Posts by GraXXoR

Winnie the Pooh slasher flick mysteriously cancelled in Hong Kong

“Cancelled? How odd!” said Pooh, looking from side to side guiltily.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” replied Alice, concerned.

Oh wait. Wrong franchise. This is apparently the real world.

Mine’s the surreally large pint of honey mead.

Google staff asked to share desk space in latest cost purge

Re: Office

How did I get here?

Intel slashes shareholder dividend by two-thirds as cash crunch bites

Good, because the world would be better off

without bottom-feeders taking a massive chunk of everything.

Yukon UFO could have cost unfortunate balloon fan $12

Half a mil for a $12 target.

Even for the military, that’s a poor cost performance ratio. Lol.

Take the blue pill: Keanu Reeves has had enough of AI baloney

That long?

Here’s a quote from one of the scariest YouTube channel:

“Just two more papers down the line.”

Uncle Sam backs right-to-repair battle against Big Ag's John Deere

“The farm equipment maker, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment,”

So they replied after some unspecified delay…?

Microsoft promises smaller Windows 11 updates with UUP – but there's a catch

Hundred time used stock photo shows a ridiculous looking model drinking cappuccino in a naturally lit office using some gods-know-what mock up interface... on an iMac.

Every time I see a photo from this particular series, I'm left with the smell of cold, corporate checkboxing...

Still, at least he wasn't wearing a red, checked shirt and ankle length trousers.

/rant... sorry. I'll get my coat.

helloSystem 0.8: A friendly, all-graphical FreeBSD

Re: Don't get this MAC is simple thing

The problem here is, who is the gatekeeper on what is "sound" and gets to determine when work on a second build should commence?

Re: Don't get this MAC is simple thing

This is what happens when people conflate “I lack experience in this field” with ”this field is very difficult.”

I would be at a loss to fix anything of depth in a Linux distibution. Hell, half of the time I can’t even get a touch screen to line up with the cursors or the the screen to rotate 90 degrees without having to delve into xrandr and cast a bunch arcane terminal spells dredged up from some pit of early 2000s pre-Reddit knowledge.

I will admit that even after using well over a dozen linuxes since Mandrake back in the mid 90s on maybe a hundred boxes or so (yeah, my beard isn’t long and tangled enough to say… ‘boxen’) I will still be first to admit I’m an eternal noob.

Re: ...Meanwhile, the Linux world has a profusion of rival distros, desktops, and packaging formats

Nature has proven time and time again that monocultures usually end up dominating for a bit and then dying a horrible, unavoidable death somewhere down the line.

If Linux ever dwindles to a single distribution, heck even a single digit’s worth of distros, it would mean there’s something very rotten in the State of Torvalds.

Re: ...Meanwhile, the Linux world has a profusion of rival distros, desktops, and packaging formats

Used Be at University in an experiment that used their file system metadata as a sort of database. It was afascinating but expensive system, IIRC.

I’m not entirely sure that your assessment that it was based on NextStep or OpenStep “metaphores” is entirely correct.

BeOS was in development at the same time as NextSTEP and the two products felt quite distinct.

If anything, BeOS was more targeted towards MacOS 9 users and shared some similarities with that classic OS.

Today, Haiku, true to its roots is still a young OS at heart, with almost zero baggage other than some BeOS binary compatibility in the 32 but version. Thus it excels at being incredibly simple compared to some of the more intense Linux distributions with multiple frameworks and desktop environments. It is relatively transparent and logical, too.

As for the user, well, it’s very easy to master the desktop and features with possibly the lightest graphical interface I’ve ever used on any OS bar Minuet.

Wow, turns out cloud sales can slow down – eh, Amazon, Google?

Continual accelerated growth.

What I've never understood is where this eternal growth is supposed to come from... Sure, in the 60s, there was a boom in the productive workforce and thus disposable income in society, so increased revenue was almost a given.

