Posts by JLV 2252 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2013
>What people are failing to understand is the removal of Youtube is down to the Tv's specs.
That's not, strictly speaking, true.
The old-style YT app is Flash-based for this TV, believe it or not. Google retired it, but Sammy did not bother replacing it. I find it really hard to believe that, if a $40 Chromecast could 1080p YT in 2015 then Sammy's devs could not possibly fit that functionality onto their $1500 (new) 2013 TV. The cynical (not me!) might suspect they just want you to buy new stuff.
>only a moron enables auto-updates on anything
Thanks! As Win 10 users are well-aware, you don't always have a choice. I don't recall a setting to disable auto-updates, but I'll take a closer look. It does have dialog that allows you to cancel the update, which is what I do every time. Though one time I had to plug in a USB stick to update the firmware after I got too far behind in my updates and it wouldn't connect anymore.
While I don't disagree with reasoning of the "keep TVs dumb" crowd, that doesn't work for everyone: I don't have cable anymore, so it's all either Netflix or my DVDs. And, having an auxiliary PC under Linux or the like to handle the internet seems like a massive electricity drain to my parsimonious energy self as well as paying double for the functionality that's already included on modern TVs.
My 4-5 year old Sammy TV constantly wants to update itself when you turn it on. Is it too intellectually challenging for them to give you an option to update it at shutoff time instead?
When it first came out, it had a really good iOS remote - it did everything. About a year in, they "updated" the iOS to v3 and the only thing it now did was to switch channels and control the volume. Note that searching for "remote Samsung" in the Google Play isn't all that useful either... there were least 2 or 3 _demo_ apps (by Samsung) for a Sammy TV, but no remote apps for them.
The only apps I've ever used on it are the Netflix and YouTube, but I guess they need to update their unremovable bloatware apps.
Sammy decided to yank out the YouTube app about 3 months ago, leaving me with the need to get a Chromecast to watch YouTube. Not really expensive, but running out of HDMI ports with this kinda crap.
Next TV? Next anything electronic? Not a chance in hell to be a Samsung. Too bad, it's actually pretty good except for the software.
darn things sold out in Vancouver. Managed to Craiglist 2 for an arm and a leg before leaving for Madras, OR.
Madras got slightly less people than expected so they were going for $2 and ended up giving them away too.
Big shout out to the lovely locals who were really friendly and almost no one tried to gouge the tourists, except for the jackass hawking camping spots (wo loos) for $100. Sheriff was handing out water, people sleeping in cars were left alone, a garage fixed my flat for free and would not accept a tip.
2AM at a popup beergarten the DJ concluded his set with a "Fuck Trump" which, surprisingly for deep rural Oregon, no one really objected to ; - )
@Ledswinger It's interesting to note that, by "classical" Geneva conventions, Guantanomo was fully justified, even tame. Enemy combatants are expressly required to be uniformed, otherwise their treatment is not covered.
Your point is well taken but there is little benefit in an all-out struggle that just ups the nastiness without really improving the prospects of either party if the new nasty just balances out. That's more true of WW1 gassing than WW2 strategic bombing. Plus, at some point excessive inhumanity "soils" the country and society doing it.
Even Hitler did not use chemicals _in combat_ (note qualifier: I aint no Spicer). We've also successfully disallowed blinding lasers.
It's hard to find a balance between "humane war" and making war generally too palatable (cf old Star Trek). Methink a good start is defining "war crimes" and holding people who knowingly and wilfully infringe them very, very, accountable. I think we're, very roughly and clumsily, heading in the right direction - the Middle East wars of the last 15 years or so would have been much more indiscriminate if carried by early/mid 20th century Western democracies. With lil more success than Nam, Algeria, Soviets in Afghanistan.
You can also tell a Java dev from his reinforced bookshelves. Filled with thick tomes on the endless libraries and addons needed suggested to get things done. A good subset of those libraries, Spring coming to mind, deals with shoving configuration pell-mell into XML so it that escapes the scrutiny of the so-desirable typing system and allow a modicum of, hated and unnecessary, dynamic behavior.
