* Posts by Gene Cash

5697 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2007

Microsoft Edge ignores user wishes, slurps tabs from Chrome without permission

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: msedgewebview2.exe

I would assume... since it's called *webview* that this is the OS component that does the rendering for embedded HTML/rich text controls.

As such, it's probably the core engine for Edge, and the rest of Edge is just a UI wrapper around it.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: GDPR breach here we come

Hm, I wonder if it's a productive thing to file an Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint on this side of the pond...

Raspberry Pi on IPO plans: 'We want to be ready when the markets are ready'

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Here's hoping the IPO doesn´t ruin the community and support

> the value was always on the documentation and software support: actual documentation, properly updated, mostly compatible with the parent distro Official OS image, open source hardware/IO access libraries

That'll probably be the first under the bus when the cost-cutting starts to maximize shareholder profits. Before or after they start laying off engineers to show they're focused on quarterly results.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: So long and thanks for all the fish

Yeah, I love all the R&D and innovation that Aliexpress does.

Gene Cash Silver badge

So long and thanks for all the fish

It's going to suck when Raspberry Pi turns to crap chasing the dollar for shareholders instead of focusing on tech and innovation.

This is about the worst thing that could happen to them.

Where's that article on enshittification again?

Techie resurrects teletext on a vintage BBC Master

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Composite Video is still present on the PI

So a 3,5mm socket that isn't there and you have to solder back on "is still present"

Only in the sense they did an incomplete job of ripping it out and some of the software happens to still be there.

This is the same bullshit where I no longer have a headphone jack in my Android phone and have to use a USB adapter, so I have to choose between hearing my meeting and running out of battery, or charging so I can stay in my meeting, or using a Bluetooth headset that randomly disconnects and is out of battery anyway.

So no, I still only buy 3B+s and won't buy anything newer.

Where's that article on enshittification again?

Cory Doctorow has a plan to wipe away the enshittification of tech

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Not sure his plans to fix it are realistic

YES.

"Netflix password crackdown fuels jump in subscribers" - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66240390

So instead of people saying "this is ridiculous and expensive and I'm tired of being abused like this" they double down and throw Netflix more money.

Me, I tossed my TV 15 years ago when an hour of TV was 20 minutes of commercials and maybe 40 minutes at most of content, and everything even remotely interesting got canceled.

Then there's Amazon putting ads in Prime video. People I talk to shrug their shoulders and don't seem to see a problem with that.

Me, I tossed my expensive Sirius XM radio 10 years ago when they started putting ads in music I was paying for.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Does old Cory know what he's talking about?

I have never ever understood why Microsoft killed their phone division out of the blue like that.

They're willing to invest billions in Xbox back when it was a very distant third, but they toss their phone business in the garbage like last week's milk.

There was a time when I would have bought a Windows phone simply because it wasn't Apple or Google. As it is, Android is utter shite, but Apple is worse. And there really isn't a third choice.

Japanese government finally bids sayonara to the 3.5" floppy disk

Gene Cash Silver badge

God I feel old....

I remember when 3.5" was TEH NOO KEWL THING on IBM PS/2 Model 30s in our college lab. I remember looking at the first such disk with a friend, and remarking that people will still find a way to staple them to a report.

CockroachDB tempts legacy databases to crawl into the cloud age

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Never Used Stored Procedures

Glad you're not one of my developers...

The real significance of Apple's Macintosh

Gene Cash Silver badge

> pointer tombstone

Citation please? This is the first I've heard of such a thing, and Google just returns a couple pages trying to explain it that are barely written in English.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Old Mac photo: MOUSE and GUI matter!

> Or maybe because Linux developers are command line gurus, who do not use the mouse at all.

Bingo, we have a winner. I spend at least 50% of my time in xterm or emacs. My window system doesn't even have widgets, it's all function key driven. F3 to make a window full-height, for example.

Then you have Windows. That consistently ignores Ctrl-C to copy. If I had a dime for every time Windows pasted an old clipboard item, I'd have retired long ago.

