* Posts by Boothy

1230 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jun 2011

As another vendor promises 3 years of Android updates, we ask: How long should mobile devices receive support?

Boothy

Re: "support" is a sales "feature"

I've still got a OnePlus 3, that came out in June 2016, so isn't far off 5 years old now.

It got updated all the way to Android 9 in May 2019, which improved battery life compared to the earlier OS versions.

Depending on usage, (I mostly use messaging, bit of news, and make perhaps one phone call every two days, although this typically lasts up to an hour each time), the phone will typically last between 2 and 3 days between charges.

The only time it's an issue is if I've had heavy use for some reason, such as taking lots of pictures, where it might not last the day, but if I know I'll be doing that, I take my booster with me.

No idea if good battery life is due to how I charge, or the environment it's in etc. I'm in the UK, so no excessive heat or cold, and I typically run the phone down to 15% (when the warning comes on) before charging, and then unplug as soon as it's ~95% which is when it's charging at only a trickle anyway. (Using the original charger and cable from OnePlus).

IBM says it's built the world's first 2nm semiconductor chips

Boothy

Re: Sounds like it is time for a new standard

For anyone curious, there's a bit of history on WikiChip on when nm no longer actual meant a real size anymore (around 32/28nm era, approx. 10 years ago).

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Meaning_lost

Google will make you use two-step verification to login

Boothy

Re: Er ...

Quote: "I recently had to create an account just to find out when and if the local authority Swimming Pool Leisure Centre "Wellbeing Center" [sic] was reopening."

Would that come under GDPR? Just curious.

Happy to be corrected, but I though one of the rules of GDPR was that you can only mandate asking for PII (name, email address etc), if it's actually data required to provide the service or function. That data (assuming any of it, is asked for during account creation of course) isn't needed simply to display opening times.

Can't get that printer to work? It's not you. It's that sodding cablin.... oh beautiful job with that cabling, boss

Boothy

Re: Printers are the Devil's work

At a previous company, we had a Tactical International Tracking System. Obviously as a tactical system we had this for several years, as is tradition.

We did try to get the next few related systems to fit A.R.S.E, (or even A.S.S), for a few years, but unfortunately never managed to get that one to stick.

In case you were wondering, no, AMD hasn't managed to fsck everything up. It's still making lots of money

Boothy

Re: I'd agree - but supply's been patchy

True enough.

I'd be curious to know how many older Zen 2 models, such as the 3900X, are still being produced, if any, as these are on the same 7nm process as the newer Zen 3 models. i.e. Are they still producing Zen 2 cores for the 3900X etc, or are they using up older Zen 2 stock?

Zen 2 and 3 both use 7nm, so you'd think from a money point of view, the more production lines you could switch from Zen 2 to Zen 3 production, the more money they'd make (high premium on the new more in demand parts etc).

Not that any of that makes any difference to me currently anyway, I've got a 3800X atm, and quite happy with that for my use-case (mostly gaming on my personal PC, I work on a company provided laptop).

My next upgrade will likely be a GFX card, but my overpriced 2080 from early 2019 (before the Super versions came out), will do fine for now. I'm not a frame rate snob, or competitive gamer, and the card hits we'll above 60fps on Ultra settings in most modern games anyway. So I'll probably give it another year at least, before I even start looking at replacing it, and even then only if stock is in, and GFX cards are closer to more normal prices!

Boothy

Re: semiconductor issues

Is any of that cost increase due to shipping? I know lots of companies are having issues actually shipping parts around, no space on ships, so switching to air, which cost a lot more, especially for anything heavy etc.

AMD doesn't really have any semiconductor supply issues, at least not for CPUs (GPUs is a different thing!).

All the current CPU cores for AMDs Ryzens (i.e. Desktop, mobile and server CPUs) are all made by TSMC. The last two gens, Zen 2 and Zen 3, being on 7nm, which has been around now for a while, and is quite mature (i.e. high yields etc). This 7nm production space was booked up well in advance of the current issues. AMD started with 7nm with Zen 2 back in mid 2019.

