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Comment Re:Security through obscurity (Score 2) 20

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at because the weakest link across every OS is the meatbag running the keyboard. This article talks specifically about the delivery mechanism for this involving a dumbass user copy a base64 encoded curl command or some similarly stupid crap and running it. If you give me root because you believe this "security check" is necessary and blindly click OK, then I'm not sure which OS is going to be able to help you out there.

Comment Re: The data was unreadable (Score -1, Flamebait) 67

Gun violence is an overwhelmingly reich wing phenomenon.

Cute progressive word play. Check. Message implying Nazi's were right wing. Check. Implication that gun violence is a right wing phenomenon. Check.

None of this is true of course. Nazi's were socialists, a mere step away from Communism. Communists killed over 100 million people over the last century, and the actual German Nazi's another 60m+. Violence to meet their goals is part of their creed.

Polling from the Democracy Institute just in the last month has Democrats in the US approving of violence up to and including assassination as high as 30%, and they're willing to admit that openly when asked in a poll. So just fuck right off. While you're doing so, ask yourself what has gotten into your head and hardened you heart. Because those polling number are obscene, and completely unacceptable in a civilized society.

Comment Re:What's the big deal? (Score 3, Interesting) 68

4 years is a lot of time to hold on to an ancient PC (most likely you have a 10+ year old computer if it doesn't meet windows 11 spec.) Ok, let's say you can't upgrade because you fell on hard times-- it happens to everyone .. then switch to Linux for fuck's sake. I don't see why Microsoft has to keep supporting 4 year old shit especially if it still works.

The real crux of the problem is the '10s were not great for CPU performance increases. They shipped like 7 (?) generations of CPU's with basically the same single thread speed, and a bunch of horrible security issues like spectre & meltdown, etc... All you got were more cores, useless instruction sets, more memory, and near the end of the '10s NVMe & finally some better single thread speeds. Windows 10 was advertised as the "last version of Windows", etc... Win 7 to Win 10 was free for existing COA's... Expectations were set. Bargains were plenty...

I actually ran an old Dell T3500 (circa 2011) as a gaming rig until '22. I picked it up used for $75. I swapped out the HDD for an SSD, put a modern GPU in it, and swapped the 4 core workstation CPU for a 6c/12t server Xeon. 48Gb of interleaved triple channel DDR3 gets close to early dual channel DDR4 speeds, not really but close enough... The Win 7 COA allowed me to update to Win 10. I got 99fps on most of the games I play. The only downsides was no microcode updates, and the 130+ watt TDP. Otherwise it was a tank.

In the end I bit the bullet and built a replacement rig from new parts. The newer Ryzen 7's, PCIe4 GPU's and faster DDR4 memory finally made it worth the trouble. I did what I could to de-fang Windows 11, and I do most of my important work on Linux via my homelab cluster. The money I saved skipping several generations of PC's was used to build a homelab, and take some training. And that's the crux here... They forced customers to spend money that didn't land in M$'s pocket. That's a bad precedent to set. I've been assuming the Spectre/Meltdown stuff was some of the motivation, but the newer CPU's don't seem to have fully closed the hole.

T

Comment Work with what you have (Score 2) 22

Why not deploy more, cheaper, less efficient AI processors, but run it only during the daytime when the solar farms are pumping out excess energy? It won't be the highest performance and have more heat output but you don't have to worry about energy availability or build grid storage infrastructure to support it. You could then offer it at a discount for customers that are willing to wait a little longer for training tasks to complete.

This is obviously not good for on-demand inference tasks (e.g. talking to AI customer support agent), but inference is orders of magnitude less demanding on the hardware.

Comment Re:Ethically maybe, practically no (Score 0) 221

Charlie Kirk was never trying for enlightened political discourse, he was out "owning the libs" for social media spots. This historic revisionism happening around him is ridiculous.

Irrelevant. The point is he was shot for his speech. He was trying to persuade people, for whatever motivation, and someone got mad an killed him.

The "hate speech" trope is disgusting. Hate speech is free speech. The revisionism around that is absurd. Once you justify violence over speech, you've lost everything we've gained over the last 250 years.

T

Comment Re:American Healthcare: Profit first, care last. (Score 2) 221

On that much we agree. I would add that losing one's home and having to declare bankruptcy over healthcare bills is simply not acceptable in any civilized society.