Much cleaner to put behavior, not data, in XML than code, innit? Especially considering how human-friendly searching through complex nested XML is ;-).
Odd that few other languages have drunk from the XML-as-code coolaid cup so deeply. They're missing so much.
Ummm... the only "censor.+" found here is in your posting.
And, why would one want to censor anything? These clowns are hanging themselves.
I've wondered what it would take to whittle down Trump's core 30-40% of supporters. You know, the guys that voted, perhaps not the way some would have preferred, but exercised their right to pick the guy. And, not to vote Dem if they are Rep. Their right.
Impeach Trump now, as some suggest, will convince that 30-40% they are being oppressed. That's a good springboard for Trump 2 later (Cruz?). Best to have him visibly pee in the punch bowl a bit more first and lose more support. Trouble is, anything sufficiently blatant to wake that core up will probably be pretty nasty for the US. And potentially the world, like a botched NK intervention.
On the other hand, I would find it hard to believe that a sizeable portion of that 40% likes, or wants to be associated with, _real_ Nazis. This whole sorry episode is a pretty complication-free event that isolates Trump some more with limited actual downsides. If I were a reasonable Southern white favoring Confederate heritage, I'd be fuming at Trump and the Charlottesville event organizers for mucking that up. It ain't gonna cut his 40% by half, or even a quarter, he hasn't quite screwed it up enough, but it's chipping at the edges.
You could almost blame the media for hyping it up, except Trump chose to put his foot in his mouth himself.
Twice. And firing the CEOs to boot.
Censorship? Why??? Popcorn! Ditto with counter-violence by the Antifa groups - 100% with Peter2's post, there is no _need_ to confront isolated Nazis violently in this instance. Yes, in another time and place. Not here and now.
@BB
Dude, let it go. Any such arguments would be of debatable value, if there were no Nazis involved. Then, yeah, you could argue that Robert E. Lee is an almost legendary military figure - he was.
But... there are reasons why renowned WW2 German military leaders, like Guderian or Rommel, don't have too many statues erected in their name. The causes they fought for make it hard to eulogize them, no matter what their personal politics were (Rommel got executed for supporting the plot to kill Hitler). Speaking from the POV of a military history fan, I'll say that's in a way regrettable, but one also needs to respect the feelings of those who suffered under those regimes.
That would always have been a touchy debate.
Mix in Nazis, not just right-wing nutcases, but swastika-carrying right-wing nutcases and El Trump should have had the political common sense, if not decency, not to equivocate in his condemnation. That he didn't the first time around ("I wuz just lookin fer da facts") is bad enough.
That he was stupid enough to re-fuck that up 2 days later is just lamentable. That you're not able to get that yourself is fully in line with expectations.
If you're into promoting Southern pride and historical sensibility, from a perhaps "slightly white-centric viewpoint", that's your choice and 1st amendment right. But choosing to defend it in a context of Nazi involvement really only helps to discredit it in the view of the majority. Instead, he should have condemned it outright and re-framed the Robert E Lee aspect at a later point.
You, and Trump, don't have the common sense to see that.
Bit like I deeply regret Le Pen senior, who could always be counted on to say something stupid like "the Holocaust? A historical detail". His daughter's much more dangerous because she is better able to further the French extreme right's agenda.
Luckily, while Trump did get himself elected, he's been sufficiently clumsy politically - and to be fair, just in plain managerial incompetence - that he's achieved quite little so far.
"anti-gun-safety-activist" could be read both ways.
I initially thought what is an anti-gun, safety, activist doing with a gun?". That's odd - what is someone who objects to guns doing with a gun?
But not quite as stoopid as an anti "gun-safety" activist. Someone who objects to gun safety, not to guns. Oh well, fully deserving of Darwins, although, at 60, one fears Harmon might have already polluted the gene pool.
>the books are better
Sorry, that old cliche usually works but doesn't fly here: a) the books are horrendously slow in coming out, b) are apparently fleshing out more and more, but not in a good way* as they go and c) any notion of surprise twists is going out the window as this will be the first time a real (not novelization) set of books comes out after a movie.
