Posts by The Travelling Dangleberries

Russia’s first autonomous humanoid robot staggers and falls on debut

As my First Born wryly commented in order to emulate normal Russian behaviour AIDOL has to master falling down stairs and falling out of windows.

Apple knits up $230 sock for your iPhone in time for Christmas

Re: Thinking ahead ...

Or maybe iJockstrap which fits well if you are a macbook user.

'Windows sucks,' former Microsoft engineer says, explains how to fix it

Re: If only there was an alternative OS

"Is this a trick question?"

As in:

"Now, I want you to be honest. Does my computer look fat in this Linux?"

YouTube's AI moderator pulls Windows 11 workaround videos, calls them dangerous

Re: Another workaround

PeerTube anyone?

https://joinpeertube.org

International Criminal Court kicks Microsoft Office to the curb

Can Hanlon's Razor be applied when incompetence is endemic and aligns closely with The Small Handed Orange-Skinned Friend-of-Epstein's latest whim?

Microsoft gives Windows 11 a fresh Start – here's how to get it

Re: The problem

Isn't the major problem with the Windows 11 start menu that it isn't the XFCE Applications menu?

FTFY?

Elon Musk's Grokipedia launches, filled to the brim with plagiarism and AI slop

Re: Muckipedia

Gorkipedia Tovarish! Gorkipedia!

Microsoft 'illegally' tracked students via 365 Education, says data watchdog

Re: When is El Reg

As no units were mentioned by "xyz" you could be over 9000 of them for all you know.

Bose kills SoundTouch: Smart speakers go dumb in Feb

The budget Indesit washing machine in the cellar was cold fill only when it was purchased about a decade ago. It is now connected to a thermostat controlled shower mixer tap turning it into a cold to hot fill washing machine depending on the temperature setting.

The hot water comes from a coil in the first accumulator tank of the central heating system and the water in the accumulator tanks is heated by three wood burning ranges. This setup reduces the amount of electricity the washing machine uses considerably, especially so for hot washes.

It has been working fine like that for over a year now.

Hacked Ford screens put anti-RTO slogan above CEO’s face

Re: When you work for the man, you work for the man

@VoiceOfTruth "I agree there are some very badly "designed" offices. While noisy, the ability to have a quick word with somebody in person is invaluable."

You know it is just really lucky that IT as a profession does not attract neurodivergent people.

Just imagine how hard it would be for someone with an Autistic Spectrum Personality (ASP) to work in a large open plan office with all of the noisy social activity going on.

Yeah, it's really lucky that there are no ASPs in the IT industry. It saves companies a lot of money that would otherwise be wasted on people friendly offices.

/s

Thunderbird 142 lands with modest upgrades – plus talk of Pro service ahead

Re: It’s free

So is SeaMonkey.

So is Claws Mail.

Then again...

So is systemd.

So is the GNOME desktop.

Copilot Vision on Windows 11 sends data to Microsoft servers

"Hell to comply with EU laws, they've started construction on "local" data/storage/blackmail data centres in EU countries."

..and if I remember correctly a Microsoft lackey has stated under oath in a French senate hearing that there is no guarantee that information hosted on these "EU" servers will not get passed onto the US TLAs.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/microsoft-cant-keep-eu-data-safe-from-us-authorities/

The year of the European Union Linux desktop may finally arrive

Re: Bring educational establishments into line for ditching Microsoft

An upvote for the Tom Lehrer reference.

I can't give an upvote for the rest of your post as, much as I would like to I have used up my quota on upvoting the Tom Lehrer reference.

Logitech's latest keyboard and mouse combo is wired, quiet, and suspiciously sensible

I have an early beige Trackman Marble optical trackball without the two extra inset buttons that is still going strong. I remember using it with my Iyonix (maybe also with my Risc PC before that although my memory might be wrong) so it It must be at least 20 years old. I have a couple of the later models in daily use as well which must be of the order of 10-15 years old. I like them so much that I bought two more in case they stopped making them. That was maybe three years ago and one of them is still unopened waiting for one of the other ones to die.

They will all probably outlast me.

User demanded a 'wireless' computer and was outraged when its battery died

Re: Phone down

I have heard it said that in northern Norway there are no swear words, just words.

Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 to drop X11 in GNOME editions

Re: Sigh

I have used the established xorg/X11 on many devices since 2008 when I first dipped my toe into the world of Linux. First on devices such as the eeepc 701 and 901 then on Raspberry Pis from v2 to v5. Also on x64 devices such as white macbooks and a three year old AMD mini desktop now used as a multimedia device. The eeepcs when they were in use as my main devices were regularly connected to external screens via their VGA output.

Xorg just worked and continues to work without the random glitches and tearing that you speak about.

Well, with the exception of my PinePhone devices which now run mobian/Phosh (GNOME based) on Wayland but which shipped with Plasma Mobile on Manjaro also using Wayland. All of them exhibit(ed) tearing and glitches, not just when rotating the screen but in all sorts of other situations as well.

Now just to be clear, many of the devices I mentioned above are slower than the original PinePhone which exhibits all sorts of visual glitches, so it cannot lie with the fact that I am comparing the performance of xorg on super fast desktop computers vs Phosh/Wayland on a lowly PinePhone.

I also would like to point out that on my PinePhone Pro I have also installed the XFCE desktop running on xorg alongside the default Phosh GUI. There are none of the glitches and tearing that you imply/suggest are a feature of xorg when logged into an XFCE session on that device.

As ever, YMMV.

Devuan and FreeBSD

I just installed Devuan with my default XFCE desktop for the first time today. It is running on a Raspberry Pi 5 with a touch screen. It reminded me of installing eeebuntu on my first eeepc701 all those years ago. Things that were not intuitive (to me at that time) that needed thinking about. Good exercise for my grey matter. The RPi 5 is to become a (d)i(y)-pad when I get round to making a custom case for it. No systemd is a start.

Maybe soon I will have to ditch XFCE for something else as I have seen more and more GNOME UI based utilities creeping into the XFCE desktop which destroy the harmony of my desktop. Or maybe XFCE will end up requiring Wayland at some point in the future if it moves to GTK5. Then what? LXQT? IceWM which was the first alternative desktop I installed on my Xandros powered eeepc 701 in 2008? How life comes back to repeat itself, the spirals that bring us back to where we started.

I have also downloaded FreeBSD which I will try out on my old eeepc 901 which currently runs vanilla debian/XFCE. I will see how far I get with that. Again no systemd but again maybe in the future I will have to use alternatives to XFCE.

Somehow the FOSS world seems to me to be less and less open and friendly than it was. I have a nostalgic feeling that desktop linux peaked around Ubuntu 16.04 and LinuxMint 18. Or maybe that was the last part of my life when it was possible to me to enjoy change that brought obvious benefits. Now it seems that the FOSS world revolves around those personalities blinkered enough to believe that their change is the only way forward and change in any other direction is heresy.

A group of people with the mantra that the competition must not be allowed to compete, the only way forward is for it to be destroyed.

Please tell us Reg: Why are AI PC sales slower than expected?

Re: Because nobody wants AI in their PC?

So maybe I am missing something obvious here but why don't the AI PC manufacturers just ask one of their PCs why no-one wants to buy them?

Tesla FSD ignores school bus lights and hits 'child' dummy in staged demo

History lesson...

...which means that such roads may have been in use for millennia.

Once wide enough for an ox and cart and at the same level as the surrounding fields they have, bit by bit, been eroded until the now asphalted road lies a metre or two below the level of the surrounding fields. The roads have also widened to the width of about one and a half cars. The habit in the UK of marking the edges of fields with hawthorn hedges means that on top of the one metre high earth bank there is a dense hedge of at least a metre high. Often these roads are winding so that you cannot see round the next corner.

So you have to keep track of potential passing places behind you as you round each corner. As well, of course keeping in mind that vehicles driving in the opposite direction could be moving at such a speed or with a sufficiently distracted driver that the car will not stop quickly enough to avoid a head on collision as you both round the next corner.

Road markings are entirely optional on such roads.

These things coupled with the British traditions of expecting one party in such situations to do the right thing and reverse to the nearest passing place and the habit of outraged silence should this not happen leads to levels of stress unseen since Marathon bars were brutally renamed to "Snickers".

I don't think that a Tesla in FSD* mode would stand a chance on such roads.

Still at least it would not have to deal with the rural winter roads here in my bit of Scandinavia with metre high snow plough banks on either side of the road and white out conditions.

*Full Self Denial

Trump threatens to add formal Apple Tax on top of the 'Apple tax'

Perhaps start by checking the difference in price between the Librem 5 and the "Made in the USA" Liberty version of the same phone.

