Posts by Not Yb

What to do once your Surface Hub v1 becomes an 84-inch, $22K paperweight

Re: Green

As someone once pointed out, the only way to be certain of a computer's security, is if it's buried in concrete, and powered off.

Re: Yes

Every one of those that I saw in school was broken, or just being used as a whiteboard without any extra features. I later saw similar smart whiteboards in engineering offices, not being used either.

Not sure they're a great example.

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

Re: Vehicle odometry, ..

Mechanical odometers haven't been used for decades now. Now that everything has ABS, they just use the wheel speed sensors.

Re: Cockup?

Starlink isn't big enough for an atomic clock. Maybe if they just use some that are reasonably accurate and wave hands at the problem until AI magically solves the problems?

Re: Cockup?

I had a car that would regularly turn on the ABS light if one of the tires was too low. Could easily drive it on 3 properly inflated tires, so that came in handy a few times.

Re: Cockup?

Sensor fusion for the win!

Re: Cockup?

Cars aren't meant to be using GPS to work out how far they've traveled. Every one I've ever seen uses wheel revolutions, speed, crankshaft, or some other set of physical sensors indirectly connected to the road to work it out.

If Tesla is reporting something that it has incorrectly calculated by using satellite data that's known to be flaky on occasion, that's not just a cock up, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what an odometer is supposed to be.

Dev loudly complained about older colleague, who retired not long after

"Why did it take management so long?"

Partly because being seen to regularly fire the older people in the group counts as age discrimination. Even if you're firing them for poor performance, if you keep doing it mostly to the older workers, it risks a lawsuit in many countries.

Static electricity can be shockingly funny, but the joke's over when a rack goes dark

Re: office chairs from hell

Mostly because the keys themselves are cheaper solutions to the same problem. Hold the keys with bare hands, and the static jolt gets spread out enough it doesn't hurt unless it's much more than is normally built up on clothed humans.

M365 Family users wake up to notice 'Your subscription expired'

Re: Fixed now?

"convince customers"

Spend too much time trying to convince them to work differently, and watch them become former customers :( It's a bit annoying really, but some people like to pay for things that are freely available, just so they can easily blame someone else when the computer eats their homework/whatever.

Trump kills clearances for infosec's SentinelOne, ex-CISA boss Chris Krebs

"We're going to stop the weaponization of the Justice Department, except against our enemies"

Re: How pathetic can you get ?

The actual definition in that 13000 regulation he's "repealing" is approximately 30 words long. The rest of the document is devoted to justifying the definition, explaining how it meets with the various requirements, why they're making this definition, why safety showerheads are specifically exempted, and much other exposition. There's even a bit about how the definition of showerhead is somewhat circular. 90+% of what he's getting rid of is discussion, not definition.

Repealing this definition means that new chemical safety showerheads may now have to meet the 2.5 gallons per minute restriction. Not a good idea, as the point of them is to wash and dilute chemicals off of people FAST.

Weeks with a BBC Micro? Good enough to fix a mainframe, apparently

Re: Power cycling bigger kit is not a hobby I would endorse

I have a vacuum cleaner (US) that proudly claims the amperage in big numbers on the front. Not that it's particularly efficient, but it sure does use those amps. Some of them are used in heating the cord's wall plug during use. It's lasted a good 20 years though.

'Cybertruck ownership comes with ... interesting fan mail'

The maker of that wet timing belt was so gung-ho about how good idea it was, too. I'd never buy one with that design now.

Re: Consequences

I think he hoped to pay the $1bn bail-out at one point, but they wouldn't let him do that due to the contract terms. Apparently signing an important document while high may not be the best idea.

Re: An Opportunity...

It's fairly simple to remove the Tesla T and other badging with a heatgun and some good fishing line on a set of handles. If you don't care what the car looks like after, you can skip the adhesive residue removal to save time.