I suspect most of AMDs CPU stock shortages last year were simply down to the increased demand, rather than actual issues making the things (production volumes were actually higher than planned from what I've seen, it's just that demand was far high than anyone had expected, so still outstripped supply).

A quick look at a few retailers (in the UK), and seems all the main Zen 3 desktop parts, 5600X through to 5950X, are all in stock for immediate shipping.

Things might change for Zen 4 due later this year, as that's expected to be on TSMCs 5nm, (same as the latest Apple CPUs etc). As far as I know again AMD have agreed space on 5nm with TSMC some time back, as Zen 4 has been on their road map for a while now, but 5nm is also the leading tech for many mobile chips, including Apple etc, and it's less mature, so high demand but possibly lower yields than 7nm. So I'd expect production of the new Ryzen 6000 range (or whatever it gets called), to be somewhat limited at least initially.

Conversely, try looking for a current nVidia or AMD GPU, and no stock anywhere!

Mayday! Mayday! Microsoft has settled on a build and Windows 10 21H1 is inbound

Boothy

Re: Unplug yer routers folks!

Or just don't hit the button to upgrade versions.

I basically do an N+2 at home, unless I want to try something new (like the recent updated to WSL).

As far as I can see, even Home editions don't try to force version updates on you on release. You just get a Feature Update message under Windows update to let you know there is a newer version of Win 10 available. (Which I simply ignore most of the time, if it ain't broke etc).

My main home PC (mainly a gaming system, hence Windows) is on 2004, which I only did a few months back, and that was only as I wanted to try something out that hadn't been included in earlier 19* versions.

Michael Collins, once the world's 'loneliest man,' is dead. If that name means little or nothing to you, read this

Boothy

Re: RIP Michael Collins

Probably because there is no population elephant in the room.

The UN did quite a nice summary (pdf) of many population sustainability studies back in 2012, 65 of them to be exact.

By far the most common estimates for a sustainable population on Earth, put the number at <=8 billion (20 studies) , with the second most common estimate being at <=16 billion (14 studies).

Only 7 studies reckoned <=4 billion, with 6 at <=2 billion.

At the same time, 6 studies reckoned <=32 billion, and 7 studies said <=64 billion.

The remaining handful ranged from <= 128 billion to <=1,000 billion!

Obviously lots of guess work in these studies, hence why the UN wanted to do a summary of many of them, to get some sort of rough consensus.

We are current at almost 7.9 billion, and still growing, but the growth rate is slowing. Some countries such as Japan now have declining populations, and many developed nations are expected to follow this trend over the next few decades.

Current estimates are that some time around, or shortly after the year 2100, we'll hit max population, at around 10 to 11 billion, at which point we start to see declining numbers.

This still puts us reasonably close to the <=8 billion mark, and comfortably within the second most popular estimate of <=16 billion.

Obviously this needs to go hand in hand with effective resource management, improved recycling, expanding use of renewables, reduce or remove dependencies on non renewables, better access to education and birth control, especially in developing nations etc etc.

PCs continue to sell like hot cakes and industry can barely keep up with demand – analyst

Boothy

Most, or at least many, modern laptops now have at least one USB-C connector, which can typically be used as an extra Display output in addition to whatever the laptop supports directly.

As an example my company Lenovo T14 has a standard HDMI output, then two USB-C ports, both of which can be used for power to the laptop, and for external monitors.

Also depending on monitor, if it natively supports USB-C (such as the ThinkVision P24h) you can daisy chain the monitors together, and even power the laptop from the same single USB-C lead.

British IT teacher gets three-year ban after boozing with students at strip club during school trip to Costa Rica

Boothy

Re: I am disappoint...

Quote: "as would a teacher throwing chalk at a boy not paying attention and talking to his mate in class..."

Reminds me of a physics class I was once in, first class of a new term, teacher I'd not had before so didn't know me, got a board rubber (the wooden things), thrown at me for not paying attention, I was doodling in my book (knowing me probably animated stick figures in the corner of the book).