A mere 25% increase in price pales into insignificance in comparison.

Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload

Re: "Vincent Truck Gogh"

There was that Dutch footballer who played for one of the teams in the north of England in the 1980s. I forget which one. His name was Salford van Hire.

Mine's the one with a picture of Peel Building in the pocket.

Re: Do they really spell archaeology like that over there?

Well if Greece and Turkey follow the lead set by "The Great Orange One" then that body of water will be known from now on as BOTH "The Gulf of Greece" AND "The Gulf of Turkey".

Mine's the one with the Norwegian bluetooth keyboard in the pocket.

Re: Whoops

Trews anyone?

Still browsing like it's 1999: Fresh tools that keep vintage Macs online and weirdly alive

Re: Quality HW

A white macbook 2,1 here from 2006 running Linuxmint together with two 4,1s from 2008 again with Linuxmint.

Tesla fudged odometer to screw me out of warranty, Model Y owner claims

Re: Cockup?

When it comes to Musk in general and Tesla in particular it is best to apply Hanlon's razor inversely.

Windows 11 poised to beat 10, mostly because it has to

Re: When October comes

We have some macbook laptops, a 2,1 version from 2006 and two 4.1 versions from circa 2008 upgraded to 4GB RAM and SSDs. All are running LinuxMint 21.x XFCE and should be supported with security updates until 2027. They stopped being supported by Apple over ten years ago.

Of course, they are a bit slow but still work fine for the uses they are put to.

I will see what the upgrade options are when 2027 gets nearer but whatever the upgrade turns out to be it won't be to Windows or MacOS.

Vivaldi bakes Proton VPN into browser to boost privacy

Re: Network services are a system level service

Vivaldi uses the Chromium/Chrome ProtonVPN extension to provide the feature.

You can remove the VPN button in the toolbar by right clicking on it and selecting the relevant menu option and then remove the extension via "Tools" -> "Extensions" where you will find the Chromium extensions management page. Disable or remove the ProtonVPN extension as you wish.

Here is a use case

Here is one reason. I have an elderly relative in the UK who has definite religious views. One of their favourite news and prayer websites is based in the Balkans. Their broadband provider in the UK, Vodaphone introduced a "save the children" type content blocker last year supposedly to make using the internet safer.

For some reason the Vodaphone content blocker made it very hard to access the news and prayer site favoured by my relative. Load times for each page went up from a couple of seconds to several minutes. Here in my bit of Scandinavia the pages still loaded as normal. Another relative in the UK tested the site on a phone first without VPN and then using their VPN connection. Without VPN the site loaded very slowly. With VPN active the site loaded quickly.

So the solution would be to install something like the ProtonVPN client and set them up a free account. However, this means that the solution has to be supported. For example should the client barf, as happened to me a couple of times in the past it could take down the device's network/internet connection. So with no internet connection on my elderly relative's device in the UK I could not use TeamViewer/Skype with screen sharing to troubleshoot the problem at a distance.

Using ProtonVPN in Vivaldi means that should something go wrong with the VPN connection it a) will not kill all networking and b) access to the internet will still be possible using say LibreWolf or Chromium even if Vivaldi refused to work.

Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options, says Dutch parliament

Re: I hope this happens

Whilst working for the IT provider supporting six local councils in a valley in Southern Norway a few years ago I was stupid enough to question the wisdom of moving everything out in to MicroSoft's clouds. I was going against the orthodoxy of a die hard MS shop with a few MS fanbois in important roles. "It saves us having to run and maintain our own server park" followed by "What on earth could possible go wrong" being the mantras of the day.

Fast forward to now, and here we are, not only worrying if Norway's F35s will continue to work fully in the post-truth Trumpist era but also now considering the possibility that forcing our children to put every thought that they create in their school career into cloud services owned by US companies might not be such a brilliant idea after all. Perhaps also not a good idea that all our medical records and a myriad of other pieces of information pertaining to each and every one of us has been placed in similar systems.

Maar zelfs om het een beetje laat is, het is toch fijn dat er zijn wat mensen in Nederland die uiteindelijk het gevaar van onze situatie goed hebben begrepen.