SpaceX has gotten worse over time. Starlink makes astronomy (and low-earth satellite orbits) worse. Starship still blows up regularly, and damaged it's own launch pad severely enough to require a redesign of the entire pad area after the first launch. Amazing is in the eye of the beholder.

Re: they're not like us

Mom drove one around for a while. Apparently they're quite loud inside.

Re: Courts to the rescue

Satisfactory (video game) put in a Cybertruck easter egg. It has square wheels (and broken windows) on the model, and drove like it until a recent update which made it act a little more like rounded tires.

Tesla Cybertruck recall #8: Exterior trim peels itself off, again

Also a problem: more than one set of engine designs that couldn't last beyond 100K miles even with recommended maintenance back when Toyota of the time could easily last 300K+.

Re: Glue?

The main problem with the iPhone battery is having to remove most of the rest of the phone from the case before you can even get to the battery. The glue is just an added bonus round.

Re: "environmental embrittlement"

Probably tested it in an environmental chamber that only included vertical rain.

HP Inc settles printer toner lockout lawsuit with a promise to make firmware updates optional

Re: Never again

I think your wife is right, stop supporting a printer manufacturer that treats you like this.

They want you to buy a subscription, for which you pay a minimum fee regardless of how many pages you print. The extreme price of their retail ink makes subscription fees seem almost reasonable, up until you compare the price with... most any other printer manufacturer.

You bought new ink once, so they did make a profit off you. Good investment for them, not so great for their customers.

Re: There should be a big label

Newer HP printers do have an explanation on the box about it (in low-contrast print, but it's there). Frequently that explanation is left off marketing copy on sites like Amazon, etc.

Re: "We lose money on the hardware"

Difficult to prove, as the requirements are more than just "lower price than cost of manufacture". From the FTC's website on it: "Although the FTC examines claims of predatory pricing carefully, courts, including the Supreme Court, have been skeptical of such claims."

It's not really selective enforcement, it's more like "hardly ever successfully prosecuted" in the US. #FreeMarket, etc etc

HP spokesperson, interepreted: "Our ink cartridges are a security risk"

Nice of them to admit that they put too much computational power in the cartridge chip. "Our ink cartridges are smart enough to be a security risk" is an interesting admission, even if it isn't directly admitted.

Re: HP

The problem isn't that HP printers clog with 3rd party ink... I've been using 3rd party ink in an HP for years now. Deny firmware updates every time they're offered, and that's enough to keep them working.

They just refuse to print with it. You're solving an imaginary problem with an imaginary solution.

Re: Update optional?

That's one person, and Brother has since claimed that they are not stopping 3rd party toner usage. The below has a pretty in-depth report on what Brother thinks might have happened.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/brother-denies-using-firmware-updates-to-brick-printers-with-third-party-ink/

Pirate Bay financier and far-right activist Carl Lundström dies in plane crash

Re: muh far right

When Benny became deceased, he was not socialist at all. What point were you hoping to make?

As Elon Musk makes thousands of federal workers jobless, tycoon pushes for $56B Tesla pay deal

I suggest you look at the actual lawsuit. It's "how the compensation plan was determined" that's the problem according to the Judge.

There's no precedent set here for normal employees, just CEOs (and similar) who also control most of the board.

Re: To be fair ...

Unlike almost all the news coverage saying how they hope to save $21 billion by shuttering USAID, I think most of us realize that the US budget is in the $6 trillion range. USAID counts as a rounding error in a budget the size of the Federal government.

Official HP toner not official enough after dodgy update, say users

It wasn't easy to work out the trade-offs, even given the ink cartridge cost and printer cost, it's still hard to work out exactly how much "printing 1000 pages" will cost using any particular printer.

HP attempted to solve this by making people purchase "pages per month" instead of "ink cartridges". This unfortunately moved the problem from e-waste, to customer annoyance and e-waste. And of course backlash from tech people who know that ink, while not easy to make, is not actually worth the same as luxury perfume per ounce.

I worked on the German translation of the owner's manual for a "Windows Printer", which was cheap because almost all of the processing of the data to be printed was done by the PC, and the printer was just sent the raster image directly. Didn't really catch on, because Windows at the time wasn't great at real-time processing.