I caught it, threw it back instantly, teacher had to duck, I then answered the question he'd posed on the board, correctly. I'd already figured it out, so was doodling in my book as I was bored, waiting for the next question. I was never one to volunteer answers back then!

Yup, I ended up in detention, but it was worth it, I was the cool kid for a while, well till the end of that day anyway!

Ah, you know what? Keep your crappy space station, we're gonna try to make our own, Russia tells world

Boothy

Quote: " ...current ISS is in a deteriorating orbit and will be unsafe in 2028"

What are you talking about?

The ISS orbit does deteriorate over time, but that's always been factored in, hence why it has engines which can adjust the orbit as desired.

The ISS is actually higher up these days that it was originally, ~400km up now, rather than ~350km that it used to fly at. It even used to adjust height down to make it easier for the shuttle to reach it, to dock with larger payloads. These days as there is no shuttle, it keeps the higher orbit at all times.

As long as it has power and fuel, it will maintain orbit.

Jackie 'You have no authority here' Weaver calls on the UK to extend Coronavirus Act provisions for online meetings

Boothy

I don't use Zoom, but we have Teams at work, and I've used the mute option against specific other attendees, on more than one occasion, due to the amount of background noise they were generating!

Most of us don't use video, so I suspect they'd wondered off to make a cuppa or something, and so couldn't hear us saying "Please use mute if your not speaking".

At least Teams (and I would assume others) flash the border around the attendees name/icon, so you can see where the noise is coming from.

FCC urges Americans to run internet speed app to counter Big Cable's broadband data fudging

Boothy

Re: There's a problem with the app...

SamKnows also have a browser based one, that works fine on a Desktop. Don't think it's related to the FCC, as they don't provide any background info on the site. But it's a lot less cluttered and cleaner than the speedtest.net equivalent, and seems to produce similar results for me on the same connection.

https://speedtest.samknows.com/

Tesla broke US labor law with anti-union efforts – watchdog

Boothy
Happy

Re: Brotherhood of Evil villain henchmen Local 102

You waiting for Evil Genius 2 to come out tomorrow by any chance?

Whatever 'normal' is, global CEOs don't expect to see it return before 2022 and are ploughing funds into security

Boothy

Re: Our new normal

Similar where I'm currently working.

I only joined my current place a year ago, just as the first lockdown kicked in (UK). So far I have never gone into any of our offices for work (I dropped off some paperwork once), I don't have a office or a desk allocated, I don't even have a company ID card, as they are location specific (combined ID and swipe/tap cards for the building).

I've had a grand total of one face-to-face client meeting, at one of the clients sites, this between lockdowns. A few people in the building fell ill a few days later (not Covid), so the client decided to shut the building down again and hasn't opened it since.

The company I'm working for, which had apparently been a staunch work in the office only, no WFH, type company before I joined, has now formally adopted a WFH first approach. Although you can go into the office if you want (once open).

They've been doing questionnaires, to find out who and how many people are likely to want to go into the office, and have started changes based on those the results. They've already closed some offices permanently (mostly smaller locations), and others are being either reduced in size, or converted to hot-desk hubs. Idea being if you want to go into an office, you just book (including block booking) a desk at any office location you want.

They also launched an updated Health and Safety quiz, (is your char adjustable, good seating position, monitor size/position, working headset etc.). The updates add some additional questions specific to WFH, such as do you have a suitable desk, if not, do you have space for one, do you have a decent chair etc. If you for example state you don't have a desk, but do have space for one, they send you a desk, same for chairs, monitors, headset etc. No having to get permission from a budget holder either (which you used to need) it's just automatic now!

Chrome 90 goes HTTPS by default while Firefox injects substitute scripts to foil tracking tech

Boothy

Re: Chromium certificates

Works fine in Chrome 89 (90 doesn't show up yet).

Which specific Chromium browser are you using? Or are you compiling your own?

Staff and students at Victoria University of Wellington learn the most important lesson of all: Keep your files backed up

Boothy

Re: Drag out the 'ol saw

Reminds me of a meeting I was sat in a few years back, when a new Enterprise Architect had joined the account, and was trying to get a feel for the land, so had set up a few meetings with the support teams for various critical services.

