Posts by DuncanLarge

Forked-off Xlibre tells Wayland display protocol to DEI in a fire

Re: Code talks

> Isn't the whole idea of giving away software for free

Free software isnt given away for free. It's just conventions that most of it is.

Would you give beer you made away for free just because you were free to share the recipe?

No.

Re: Code talks

> Not so good as it will small-p politicise what should be a straight forward technical project

Actually its the opposite as the DEI code was used to exclude developers.

As there is no DEI policy, the Xlibre developer says that even if you are a super inteligent shade of the colour blue, nobody will care about it, you can contribute.

I dont understand where this DEI is inclusive thing comes from. Where it is present it is frequently used to excl;ude people based on race/religion/politics and what sandwiches they like. It is a control freaks dream.

By not having a DEI policy you dont accumulate extremily personal and irrelevant data about someone, like what skin tine they have, what accent they have, when they last prayed and to which god it was etc. WIth a non DEI system, you have no care about that whatsoever, none. You just let everyone be "people".

DEI is a cancer. I have seen some people fail to get jobs simply because they didnt tick enough boxes to satify the DEI reports.

Not trivial

> superficially trivial as the protocols that handle displaying Unix computers' graphical user interfaces

Um, the difference between X.org/X11 and Wayland are not "protocols! and far from trivial.

Wayland moves responsibility about, putting too much responsibility for rendering onto the window manager. Way too much. This is because Wayland is a specification, not an implemented solution.

X11 however is an implemented solution, it is however full of cruft, but basically its no different than OpenSSL. OpenSSL still exists and everyone relies on it, LibreSSL is a drop in replacement for OpenSSL which being a complete fresh project does THE SAME TASKS only with cleaner code. It is a alternative to OpenSSL, and you dont have to learn a new language, or emigrate to Mars to be able to use it. Because it works the same way, you can just drop it in.

Wayland attempts to do that between window managers. But, it totally fails to handle many use cases.

First of all, Wayland has no concept of networking. None. Thus it is more stuck in the past vs X11 as it has no network transparency.

Normal plebs running GIMP dont use X11's networking capabilities. Buy enterprise does. And it so much a useful feature that WIndows 10/11 implemented a layer for WSL2 to allow X forwarding over SSH. Now why the HELL would Microsoft implement that unless people were asking, BEGGING for it?

The Wayland develops however think that the solution is to go back to 2001 and use RDP or god forbid: VNC! :O

Remote desktops? Are they kidding?? No. Here where I work we have windows machines where I have to use RDP to open a massive oversized window showing a whole desktop environment just to edit GPO on a domain controller. IT's clunky and old fashioned. The windows doesnt fit my screen, resulting in me scrolling scrollbars about to use a desktop? I mean WTH it's 2025 and I'm using remote desktops still. But its windows, so its "just what we have to do".

But I, in IT, and the designers, the coders and programmers here where I work, expect to SSH onto a linux box and FORWARD X GUI's. WE DONT USE REMOTE DESKTOPS. Nobody here thinks they want to, they hate the idea. They groan if nedit wont appear on THEIR DESKTOP. The only annoying thing is we have to use old X11 software for windows called Xming, but thanks to WSL2 we can now uninstall that and use MS' native X client instead.

Do do network computing you need to focus on many transparencies. This is even more important in 2025 when looking at "the cloud":

1. Network transparency is increasingly important in a modern computing environment.

This means that users should ideally not have any clue or care generally of the following:

a. Where the files are on the network. UNIX like systems do this by mounting NFS etc into a single tree. Users and programs have no clue that the files are on a different server.

b. Where the programs are running. Although only Plan 9 manages to do this fully, users should not need to know where the program is running when they interact with it. UNIX like systems get most of the way there, the users SSH in and forward X11, their LOCAL input and output devices then become attached to that "display" and thus X11 programs on the remote server appear local to the user. Plan 9 can realise that FULLY, Linux cant but thanks to X11 it gets much of the way there. Users still know they are running an app on a remote machine, but it doesnt FEEL or LOOK like it.

WAYLAND BREAKS/IGNORES NETWORK TRANSPARENCY. In the cloud age where distributed computing is really starting to get off, you really think that anyone is going to VNC onto machines just to run a text editor or view a 3D model on a powerful server running blender? Well, Wayland think you should, and the thing is in 2001 this wasnt a problem either, Wayland is developed by wiondows/mac based laptop users who totally have no clue about the need to improve on X11's network transparency.

Instead they say "you can cobble something together in a Wayland compositor". Well, perhaps that will happen, lets hope that no thanks to Wayland those doing it make it a standard... Talk about re-inventing the wheel.

Other examples of transparency in a modern OS (UNIX is a modern OS, Windows isnt even if it is younger): https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jac22/books/ods/ods/node18.html

One example is, Windows STILL relies on drive letters. Windows has no unified path tree (but it can have one with NTFS mounts) so users are still required to know they have a C and a D drive and that the files are on each etc etc. The only time it makes sense is with removable storage.

Considering the attitude young developers have these days where instead of building on to of and improving the old standards to be better but still working towards the same goals, they simply throw it out as they havnt a clue and implement the crap from crap OS's they grew up with (systemD), well I bet it wont be long before there is a pust to having Linux use driver letters as well.