I live in a state with a "homestead" protection. It's kind of an odd provision. I can declare bankruptcy and keep my homestead. I'd lose other property, but not my primary residence. The only way I lose my house is to not pay the mortgage or my federal income & state property taxes.

As for safety nets... I think it's long past time we couple unemployment and COBRA coverage in some fashion. This would roughly double the amount needed to provide unemployment benefits, but provide a much needed safety net. Structured correctly, it could alter the layoff calculus for corporations. The benefits having a limited period & termination date make's sure it's a safety net and not a hammock.

T

Comment Re:American Healthcare: Profit first, care last. (Score 0) 221

"BUT PROFITS" is not a rational response to every question. At some point, we have to start treating people as if they matter as well, or the continual indifference is only going to lead to further violence. This shit is unacceptable.

Except... The only way it continues to exist is if it generates a profit. It's there's no profit, it stops happening.

Hospitals close, doctor's/nurses/techs leave, etc... Say I was a doctor (I'm not)... You call out the indifference, but you're indifferent to my needs. I'm not working for free. My college cost a lot of money.

As for socialism, it always fails. Always. People hold up Canada and England's public health service, but omit that you can wait a year or more for a simple MRI, and die in the queue. When you look at full blown socialism, that too always fails, from the Mayflower compact to Venezuela...

We need safety nets in society. Some of these are socialistic in nature, unemployment, medicare, etc... Some are regulatory, like making it illegal to hold cancer patients hostage to contract negotiations. Violence only leads to more violence.

T

Comment Re:Some Evidence. (Score 3, Informative) 107

Dude there are *four* surviving space shuttles. One in DC, one in NY (those are close together, fair enough -- the one in NY was only for atmo testing and while mostly capable of flying in space, but never received the refit to be able to do it) but the other two flown shuttles are at KSC in Florida and in Los Angeles. If your argument was that people have to travel too far, then we'd move the NY one to Nebraska or something to minimize distance traveled from any point in the country. That would also be a lot cheaper to stay at a hotel there than in Houston.

But, conveniently, Florida, New York, DC and California are some of the most visited places in the US. 64% of Americans have visited Florida (far more than any other state), 56% have visited New York, 54% DC, and 50% California. Texas just barely beats California at 51%, so you could probably improve accessibility a tiny tiny tiny bit by moving the LA one to Houston, but that would leave the entire western US with worse access (distance from LA to Houston is 1500 miles, vs distance from Houston to KSC is 1000 miles, and that's not even taking into account places like the Pacific Northwest.)

If you want to see a shuttle for less money, you have a couple of options. Go to Florida and drive to KSC, or stay at a cheap place somewhere along the Northeast Corridor or Metro North train lines and take a day trip into NYC -- you can stay late as the last Northeast Corridor trains run late into the evening and the Metro North trains leave as late as 1AM. (And you can take an uber to Penn/Grand Central to get the short distance to the train stations if you want to avoid the subway at night -- it's not as dangerous as the news makes it seem but you do see some tweakers on the subway, but the regional trains out of the city are clean and comfy)

Comment Re:Graybeard approved (Score 3, Informative) 54

Came here to say the same; graybeard and all...except 35 years as a professional developer (software, hardware, firmware, whatever); e3 user initially with IBM in early 90s, then vi from about 92 to present.

Used to use Apple exclusively in the 80s until they absolutely lost their #$!@% minds. That period without Jobs (pretty much all of the 90s) was insufferable trash.

Eventually they sorted it all out but it took me a solid 15 years after their release of OS X to finally be willing to give them another try; and honestly it was all the Windows 10 horseshit that drove me to it.

Bought my first MacBook Pro (Intel) in, I think, 2016...never...looked..back. Ever. Not once.

Fancy with all kinds of pretty little bells and whistles? No. Intuitive, powerful Window management? No, for sure.

But it f'king worked. I have NEVER had a single crash of any sort on any MacBooks I've owned or running any version of macOS I've tried. I'm sure it happens, but holy hell what a difference the entire experience was from Window's upgrade/BSOD/reboot hell and Linux's atrocious desktop/support/management consistency hell.

And then Apple goes all in on ARM!? I'm here to stay I guess. At least for a while; almost certainly until I retire and beyond a bit...I could get by on what they currently have for that time period. So even if torched every good idea they ever had tomorrow, I guess I'm finishing up this career with Apple...where it all started for me.

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