Linus Torvalds flames Google kernel contributor over filesystem suggestion

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Linus being shouty is not really news

Pehaps the ones he's shouting at shouldn't be contributing. Don't let the door hit you in the butt.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: tracefs?

You seem to have Linux confused with systemd.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: When the creator dies

> Sometimes I wonder what happens when Linus dies

Me too. I think Linux will fossilize. Is there anyone that can step up and not only do the technical side, but deal with all the political/social bullshit that comes with being "head maintainer of Linux"?

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: A better long-term approach...

> OMG! Imagine the horror if Micro$haft became the biggest code contributor to Linux, usurping RedHat from the No.1 slot. Oh, wait...

That would be fine. RedHat has managed to be even bigger dicks about Open Source than Microsoft. And Microsoft has apparently reformed from the Halloween documents days.

Microsoft didn't try to conceal their ire back in the day. RedHat (IBM) are being far more insidious, saying "We're Open Source" then penalizing anyone that tries to be Open Source with their product.

GPS interference now a major flight safety concern for airline industry

Gene Cash Silver badge

WTF did people do before GPS?

I'm actually old enough to remember life before GPS (and the internet too, but that's another topic)

They seemed to get along fine then. They no longer have backup navigation methods? Was getting rid of the inertial navigation system part of the cost-cutting?

Standards-obsessed boss ignored one, and suffered all night for his sin

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: is to gradually push less

> The correct way is to crouch down with your back to the bike, one hand on the bottom handlebar, the other on the bottom passenger grabrail. Then lift using first your legs, and then once its a bit up you can lean your whole weight into pushing it back. Arm strength can help but not usually necessary

LOL. Good luck with that. If the bike lies flat like say, a Yamaha Tenere, or an Energica SS9, you're screwed, unless there happens to be a couple beefy police officers nearby.

If the bike has luggage or is a BMW with large cylinders and a crashbar, it'll be upright enough for the above technique to work. That 30 degrees or so makes a big different.

The Energica is especially bad, as being Italian[1], it sits near to vertical as makes no difference, and I had to chop 10mm out of the kickstand to get it to lean and not fall over in a stiff breeze.

[1] could be worse. A lot of Ducatis have a SPRING-LOADED kickstand that flips up if you look at it funny.

Akira ransomware gang says it stole passport scans from Lush in 110 GB data heist

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: HR

OK, I'm new here and I don't understand all this computer mumbojumbo.

How do you sign into a printer?

Guess the company: Takes your DNA, blames you when criminals steal it, can’t spot a cyberattack for 5 months

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: On the other hand ...

> For instance, it's not unusual for people to use different names, or variants of names at different times in their life

Entire families change their names when they immigrate, or a war happens and their old name is too German or something, or they don't like the old way it's spelled. There are entire genealogy communities devoted to tracking such stuff. Yes, they do their homework. It's basically what they do with their spare time.

> Most of that data isn't online

Wrong. A LOT of it is online. There's the official census to start with, military records, other official archives, findagrave, newspaper obituaries, various announcements of life events such as promotions, the marriage, birth, death, church, and court records mentioned above, etc are online.

And as per the first part, there's a lot of people going through old microfilms and other offline archives and putting them online. You can buy info like the entire Florida driver's license database on a CD and put that online.

Top Linux distros drop fresh beats

Gene Cash Silver badge

"most Linux distro vendors have no telemetry"

Not exactly true. Debian has "popularity-contest" which tells what packages you have installed.

Of course this is 100% optional, and I believe there's an install-time switch for it, but it's been a while since I installed a Debian variant from scratch.

JAXA releases photo of SLIM lander in lunar faceplant

Gene Cash Silver badge

Japan deserves a little more credit

All snarks aside, telemetry shows their flight computer actually mostly compensated for the frigging LOSS OF AN ENGINE NOZZLE and still touched down gently enough to avoid RUD.

