions and sent them to MS (in Ireland) to be exchanged for the real thing.

Eventually (long after I sourced what my client needed from elsewhere) they sent me the real thing, but not quite the same thing: a single copy of Office 2010 Professional - which now sits, unopened, in my “keep it just in case” box... for the day when I can no longer use Office 2000 :) I’m told 2000 now works well in WINE (it didn’t use to) so that day might never come. Currently I have to use Office 365 for work, mainly Excel, and boy do I hate it! Soooo slooow, and oozing new features that just get in the way.

Valve powers up Arch Linux – because who needs Windows when you have a Steam Deck?

Re: Woa - desktops = production??

I am still using my custom-built Core 2 Quad bench PC that I've used to help fix many, many clients' PC problems with. It has gone through many incremental upgrades, with only the case and PSU still from the original. I doubt there will be any more rebuilds - it does everything I'm likely to need in the foreseeable future.

Even my 'gaming rig' is old - 3rd gen i5 with 10-yo GPU - yes it can run Crysis (the first game I ever had to build a specific PC for back in 2008), but then so can any modern phone or PC - probably even the half-assed Win 11 NUC I've been provided with for WFH!

I'm now wondering if I can virtualise the NUC and stick the VM on one of my Proxmox servers or (Debian) dev laptop, and whether $employer/client would notice. Helpful suggestions welcome...

Re: Woa - desktops = production??

Welcome to the wonderful (?) world of DIY system builders and upgraders - but I have to admit that I agree with Liam and several posters that we are a dying breed, and it is certainly possible that we will be forced to give up in the not-too-distant future. <sad face>

Have one on me - you'll need it to cope with the frustrations that you will undoubtedly experience ->

UK government's bank data sharing plan slammed as 'financial snoopers' charter'

Re: What is all this self-assessment?

I wouldn’t advise changing your surname either, or getting married - divorce is predictable (statistically) and potentially far more expensive!

Re: What could possibly go wrong...

For once I agree with you!

Re: What could possibly go wrong...

Encouraging people to contribute more to pensions by deferring tax (you still pay tax on the income, just much later when you start drawing on the pension) has been government policy for decades - it’s nothing at all to do with tax avoidance.

Re: Nothing to hide

Rich people’s problems.

I’m more worried about all the potential flaws in the system that will allow “sharing” that wasn’t in the plan - and we all know there will be flaws...

Microsoft hits go on Windows 11 24H2: Fresh features, bugs, and a whole lotta AI

Re: Up to now...

+100 for WinSetView - just what I need for my WFH Win11 PC :)

Three, Voda promise £10-a-month or below mobile tariffs in bid to sway CMA on merger

Re: Under a fiver

I agree, and my current contract (a MSE special with Lebara) IS under a fiver - for unlimited calls and 5GB, which is plenty for my needs - so "just" £10 would be >100% increase.

Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund throws cash at FreeBSD and Samba

TrueNAS

Don't forget TrueNAS - the Core version runs on *BSD, and in my experience (admittedly limited as I only run one TrueNAS server) is utterly stable, as is the ZFS array that it uses.

My server is an old laptop (chosen for its connectivity), and the only bit that was awkward and frustrating to configure was power management...

It's really good to see the public sector investing in FOSS - a shame it's not my government though!

For the minister, though I'm sure he/she would rather drink a local one ->

+1 for the self-deprecation - not something Americans are known for!

Binance claims it helped to bust Chinese crypto scam app in India

Re: Submarines

Thank you for that very comprehensive reply! It was a genuine question and your answer does give me some confidence that governments are taking the threat seriously. By "we" I was thinking of the UK, but clearly we can't act/think in isolation.

Submarines

I wonder if we are defending our underwater cables and pipelines in any meaningful way?

There's no James Bond sub icon, or even a Lotus Elite...

Extracting vendor promises won't fix cybersecurity. Extracting teeth might

C

It’s not helped by C developers pushing back against memory-safe languages such as Rust... I’d much rather my Linux machines for example were a bit slower if it meant that they were guaranteed to be less hackable as a result.

I’m sure it will happen eventually, once it is generally accepted that C is a legacy language that has had its day and is no longer an acceptable choice. Cue the downvotes...

Recall the Recall recall? Microsoft thinks it can make that Windows feature palatable

Re: Targeting users with Alzheimer?

Just think how useful it could be - if you had Recall you could go back and (re)read the article properly! Or maybe ask the AI to fact-check as you type.

Re: No windows hello - no recall

So would mine if I had one.

Oh I forgot, there’s my WFH PC, supplied by work, controlled by work...

OS/2 expert channeled a higher power to dispel digital doom vortex

Re: been there..

I find pictures much easier to visualise than words...

Re: In the days before t’interweb…

Bilingual Germans are by no means rare. I know several including my best friend, his sister I used to go to school with, and their mother.

However I used to be in a relationship with that much rarer thing - a bilingual English person! She had lived in Hanover for several years and unlike probably most Brit ex-pats she was completely fluent. I was busy learning German at the time and could tell that much of the time she actually thought in German, so I have no problem believing that little anecdote.