* https://www.amazon.com/gp/review/RQMHSVDEC80QE?ref_=glimp_1rv_cl
I could already see the loss in plot tempo in book 4 so didn't bother with 5. And 6 was due in 2016, then 2017, then... I like GRRMs other work so I actually wouldn't mind if he gave up and let HBO drive and went back to writing SF, less self-consciously.
>Sounds like a resounding quality endorsement to me.
In this case, yes. But it doesn't change the fact that the CPU throttling, which you cleverly decided was bullshit on my end, is pretty Catch 22-esque - how the heck do you justify thermal shutdown on an absent battery? When the rest of the system is perfectly aware it's missing. So, I think it's perfectly reasonable not to hold up Apple battery wisdom overmuch in heat management zen for the Surface.
The 2016 MBP I wanted to replace it with was returned - lousy keyboard, pricey, and the Touch Bar is a gimmick outside of native OSX apps and has zero travel. And it wasn't that much faster than my old laptop.
So, on balance, Apple is still the least worst for what I want to use the gear for. I still don't appreciate the cant-do-no-wrong attitude of its deep fanbois. I do feel embarrassed about stupid gushiness about Apple - they're just a vendor and it is to our best interest as customers to keep them on their toes, not idolize them.
To repeat: the fact that I am servicing 6 year old gear takes nothing away from the idiocy of the particular issue I was talking about and that you decided you needed to correct me on for bad-mouthing poor Apple.
>Google sez this was a couple of people back in 2008 wondering if their MBA
Nope, April 2017 with trip to Genius bar where this exact thing was shown to happen on my, 2011, machine. The tech there and I talked it out and this was exactly what was happening. From the sounds of it, this is largely something that is decided in the low level OS/firmware, not just the hardware - the mac was aware it had no battery and still did just that.
But don't let get that get in the way of being a good fanboi ;-)
I rather like Apple hardware, and even more so the OS. Yes, it's pricey and is not perfect by any means, just better than a lot of alternatives (unless you have the mojo to tweak Linux on exotic hardware, which I don't). And it's impressive that a 6 year old machine still mostly runs smoothly and effectively. But I effin hate being lumped in with the fanboi brigade in the reality distortion field.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-to-solve-kernel_task-high-cpu-usage.1706948/
Ever heard of thermal runaway throttle w Apple? CPU goes up to 350% "usage" or so. This is because the machine is perceiving overheating (among other spots - in your battery) and doesn't want to catch fire. So, at avery low level the CPU pretends to be hyper busy so that whatever program is causing the real heavy use that's causing heat buildup can't get CPU cycles.
With me so far?
Now, physically take out or disconnect an MBPs battery and the system doesn't see its heat sensor anymore. So it happily _assumes_ overheating from that _absent_ sensor in your equally _absent_ battery.
CPU throttle to the rescue of your overheating battery and you can't use your machine just plugged in until you get a new battery. Been there.
So... let's not go overboard in Apple praise on this particular subject, even to rag on MS, shall we?
Flame, cuz.
"Hot damn, those campaign contributions certainly paid off! Best investment ever, no need to lay cable or masts. Our boy Pai is smoke n mirroring all those fools. Who says these are not competitive markets?, bitch!."
- Lowell C. McAdam, CEO Verizon
or maybe
- Randall L. Stephenson @ ATT
David N. Watson @ comcast wishes he could take the credit, and he will, later.
Not speaking to your problems with Apple kit, but that's not my experience when it comes to running newer macOS on older kit.
MBP 2011 here, still running fine besides its known fried GPU manufacturing defect. Latest macOS runs fine on it, but keep in mind the thing is maxed @ 16GB Ram and a shiny Samsung 850 SSD.
Lest I be accused of just being an Apple shill, I bought a refurb 2016 MBP when my GPU broke down. It was unreliable and tended to reboot on things like plugging in an external monitor via USB C. Maybe it was a lemon - so I returned it within the 2 week no-questions-asked window. In any case, lemon or not, its keyboard was crap and it wasn't much faster at compilation than the old one. And, $$$$$$ is too much as well.