Firefox 136 finally brings the features that fans wanted

Re: No trust

Mozilla lost my trust some time ago. I now use Firefox mainly to read and post on Mozilla Connect. Thunderbird on my ARM Linux devices has been replaced by Claws Mail which is faster than TB and has a stable, traditional UI.

uBlock Origin substitute

Well there is Vivaldi as well which offers its own ad and tracker blocking functionality. It allows you to use uBO blocking lists and seems to function as well as uBO on Vivaldi for Android. I will use uBO until it stops working on Vivaldi for Linux, at which point I will turn on Vivaldi's native ad and tracker blocking.

FuriPhone FLX1: A Debian-powered brick that puts GNOME in your back pocket

Re: so totally unusable then

My Phosh/XFCE PinePhone Pro initially boots into the Lightdm greeter screen with the Onboard onscreen keyboard enabled. On choosing Phosh for the current session and logging in using Lightdm greeter you then get the standard Phosh keypad screen when unlocking the device once Phosh is active.

If you choose XFCE for the session the the Lightdm greeter screen is the default when logging in after waking from suspend for example.

As regards alternative apps both under Phosh and XFCE I use desktop versions of Claws Mail, VLC and FreeTube as media players, mtPaint, Mousepad, XFCE terminal, Thunar as file manager and have LibreOffice installed - though I need a physical keyboard to make use of LO. Vivaldi stable and snapshot replace Chromium. The default GNOME apps they replaced have been uninstalled under Phosh. I tried uninstalling a couple of apps under XFCE and Synaptic/apt wanted to uninstall all of Phosh as well.

Re: so totally unusable then

Re Plasma vs Phosh my experience was the exact opposite. Plasma (Manjaro) that shipped with my PinePhone was very much a buggy work in progress, window tearing when rotating the device for instance was one of the minor issues while Phosh (mobian) did pretty much what it was supposed to do.

That experience was repeated when I got my PinePhone Pro.

I use web Skype natively on both PinePhones in Vivaldi. I made a test Skype call a while back sans video on the PinePhone Pro and sound quality was fine. WhatsApp web works OK as a linked device for text messaging again using Vivaldi.

Re: so totally unusable then

I installed XFCE alongside Phosh (mobian) on my PinePhone Pro. I have customised XFCE a little but generally it is touch screen friendly. I use Onboard under XFCE as an on screen keyboard and prefer it to Squeekboard which is the Phosh on screen keyboard.

I struggle with swiping exactly the right amount so XFCE makes a familiar change/relief from Phosh (or Android for that matter).

Arrr! Can a sailor's marlinspike fix a busted backplane?

Re: Vivaldi and that can follow the OS theme.

But at least you can scale the UI which is useful on both small screen devices like PinePhones and TV sized PC screens 2 metres from the audience.

Re: changed the look on XP to 'classic'

Another SeaMonkey user here at least on my x86 / x64 Linux devices. After the TB UI was properly trashed recently I have moved over to Claws Mail on my ARM Linux devices. I was surprised to discover that Claws Mail works well on my PinePhones with touch screen input. It is also fast even on the PinePhone.

Meta blocked Distrowatch links on Facebook while running Linux servers

One step beyond...

I have gone one step further by not ever having opened a Facebook account in the first place.

Mine's the one with the PinePhone in the pocket with my Mastodon feed open in Vivaldi.

Now Trump's import tariffs could raise the cost of a laptop for Americans by 68%

Re: Eh?

This reminds me of the "Cakeist" approach taken by Brexiteers in both the run up to, and post the Brexit referendum prior to the amazing trade deal that was definitely going to be negotiated with the EU.

Their idea was that the EU needed the UK more than the UK needed the EU.

Therefore, if the UK left the EU then shortly afterwards the EU would come running to the UK cap in hand begging to be able to sell their cars, cheese and bubbly tariff free to UK customers. Thus giving the UK a trade deal with the EU single market that was better than the deal (as a member) that the UK already had.

How did that work out?

However, the problem is that the instability that such ideas create, (if pursued with any vigour) is that the resulting chaos will only be of benefit to the "Chicago Boys" disaster capitalists and the alt-right poster boys who hang on their coat tails.

History shows that what happens to the rest of us will become irrelevant.

Arch Linux installer now slightly less masochistic

My first short experience with Manjaro was the version installed by default on my PinePhone shipped together with the equally wobbly Plasma Mobile GUI. I found my way to the relative stability of mobian/Phosh and the more familiar territory of apt very quickly.