Mine’s the one with pockets bulging with 1990s Deutsch Plus VHS tapes and Berlitz CDs...

A look under the hood of the 3D-printed, Raspberry Pi powered 'suicide pod'

Re: sounds complicated

You are dead right! But seriously, one of the many ways that our society is crazy is that we don’t allow people who are EOL to actually request termination.

One of my close relatives said to me “if I get to that state, shoot me!”, referring to medium/advanced dementia. I would happily carry out his wishes except that a) I don’t have access to a gun or any means of getting one legally, and b) it would be so illegal to do it that it would make my life far more of a misery than he possibly could.

The stupid thing is that even if he passed a stringent mental capacity test (which I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t now) and swore an affidavit saying that he really, really, wanted euthanasia once he reached a certain lack of capacity, the law here in the UK doesn’t allow him that choice, and criminalises anyone who tries to help.

PS If the government wants to help the NHS, it could start by sorting this out, and as well as saving a fortune it would earn huge kudos points from the population!!

WordPress.org denies service to WP Engine, potentially putting sites at risk

Surely...

I always assumed that hosted WP was done by WordPress themselves as a way of funding the FOSS project, though I've never looked into it. Surely that is what they should be doing?

Campaigners claim 'Privacy Preserving Attribution' in Firefox does the opposite

Re: "opt in is only meaningful if users can make an informed decision,"

If “Mozilla believes that users are too dumb to say yes or no”, then the feature should be off by default, since by definition if you can’t understand something then you are incapable of giving informed consent - it’s the basis of Powers of Attorney...

Oracle urged again to give up JavaScript trademark

Keep the initials

Since it is widely known as JS, how about JustShite? Not that I think JavaScript is bad (other opinions are available), but there are several better languages commonly used for the backend that could be used for the front end too if browsers decided to support them - Ruby, Python, PHP...

Now that would f**k Larry :)

How about ForkLarry...

Probably an understandable reference by the majority of devs and much more likely to gain official approval. Would definitely get my vote.

Mine’s the one with a copy of the Ruby Pickaxe in the pocket for bedtime reading...

250 million-plus unused IPv4 addresses should be left alone, argues network boffin

Re: "Extensive use of IPv4 NAT"

> if people years ago had had any capacity to think beyond next week or beyond "works for me"

Pro tip: Don’t go into politics!!

BT Unreliable?

Amongst my clients, yes - especially if they used BT Mail. I helped lots of people switch away from BT, also saving them money as a bonus :)

Re: Well...

> millions of people

BILLIONS of people

FTFY

Re: No problems with IPv6

Lucky you - but your use case is probably unique, or practically so, thus ideally suited to IPv6.

I taught myself IPv6 out of interest and so that I could use it on my HomeLab, but to the average user IP-anything is mumbo-jumbo, and as the article clearly states, there is a huge cost to switch to 100% v6, with no benefit whatsoever to those billions of users. So why would they want to pay for it, directly or indirectly?

The horse already bolted years, nay decades, ago - whenever it was that NAT was invented/adopted...

Re: Well...

If you are seriously advocating allowing governments to “forbid $stuff on the Internet“ then I have an apartment for sale in China that you might be interested in...

Apple AirPods Pro 2 can be sold as hearing aids, says FDA

Technology User <> Tech-Savvy

> young pensioners and elderly pensioners

Very true... I am nearly 60 and have spent many years trying to teach pensioners how to use everyday technology. At 70-75 quite a lot of people are starting to show signs of significantly reduced cognitive ability, often with other signs of dementia such as confusion, extreme forgetfulness, inability to understand new concepts etc, typically accompanied by significant lack of self-awareness of these deficiencies (or at least the extent of them).

My dad has never sent an email (refused to, and now can't, learn) and can barely make a phone call. He is convinced that because he can still type he is fully compos mentis, and refuses to accept that he badly needs hearing aids.

On the other hand, some are fine, albeit usually slower and less sharp than they were a decade or two earlier. 6 years ago my mother, aged 79, spent her last days sat in her death bed busy texting, WhatsApping, emailing, Messengering on her modern phone for all the hours that she could.

The future everyone wanted – in-car ads tailored to your journey and passengers

Re: The only logical explanation

Sounds pretty similar to George Orwell’s 1984...

Trump taps Musk to lead 'government efficiency' task force

Please Nooooo....

The problem with Trump somehow managing to get in again is not just that he will destroy America, it’s that it will have severe knock-on effects for the rest of us,,,

I just hope there is enough time left for Trump to upset enough putative Republican voters that they realise the stupidity of voting for him, assuming they have at least a basic grasp of democracy (not a given, I realise).

Re: Musk's plan

Surely Trump will change the constitution to make it Great Again?

To patch this server, we need to get someone drunk

Re: Prison

That conspiracy theory is so sadly cynical and demonstrates such a complete lack of understanding of sociology!

Don’t jump to attribute to malice what is more easily explained by stupidity...