Posts by The Travelling Dangleberries

Windows Update is a torture chamber for seldom-used PCs

Re: This and more

We have a lot of Linux devices at home including three early Intel macbooks with Core2Duo CPUs running LinuxMint from SSDs.

If I am downloading and installing updates, using a browser at the same time then it will update without becoming unresponsive. The fan might start hissing but that is to be expected. The rate limiting factor in the process, given that the SSDs are quite quick is our slow 4G internet connection.

I only get to see Windows 11 on my PIC's work laptop supplied by their employer. Then only occasionally, fortunately.

My main concern with the Windows 11 laptop is that, looking at my pihole logs it has gone from trying to phone home to the mothership once every 4-6 seconds to trying to phone home almost every second. That one laptop, when it is on accounts for over 25% of daily pihole domain block events.

If Windows 11 didn't need to try to send data back to MS so often then maybe it would run and update a little faster.

Microsoft locks out VeraCrypt and WireGuard devs, blames verification process

Re: A blog? Emails? Banners?

If MicroSoft implemented a seabourne bottle based messaging system for communicating with users of their services then MS "Customer Support" would be instructed to throw bottles destined for European customers into the Pacific Ocean.

AWS CEO: It's funny when people ask me if AI is overhyped

Re: WTAF?

I am really interested to find out how AI is going to make efficiency improvements to the firewood stacking process that takes place every spring here at The Travelling Dangleberries Towers.

Claude Code source leak reveals how much info Anthropic can hoover up about you and your system

A nice pair of...

Could it possibly be Anthropic's answer to GhatGTP's "adult content" generation mode?

I will just get my coat...

Most chatbots will help plan school shootings and other violence, study shows

Re: Stop blaming tools for what people do with them.

Yes and just how close do you need to be to someone to:

a) shoot them in the head

b) hammer a nail into their head?

I ask as a person can struggle back if you are trying to hit them with a hammer.

They can do very little to protect themselves in a school playground when presented with a nutter holding a loaded assault rifle standing fifty metres away.

Guns DO kill people and are the weapons of choice in mass murder events such as killing children at school.

I honestly cannot remember an incident where a mass murder event was carried out with a hammer and a nail.

Get a bloody grip!

Linux PC vendor System76 tries to talk Colorado down over OS age checks

Re: I honestly do not get the reason they even want this

I install an OS on my Raspberry Pi with age verification once and then use the SD Card copier to make copies of that verified image ad infinitum?

Or will they match the ID to some immutable hardware ID on the Raspberry Pi? Or mandate a special "ID chip" for all "internet enabled" devices?

Yes and then service providers will exclude such "jailbroken" devices with age verification stripped out from logging in to their services. As in this case:

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/10/microsoft_authenticator_checks/

Norway's Consumer Council takes aim at enshittification

Re: In English

Norway is part of the EEA and as such implements most of the EU directives. Which includes things like the GDPR. IIRC it was the Norwegian Data Protection Agency that lodged the complaint when Meta introduced the "pay a fee to have non-targeted advertising or have targeted advertising for free access". So Norway seems to be more on the ball than many countries not just in Europe but elsewhere in the world.

I watched the 90 minute presentation of the report which, apart from the interview with Cory Doctorow was in Norwegian. I do not know if there is now a version of the presentation with English subtitles. The presentation of the report is, to my mind less important than the report itself.

However, it would be a shame if the work that the Forbrukerråd has put into researching and writing report was only limited to Norwegian/Danish/Swedish speaking part of Scandinavia. Especially as the themes in the report are common to all users of electronic devices and the internet. Publishing the report in both English as well as Norwegian is a good way to make the findings accessible to people in other parts of Europe and the EU thus allowing the efforts of the Forbrukerråd to act as a catalyst for further debate in other (European) countries.

Techie was given strict instructions not to disrupt client. Then he touched one box and the lights went out

The story might still be developing as we have only seen a snapshot of the situation. Not the whole picture. It could still easily slide into being a complete disaster.