EA: Does the system have a backup?

Support Lead: Yes, weekly full backups and overnight incrementals.

EA: How often is the restore process tested, and when was the last test?

Support Lead: It was tested when we first set the system up a few years back, so we know it worked then. But never since, as we don't actually have any other hardware large enough to test recovery on.

EA: What about pre-prod? That should be the same size as prod shouldn't it?

Support Lead: Erm, client didn't want to pay for a full size pre-prod, so it's not actually big enough to fit prod on now.

EA: So that's a no then, no backup.

PSA: If you're still giving users admin rights, maybe try not doing that. Would've helped dampen 100+ Microsoft vulns last year – report

Boothy

The few times I've had that type of issue with programs, I've just selected a different install location than the default, a location that I (as the User) own, such as X:\MyPrograms

Quite a few older PC games have this issue as well, as they try to save config data into the install folder, sometimes even saving save files there! Often just installing somewhere else stops the prompt for admin privileges.

Someone defeated the anti-crypto-coin-mining protection for Nvidia's 'gamers only' RTX 3060 ... It was Nvidia

Boothy

Will miners actually buy the CMP HX cards?

As far as I'm aware, miners look at TCO, so take into account initial purchase costs, running costs and eventual sale of the card once it's no longer viable for mining. So they presumably factor in how much they expect to get back on the GFX cards when sold (and at the moment the 2nd hand market is booming!).

How many people are going to want to buy a 2nd hand CMP HX card? Okay, these seem to be basically headerless CUDA cards, so a few people out there might want them for other purposes than mining, but I can't see this being much of a market?

CMP HX cards would have to be very cheap compared to the full blown GFX cards in order to get miners to buy them as a throw away device, rather than something they can sell on later.

It also means the silicon on the card is basically single use, so this will impact the 2nd hand market, reducing the number of hand-me-down cards later on.

Millimetre-sized masses: Physics boffins measure smallest known gravitational field (so far)

Boothy

Re: Gravity as ratio

Quote: "Mass is motion"

Nope, mass is essentially resistance to acceleration.

The relationship between mass and motion, is that the more mass something has, the more energy it takes to impart motion on that mass. As such, the two, mass and motion, cannot be the same thing.

Don't be a fool, cover your tool: How IBM's mighty XT keyboard was felled by toxic atmosphere of the '80s

Boothy

Re: Metrification

Even my parents, born late 1940s, early 50s, used Celsius. (UK)

I'm in my 50s now, and can say Fahrenheit was never used in our household. I know 32 °F is freezing, but I'd have no idea what a comfortable room temperature was, or if it was hot outside if in °F!

Another Windows 10 patch that breaks printers ups ante to full-on Blue Screen of Death

Boothy

Re: "in some apps"?

My first hard drive, also for an Amiga, was 80MB.

I can remember sitting there, installing the OS, Workbench, then basically adding every other program I used, and a good few games, and still had tons of space left over!

I even ended partitioning the drive, to give me separate boot drives, one into a GUI OS with minimal overheads, one with OS + fancy icons and a few other tweaks, and then a minimal command line only boot, tweaked to free up as much RAM as possible, mainly for playing a few games that didn't like to be launched from the GUI.

Boothy

Re: "in some apps"?

One of the first peripherals I bought for my Amiga A500 was an external floppy drive, it seemed awesome at the time to be able to access other apps er, programs, whilst still having the OS disk in place!

SpaceX wants to slap Starlink internet terminals on planes, trucks, and boats – but Tesla owners need not apply

Boothy

The current user 'terminal' (their name) is a phased array dish about 2 foot across.

There's a few pics on arstechnica

Granted they could probably shrink the size down somewhat, perhaps integrate the phased array into the roof panels, but that's going to take a bit of a redesign to the cars.

Linus Torvalds issues early Linux Kernel update to fix swapfile SNAFU

Boothy

Re: Linus is maybe a tad incorrect?

Hmm, didn't even know this!