So welcome Xlibre! Lets hope you can toughen up X11 enough to bury the obsolete bty design Wayland system that cant even let you take a screenshot. I mean it's great to consider the security etc but c'mon, not being able to let the user snap the screen WHEN THE LOCAL USER WANTS TO is just brain dead brokenness.

Switzerland to end 2024 with an analog FM broadcast-killing bang

Re: DVB vs FM

It's nice I hear your argument quite often.

I'm a big fan of broadcast radio and TV.

However, I've always been dead jealous of you yanks having so much talk radio over there, as using the radio to listen to music seems pointless to my ears.

You hated how you didn’t have local bands etc, well from the perspective of a non-music listener like myself I can relate as I hated the lack of local talk and news stations. All I had was loads of music stations, which I hated due to the fact they played music and a couple of national talk stations one of which was only proper talk around midnight and for the rest of the day spent the whole day talking about another pointless subject to my ears: sport.

As a kid my taste in music was so limited it included just Phil Collins and Roxette with a smattering of acceptable songs from the 80s'. After 1995, till this day, the kind of music I generally get exposed to as well as the charts is basically full of sh*t. I never had the motivation nor time to try and wade through the stuff to find something acceptable, even though I knew it may exist in an obscure corner somewhere. With my adverse reaction to most "popular" music (no, not pop as a genre, rap, r&b, garage grunge or whatever it is called now) I would spend energy trying hard to avoid getting anywhere close to it.

So, I grew up loving the concept and science behind radio and broadcasting. I love it, but till DAB with its newer talk only stations and stations dedicated to music I can normally stomach (Absolute 80's, Heart 80's, only ClassicFM held that banner back in the 90's) I'm pretty annoyed at how it's peddled as a replacement for FM, yet can’t even manage stereo let alone the range.

I’m also deep into computers, have a CS degree, however I know the difference between broadcast radio waves and computer networks and although I like a network, I can’t abide them when forced upon me to deliver what I expect should be broadcast.

The big issue, is the fact the network is a gatekeeper. Broadcast reaches everyone, from the person in a tent well away from decent mobile signals to the poor family who can’t afford much more than the TV license itself. They all can watch and listen, with no gates or paywalls, if just radio no payments at all besides the cost of the radio!

But with DAB not living up to scratch, failing to replace FM, which itself is barely used as most people fall into the streaming trap, I can see those people benefitting from broadcast falling through the cracks of “out of range” or “can’t pay to access the network”.

And the organisation here in the UK peddling the future of TV, delivered via paywalled IP networks, is described as “free”.

Re: DAB is shite.

> US radio has always been better and with much more choice than UK, mainly because they don't pay royalties on every track they play.

I don’t think that is what is being referred to. US radio stations are heavily talk based, many with no music at all, just the sort of thing I wanted when growing up here in the UK.

My local BBC radio station was all talk for most of my youth luckily, but even they went and started playing music generally throughout (not just during music focused programmes) which was a nightmare.

Almost all music is unlistenable to me. It is not a stylistic choice, just like not liking the smell of coffee isn’t. I literally cannot abide being around music that I don’t like, and my tastes for which I do like are extremely narrow, limited to very specific bands or only certain songs. As far as genres are concerned, only the styles you find in the 80's and early 90's generally work for me. Everything before the 80's stands out as, horrid. And quite soon after the mid 90's almost all music I would hear thought the day was simply distasteful, and continues to be.

However, some things have gotten better as in recent years a resurgence in the styles used in 80's electronic, 80's new wave etc have surfaced and its starting to sound a little better.

Music with lyrics is the worst offender. It seems without lyrics many more tunes work fine in my head. Probably this is why I only like certain songs and bands. For example, anything by ABBA makes my skin crawl. Everyone loves ABBA, even the other 90's teens in school would all sing ABBA songs from time to time. I was totally shocked that anyone from my generation could even stand to hear a single not of such 70's "eeeewww". But somehow, they loved the stuff.

It wasn’t a choice, or snobbery. I literally felt the need to run from a room if music that wasn’t compatible with my brain was in earshot. I wasn’t trying to show off my dislike, it was like having mental pain, not physical pain, more "in my head". Over the years I learnt that most people just "get pleasure" from music because it happens to be music. I have no idea what that is all about as I have never felt "pleasure" from music, unlike when eating chocolate. Music is noise. But, I do get pleasure from music I somehow like and I can form a "bond" with that song over time, like getting used to a smell, it slowly gains value.

It may also explain why I was never able to dance. I can move like I'm dancing etc, but movement and music being linked was like saying the moon and flower petals are linked. I couldn’t see it. At most, I may tap a finger, just a finger to a beat, and if I really liked that song and it had started to feel pleasurable, I'd tap more fingers, as if I was playing the instrument.

But 90% ov everything I would hear all over UK FM was total useless musical shitty hell. I was surrounded by people who were obsessed with it, still am, and it felt like they were all on some drug.

FM had NOTHING for me. AM had NOTHING for me. Till I discovered talk radio, BBC R4 was too old and stuffy for me as a kid, now I lap it up but my local BBC station was exciting! I actually was getting excited over radio, where it was ALL TALK and PHONE IN'S. Talk Sport had a general talk/phone in segment relegated to around midnight. James Whale, Mike Dickin and others were voices that soothed me to sleep in a world awash with terrible sound pollution called modern music. No, I didn’t like sport either, BBC 5 Live and Talk Sport during the day were avoided.