This is far better than Chandrayaan-2 that came out of attitude hold and went "roll rate?! WHAT! I CAN'T DEAL!" and cratered.

Telco giants show it's tough selling 5G kit right now

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Maybe 5G is actually not so needed?

OK, then "'splain it to me, Lucy!" if 5G is so damn luvverly compared to 4G...

Why have I gotten twice as many dropped calls? Chatting away and then "hey, where'd the other end go?"

Why do I now get calls where the other end just fades out, or goes all garbled, or is interspersed with buzzing and other injected noises?

Why do I have SMS messages with nothing other than plain text just sit there for 25-30 minutes "having trouble sending"?

This is a Pixel 7 Pro on T-Mobile, if anyone's counting.

Taiwan connects its first home-grown quantum computer to the internet

Gene Cash Silver badge

Why is there a still from a '50s SF movie at the bottom of the article?

Oh wait, is that really a picture of the computer and the lab?

Boeing goes boing: 757 loses a wheel while taxiing down the runway

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: click bait

Did you not notice they quoted exactly from the FAA report they linked to?

DPD chatbot blasts courier company, swears, and dabbles in awful poetry

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: As Arthur said

A while back, just for the hell of it, I ordered water heaters through Amazon. These are the large cylindrical things about shoulder height and maybe a couple feet in diameter.

It showed up in a bare cardboard box. No packing. Lots of holes and beat to hell.

I took a picture, and Amazon arranged for pickup. refunded it, and I ordered another model from another company.

Rinse and repeat about 5 times (It wasn't costing me anything) and Amazon finally apparently removed water heaters from purchase.

Absolutely none of the water heaters were in anything other than the manufacturer's box.

It was fun and I was bored.

Users now keep cellphones for 40+ months and it's hurting the secondhand market

Gene Cash Silver badge

Latest OSes & "updates" suck

Android 14 tries to remove even more features, so I've blocked updates and I'm sticking to my current phone as long as possible.

BreachForums admin 'Pompourin' sentenced to 20 years of supervised release

Gene Cash Silver badge

"forbidden to use the internet"

So what exactly does that mean? I assume they mean he can't use a browser, but when assuming can land your ass 10 years in jail...

So most phones use a WI-Fi connection over the internet to make a call when they can.. does that count?

But then I assume using a smartphone is right out. No Google Maps, for example. But what about Google Maps in his car? That seems to be "always-on" in my friend's Honda.

Does using a smart TV count? Or even just a smart refrigerator or washer? Or an Alexa device?

Japan's lunar lander is dying before our eyes after setting down on Moon

Gene Cash Silver badge

Stupid Lander Inverted on Moon

According to the telemetry from the Youtube broadcast, it's apparently rolled upside down.

Considering how the solar panels seem to be pointed, there's a good chance it might wake up in a week or so when the Sun swings by that direction.

Junior techie had leverage, but didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Responsibility

> No! It's not his job to know what he doesn't know

Wait. People don't know "top-heavy stuff falls over" these days? Explains a lot...

Businessman faces 20 years in prison over accusations of illicit chip exports to Russia

Gene Cash Silver badge

"citizen of the US, Israel, and Russia"

Wait, what... how?

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Battery vs Charger

> Best bet would be to get towed to Florida. Er, no. It's cold down there too.

Well, if you call 20C cold, yeah.

Source: Am in Florida.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Yeah. "Machines have issues with extreme cold. Film at 11"

ICE (ha!) cars/trucks have issues with cold too, but El Reg can't make clickbait out of that.

Remember when enterprise administration was more than just a browser dashboard?

Gene Cash Silver badge
FAIL

One big virtue

No systemd and no pulseaudio.

NASA, Lockheed Martin reveal subtly supersonic X-59 plane

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Trump Thump

Actually, it's usually Congress that slashes NASA's budget.