I don't rejoice in MS's Surface hardware woes. There are so many crap laptops with ugly cases and 1366x768 "HD" screens that Surface's hardware can only be lauded for motivating the big manufacturers to up their game. However, it's sad if it's really unreliable at that price.
As to Windows 10, there is always the hope* that MS will see reason, de-telemetrize it and settle henceforth on a stable configuration UI, but right now I can't be arsed to spend too much time on my ASUS gaming laptop which is otherwise a pretty nice beast.
* I can also hope for peace on Earth and rainbow unicorns, doesn't mean I believe it'll happen.
Assume each homeowner will renovate/build once every decade or so. Yes, there is a lot of money in it for the owner and the builder. Each homeowner ought to solicit at least 3 serious bids.
But it's a chicken and egg problem. The homeowner needs to have his house redone and can't hold out because his preferred VR solution (out of potentially several) isn't something an otherwise competent builder is willing to work with.
On the other side, the builder, who's at heart a... builder, not a techy, is not going to invest time and money into building a VR capacity that very few clients are interested in. And if the client is VR-savvy, what's the likelihood that their VR kit matches the builder's VR kit? Keep in mind, once that client's VR has been successfully integrated with, you won't be seeing her again for decade or so.
Even with massive VR standardization and cost drops, can't see these stars lining up anytime soon because of the lack of follow-up jobs between a builder and an owner. And the disconnect between doing the job in the physical world and "looking good VR-wise" which is a secondary consideration for small jobs.
VR, and AR, or a mix of the 2 will probably be used more and more on multi-million $ projects. But that ain't quite a kitchen re-do.
Yes, there'd also be a fair bit of value for savvy homeowners to look around their house model themselves, but that's a different story than getting everyone else to work with it in any serious fashion.
>Where the fuck did that come from?
Oh, sorry, was the subject of electronic part swapping off topic to your rant? Just like your bicycle rant was off topic to the original article, which dealt with electronic repairs and had nothing whatsoever to do with bicycles?
I mean, since you seemed to take issue with the article, I assumed you didn't mind if your parts are glued and non-serviceable. That's where "that came from". My bad. Btw, to me, external drives are not necessarily the greatest solution for laptops.
I suggest, since you seem to think of yourself as a clever chap, that you investigate the distinction between anecdotes and statistically sound data. I have no doubt there are tons of stupid cyclists doing stupid things. With you so far. However, you decided to jump feet first onto a gross generalization from that point on. Again, on an article that had nothing to do with bicycles.
Dunno if that is applicable in your case, but maxxing up the RAM and swapping for an SSD can do wonders for an older Mac. Some Macs have higher possible RAM than officially supported by Apple, but you can still get RAM from reputable vendors like Crucial or Corsair that are specifically OKed for your device. An MBP 2011 for example is certified at 2x4GB but you can get 2x8GBs matching your original SKU. I fried my Samsung SSD after about 18 months and I suspect that wasn't helped by constant heavy swap file use while at 8GB RAM.
That MBP 2011 is not much slower than the new, no upgrade, $$$, MBPs while doing Webpack compiles. I know because I returned my newer MBP because I didn't like it much (sucky keyboard).
>better than being forced to throw the whole thing out every time a single part fails
Amen. A lot of common sense "green" activities can save $$$. Something that might be missed due to justified skepticism about "Designer Greens" or "Red Greens" that seem to want to either mandate very expensive stuff, subsidize the heck out of it (at others' expense) or just regulate it out of existence to suit their own hairshirt lifestyles.
More repairable electronics are mostly a win-win-lose. Win for you, win for the environment, (slight) loss for the manufacturer and miniaturization.
Hum, besides being a pretty stupid rant, 60 km/h average speed is a pipe dream for cars in city cores. Where a lot of heavy bicycle commuting takes place. Not only that, but even 60k peaks are above speed limits in many cases.
Not saying you don't have a point about _some_ obnoxious cyclists going out of their way to hog as much of a lane as possible - totally agree on side-by-side cyclist twats* - but otherwise your post is benighted, stupid and 'tarded.