Classic FM. I remember when that was opening. They played birdsong as a test transmission. I still have a recording of that wonderful sound, it was on DAB later so I recorded it. Classic FM was tolerable, I'm not a classical music swat or anything, but that music is generally way better than ABBA and I can happily exist in the same environment as it.

So, I love radio, as a technology, as a way to communicate. I love AM and FM broadcast, but they still offer nothing to me at all. DAB however does, several talk radio stations are there, plus stations that play only 80's music which frankly is a godsend.

When I read about US radio I'm jealous. Sure they play music there too, royalty free as you say, but there they also have loads and loads of talk!

Re: DAB is shite.

> No, iPhones have never supported FM, though I believe their Qualcomm modems were technically capable of it. I might be misremembering, so don't quote me.

My iphone 3GS and 4S beg to differ

Re: DAB is shite.

> I don't think any iphones have ever had it, just a subset of Android phones

Only recent iphones dropped FM support much to the worlds annoyance, several countries called out Apple for puting lives at risk.

Re: DAB is shite.

> Take away FM in the UK and I won't be listening to radio any more. All those retro radios stretching back nearly a century will become paperweights. And a major route into electronics for youngsters vanishes into a surface mount black box.

Same sentiment here, although I use DAB as FM never serviced me growing up with any decent stations apart from BBC 3CR before it corrupted itself and started playing music mixed in with the talk. I listen to talk radio formats, barely like music enough to survive listening to it on the radio. Classic FM has a decent chance of doing that but I barely listen to that either. I use CD’s, have all I ever need.

So I use DAB, it has several stations I wished I always had as a kid but FM/AM never offered to someone like me, but if anyone tries to shutdown radio/tv broadcasting in favour of non-Free To Access IP networks (make it free, and we can talk happily) I'm just doing without. Stuff it. I'll literally "cut the cord" and "pull down the antenna". No, I actually will! I'll take it out of the attic.

I have plenty of other things the TV can do. DVD/bluray, stuff I’ve recorded and archived. I can give up the news, shows whatever, and just build plastic model kits, program a microcontroller to water the garden and, well, do the gardening. Oh and walk! I’ll walk places. Take photos! Make my own entertainment.

I’m 44 and starting to consider jigsaws as being something to get into now, so that I’m prepped to use them in my 70/80s to keep my mind sharper.

If you want/need to inform me of news etc, put a letter through my door. I am odd that way, I work in IT, are heavily into computers, but I know when I and others are being taken for a ride, intentionally or accidentally. If you can’t replace broadcasting with Free To Access IP systems, well. why will I support that? It's a debasement of decency, I will be a pensioner at some point and god knows what money I will have to fork out for a TV license AND broadband AND streaming. Perhaps I'd prefer to run the heating or cook a meal instead???

So, if they turn it all off, so do I. Bugger off the lot of you and take your streaming, I'll just get used to what I'll have to do when I'm in my 80's. Give me a newspaper, I'll read it, even though I can tell you how TCP/IP works and the difference between TCP and IP and what ARP is and how an Ethernet frame is structured. I know what I need at the simplest lowest and cheapest level, if you deny me and others that, well, shove it. I'll be better off untracked and un-monetised anyway.

But if you finally figure it out and offer Freely FOR FREE, that MEANS FREE INTERNET ACCESS FOR FREELY. Then you can keep me. I’m not a little guy yet, but I know I will be and I know many who are right now reliant on FTA broadcast TV and radio. So, I’m getting ready to fight, which involves me doing he only thing I can do, just ignore you, the internet, everything, leave you all in your own world while I build my blissfully ignorant universe around me.

Perhaps someone decent enough to think about people like me doing that by choice or ending up like it, might see it as some kind of social problem, like we did with pensioners today unable to access internet only services or unable to get anywhere as no busses exist anymore, the post office shut as nobody uses them anymore and the library is shut as we all stopped using those as well.

Ta Ta!

Re: FM? Bah, humbug! DAB? bah, humbug²

> I don't remember much other than nothing whatsoever seemed to happen

So every soap opera ever...

Re: DAB, now totally obsolete

> This type of broadcast still has a place but not the kind of digital based multichannel service that DAB provides

It's called 5G broadcast, coming SIM free to a TV or phone near you, if yuo live in a country that bother with it, which doesnt look like the UK will.

Re: Resilience

> Streaming now is pretty much ubiquitous

Says who?

I know plenty of people who dont have the cash for streaming, they can just about have internet and wifi for (most) of the year.

I see no reason to gatekeep poorer families into watching TV or not watching TV depending on if they have enough money to pay the internet bill and the bills for the streaing services.

Even when looking into so-called "social" tariffs, the prices vary wildly, the tariff can be uppoed to a standard tariff at a moment’s notice due to any admin error or confusion surrounding your universal credit status, not all ISP's offer social tariffs, the speeds are kept artificially low for no good reason other than to punish you for being poor, perhaps for the rest of you natural life.

Consider that you say "streaming is ubiquitous" yet totally ignore the fact of the previous ubiquity, that of multiple TV's per household is the case for poor families who simply need to front up the yearly licence fee, and all TV's in the house can tune in independently.