Historically, the president asks for an increase and Congress says "fuck you"

And not that I support Trump, but he asked for the biggest NASA budget increase since Apollo.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-budget-nasa/white-house-calls-for-biggest-nasa-budget-in-decades-to-reach-the-moon-mars-idUSKBN2042J9/

So get your facts straight before popping off at the mouth.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Douglas X-3 Stiletto, anybody?

Ah, the aircraft that discovered roll inertia coupling, aka "flying like a thrown pipe"

The F-100 and the F-104 had the same problem, and this plane helped find out why and how.

> rides on some unproven assumptions

That's why they do X planes.

The week in weird: Check out the strangest CES tech of 2024

Gene Cash Silver badge

Skwheel

So, um, isn't that basically rollerblades BUT ELECTRIC? And my reason for using rollerblades was exercise, so... hm.

I don't see why it doesn't have AI, though! They're missing the bus!

Disease X fever infects Davos: WEF to plan response to whatever big pandemic is next

Gene Cash Silver badge

Black Death was a good thing... bring it on

Manpower was suddenly of much greater value, meaning kings and dukes now had to bargain with their laborers over working conditions and compensation. Wages doubled in some places in just a year.

Prices fell because there was fewer people to buy stuff.

1 & 2 meant lots of middle-management(cough) mid-level lords had to sell their estates.

This pretty much killed serfdom and feudalism.

Towns repopulated faster than the countryside, so things pivoted from agriculture to industry.

And of course, it helped develop medicine and sanitation.

So as long as **I** don't die, I DGAS about everyone else. I'll be vaccinated and wearing my mask, TYVM. Ya'll anti-maskers & anti-vacciners do whatever you want. Evolution in action. Average human intelligence goes up a fraction of a percent.

Adios, dead zones: Starlink relays SMS in space for unmodified phones on Earth

Gene Cash Silver badge

T-Mobile?

Is this the same T-Mobile that couldn't text a small screenshot yesterday while the phone happily displayed 5 bars of 5G-UC?

Does the UC actually stand for "unconnected"?

Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get faulty Windows 10 update installed

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: When did Windows turn into Linux?

In 2020 I did an update and when it updated elogind, it killed my X11 session & xterms, which killed the update. The elogind update also killed the console, and I couldn't ssh in, so I rebooted.

And got "kernel panic: can't find root filesystem" - it had installed a new kernel but hadn't gotten around to updating initrd yet.

Of course that's something GRUB could deal with, but it was still a pain in the ass. I did "dpkg --configure -a" and everything was happy.

So one screwup in about 15 years? Yeah, I can live with that.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Dang it, I need a copy of that patch!

Office gossips beware – chitchat could choke your career chances

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: GDPR

Isn't that the very definition of gossip?

Another airline finds loose bolts in Boeing 737-9 during post-blowout fleet inspections

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: I hope they also covered

> Boeing seems to have caught the Microsoft disease

Boeing caught it from McDonnell-Douglas, who they bought, and apparently the old McD beancounters are now in charge.

Welcome to 2024: Volkswagen really is putting ChatGPT into cars as a gabby copilot

Gene Cash Silver badge

People have pushed back, and VW is installing real buttons

VW Is Putting Buttons Back in Cars Because People Complained Enough

https://www.thedrive.com/news/vw-is-putting-buttons-back-in-cars-because-people-complained-enough

Refreshed Mk8 Golf With Real Buttons Will Be Revealed in January

https://www.thedrive.com/news/refreshed-mk8-golf-with-real-buttons-will-be-revealed-in-january

VW CEO Admits ‘Frustrating’ No-Button Interiors Have Damaged VW’s Reputation

https://www.thedrive.com/news/vw-ceo-admits-frustrating-golf-id-4-interiors-did-a-lot-of-damage

(I don't have a car, VW or otherwise, so I have no dog in this race - and no, I would not buy a touchscreen-only vehicle)

NASA science bound for Moon after successful Vulcan Centaur launch

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: How the mighty are fallen

Don't forget, SpaceX started with engines tossed in the trash by Congress & NASA, and the chief engineer kept a couple examples in his garage.