But in an age where there are fewer and fewer wealthy people entering the marketplace and with even fewer predicted in the future, how do companies expect to continue raking in the money?

Recent data from the US (and not to mention the UK, the only G7 economy to show actual direct decline) has indicated the largest drop in "relative disposable income" since the Great Depression almost a century ago.

We have seen tech companies' and the energy market's approaches: Increase the price of equivalent or lesser products and reduce availability.

Hence the fact that companies are ratcheting up the price brackets to compensate for losses in sales volumes even while raw costs are starting to fall. (Energy being basically non-elastic is especially egregious in this respect).

But that is eventually self defeating since it mearly redistributes finite expenditure elsewhere. Add this to the reality that even what actual money there is now more and more tends to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands: the hands of the owners themselves rather than their customers'.

Thus at some hypothetical point in the future, there will likely be more money within the special club itself than outside and options for future growth will become increasingly sparse, if not entirely absent.

Here's a few sobering articles:

https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/gdp-report-reveals-ominous-great-depression-warning-sign-not-seen

https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/press-releases/articles/consumer-disposable-income-confidence-falls-to-record-low-as-rising-cost-of-living-takes-hold.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/30/groundhog-year-uk-disposable-incomes-to-fall-by-38-in-2023

Semiconductor world in for a rough ride as chip bubble bursts at the high end

And despite this collapse, the consumer price indices remain at historic highs combined with other sectors of the market raking in record profits for their shareholders.

So it’s no wonder then, that the consumer and indeed many end user businesses including mine are carefully guarding the smallest pot of disposable income seen in years… Second half of 2023? This train wreck is going to take a lot longer to right.

This is like one of those things you might hear in a pub after a flew pints of bitter.

A moment of silence for all the drives that died in the making of this Backblaze report

Re: 1980s Hard Drives

We used to call them soak tests, IIRC.

All our machines were run for 24 hours using an automated test suite that marked off all the bad sectors found on the disks and also was good at picking up failures in the SIMMs or CRT.

Apple sued for promising privacy, failing at it

I don’t have much of an issue with a company that doesn’t promise privacy to any extent whatsoever, using metrics in a legal fashion, within the context as laid out by common law.

What I don’t like is a company that is actively selling privacy as a feature and positive sales point of the said brand doing the same.

User was told three times 'Do Not Reboot This PC' – then unplugged it anyway

I was more surprised that the she became a he in subsequent weeks.

Apple releases Lisa source code on landmark machine's 40th birthday

Re: Architecture and Morality.....anyone?

Have you seen the state of some of the kids wondering around on the streets?

Same thing.

As wafer demand dries up, foundry revenues head for a cliff, we all celebrate

The last thing to ever drop

Is the price to the consumer.

Prices for pretty much everything electronic are still sky high.

And everything non-electronic has been hit with shrinkflation.

Twitter tweaks third-party app rules to ban third-party apps

And when Twitter Twats it's last Twit.

...I hope it's Elon who finally gets a bowl of petunias dropped on his head.

Version 5 of the Endless OS enters testing

Re: Another interesting project!

Jeez, I've been out of English language circulation far too long.

Just like it took me far too long to realise wtf those girls were actually on about... LOL.

I live in Japan... We have a type of snack called Collon, which looks like a slice of tripe... filled with rich, dark... chocolate.

Nothing like dipping a few lengths of chocolate stuffed collon into your coffee in the morning...

Apple just cut Tim Cook's pay by 40%. How ever will he get by on that $50m?

Re: Obscene riches

All CEOs are on obscene compensation. More than ever before. (At least 2022, was).

Even while the world is in a major downturn, CEOs and their respective companies were raking in record profits yet worker’s salaries are in the gutter.

Haiku beta 4: BeOS rebuild / almost ready for release / A thing of beauty

Re: You ran it on WinCE and..a..Dreamcast?... Really?

Why all the hate for WinCE?

At least it was true to its name in how it made the users feel...

Re: Great for revitalising old netbooks!

There were no 486 grade eeepcs.