I built a headerless Ubuntu 20.04 server last summer into an old Intel NUC, minimal default install, then just added stuff afterwards. Just had a quick look, sure enough, there's a ~3.3 gig /swap.img file dated June 2020, which is when the 'server' was built!

Thanks for the into, TIL.

I haven't bought new pants for years, why do I have to keep buying new PCs?

Boothy

Hey don't knock it! I managed to get Netscape running on my old Amiga A4000 many moons ago (mid 90s).

Granted this was using the Shapeshifter emulator, so MacOS, and on a 25MHz 68040 CPU.

It did work, although granted it was a tad slow ;-)

Brave buys a search engine, promises no tracking, no profiling – and may even offer a paid-for, no-ad version

Boothy

Re: I disagree with the article

Similar experiences here as well, I use DDG by default, switching to other sites if needed.

In general, if I'm searching for a product name, what I'm looking for tends to be resolving an issue, trying to find a specification, or tying to find an independent review.

Instead Google floods me with retailers and special offers, which 99% of the time I have no interest in, and often aren't even for the product I was searching for! If I'm actually buying something, I'll generally go directly to a retailer, one I've used before and know (or at least hope) I'll get good service from.

The one thing I'd say with DDG, whilst good for most things, it seems quite poor for some specific types of searches, such as error messages. As an example, searching for a specific error message (log files, application errors etc), where an exact match for the entire phrase is needed. Often DDG will have nothing at all relevant in the results to the search that was run, whereas Google finds several exact matches for the same search.

Hacking is not a crime – and the media should stop using 'hacker' as a pejorative

Boothy

Re: My current annoyance is "gift" as a verb

You do understand OED documents the language, it doesn't define it?

I've seen quite a few interviews with Oxford Dictionary staff over the years, written and TV interviews etc.

Each time they've stated their job is to document the language, as used. It's the people that define the language, through usage, and English is a living constantly changing language (like many others in the World).

The OED have quite a strict process for adding new words to the dictionary, anyone can submit new words, but they have to be in widespread use, in books, in newspapers etc. before they are actually added into the dictionary itself.

You might not like some of the new words, but that's nothing to do with the OED itself.

After spending $45bn on 5G licences, Verizon tells customers to turn off 5G to save battery life

Boothy

Re: I'm somewhat miffed

From what I understand, 5G is more efficient, but only if the 5G mast is close by, and by close I mean within a few tens of meters, not say a km+ away like a typical cell tower.

One of the ideas was that you add 5G to the main cell towers (same as 3G etc), then add repeaters in the areas between the main cell towers every 50m or so. One plan being to add them to street lights as they get replaced, or local road signs etc. (The repeaters only need power, they use a microwave link for data).

That way in theory, mobile phones are only a few tens of meters away from a 5G signal, so can run at a lower power.

The issue seems to be that whilst many main cell towers have had 5G added, very few of the repeaters have been installed yet. (Costs, NIMBY, not rolled out yet etc etc).

So instead of the phones connecting to a cell only a few 10s of meters away, and so allowing for lower power usage, they are still having to connect to the main cell towers, which are typically further away, and in that use case, 5G seems to be worse than 3G/4G for power consumption.

I suspect till there are lots of 5G repeaters all over an area, you'd probably be better sticking with 4G/3G etc, at least for power usage issues.

Linus Torvalds went six days without electricity, swears smaller 5.12 kernel is co-incidental

Boothy

Re: 60kWh per day?

I've been looking at heat pumps as well. I've not seen that article you linked to before now, but it seems to match what I've seen elsewhere, where basically in the UK at least, if you currently have gas central heating (like many (most?) homes in the UK), it doesn't really save money to switch to a heat pump. i.e. the monthly heating costs don't really change much due to gas being cheaper than leccy.

Main reasons I've seen so far for people with existing houses converting to heat pumps, have been where they've been gutting the house anyway, or they have existing electric based heating (i.e. it's currently expensive), or they have a decent solar system to offset the running costs, or they just want to reduce their carbon footprint, irrespective of the costs.

Think I'll be sticking with the gas central heating for now!