Some time not so long after that there was a minor schism in the fractured PinePhone community where a group of non-Manjaro developers asked the Manjaro team to stop shipping stuff they knew to be broken.

As an example - within my first hour of using Manjaro/Plasma I discovered that brightness slider was obviously inspired by the colour scheme of the cockpit of Hotblack Desiato's stunt ship. If you moved the slider all the way to the left the screen dimmed to such an extent that the slider, and all the text and other controls on the display turned the same shade of black as the background.

Ten years under Dr Su: How AMD went from budget Intel alternative to x86 contender

Re: Still not competing in mobile markets

Tuxedo Computers in Germany do a range of AMD laptops with Linux preinstalled.

Your computer's not working? Sure, I can fix that problem – which I caused

Re: Computer wiped every month ?

I have a solitaire app that has not been updated for ages and has always been free of adverts.

My coat is the one with PinePhone Pro (running mobian) in a pocket.

Harvard duo hacks Meta Ray-Bans to dox strangers on sight in seconds

Re: As a good American...

It occurred to me a couple of years ago that it was probably possible to track people with no social media presence using facial/gait recognition simply by looking at other people's pictures and videos say posted when on holiday.

Those people in the background when you take a cute picture of your 4 year old, face smeared in blue ice cream. Or you appearing in their pictures of "Ye Olde Ice Cream Shoppe" complete with your child, face smeared in blue ice cream.

I have a maxim in life that l use often - "If I have just come up with such an idea then someone else will have already produced a prototype or working system".

Top Linux distros drop fresh beats

Re: Style is optional

@Anonymous Coward

"As useful as just clicking and dragging?"

More so,because I do not have to hit the narrow borders on the edges of windows that most GUIs I have used in the recent past seem to think are a good idea.

Hand-eye co-ordination tend to get worse as you age. Clicking at the right moment once the mouse cursor has changed to "resize" mode becomes quite difficult on bad days. With Alt Right-Mouse-Click you can click "inside" the window and drag to resize without having to hit that thin resize zone on the edge of the window and click at the right moment.

This kind of problem just shows how of little importance today's UI or should I say UX designers place on the needs of older people. Shit like having to mouse over things to try to find where the feckin' scrollbar has gone or to find the drop down menu that then disappears just as you have located the thing you want to click on.

So yes, for older people like me Alt Right-Mouse-Click has its place.

Re: Style is optional

@Anonymous Coward

"XFCE is indeed horrible and needs a huge amount of configuring, customisation and hacking to get it remotely useable. Resize window anyone?"

I find dragging using Alt Right-Mouse-Click very useful when resizing windows.

I generally find that defaults chosen by LinuxMint for their XFCE desktops, such as dark themes, modern looking icons etc to be displeasing. But a few mouse clicks including re-creating the RISC OS placement of window buttons (close, minimise, maximise) and installing tango-icon-theme does the trick here.

I got used to having the primary panel at the top a la MacOSX as I started with eeebuntu which used Gnome 2 and had the panel at the top. Which was, at the time useful if you connected an external monitor with the eeepc screen as primary.

While it is possible to get RISC OS button placements under MATE the last time I tried it was only possible from the CLI. XFCE allows you to place window buttons in any order from the GUI.

IBM pauses advertising on X after ads show up next to antisemitic content

Re: That's rich.

Posted by the person who has never owned a VW or a vehicle made by GM and has never been treated with products made by Bayer and does not drink Fanta?

YouTube cares less for your privacy than its revenues

Re: Supply-chain Control

Vivaldi and FreeTube fix some of these supply-chain issues here.

Miscreants leak texts and info siphoned by Android stalkerware app LetMeSpy

Re: someone obtained "unauthorized access"

"...And the ladies in the cloakroom

Take no notice of me..."

YouTube's 'Ad blockers not allowed' pop-up scares the bejesus out of netizens

DuckDuckGo might be your friend...

Or search for videos via DuckDuckGo and watch them from the DuckDuckGo results page. No ads. Just don't click into YouTube at the end of videos. I tend to use yt-dlp for most videos though.

No more feature updates for Windows 10 – current version is final

Perfectly good legacy hardware.

"The fact that you consider it "perfectly good" implies that it's a long way from being "legacy hardware", of course."

My very early Intel macbook (2006) running LM 21.1 is perfectly good at doing what I ask of it while (I assume that) most people would regard any laptop of that age as "legacy hardware".