What goes up must come down: Logitech sales tumble amid PC slump

Cutting prices?

Looks like Reg is cutting something… into their tobacco.

Prices for anything remotely desirable are through the roof where I live and there is no sign they are coming back down to earth.

Graphics cards, motherboards, hell, even just cooling fans are stupid price right now.

Cisco warns it won't fix critical flaw in small business routers despite known exploit

I always find this sort of lack of flexibility a little disheartening. Where is the customer concern? Where is the humanity? Surely, offering a post cutoff patch would go a long way to generate goodwill and publicity.

Though playing devil’s advocate, it might raise future expectations and even set them up for legal challenges if the good-will code has some unforeseen side effects. No good deed goes unpunished, etc.

Probably best just to say “fk it! yer on yer own!”

Apple accused of censoring apps in Hong Kong and Russia to maintain market access

Re: Woods

Is it weird I read that in a Russian Accent.

This is the end, Windows 7 and 8 friends: Microsoft drops support this week

In the end

… be it a Mac or otherwise, every computer in my business ends up with Linux on it eventually when it initial OS runs out of steam, and by steam I mean is purposefully made obsolete by Microshaft.

My current main gaming PC and prior one are currently fully 11 capably. The one previous to that is limited to Win 10 since it has no TCM and hacking stuff in windows to work is a fool’s errand.

I gave up win 7 a long time ago, so all the rest are on an ungodly mixture of FreeBSD, AntiX, MX or Mint and continue to perform even better than they did under their final windows guise.

Tributes flow as Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo - the mind behind Sound Blaster - passes aged 68

Re: SIM-Wrong-Who

are you 12 or something?

jeez.

Perfect Naming

I remember laughing at the name of the AWE32 when brought the box back to my flat.

Me and two mates got to work installing it and hooked it up to an AUX input on my hi-fi, another pricy hobby I had at the time.

I actually do remember the three of us feeling actual awe at just how good the polyphonic sound was. The included demos were very convincing.

But it was in game music and sound effects that really did it justice, since this was still before the days of just streaming music from the hard disk.

Doom II and one of the Wing Commander titles sounded amazing.

That was the last discrete sound card I ever bought.

Samsung expects profit dive as demand for memory and devices continues to slow

69 percent down?

Interesting decline.

That’s the same amount of decline the iPhone 14 series has faced here in Japan compared to the heady heights of the iPhone 12 days.

It’s not just Samsung facing the post pandemic pinch.

I’m seeing the same thing happening in the ripen graphics card market, too: wistfully priced, high-end Nvidia parts sitting in the shelves gathering dust.

After roasting Nvidia for overheating issues AMD now has its own

At the rate modern computer gubbins' power ratings are increasing, we'll soon be watching Youtube videos on Seasonic MCCBs vs Corsair MCCBs and discussing the pros and cons of employing two-step stored energy mechanisms on Reddit.

Coat is rubber lined.

LockBit: Sorry about the SickKids ransomware, not sorry about the rest

Re: see these bastards experiencing tarring and ...

... and ironically encrypt on compression with a random 256 character string.

Google warns of commercial Heliconia spyware hitting Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Defender

Disappointed naming convetion.

We got Noise and Soft, but no Spring, Summer or Winter, then?

I'll get my thick, winter coat with the missing "l" in the pocket.

GPU shipments saw biggest nosedive since noughties recession

So is this what is happening to prices?

There is less demand, so we are selling less.. so we have to put the prices up to compensate.

Or is it more likely that inflation, leading to price rises, is causing the slump in sales.

Either way, this feels more like stagflation than inflation... A lose-lose situation for consumer AND maker.

Not good. Not good at all.

Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison

Re: How long before she ...

The female instinct in her realised she won’t find much in the way of fortune action for the next 11.25 years so she might as well try now.

But the curmudgeon in me simply thinks it was an utterly cynical, CEO level play for juror sympathy.