But in the "new world" or Freely, they will still have to front up the license fee, plus the fee for the internet, and any other streaming costs they are/will be required to pay. Including: a NEW TV! So no more getting a second-hand TV, they all are fit for the tip. So the so called "free" TV that Freely is end up being quite expensive every year.

So, assuming they have a social tariff, and have managed to score a new TV, just so they can enjoy EastEnders etc, they find they need NEW TV's for each room they already have an old TV in. I mean who sits round the same TV like the Royale Family these days? Everyone has too much choice and all want to watch different things, which they can do with old fashioned broadcast TV and free second-hand TV's literally given to them by more affluent relatives.

But not anymore. New TV's for you all. Only, the social broadband they must fork out £12-£25 a month for (which represents a large portion of essential costs, like food, or nappies for example) but it turns out that they only have the bandwidth to support one TV...

In 2025. Huddled around the TV like the Simpsons, and paying through the nose for what feels like a downgrade.

Now, I can afford the downgrade of IPTV/Freely, currently. But what of me in the future, when I'm at pension age. Will I be getting free broadband? I hope so, I think every household should get a free tier of broadband simply to get Freely and other "essential" services such as free bandwidth to access council websites etc. Anything above that, like streaming Netflix or gaming will need a proper broadband package.

Sounds reasonable no? It could be paid via taxes. Simply the moment you move into your new house, you should be able to plug in a router and get that free tier.

But, that don’t make money. And the affluent majority will simply ignore the issue as always. Well, you'll be in that boat eventually and you will see the kids and young adults all screaming about the latest method of doing X Y or Z and you are stuck hoping the last radio station isn’t switched off as you have to rely on Free To Access systems now, unlike in your youth.

You know the thing that really pisses me off about the blatant and arrogant threat of dismantling Free To Access systems like terrestrial radio TV and satellite? That in the IP network focused world, they have solved it. 5G Broadcast brings terrestrial 5G IP broadcasting to the public. No fees, no SIMS. Just a new TV (or a box perhaps). Mobile phones can be made to get it as well!

Free To Access IP TV and streaming services, no need to have a contract, no data costs. THAT I would get behind, but this brain dead Government never seems to be able to think clearly about the real issues like this, so have rejected 5G Broadcast, just to be different for some stupid reason, probably so they can boast about successfully rolling out unaffordable and non-free broadband to the whole country. Sure, can get broadband in the middle of the Yorkshire moors eventually, but can’t get enough of it to watch TV.

Stick to what works, replace it like for like. Nothing replaces FM/AM or Freeview/Freesat as yet.

Re: Resilience

> Freesat/Sky is going in 2029 as that is when the current satellites will be decommissioned and nobody is talking about launching any more.

Freesat can use other newer satellites already up there.

People will just have to adjust the dish.

Re: Resilience

> TV does have a shutdown date, terrestrial TV (Freeview) is going in 2030 and Freesat/Sky is going in 2029.

No it's not.

As with FM they will be reviewing it

Re: Resilience

> At least with FM you can make a crystal radio set

Crystal sets cant demodulate FM.

Re: Not sure whether to report this as an error?

> > "Analog" is definitely a yankism.

> Apparently so. ngram for analog. Use the pulldown to pick a country.

Actually yes. You made the mistake of using Google Ngram, which has a small and circumstantial datasete, that being google books. Basically, you were seeing how many times a book between 1900 - 2019 used the term analog, but as American English books books are not translated into British English when they are published here, you cant use this to determine the popularity of a spelling.

Instead you need to use dictionaries, particually the Oxford English dictionary (when looking at comparing British English vs American English).

Here you will find this:

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/analogue_1?q=analogue

"(of an electronic process) using a continuously changing range of physical quantities to measure or store data"

Which shows that "analogue" is the correct British term for analogue electonics, transmissions. That page says that American English uses "analog".

Then if you look in the Oxford English Dictionary (remember, this is the definitive source for what words are "official" in British English) for "analog" you find it does actually exist ion British English but, it has a different meaning as it is a noun:

"a thing that is similar to another thing"

So searching that ngram thing prove nothing, as you are not searching based on the use of analog as a noun or an american english adjective.

Re: The fundamental issue with DAB

> Many UK DAB stations are barely better quality than FM

Actually, it's practicallyu ALL unless its a BBC station at certain times of the day.

Why?

Because practically all DAB/DAB+ stations are mono.

Re: The fundamental issue with DAB

> In my recent experience, the vast majority of in-car listening is to internet audio streaming stations

I really have no idea how anyone manages to do that. Even now in 2025, trying to get enough bandwidth to use a streaming service is entirely based on luck.

There is nothing beyong 2G between Buckingham and Bristol along main roads. Calls and SMS can be made, when stoped you can get data, but when moving data is nearly impossible.

DAB/DAB+ however had no problem. Plus, when driving you shouldnt be using a mobile anyway. Even if you have a modern car where it tries to link with the car screen, the UI is too dangerous and non-standard and can change wildly between app versions. Not the thing you want when driving.

It's not just Big Tech: The UK's Online Safety Act applies across the board

> trolls shutting down the site and exposing the operators to liability by putting up objectionable material and reporting it.