Boothy

Re: No Backup Gen?

I think the limiting factor with Powerwall (and other similar tech), is the batteries themselves, rather than the inverters. I know Powerwall 2 can, as you mention, do 5kW continuous, but that is per Powerwall. So if you needed more than 5kW, you could install additional Powerwalls and so get 10kW, 15kW etc. More cost though!

One Gateway 2 can manage up to 10 Powerwalls, so that's a potential 50kW continuous. (Probably £70k+ install cost!!).

I think there is some re-education to be done as well. I've had solar for a few years, (no battery) and got into the habit of only using the dishwasher etc during the day, and never at the same time as doing laundry. But obviously this wouldn't always be an option for everyone, and I still use the electric oven in the evening, which means it's dark at the moment (UK).

If I do get a battery, the timing can be more flexible then, but I'd still be trying to avoid doing too many high Watt jobs at the same time.

Interesting on you only having an 80A supply fuse, I've just double checked, and both my main breaker in the fuse box, and the fuse on the feed into the meter are 100A.

Boothy

Re: No Backup Gen?

I've only really looked at Tesla myself so far.

From what I've seen UK costs for a Tesla Powerwalll system, including the off-grid bit and installation, is around £10k inc VAT (although this would likely go up for a complex installation).

This is for a 13.5 kWh battery (single Powerwalll 2), plus the off-grid system (Gateway 2). As far as I can see, they always install the gateway box, as it manages everything. (You can have multiple Powerwall batteries running off one Gateway box).

The Gateway 2 box automatically (and instantly from what I've seen demonstrated) isolates the local power from the grid power, in case of a power cut, whilst continuing to provide local power from the battery, and also allows solar panels to continue working.

So basically it's a UPS for the house, and does comply with UK regs etc.

LastPass to limit fans of free password manager to one device type only – computer or mobile – from next month

Boothy

Re: Winrar

Why use WinRAR in this day and age? Just install 7-zip instead!

Accenture, Capita, IBM jump on £800m framework to make the NHS more agile as UK.gov announces further reforms

Boothy

Re: Getting 12 different companies to work on the same project

You can likely bet that the NHS are the official SI, responsible for coordinating all the parties, and who will then likely not hire someone competent in that role.

Or alternately, they'll assume one of the suppliers will do the SI role for them, but then not include that role in the contact.

Either way, it won't get done, and chaos will ensue!

helloSystem: Pre-alpha FreeBSD project chases simplicity and elegance by taking cues from macOS

Boothy

Re: Drivers, drivers, drivers

Quote: "When you say discrete cards do you mean they might put their graphics cores onto a PCI-E card?"

Basically yup. Intel announced a while back they were getting back into discreate GFX cards. They are shipping an updated GFX engine with some devices now (Laptop OEM stuff). This is known as DG1 (Discrete Graphics 1), although it's a discreate chip, rather than a card, aimed at Laptops.

DG2 is apparently the discrete card, and these are in alpha currently, and are supposedly due for launch later this year.

Even if DG2 is only mid range, say equivalent to a 3060 or maybe a 3070, if they can get them in stock, they'll likely sell simply due to nVidia and AMD not have much stock anywhere atm.!

The laptop you bought in 2020 may stop you buying a car in 2021: Chips are going short

Boothy

Re: Genuine or artificial shortage?

There's a lot of chips in laptops (sound, USB, power etc), and other devices (wifi, modems, hubs etc), that aren't on the cutting edge nodes like the latest CPUs use. Where cost is typically far more important and so they use older, mature, and so cheaper nodes, which is basically what you have for the stuff in cars.

From what I've heard elsewhere, this was an issue the automotive companies basically created for themselves. They were expecting big drops in sales due to COVID, and so reduced a lot of their orders with companies like TSMC, this freed up capacity at the chip plants, which were picked up by other industries.

When the car companies realised the sales drop wasn't a big as they expected, they went back to the chip companies to increase the orders, but were basically told, "Sorry, we're booked up now".

Part of the issue is the JIT model that car companies follow, very little stock held, so a large impact when things go wrong.

