Posts by Hubert Cumberdale 1087 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Sep 2019
I'm skeptical. If this happened, then we should all smash our devices and run for the hills in tinfoil hats because all bets are off.
I don't question your personal experience, I just question the fundamental cause. If YT – or indeed any website – can mess with a browser's extensions in that way, then something is seriously wrong with the browser. Mayhap you should check for malware?
Oddly (for me), I kind of agree with Google. I say pointing out when it's plain HTTP is probably the best strategy, as it means everything is potentially visible in transit (which is a problem). Showing a padlock is kind of meaningless when the use of encryption is the norm (or it bloody should be): it just gives people a false sense of security.
(And those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it.)
Top tip – Edge can't run at all if you do this:
c:
cd "%PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Microsoft\Edge\Application\9*\Installer"
setup --uninstall --force-uninstall --verbose-logging --system-level
(You might need to change that 9* to an 8* – haven't quite worked that out yet.)
Seems to be working long term for me now.
Being a totalitarian regime, China are better placed than most to make IPv6 happen in their country. However, it'd be nice if they'd also actually normalise the use of TLS like most of the rest of the world. I go to a lot of Chinese journal websites, and almost all of them are plain, unencrypted HTTP. I guess they don't really want people using encryption. Which is exactly why I think everyone should encrypt everything all the time.
Considering how hard MS tries to force Bing (and of course Edge) down people's throats, its market share is actually pitiful. I'd wager it's made up largely of people who don't know any better. (And I'm really glad they dropped their cringeworthy attempts to turn "Bing" into a verb.)
Okay then. Homicide rate per 100k (2019) – US: 5.77. UK: 1.28. Interestingly, 4.5 times lower. Still not looking good – let me guess: that's somehow also caused by loony liberal lefties and their violation of your right to shoot them? Also note that more than half of gun deaths in the US are suicide. It's much harder to kill yourself over here, and that's a good thing.
It may be mostly the police and criminals that have guns in the UK, but I'm just fine with that; tight gun control indisputably reduces the number of gun-related deaths. (If you think otherwise, then you're an idiot: feel free to indicate this using the downvote button.)
Firearm-related death rate (per 100K pop.): US: 10.89. UK: 0.24. Yes. That's right. 45 times fewer.
Which is fine. But it's still quite different from your camera effectively saying, "It looks like you're taking a picture of the moon. That's been done a lot before, and with better cameras: let me download a better photo and give you that instead (without even telling you)."
Fair point, fair point. My partner often rolls her eyes when I start out on what I think is a novel anecdote...
As for hiding things with an adblocker – that's a good point. I reckon, given a small amount of time and motivation, I could set a rule for uBlock0 to make it seem like posts from certain users aren't even there! Certainly worth considering for some (not you – you can be entertaining). Might get confusing though, wondering what people are replying to.
Cool story, but I thought it sounded familiar. You've posted it before, three times, in fact. With precisely the same wording. I know you enjoy getting the upvotes, but don't you think that's milking it just a little?
Maybe it was his use of that bizarre and unloved compression format, RAR, that was the problem. I guess it was just an easy way of creating a self-extractor back then (and the less said about a random self-extractor downloaded from a newly registered domain having unfettered access to root drive the better). Can we all agree that there no sane reason for anyone to use RAR today, though? Right? Can't we?
[runs away expecting torrent of abuse for some reason]
Is it me, or does the word "cyber" in isolation sound weird and dated? I get its use in some compounds (cyberattack, cyberbullying, etc.), even if I still don't like it (there must be better prefixes we could use – it just makes no sense regarding its original Greek origin of "steersman"...), but on its own, it feels like it should have gone the way of "information superhighway" or "world wide web" (and don't even try to pretend that "cyberspace" sounds anything but ludicrous now).
This has been working for me for a while now:
c:
cd "%PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Microsoft\Edge\Application\9*\Installer"
setup --uninstall --force-uninstall --verbose-logging --system-level
It hasn't come back in over a year. (You might need to change that 9* to an 8* – depends.) Also worth doing:
REG ADD "\\.\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate" /v DoNotUpdateToEdgeWithChromium /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
but I don't think it really achieves anything any more.
It's still fun though:
Me: Do you speak jive?
ChatGPT: As an AI language model, I have the ability to generate text in a variety of natural languages and dialects, but I do not have the ability to speak or understand spoken language like a human would. However, I can understand and respond to written text in a variety of dialects and languages, including Jive.
Me: Cut me some slack, Jack.
ChatGPT: Sure thing, my man. No need to get your feathers ruffled, everything is cool like a fool in a swimming pool. Is there anything in particular you need assistance with?
I'd say that's fairly impressive.
"Bigot."
...says the same person who recently suggested that people taking offence at bigotry should be told "to go fuck themselves and mind their own business".
^ Absolutely this ^
The USA is weird. In the UK, we (allegedly, probably, usually) have policing by consent. Over the pond, it seems that the default assumption is that you probably won't consent, so it's assumed that violence (be that through the demand for verbal subordination or actual physical attack) will be required.
If it were a "proper" football field, then the size could vary considerably.
Rule No. 1 of giving a presentation somewhere new: never assume that your tech will work with their tech. This has always been the case, and probably always will be, whether with Linux, Mac, or Windows. These days that means – as a minimum – taking a fairly long HDMI cable with you (and of course any crazy conversion dongles that your super-slim near-portless laptop might insist you need). And I still never trust wireless for anything critical (which includes the critical avoidance of embarrassment during a presentation). And if I'm feeling like things may be a bit behind, projector-technology wise (I'm looking at you, tiny random church I'm talking at for some reason), then I'll even take an HDMI-to-VGA converter...
"appears only to impact buyers who shop on Microsoft's website"
Well that rules out anyone with any sense then. There are always cheaper ways to get MS software than from their website. Personally, I'm a fan of grey-market licence keys (though I suspect I'll get a barrage of criticism for that).
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