The solution is simple. Dont let people post like that. All posts have to be reviewed. Why would you allow instant replies?

You could also limit the number of posts, to one a day. Or have them pay to post, all sorts of mechanisms can be employed to disuade people posting what literraly just popped into their heads.

If you force most people to wait and hour or two, most bad ideas and bad posts will be forgotten by the would be poster. Just like in real life. Thus leaving you with the real bad ones.

Re: Just another example...

> Shops aren't run by hobbyists doing it out of love and passion. They're businesses. And use by dates are easier to define than "hate speech" or whatever else people are meant to be protected against.

Yet hobbyists using 3D printers cant print guns.

Whats your point?

Also hobbyists making cars, must make them safe for the road. Your point?

I could, if I wanted to, build a traction engine. But I still have to get the boiler signed off. Even though I'm not a business, I must get it signed off.

So what the hell is your point?

systemd begrudgingly drops a safety net while a challenger appears, GNU Shepherd 1.0

Re: 42% less unix philosophy

> Your use case is not the usual ones

It's an extremily common use case, in the real world, beyond running GIMP and steam.

Re: 42% less unix philosophy

> Some times it absolutely does matter - especially when dealing with embedded systems

Oh yes, tel me about it.

systemd was written to make a mans laptop boot faster, not written to actually run an OS that does real back office stuff.

Where I work we have some reall old datalogging hardware mixed with newer stuff etc and the old hardware is very, VERY strict about how it should connect to things and WHEN. Having systemd run stuff before its supposed to, even when WE CONFIGIRED IT NOT TO can end up in the dataloggers internally getting into a state where they will not talk anymore, as basically the connected computer started talking what the datalogger thought was gobledegook and it was never coded to handle asyncronous errors like that.

I used to work on a batch processing system, running IBM i. There I learned the value of having a totally REPEATABLE and PREDICTABLE boot process.

Re: 42% less unix philosophy

> Did you know that you can implement SysV init in systemd using Before= and After=?

Did you know that the way systemd runs it can not actually guarantee that those parameters are honoured?

Did you know that each boot you get a different result?

With a real init system, things should start and stop in-sequence as defined. It must be repeatable, every time. Things like systemd were written to identify and parallelise what CAN be parallelised. ANd many of them can do that. But systemd didnt even get that right.

I mean when shutting down my PC I get the following behaviours:

1. it shutsdown really quickly.

2. It starts shutting down, but for some reason systemd wants to wait 5 mins for a process to exit.

3. It starts shutting down, tells me that systemd wants to wait 5 mins, so I mash the three fingered salute to FORCE systemd into submission but instead of KILLING the errant process that systemd obviously cant be assed to actually manage it decides to ADD MORE TIME as I mash the salute over and over, like its trying to punish me for wanting to tell it what I say it should do.

I installed Debian 12 on my laptop recently and switched it to openrc. No problems whatsoever.

Re: 42% less unix philosophy

> Honestly - not having to work out exactly how *this* new distro specifies it's start up and service scripts vs another has been a godsend.

Try figuring out the crazy config locations for systemd.

Any normal admin would expect it all to be in /etc but nooooo, each distro lumps the unit files in strange places, like /usr/lib I mean wth?

With SysV init scripts you know exactly what happens in each runlevel, simply by listing a directory, weras with systemd you have to tralw through its output to try and put it all together.

Oh and as for journald, wow, how to re-invent the wheel. Simply running a standard grep over /var/log was simple enough, but now we have to trawl through the journaled output and learn its re-implementation of text string searching.

Lebanon: At least nine dead, thousands hurt after Hezbollah pagers explode

What a load of bull

Re: When they came for the ...

> The IDF are terrorists because they indiscriminately bomb Palestinian camps

You mean Hamas bases built in and underneath such camps??

The rules of war allow a defending country to attack military targets. If civilians get in the way by will or by force then they may be willingly (by their own will) or unwilingly (by the force of the enemy using them as sheilds) in the line of fire.

This is not a movie or TV series where the whole war is brought to a standstill because some bunch of families are being held hostage by the enemy. International pressure has already made sure Israel is well aware it is in the limelight and will do more than usually required to shift the civvies out of the way.

But as wel all know from the leaked phone conversation where an Israili is trying to convince a Palestinian to move out of the flat they live in and go to refuge areas etc, over and over he tells them to, as soon that area will be targeted, the civvie male seems damn proud to have himself and HIS KIDS in the firing line as their deaths will look great on social media!

So when you have civilians willingly stepping in front of bullets and happily laying their still innocent underage children over the top of Hamas tunnel entrances, what are you supposed to to?

It's the trolley problem. Do you stop the war to avoid blowing up the little kid who is abused by his own parents by being placed as a sheild over a tunnel entrance? Or to save the hundreds of men women and children inside those tunnels, being raped, starved, tortured by an already understood to be inhuman group of men who hate women gays etc, risk blowing that kid up too?

Re: Conspiracy

> You got downvoted because, like all your posts, it was unintelligible garbage

Short term memory is obviously not working in you thus you never placed the facts into long term memory. EIther that or your recall is crap.

The attack this poster is reffering to has been proven and covered extensivley, on The Register no less and it is so simple and old that it doesnt need somethinga s modern asn an EV.