In case there was any doubt about using legacy Edge, Microsoft 365 throws its weight behind WebView2

Boothy

Just being pedantic, but it's not the lifetime of 'Windows 10'.

Quote from MS: "Internet Explorer 11 will continue receiving security updates and technical support for the lifecycle of the version of Windows on which it is installed."

'Windows 10' is not a version number, that's basically a brand name, '1909', '2004', '20H2' etc are the version numbers.

MS could (I hope) one day simply not include IE in some future version of Windows 10, at which point it would no longer be supported on that version, but would continue to be supported on the older versions whilst they were still in support.

Just a guess, but we are due a new LTSC version of Windows 10 later this year. That would likely be an ideal time to announce a last version of Windows to support IE. That way anyone who really really still needed actual IE for some reason, could use the '21H?' LTSC version of Windows 10, whilst the next version of Windows after that (typically ~6 months later), could come without IE.

Boothy

IE is the Internet!

For some people anyway!

I was on a call (Teams presentation) just last week with someone from outside our organisation, the presenter was sharing their Desktop (rather than a specific document), you could see the taskbar, and on the taskbar, that they'd not only pinned IE (no Edge or other browser icons visible), but actually had IE open and in use! (The IE icon had the blue underline showing it was is use, just in the background).

Someone asked why they were using IE rather than Edge, i.e. did they need this for a legacy application? The response was that they'd always used IE for the Internet, and then asked us what Edge was! (This was an admin person, rather than anyone technical).

In my mind, IE really shouldn't be part of the default installation in the OS. In fact, is it even needed now [*] if Edge has an IE mode?

* I'm aware some of the legacy libraries might still be needed by the OS/some apps etc. But at least remove the IE icon etc. (or redirect it to Edge or a browser selection screen instead)!

Boothy

I'd rather they just remove IE like they are doing with legacy Edge.

If Chromium Edge has an IE mode for the (hopefully) few remaining web apps that need IE, why still have IE installed at all?

Windows' cloudy future: That Chrome OS advantage is Google's to lose

Boothy

If you're not aware, and you like Xubuntu, you might want to have a look at GalliumOS for your Chromebook. (i.e. once Chrome OS updates have stopped).

GalliumOS is based on Xubuntu, and tweaked specifically for Chrome OS hardware.

Can be a bit tricky to install initially, depending on the Chromebook. On mine, a Lenovo from a few years back, this involved opening the case, finding a screw (which had a large head that electrically bridged a couple of traces on the motherboard). Removing the screw unlocked the boot loader (it was basically read only with the screw in place).

But once the boot loader had been replaced (which only needs to be done once), everything else was basically just like installing an OS on any normal laptop. Only real issue being hardware support, hence GalliumOS rather than regular Xubuntu. (For ref, my touch pad, touch screen etc all worked out of the box with GalliumOS).

Oops: Google admits failing to wipe all Android apps with location-selling X-Mode SDK from its Play Store

Boothy

Re: What is the point?

"Play protect" built into the Play Store, already does most of what you've asked.

Open "Google Play" aka the Store, click the menu button, and select "Play protect". It should show when the last scan was done, and you can kick of a manual scan if you want.

It checks apps during installation, but also scans anything already installed, that later might have got banned. The periodic auto scan should pick up these 'bad' apps, and either remove them or warn you about the app so you can remove it.

Play Protect will also scan apps that were installed via other means (on by default).

Synology to enforce use of validated disks in enterprise NAS boxes. And guess what? Only its own disks exceed 4TB

Boothy

Being pedantic, but it did say "comparable drives", not those specific drives produced by Toshiba.

Might well be that the same drives with the original Toshiba firmware were already faster than the same "comparable drives".

Subnautica and Below Zero: Nurture your inner MacGyver and Kevin Costner on an ocean-planet holiday

Boothy

Re: Looks like fun.

Not tried it myself, but I've seen posts that it works fine through Proton (i.e. Valves fork of Wine).