The great semiconductor drought may be about to break

It’s not exactly scientific I know…

But I have used the Raspberry Pi 4 as my benchmark to measure typical lead times on products.

They are still on sale at certain establishments here in Japan for well over $200 US. This seems to be down marginally from a peak of just over $300. But most of that decline is due to the falling Yen, nothing to do with the market improving.

4 days on a year lead time could be considered random noise.

PC shipments fall at fastest rate ever as businesses slam wallets shut

Re: Translation please

"re-nose" is what you have to do every couple of years to all the Microsoft Marketing execs with a penchant for Marching Powder.

That was what you came away with?

As the whippersnappers seem to say these days: "weird flex."

The new GPU world order is beginning to take shape

inflation seems to be a self fulfilling prophecy these days...

Companies see prices around them rising so feel they can arbitrarily raise prices and blame it on the government / the free market / stupid consumers / uncle bob.

Even though inflation is supposedly 3.x percent where I live, it's common to see prices rising by anywhere up to 75%. or the same product at the same price but the box is almost half empty (8 weetabix instead of 12 in an identical box).

kind of starting to get annoying.

Biden cuts off China's Yangtze, 30 others from US chipmaking gear

Either that or you doze off, fall in and Drown.

OpenAI opens doors to DALL-E after the horse has bolted to Midjourney and others

Open source leading the revolution, as it should be.

And as a certain Light Transport YouTuber would say:

What a time to be alive!

Those screws on the Apple Watch Ultra are a red herring

Lucky you where I live, one of those watches is probably worth less than 20 trips to my lock bar.

At twice a week, that’s less than three months’ worth of “social” eating and drinking.

My last Apple Watch has lasted me five years, a much better value proposition than drinking.

Re: Muppets

I should bloody well hope a horologist could open a watch. Since they literally design and make watches for a living.

PC component scavenging queue jumper pulled into line with a screensaver

I’m presuming it’s something along the lines of getting Goatse’d?

Re: This is the most unusual way of using a Sysinternals tool...

That happens to me after a few too many beers and samosas.

Ex-Googler Eric Schmidt's think tank warns China could win global tech race

Re: "the US is in poor shape to catch up"

I don't think you have any grasp of how the average Chinese mainlander thinks*

* And by "thinks," I mean, "has been moulded to think by the CCP."

Loyal Chinese citizens come over the the US or Japan etc, and study their hearts out with the sole intent and purpose of bringing that knowledge back home to China.

"... but but... they will fall in love with the comparative luxury of the liberal US lifestyle..." I hear you say.

Nope. They spend 16 hours per day studying and are given the minimum amount of money to survive on basic subsistence for four years. They will be counting off the days till their return and their image of the West (or Japan) will be far, far less positive than people imagine.

Re: news?

What on the gods' green earth gives you that idea? Look at what they started to do to HK pretty much the moment they got it back, despite PROMISING EXPLICITLY not to for fifty years.

If that's how they treat promises, how do you think they will treat "vague gestures of compliance."

Ethereum Merge signals end of GPU shortage, but not necessarily high prices

Executive summary: We have been programmed to expect prices to go up. NVIDIA know this.

"Meh... everything's getting so bloody expensive these days." Is a common phrase I hear here in Japan (in Japanese, natch).

Japan is supposedly at less than 5% inflation (hence the 0.25% interest rate that is hammering the Yen against the crazy USD right now).

My energy prices for my business have more than doubled. House prices are through the roof... Everything is just so EXPENSIVE.

In pretty much every single restaurant and bar, prices on certain things have gone up by anywhere up to 80% that's 16 time higher increase than the suggested 5% and nearly treble the JPY/USD differential rate of change.

Look at all the software prices that are increasing like Claris which as of today has just added an arbitrary 10% to ALL worldwide prices even where there is no inflation... because they can.

I believe that NVIDIA know this and will use this to keep their margins high or even higher than before the meltdown and they are believing that customers will compromise or give up on OTHER goods to pay for NVIDIA.