A large number of cars, especially ones with GSM modems are right now hackable and can have their brakes for example remotely operated or disabled.

The curse of fly-by-wire controls. It was even demonstrated on LIVE TV a couple of years ago.

Re: Conspiracy

> Funny that not so long ago I was heavily downvoted for saying that unfriendly state could install a backdoor in EV cars allowing it to remotely control the car causing it to crash or even cause battery to catch fire.

Why the hell were you downvoted for that? That attack has already been prven and covered in detail on this site and it doesnt need anything as new as an EV.

A simple device plugged into the OBD port is all that is needed, and GSM connected cars are hackable and controllable practically via the web. Proven. All becaise cars are an interconnected network of computers and subsystems that unsurprisinly, have zero concept of security.

Who is Tesla and why do you want to blow up her pager?

Re: Technology question

Simples

Intercept crates of pager models that are used by the terrorists. Barely anyone else will have them as they will use smartphones.

Pay people to open the pagers up, to "fix" an issue, they wont know they are basicallly just the paid help.

This "fix" can be a replacement battery, although pagers tend to use alkalines some may use li-ion. The new Li-ion battery is a "special" one. Perhgaps the protection circuit has been removed. Or you can just add in a board with a little banger attached.

Either way, you then update the pager firmware to short the battery or trigger the detonator on the board when you just happen to send a "special" pager message on the totally open easy to intercept pager "network". Shorted li-ion battery with no protection circuit = fire and bangs. Little boom box embedded inside pager = boom and bangs.

You might want to look up Stuxnet.

Dont underestimate the ease and ingenuity a state funded project like this can accomplish. Again, look up Stuxnet. Then watch Enemy of the State and ask yourself if you really know how these state funded groups which employ people out of universities etc operate and what they are really capable of. Once the SNowden stuff came out I rewatched Enemy of the State, which I had always liked, and understoood to be true(ish) but that post-snowden re-watch really makes the film seem more of a documentaty with thriller elements.

They all thought we we all idiots wearing tonfoil hats, linking double yolk eggs with Alien visitations etc. Post snowden they are in our camp.

And that's 3 recalls for Tesla Cybertruck in as many months

Re: "The terminology is outdated & inaccurate. This is a tiny over-the-air software update." - Musk

Maybe get your glasses checked and re-read the post?

Analysts join the call for Microsoft to recall Recall

Re: "letting the user scroll the archive of snapshots"

I found that search prefers to search the internet before local resources.

I found that out as just after booting I was using search to launch notepad, it took me to bing!

I would use the start menu but thats broken and unusable these days. I pin my essentials to the task bar

You want us to think of the children? Couldn't agree more

Re: Article 8 of the ECHR

> But I fort we di'n 'ave to doo all that Uuuurup noncesense any more cos we got Brexit done and kicked out all those forriners! We can doo wot we like!! Fuckemall!! RULE BRITANNIA!!!!11!ONE

The ECHR has as much to do with the EU and Brexit as a Carrot has to do with a bag of paper straws.

Thanks to Brexit, most people know know more about the ECHR and the terrible cost of Tony Blair making it our highest, unelected and unaccountable court.

Apart from you.

Re: Parental controls

> which bizarrely ended with the aforementioned call for banning phones under 16

How would that rob a kid of their future?

What does a kid under 16 need to do with a mobile phone and constant access to the internet that I couldnt do in 1996 when I was 16?

I'm now 43, work in IT with a BSc in Computer Science and own my own home (due to luck I might add as the prices are crazy even for me). I didnt have access to the internet at home back then and had my own 486 running at 66MHz (it had a whopping 8MB of RAM too) and anything I wanted to do on the internet I simply did when I could, at school or in later years, at home when permitted by my parents, during the days of dialup. Even when I did have a phone it only sent SMS and calls and played snake and when we had broadband installed at home, there was no such thing as wifi and no way my dad was going to drill holes to run a network cable from the router to my now much more powerful PC (AMD running at 333MHz with 64MB RAM, sweeeet).

I did mostly everything offline, even building my first PC from scratch, offline. It wasnt really very hard at all, I used a book and other knowledge. When I needed something off the web, I downloaded it when I had the oppertunity from school or university and simply carried it home. Nothing actually hindered me, it was just a bit slower. Heck I even applied for my first IT job after Uni using a laptop hooked into my mobile phone via serial cable, dialing up to my ISP (which I signed up to myself) to download and upload emails at a whopping speed of 1Kb/s and I was being charged by the min too.

So, what the hell is so essential for a kid to have a mobile phone with constant internet access < 16?

Answer: nothing. It's something they find cool and exciting and they become someones product. They also "need" it so that other kids will acept them, a behaviour I happily ignored when I was that age. There are plenty of kids around the world right now doing way more than a mobile phone touting 14 year old, and they dont even have internet access at home. They get it from libraries and schools. Most of the kids you are talking about are simply learning how to abuse, be abused, be a product, follow the corwd and get a better score on candy crush. Thats what these devices are marketed to them for.

Re: I'm surprised that there is no HTTP header...

> Let's face it, 99% of sites would be fine to honor an "under 10, under 14, under 18, I'm not a degenerate"-equivalent HTTP header

They wont. We asked them not to track us with a similar header and guess what, it went ignored as the data is worth more that way.