And at least we are no longer launching our spy satellites with Russian made engines.

New year, new bug – rivalry between devs led to a deep-code disaster

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Amiga pedantry. Sorry.

> but the memories are really dimm

Nice

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: The real lesson...

> modern optimisation technique

> compilers have gotten so good

> with modern compilers

May I remind people this was 1985ish which was nearly FORTY years ago?

C compilers back then were mostly described by the technical terms "crap" and "shite"

GCC wasn't even released until 1987, and to quote Wikipedia: "by 1990 GCC supported thirteen computer architectures, was outperforming several vendor compilers, and was used commercially by several companies"

So back then, rewriting C in assembly was a valid path and all the moaning about how stupid that is, are way off target.

Ransomware payment ban: Wrong idea at the wrong time

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: The best defense is to avoid becoming a victim ö

> Your average business doesn't have the time, money or expertise to implement such a thing

Bull. Shit. Securing your computers on the internet in this day and age is no different than knowing how to drive your delivery van.

If you can't drive your van, hire someone to do it. If you can't afford gas/maintenance/licensing, then you shouldn't be in business.

"Can't be arsed" is not a valid defense.

It's no different than putting your cash in a safe or the bank at the end of the day. If you don't, do you really expect people to cry tears when someone takes it?

Microsoft pulls the plug on WordPad, the world's least favorite text editor

Gene Cash Silver badge

I was in the same situation. Boy, did the school get PISSED when my mother bought me a TRS-80 for Christmas 1979.

They actually tried to ban me from talking to the other kids about computers.

The Register's 2023 in gaming had one final boss: Baldur's Gate 3

Gene Cash Silver badge

No mention of Tears of the Kingdom?

I am an almost complete spaz. I was so frustrated about it in early college that I started riding a motorcycle in the hopes it'd cure me or kill me. It did at least give me enough coordination to play video games after crashing 40 or 50 times. I still can't carry something fragile across the garage without dropping it.

I'm now in my late 50s in the same position as Andy Non.

So I'm not a big fan of Fromsoft or Dark Souls because I just don't enjoy getting my ass beaten soundly and repeatedly with no recourse. This means I gravitate to something like HALO that has a bit of lore and no real bosses. I do enjoy watching someone else play them... someone with skill and coordination. I've watched Ellen's Souls Academy where she was guided through Dark Souls 1

Of course, I've played Kerbal Space Program for almost 10 years.

I saw a 5 hour stream of Tears of the Kingdom, which (FIVE HOURS) was enough for part of one side quest. This got me to buy a Switch and TotK.

As the streamer (Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions) says, THERE IS A LOT OF GAME IN THIS GAME. I've been playing since early December and am still on some of the first main quests, and maybe 5% through it.

One excellent feature is if you run up on a boss, and you don't have weapons or whatever, the game gives you a fast-travel point so you can nope out and easily come back later. THIS IS JUST THE BEST FEATURE IN A GAME EVER. One reason I hated HALO Infinite was you'd hit a boss and there was nothing for it except die over and over and over and over and over and over until you beat him. And the TotK bosses are actually beatable if you put some thought and strategy into it, which gives you hope instead of utter "do I gotta do this, mom?" despair. And with the regular enemies, you can just avoid them.

The only bad bit is you have to grind a little for "batteries" but I've actually found instead of doing the farming/mining for it, there are times in the quests where you run across large chunks of it. So it's not totally grindy.

There are actually 3 maps: the usual ground, bits of stuff to do in the sky, and an underground level.

There are lots of shrines with puzzles, but this is the internet, and I didn't really spend a moment dealing with frustrating puzzles, I hit IGN and Google for pointers. I've also watched a lot of the "you want to do these things early in the game for the most fun" videos as I don't care about spoilers.

I might like Baldur's Gate 3, but I don't really like RPGs because you have to do a lot of dealing with people, so probably not.