Microsoft seems to have completely disavowed knowledge of such a thing, but it definitely existed. Note: Microsoft Windows is translated to Microsoft Windows, not "Fenstern", no matter how much I wanted to get that past the project review as a joke...

You jest, but the HP Instant Ink subscription can already be upgraded to get HP paper shipped automatically.

Re: I remember when HP was a good company

Brother is still good, unless it turns out the toner issue that one guy found is not just a one-off coincidence.

Re: I remember when HP was a good company

The only person I know who bought one, had previously worked for HP Enterprise/Tandem, so supporting a company he probably still had stock in made sense to him. Not to me, but hey, he didn't ask.

I still own one, and always click "no" when asked to allow firmware updates so I can keep using the 3rd party ink I currently have. Stupid that they actively add security problems to their security updates. If a printer can refuse to print due to "improper cartridges", it can easily do so even when "official" cartridges are used. HP will probably blame suppliers for shipping "counterfeit" toner, when it's actually on HP for being too greedy with consumable prices.

Re: if a customer HP has invested in

If they could easily work out how to stop people refilling their HP "large tank" printers with non-HP bottles, you can bet they'd start charging subscriptions there, too.

Epson may, or may not, have worked out how to do that with EcoTanks, but the solution there is to first refill the OEM bottles and then use those to fill the printer. Honestly though, Epson ink is so much cheaper than HP retail, that it's probably worth paying for the genuine stuff.

Athena Moon lander officially FOADs – falls over and dies – in crater

CEO of the company that designed this thing seems to believe that moment arm calculations aren't very important so long as the CG is low enough.

Developer sabotaged ex-employer with kill switch activated when he was let go

Re: Not a very bright boy...

The bit about "initially admitting to the crime" is the dumbest part. US Court system is set up to encourage "not guilty" pleas even if guilt is fairly clear.

Most criminals, even when caught with plenty of evidence, still plea "not guilty" despite what most would consider "overwhelming evidence" because it's detrimental to their case to start with "guilty".

Crypto takes a dip as Trump signs Bitcoin Reserve order

Re: Mid Terms?

Legislature can revoke executive orders, or pass law specifically addressing whatever issue. Conflicts go to the Supreme Court for clarification.

Re: How will they know when it's stolen?

"One day"? It's going there now.

All sorts of ways to get a little extra from your gold coins, one of them being "put the coins in a very slightly abrasive pocket, and collect the dust off them to sell later".

Re: If he gets the Feds to stockpile enough Bitcoin

Nothing can stabilise bitcoin. It's inherently unstable, based on how many people continue to think it's a good idea to run miners and hold bitcoin.

Re: It will be fun to watch

I still haven't figured out why they don't just sell it on the market, should be a good chunk of change, and won't hurt people who don't have too much invested in a speculative asset.

So much of this crypto discussion has already been solved by national currency regulatory authorities, but hey, criminals still need something to use, I suppose.

Every time this sort of thing happens, there's someone who doesn't understand that currency is a hard problem that has to assume the presence of bad actors who will take advantage of any scheme that can lead to more money.

Most national currency producers have worked out enough of the more obvious schemes to stop crime that crypto just ignores, with it's enabling by default.

Oh Brother. Printer giant denies dirty toner tricks as users cry foul

The current firmware in our HP printer suggests we update it. I suggested "no", because it's not MY security that's being updated, and an insecure printer isn't really much of a malware vector on a home network. Either it prints the document, or doesn't, the only "communication" it really needs is "is print job done?" So far 3rd party cartridges still work great.

Does this thing run on a 220 V power supply? Oh. That puff of smoke suggests not

Re: Blown Cap

These days a bunch of power supplies are designed to take whatever comes in and deal with it. Years ago I had a razor that was rated at "10V DC - 220V AC" (not a typo). Could plug it into almost anything with voltage on it and shave.