It is absolutely incredible how people are unable to just... stop... and do nothing... and think to themselves... and just sit and enjoy the scenery nowadays.

I live in a quiet rural town precisely because it allows me to do that. But during lockdown, I heard NOTHING but people saying how they were going insane and "had to" break the law/quarantine in order to go out and do stuff and meet up with people after just a few days. They literally couldn't be in their own company for a few hours without going mad.

When the time comes to choose some Mars settlers, I hope we chose from the people based on their reaction to lockdown. Even supposed scientists went apeshit at each other in those biosphere projects.

You could send me to live on Mars on my own to terraform the place and the only time I'd get pissed about that would be if others came and tried to set up camp near me.

One jurisdiction does not form international law.

Read the Reddit T&Cs, or that of any major website.

You give them a (sometimes limited) copyright permission to use your post by using the service to post anything publicly.

That's not how copyright has ever worked, by the way.

Just wait for it.

Headline: "Meta uses AI to replace hundreds of jobs."

Reality: "Meta stupendously over-hired for the AI fad and is only now realising that it has no real profitable value to it and it's all just hype."

I mean... I know Tumblr went downhill and I abandoned it several years ago, just after it was taken over, but I wasn't really paying attention as to why.

But I never imagined for a second that the plan was to convert the entire thing to Wordpress...

It's a website run mainly by one guy....

"This website was made by Thomas Bloom, a mathematician who likes to think about the problems ErdÅ's posed."

It's not like an official website endorsed by the author or anything. It's just a website of a guy who has some interest in that particular set of problems.

"Is the database up to date (e.g. the open/solved status of each problem)?
No, but that is the eventual goal"

https://www.erdosproblems.com/...

It's like holding some trainspotter responsible for not knowing about the existence of a particular niche train somewhere in the world.

Oh no... they'll just have to... patch their firmware like every other manufacturer has had to.

For those people who bought a Framework laptop, enabled secure boot and rely exclusively on that to protect their computer from booting into an unauthorised operating system.

P.S. their firmware page currently have 11 CVE fixes listed for the lasted firmware.

This is inevitable.
This is how manufacturers should do things.
It's really not even that important.
Making an article about it is scaremongering.
I don't see an article every time Dell has something like this, or Asus, or HP, or ...

I'm more interested in how any app would know how long it took an image of that size to render, regardless of whether that differs for white/black pixels (I can see that with, say, transparency options etc. you might be able to make white pixels take longer).

Surely that's a function that you just lob at the renderer and it does it when it feels like it, it doesn't have to be performed in-line (maybe in order, but not in-line).

The fix for the API would appear to be simple... do checks on the bounds, etc. as normal, return success immediately, then blit/render/etc. in the background as necessary. The app won't then have a clue how long a pixel takes to render.

I only use their wired models.

It's a dumb idea to use a CCTV camera that can be blocked (from viewing and cloud-upload) by someone running a smartphone.

And, for decades, they didn't. And they still don't really. You have to fight like hell to find the models, you have to pay overpriced prices to get to it, you have to basically forget technical support for it (I've had them say "can you just boot Windows so we can check that's working", etc.), they don't provide proper drivers, and ongoing support is dubious.

And so if I'm going to have to drop that much on those models which do support that option, and deal with that? I'm just going to buy a product designed for that from the outset.

You're talking to someone who used to work on a single-floppy Linux router distribution, who used to boot Slackware from an UMSDOS loopback via ZIPSlack, etc. I have no fear of installing Linux on any machine.

What I want is one that's not designed according to Microsoft's arbitrary requirements, and exists outside of their entire ecosystem.

The older I get and the longer I work in IT, the more I believe that software activation is to be avoided at all costs, especially time-limited software activation.

I've got a Framework laptop on pre-order because I'm pretty certain I really don't want Windows. I have only one Windows machine at home, on Windows 10, and I'm really not convinced that it offers me anything at all that I want. Much of my early use of that device was getting AROUND shite that I don't want, and fudging things to make them work. Windows 11 needs that x 100, from my experiences with it.

And now they have the 10 ESU stuff, which is just unnecessary, especially after they promised "no more new versions of Windows".

So I think I'm done. Again. Having previously used Slackware as my primary desktop for 10 years.

I audited the software on my primary machine and I don't think there's a single thing on there's that proprietary, needs "activation" (I "activated" my software when I clicked the download button, giving it executable permissions or via the use of credit card to purchase it in the first place, thanks) or that can't work on Linux.

I'm at that point again where I need to computer do work for me, not run off and do whatever the hell it likes. Between activation, AI, mandatory cloud accounts, "search everything" rather than just organise stuff, etc. I think I'm done again.

I have 20 years until retirement. I reckon that's a viable proposition to reach there without having to have a single Windows machine at home again.

He says, typing from a Samsung DeX session on an Android phone.

Myself and another IT manager friend were looking at the same time for new NAS units.

We both looked at Synology. I rejected them based immediately on the first article I saw about them restricting what drives you can use. It's none of your business, Synology, just use what's presented to you and get out of the way. I ended up buying QNAP (for work) and Asustor (myself).

My friend, though, was in a procurement nightmare and the people above them hadn't done their homework and they ended up with a Synology unit and a bunch of IronWolf drives. And only when it filtered back down to my friend did they realise that it just wasn't going to work.

Cue one month of more of arguments and having spent a small fortune to then have to back the Synology and buy something else. And now Synology changes its policy? Yeah, it's too late. You already burned that bridge and cost people money (now admittedly, through their own poor research and not keeping up with industry news, but why should that be necessary?).

My friend and I were basically sworn off Synology at that point. I'd dodged that particular bullet, but he was caught right in the middle of it DESPITE hearing this about Synology and trying to warn people.

Sorry, but your profiteering indicates your STATE OF MIND, and how you view customers. Whether you "fix" it or not, that state of mind persists. This is what people don't get. You've now tainted yourself because you clearly don't care about what your customers wanted, and only realised after people swore off buying them or by literally backing units that - as far as they were concerned - weren't fit for purpose.

You need to do an awful lot more to fix that problem - by showing customers that your state of mind has changed, not just your knee-jerk reaction to getting a bunch of returned kit and lost sales. We need to know you're not just going to try something else entirely to try to recoup that loss.

It's to do with reducing wastage as much as reducing profits.

I have a bunch of chargers that came with phones - and I don't use any of them, because all my house sockets have USB-C, I have a ton of USB-C cables, my car has multiple USB-C adaptors or sockets already, etc. etc. Another brick of copper to convert to USB-C is really unnecessary.

Hell, my bathroom scales are USB-C, my kitchen scales are USB-C, etc. etc. etc.

But I have a box of "old" chargers that have never been touched because they came with the device and they're worthless to me. Even if I gave them away at a flea market or similar, nobody would take them.

The most expensive phone I've ever bought was ~$500... and I have owned about 5 phones in my life. Not one of them did I use the "official" charger for for any significant length of time (e.g. to charge them up initially, maybe, but beyond that I had battery packs, charging sockets, docking stations, car adaptors, etc.).

A USB-C cable is pennies. A USB-C charger is, what a couple of $ if you want one. Any store would start bundling them together now if you asked for one. But for the millions of people who already have a drawer full of useless or surplus wall-bricks, or who mostly charge their phone in the car, etc. they aren't bundling another $5-10 of plastic and copper with every phone they sell.

That's right.

I put a pre-order down on a Framework laptop so I don't have to use Windows 11.