Well-thought out bicycle commuting is a boon for both the cyclists and drivers - bicycles take up less space so will congest less than the equivalent amount of km/person carried out by cars. Granted, many cities are yet to find a solution where cyclists don't intrude overmuch on car traffic, but it's still a cheap way to limit pollution, save money and increase people's health. Mixed-use, cycle-car-pedestrian, city planning also avoids the ugly urban sprawls and dead 'burbs so common to North America that forces you to drive to remote pubs for a pint.
But, hey, no problemo if you like buying a whole new laptop 'cuz you ran out of disk space on your otherwise still-good machine. Me, I'll chalk it up to another case of regulatory capture ;-)
* I drive and cycle both, as well as walk around a fair bit. Whatever mode I am in, I usually try to show the same courtesy to other modes as I'd prefer to happen to me. Often that means going out of my way to let cars pass me while cycling.
Why not just upload a sha hash of the file? Wouldn't that be sufficient to flag a known baddy? At least if it's not morphing itself.
AWS secrets can be pretty disastrous to lose, for example.
Some of these AV snakeoil salesmen vendors bring to mind the old adage that it's best not to see a doctor because if the disease hasn't killed you yet they're sure to.
I agree. While the numbers are horrendous, MS really is taking a big risk by bailing out on mobile. There's a huge chunk of stuff that naturally will gravitate, or be closely involved with, mobiles. Take personal health. And, in a way, cloud + mobile is good reason for cloud too. Step away, and others may sneak in.
With their massive cash flow, MS has spent decades and untold B$ trying to diversify from Windows n Office. Often for no discernibly good reasons - Skype, Linkedin.
Many people aren't that fond of either Android or Apple. A clever, humble (as in, listen to customers) and deep-pocketed vendor could still find a spot.
Might be MS is just realistic that they only have one of the above qualities. But it still showcases their worrying lack of perseverance that adopters of new MS ventures best keep in mind.
>vice-versa
Agree. I'd also add that, if he is innocent, I hope he gets cleared relatively quickly and doesn't suffer huge financial losses and stress defending his innocence. That's probably an unrealistic hope, but still.
On the positive side, he has enough profile and goodwil that his trial will receive a lot of attention. If the G-men have a case they'll have to make it in full and won't be able to cut corners.
Remember though that Kronos itself is not a prank hack, like defacing whitehouse.gov or whatever. Whoever built it, whether Marcus or not, should burn. And that's another reason the FBI needs to make an airtight case: if an innocent man gets jailed, the real criminal gets away.
True but the average Windows user does get to worry about compliance with their general, end-user, customer agreement if you have the temerity to want to launch a guest VM Windows using the same license as your current, host, Windows. Or the impact of hardware changes depending on the flavor of license, like OEM, you might have purchased. That's a darn sight more applicable to the real world of average users than a GPL spat wrt grsecs' shady practices.
Nice try tho ;-)
Honest question.
With advanced hardware, like the newer "Windows Precision Touchpad" driver specifications that finally get better touchpad behavior on Windows machines... how easy it is to get Linux running and have all the hardware fully operational these days?
I know, and this is not what I am asking, that Linux will install itself seamlessly and will get 95% of the hardware fully operational - the screen, the audio, etc... What I am asking about is: can I hope that the last 5% of exotic hardware on this kind of machine will work easily on Linux? Or will it require a lot of messing around with drivers, which is really not something I enjoy doing at all.
I.e. when I read through forums sharing tips about how to configure special hardware, I am impressed with the technical know how on display. But I am not particularly interested in going there, even though I would love a very capable 'nix based dev platform to replace my MBP. (IMHO, the latest MBPs are pricey, have crappy keyboards and the Touch Bar is a pretty useless gizmo when using non-Apple apps - it has zero tactile feedback). I am mostly on bash and text editors, so don't really care about the rest of the Apple apps.
And it seems that Linux-specced laptops are neither abundant, nor particularly cheap either, hence my question.
You must have missed the part where your retirement depends on investment returns ;-) Including that of investments run by your government on behalf of the general retiree pool, if you are not directly investing yourself.