Same with kids. SIte has to choose between losing money vs letting a kid watch something that perhaps the parents if they bothere to are would not want them watching? They'll take the money and run. The kid is just data in their logfiles, they may as well not exist.

Re: In the good old days..

TV and books may have been the "problem with kids" of the day, rock and roll too, but Social Media and constant access to everyone else’s opinions/thoughts from any culture no matter the compatibility with the one you are in, is very very different.

With TV you had what, 4 channels? 5 channels later on and then Sky TV. All of that regulated. All the "nasty stuff" was post watershed.

With books, you had a slooooooow medium. It took time to read and you had buckets of time to think decide and act. You could even put the book down halfway through, sit on it a week and come back. Or you could put it down halfway through and decide "Nah, thats enough of that".

With Rock and Roll, unless you are the "Dancing Priest" it's very likely that the dancing and music will end at some point and you will go to bed and be made to engage with society and your education again.

But with social media, you have none of what I have described. The platform informs YOU of what to watch and react to next. There is no regulation, what platform holds uploaded videos before review by the regulators? Maybe in China. There is too much data, too much to regulate and too much to control so any controls are always inadequate. Social Media isnt even something you have natural barriers against, for example, if we used the internet only at home, perhaps even a-la dialup with having to log in every time, you would have access ONLY at those times allowing you to have oh so much time offline. But no, we put a constant connection in our pockets and the teens etc have zero restrictions imposed as to when they are online, it's constant. THEY have to FORCE themselves to be offline to get a break from the algorithms and the cyber bullying etc. THEY have to do it, with their WILLPOWER which is hard to do when you are made to be ADDICTED to the platform by its INTENTIONALLY designed to be addictive algorithms.

Think of it this way.

Many people are happy to enjoy an adrenaline rush. They may go skydiving and all sorts of other things. This is addictive, but even an adrenaline junkie has many barriers in place that can help them avoid the next skydive. They have to work, the skydiving is expensive and must be BOOKED for a specific time etc etc. This enforces their off hours. But imagine if skydiving was like the old dialup internet, but we developed the tech to skydive, at will, anywhere and any-when for next to nothing even for free. On the bus, in the classroom, anywhere and any-when. Suspend your disbelief for a moment as you imagine people randomly skydiving through a bus, just think of the adrenaline rush effects. Just think of the algorithm that makes you want to do it more and more.

Do you think thats good for the brain?

Do you think that is in any way similar to a bookworm reading loads of books, or watching live TV?

The internet and social media are VERY different and we let kids onto it thinking it's a good idea. Facebook won’t stop under 12s logging in, even though it's against the usage agreement. They are worth too much.

"Teen angst", always confused me as a teen.

I was supposed to have it, being a teen. Instead I was totally normal.

All the other teens however seemd to be from another planet entirely.

San Francisco's light rail to upgrade from floppy disks

Re: San Francisco's light rail to upgrade from floppy disks

> How reliable are Minidiscs over time?

No issues so far. They are MO so much less delicate than other RW media.

> I know the data versions of the drives (NetMD)

I think you mean MD-DATA. NetMD was a USB transfer method for copying music faster than real time to disc. MD-DATA was the data storage version allowing approx 340MB?

> They're optical, so should be fairly resistant to magnets and static.

Actually MD's are magnetic. They are read optically and written with a compination of optical and magetism. They are made of a material that will change its magnetisation only when heated to a specifi temp, which is where the laser comes in. The laster heats the disk and that allows a magnetic moment to be recorded onto the disc. Once cooled that magnetic moment can not be changed. A MD is totally immune from external magnetic fields (although perhaps extremily srtong ones might have an effect).

The disc is read optically as the light from the laser is twisted by the magnetic fields.

Re: Have they been hacked?

> Yet modern USB flash drives seem to die if you look at them.

I had a 54GB flash drive that was used all of 3x in as many years die sitting on a shelf for 1 year or so, I didnt even have to look at it.

It was dead as a dodo.

I've had a little 2GB sandisk die and come back from the dead as well! Still works but I dont trust it. I dont trust any of them.

Re: Have they been hacked?

You'll find that most of the issues with writing are due to the old media.

Re: Have they been hacked?

> Worse, drive timings vary, so not all drives will work in a given device

All 3.5" drives are standard. They dont have different RPM, if they do thats because they have a fault.

5.15" drives did have different RPMs.

The only differences between 3.5" drives are those that are fully schugart drives (practically EVERYTHING) vs those that are not fully schugart (IBM PC). Many drives support both with a jumper.

A Gotek supports both with a change to its config files.

Re: Curious what the floppy replacement will be?

> The easiest replacement might be a purely electronic device that emulates a floppy disk

It's called a GOTEK and you can have one off ebay for £20-30.

It is a drop in full replacement for a 3.5" floppy drive. YOu plug a USB flash drive into it containing floppy images (it supports a very wide number of floppy image formats) and select which image to mount.

It is fully hardware compatible witha 3.5" floppy drive, simply plugs into the usual floppy cable.

They are used to replace floppy drives in all sorts of industrial systems as well as retro computers.

Easy

Just swap the floppy drive for a Gotek and a flash drive and you are done.