A quick look on protondb and both Subnautica and Below Zero are classed as Platinum, i.e. Runs out of the box direct from Linux Steam, by using Proton.

Cisco intros desktop switches, one with USB-C to power your laptop

Boothy
Trollface

Re: Pricing

Also only one of the front ports will be active by default. You have to purchase additional licenses to unlock the other ports, which is on an annual subscription model.

Google, Apple sued for failing to give Telegram chat app the Parler put-down treatment

Boothy

Re: @Jimbo Smith The duopoly needs to learn the hard way!

Quote: "And while AWS doesn't host Twitter feed, Twitter still uses AWS for part of their infrastructure and as such, following what they did to Parler, they would be obliged to remove Twitter from their servers."

Nope. AWS terms of service relate to the services AWS host, not something hosted by a different 3rd party. As long as the specific systems that AWS are hosting for Twitter are not breaking AWS terms of service, there is no valid reason to remove them.

Even if they did kick Twitter off AWS, as stated the Twitter systems in AWS have nothing to do with the Twitter feed, so it likely wouldn't impact them anyway, at least not externally. (AWS are likely hosting HR, or other admin services, or perhaps development/non prod environments).

If you want to take Twitter off line, you'd need to go to whoever is hosting the Twitter feed, which isn't AWS.

Tesla axes software engineer for allegedly pilfering secret Python scripts after just three days on the job

Boothy

Re: "the software somehow started backing up those files"

Dropbox will also sync Desktop, Documents and Downloads if you set that option up, not just the 'Dropbox' folder.

Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'? Newbie gripe sparks some soul-searching among Debian community

Boothy

Re: "Drivers" me mad...

I see where you're going :-)

But thankfully not! These were strictly for my use at home, so the disks never normally left the house, and were mainly used to keep a gaming PC and a test PC reasonably 'clean'.

It was probably a year or so later that I started using VMware for the test systems, and so snapshots and cloning VMs removed most of the need for fresh installs. The gaming machine was eventually switched to Win 7, and so the XP disks dropped out of use.

Oddly, I still have the XP disks! Got a few of those multi CD/DVD zip up folders, and I had a look over the weekend, and actually found my old OS and main Software collection in there!

Blast from the Past:

Several XP disks, retail copy, then another with SP1 and SP2 slipstreamed in, plus the above mentioned C: drive only one!!

Hirens Boot CD!

Disks for Office XP and Publisher XP.

Server 2003.

Visual Studio .NET (1st released version)

Boothy

Whenever I set up dual boot I generally do two things...

1. Install each OS to it's own drive. i.e. Not to separate partitions within the same drive.

2. Only have one drive plugged in at a time during install, so their respective boot loaders only install on their own disks.

Once installed I then plug both drives in and initially test via the MBs boot menu.

Then once happy they work individually, I usually (although not always), set Linux (usually GRUB) as the default/primary boot drive for the system. Once I've booted up into Linux, I add the 2nd (aka Windows) drive into GRUB, and I can not select at boot time.

Although this is on a desktop, so not much help for most Laptop users, as they are typically stuck with just the one drive (although not always).

You would expect a qualified electrician to wire a building to spec, right? Trust... but verify

Boothy

Re: Held to a higher standard?

Also early 90s for myself. Used to do a lot of 1st and 2nd fixing with electrical/electronic equipment of various types and had similar issues to you with 'mains' cables etc. (Sometimes they'd burn through our cables as they pulled the heavier cables over ours!).

Most of our cabling was either standard telephone type cables, typically 6-core (i.e. 3 twisted pairs) most often, although sometimes we had larger twisted pair cables, and sometimes coax as well, depending on the equipment going in. Either way, this was fragile stuff in comparison with typical mains rated cables.

I soon decided to try to get whoever was in charge at the sites we were working at, to not just let us know when the 1st fixing window was available for us to start wiring (i.e. walls (and usually roof) up, but not plastered yet), but also let us know when the sparkies had completed their bit.

This meant less damaged cables for us, that we could stay away from the mains cables, and also any walls that needed breaching for cable runs, were often already done by the sparkies, so we didn't need to!