Look, I am not claiming that corporations are snow-white. But the very notion of workers require the presence of employers. Who can't all be public sector and non-profit, otherwise, there'd be no tax revenue, would there? Corporations are one mechanism for ownership. They need not abuse the public any more than a private business owner is required to screw his employees, although the lack of individual responsibility does make it easier for them to act unethically if they don't run the risk of penalties.
Absolutist positions make it easy to ignore the need for reforms. Right now, at least in economies like the US, the UK and to a lesser extent Canada, it is acceptable for CEOs, not founders, to be remunerated in the tens of millions, 300x their average worker pay, whether or not their companies outperform their peers. That's because they have a huge say in how their pay package "needs to be competitive". Other market economies, esp in Scandinavia, tend to have a social contract that says "<5-10 M$ OK, but no more". That's already a heck of a lot, mind you, but nowhere as obscene as what we are seeing in some cases. Remember the post-bailout bank bonuses in the US, paid for by the taxpayer funded relief to failing banks? I do.
Sorry, but your baying at the moon ain't gonna convince too many lawmakers you have a valid point, dear ;-)
>a for profit company must do it to maximize shareholder value or they risk a minority shareholder lawsuit.
There's a question about just that under StackExchange Skeptics.
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-companies-legally-obligated-to-maximize-profits-for-shareholders
I think it boils down: corporations can't disregard shareholder interests (and, nor should they, that would make them even more prone to aim to maximize exec bonuses instead). But maximizing profits is not expressly mandated, as some claim. Esp not wrt to doing it by breaking the law in some form.
There was a bit of a shareholder revolt against the execs of the Epipen manufacturer recently for example, though it could be argued they had certainly pushed the envelope on maximizing profits.
Risking a lawsuit by shareholders is not quite the same as having a reasonable expectation that those shareholders would win that lawsuit. There is plenty of scope for corporate and executive malfeasance already, no need to invent stuff.
Last, shareholders' and the larger public's interests are not necessarily that far apart: limiting executive pay and bonuses should be a natural goal for shareholders in a well-functioning market.
He's not the most obviously technical of authors, but William Gibson has been remarkably prescient about the degree of adversity on networks and computers as connectivity and complexity goes up.
Neuromancer is pushing 33, and most of the short stories in Burning Chrome came out before 1982 so SMTP contemporary.
Agree, much ado about 1 episode. But...
As I said no one really knows if GRRM is gonna finish his books at the rate he's going. When HBO signed he was already deep into taking untold years to write #5.
And HBO knew this so I am sure their contract w Martin takes that into account and provides them access to the whole plotline, should they need it. How else are they working from book 7 material now?
So, in escrow or on their servers, the entire storyline is already sitting there, waiting for Kevin Mitnick to call them pretending to be Martin's wife who needs a copy after a ransomware or the like.
Factor in the $$$$ lost when Scrum Masters guess turns out to have been prescient and HBO customers stop watching and cancel in disgust ;-). Security does matter, at least to the one getting hacked.
@phuzz - masterful.
Errr, book 6 is still not out and I recall that season 5 was already slightly ahead of book 5 (Tyrion never gets to Daenerys in book 5).
In fact folks wonder if GRRM is gonna be motivated to finish books with known, TV-"leaked", endings.
I have read his books since the 80s, but am passing on GoT after book 4. He's too slow at writing them.
Powershell is powerful, true. But its early learning curve is very steep. Steeper than bash and much steeper than dos. Even a lowly dir /o:d requires figuring out what the object's date attribute is called and a pipe to the sort. And the whole command will be much longer too. On the positive side you don't need to parse an text stream to isolate that date for further processing. For advanced usage, ps's more structured object mechanism pays off, most of the time it seems overkill.
I fear the days of the casual command line user, if there ever was such a beast on Windows, are ending.
They have a bit of a feud going on (who doesn't Trump have a feud with?)
http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-vs-amazon-jeff-bezos-641506
popcorn.
Mind you I kinda like Bezos & Amazon. But Amazon has a rep as an employer w very lil work/life balance, they squeeeze you. And they ought to be watched for market domination too.
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