Simulation reveals all Japanese will have the same surname by 2531

Re: Don’t Call Them “Surnames”

The French all caps surnames was something I learned to hate when setting up user accounts, especially as they insisted on NOT using a comma to denote the fact that they had a habit of putting the surname first!

I had loads of accounts that needed renaming and it took me a while to figure out why they were doing this.

Rufus and ExplorerPatcher: Tools to remove Windows 11 TPM pain and more

Re: So much MS BS spin. Privacy? or minute by minute monitoring of a Windows 11 system?

> Settings experience

OMG, please, please tell me they dont call it that!

Supermium drags Google Chrome back in time to Windows XP, Vista, and 7

I have XP SP3 installed on a much more modern Dell machine with a Xeon 3.something GHz 4 core CPU and 16BiB of RAM simply so I can use a DDS3 tape drive to read DDS1/2/3 tapes at work.

A Windows 2022 server with backupexec 22 installed was not able to do it as the windows driver for DDS drives seems to not support anything below DAT72 drives, which is really annoying as there is no real reason why it shouldnt work as they are just SCSI tape drives at the end of the day and the generic driver supplied by microsoft is called dat4mm.

So XP was chosen as it is the latest version of Windows that still has a fully functional NTBackup which along with backupexec can read these tapes (Backupexec uses NTBackup format). The main WIn 2022 server handles LTO and tapes the DAT72 dive can read.

This Dell has 1 PCI slot but is mostly PCIe. NO big deal for XP, it was perfectly happy as long as I set the UEFI to enable CSM and I had to use SP3 as an SP2 install disc would blue screen after installation. SP3 is lightning fast on it and with a driver from Nvidia for the Quadro card I put in I get a decent resolution for the 22" Dell display port monitor.

Several devices were obviously not recognised, HD Audio being one, but I dont need that. USB3 support too, but the motherboard has USB 2 ports as well so thats how I transfer the recovered data off.

China breakthrough promises optical discs that store hundreds of terabytes

Re: Every single time someone mentions tape...

Never had a problem with tapes. I have DDS tapes from 1990

Re: Nice to have the little piece about optical media once a decade

The problem with the holographic discs were the lasers. As compenets they had to be tiny and were simply not really useful.

This new disc uses 4 lasers for different stages of reading and writing and as comp[onents they are more usable.

What they did here was find a way a BIG laser diode can make marks way smaller than its wavelength. None of the holographic systems could do that.

Re: Missing important use cases

> And Blu-ray failed to make the same splash exactly because at that point, many people had an Internet connection that was good enough to just stream whatever they were interested in.

The actual reason more like this:

1. VHS made home video popular, not DVD.

2. SVHS failed because people already had VHS and didn’t care enough to have a new machine and tapes just for a better picture

3. DVD came about and now the public were ready for a picture upgrade, also eventually getting DVD recording too. The old tapes were old by now, SVHS just was too new with not enough benefit. DVD went into a market ready for such an upgrade.

4. Bluray came out, like SVHS it has struggled because even with people having HD TV's most people don’t care about HD enough to stop buying DVD or swear they can’t tell the difference, still! It is well known that DVD sells better than bluray, thus many shows and movies ONLY get a DVD release as it’s cheaper to make and buy and makes loads of sales. If it were just "the age of streaming" that caused blueray to have less sales, why are people still buying loads of DVDs?

It’s all in the numbers. The films and TV shows getting physical releases don’t just sit on the shelves and evaporate, they have to sell otherwise they wouldn’t be produced in the first place. I mean FGS, Audio CD is still everywhere and all bands, at least the ones I listen to, release new albums on Audio CD and even Vinyl too. Super Audio CD? DVD Audio? Didn’t grab the market, no longer made besides some SA CD's for classical markets. DVD Audio fizzled out and was simply replaced with Video DVD that had the audio and video (such as a concert) on it! Same quality, more standard.

Audio CD, still made and sells. DVD Video, still made and sells. Bluray still made and sells well enough. UHD bluray still fairly new and does sell to enthusiasts and those who care enough about 4K TV's to actually want to view 4K on them.

As for streaming, well, that has been getting some bad rap as of late with hikes in subscription costs and the inclusion of adverts. People went to streaming NOT to escape DVD, but to escape ADVERTS. WE ALL WENT TO NETFLIX TO AVOID ADVERTS. Plus, we were told that EVERYTHING would be on streaming, yet a decade or so later, and we have adverts and FAR FROM EVERYTHING, with things vanishing randomly, even when you were told you OWNED IT FOREVER.

So, streaming is now starting to lose out to DVD and bluray again. Even Disney has released SW expanded universe stuff on DVD and bluray to try and capture new subscribers to Disney+.

Not everyone is a sheep mate, we can’t all be herded and follow the herd to the next fashionable thing. Many who do, get bored of it and wander off back to where they started or somewhere near it (people still buy books printed on dead trees would you believe!). Some like me watch the herd and follow after they finish making a mess of things, or I stay put. And people like me have MONEY to spend. Thats why Audio CD etc still havnt died, and why vinyl popped back.

Re: 100 layers?

There are not 100 separate layers. The layers are made during the burning process, you only spin coat one thick layer of material and burn the data layers into that.

> There's a reason all the optical backup/archiving formats, including the various MO formats, have long died out while tape is still standing.

Tell me the reason as CD/DVD/and BD-R are still everywhere and used as such.