Burger King turns to AI to flame broil employees who aren't friendly enough

(Said with the rising excitement of a game show host)

"Mornington Crescent!"

Android malware taps Gemini to navigate infected devices

So what is less secure?

An old Android phone with un-patched OS vulnerabilities but up to date apps.

OR

A new fully updated Android phone with Gemini installed?

Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

Re: Teenage boys will be salivating...

Remember that the purpose of a Tesla motor vehicle is NOT to end up becoming a self driving car.

Teslas are designed as a surveillance platform primarily with the aim gathering as much video footage of their surroundings, and interior as possible.

LIDAR is only useful for cars that are trying to actually implement autonomous operation and therefore totally unnecessary on a Tesla.

Re: Teenage boys will be salivating...

I have been considering a plan to reduce the number of people who tailgate my car, particularly in winter when my driving style errs on the side of caution.

I mount a flip up sign on the parcel shelf of my car. The sign will be round, mostly white, with a thick red border and the text "40" on it.

The modern car a couple of metres behind my back bumper will have speed limit sign recognition.

In such situations I could flip up the sign in my back window and get the car behind me to slow down to the new "observed speed limit" without any driver intervention being necessary.

Latest Vivaldi release surfs a wave of anti-AI sentiment

Re: It's an easy move - do it!

Vivaldi and LibreWolf both offer Linux ARM64 builds. Useful for devices like Raspberry Pis and PinePhones.

I like to have the same browsers on all of my devices if I can.

Re: AIdvertising

I customise the UI to my liking, with a traditional menu "File, Edit, View etc" and tick the Use Native Window option and select the "Subtle" theme so it fits in better with my XFCE desktop.

I have to do a lot more to get LibreWolf the way I like it including installing Aris's CSS fixes for Firefox.

The biggest advantage that Vivaldi offers over other Chromium based browsers is the UI scaling. I use Vivaldi and LibreWolf on big screens viewed at distances of 2 metres and also on PinePhones and other sizes of screens in between.

I can select the UI scaling I want with Vivaldi, the LibreWolf UI elements are sort of OK on the big screens and too small on the PinePhones while the Chromium UI elements are almost always wrong.

Re: I'm enjoying Vivaldi

Why not just enable Vivaldi's native tracker and ad blocker that uses the same block lists as uBO?

What the Linux desktop really needs to challenge Windows

In my experience Vivaldi (both stable and snapshot) updates happily with apt/apt-get etc once it has been installed on a debian/mobian or Devuan system.

The developers have stated that their roadmap for 2026 is "It's not AI".

https://social.vivaldi.net/@brucelawson/115730545156385178

I have been helping my remaining aged parent (now 87) with their computing needs for the past 25 years or which the last 10 years or so has been Linux (LinuxMInt XFCE).

Their needs are relatively limited but the amount of support they need is also relatively limited.

Much less than my other parent, a former Computer Studies teacher and Windows user needed, even before dementia set in.

@werdsmith "Rubbish, users don’t become experts at Windows.

They switch on, launch their applications and some become experts at their applications."

Which is exactly what happened when I got my first EeePC in 2008 and my second one in early 2009.

After using them for a while I moved on from customising the default Linux install with IceWM through installing eeebuntu (until Ubuntu supported the hardware fully) before ending up with LinuxMint.

Poop-peeping toilet attachment has a different definition of 'end-to-end' encryption

Look, it is quite simple. For the right-pondians among us it is quite late in the evening.

We are all pooped!

Down the pan...

I assume that the Kohler LLM is being trained to create potty humour, thus another example of the great strides that AI (Asinine Intelligence) has been making recently.

Linux admin hated downtime so much he schlepped a live UPS during office move

Re: Smart, But Also Bloody Stupid

I used to used to take a Brompton on trains to help me get to and from work.

The vents on the top of my CRT monitor at work were a great place to dry off gloves and woolly hats on rainy days.

I gave away the 21" Iiyama monitor I used at home when I left The Netherlands and regretted not taking it with me for some time afterwards.

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.