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Submission + - Microsoft Blocking Windows 7/8.1 Updates on Intel Kaby Lake CPU's (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by halfEvilTech
halfEvilTech writes: Last year Microsoft announced they where planning on blocking OS updates on newer Intel CPU's namely the 7th Generation Kaby Lake. Now, the answer appears to be "this month." Users of new processors running old versions of Windows are reporting that their updates are being blocked. The block means that systems using these processors are no longer receiving security updates.

While Windows 7 has already ended mainstream support, the same can't be said for Windows 8.1 which is still on mainstream support until January of next year.

Comment Re:Rule Change when it's in his best interest? (Score 2) 450

by halfEvilTech (#54194763) Attached to: Senate Confirms Neil Gorsuch To Supreme Court

The GOP cited that in their rule change for Supreme Court justices. Before it was limited only to lower courts.

The rule was in place after the GOP refused to hear any Obama nominees. It was warned back then that it will come back to bite them in the ass and sure enough it did.

The one thing not coded in the constitution though is how many justices sit on the Supreme Court. That is actually in the Judicial Act of 1869 which set the number of justices to 9. It had been as high as 10 previously. But there is nothing stopping them if they have the votes to create a bill allowing more justices to be on the court and start flooding the court with them.

Submission + - Gorsuch Confirmed to SCotUS (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by halfEvilTech
halfEvilTech writes: The U.S. Senate confirmed Neil M. Gorsuch to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday. On a vote of 54 to 45, senators confirmed Gorsuch, 49, a Denver-based judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. He will become the 113th person to serve on the Supreme Court and is scheduled to be sworn in Monday.

Comment Re:units (Score 1) 103

by halfEvilTech (#54191637) Attached to: Earth-Sized Telescope Set To Snap First Picture of a Black Hole

If you include the web archive for the LoC - then you are looking at just over 600 TB for 1 LoC unit.

As of July of last year the LoC has archived about 545 TB of web data, and add about 5 TB a month on top of that. In addition in 2012 the data size of the books and other media was about 15 TB.

sources -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://blogs.loc.gov/thesigna...

Comment alternative approach (Score 3, Insightful) 1081

by halfEvilTech (#53251005) Attached to: Slashdot Asks: Should The US Abolish The Electoral College?

The Electoral College is due to the fact we live in a republic- the number of electoral votes is equal to the sum of the house and senate.

A better approach would be to divide the Electoral College votes proportionally to the vote cast in the sate. This would then still give candidates incentive to campaign in smaller or less populated states.

If we where to go to a straight out popular vote only then people will complain that it is always the big states like California and New York that decide every election and as such Presidential candidates will likely only stop in those larger cities along the costs and be damned to fly over country as they call it.

Submission + - Microsoft Moving To 'Rollup' Update Model For Older Windows Systems (microsoft.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A posting on the Microsoft TechNet blog announces Microsoft moving to a montly rollup-style update model for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 systems. In this new model users will no longer be able to pick individual updates for installation. This will, according to Microsoft, improve the end-user experience by reducing system fragmentation. Microsoft will also provide enterprise users with a monthly minimal package only containing the latest security updates.

Submission + - Windows 10's "all or nothing" cumulative update scheme coming 7, 8.1 (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The shotgun "cumulative" update scheme used in Windows 10 is coming to 7 and 8.1. No longer will updates be offered through Windows Update individually. Instead, you'll grab the latest "cumulative" update for your version of Windows, and take whatever Microsoft gives you.

Of course, Microsoft says it will improve performance of Windows updates on the older versions (and that may very well be true, but so would an actual updated 'security fix only' service pack for them); but you know they will not be able to help themselves with their new method of obfuscating "other" non security updates. We all know that Microsoft does not document their updates well in Windows update (everything simply "resolves issues in Windows"? really? Windows 10 offer updates said that too, what exactly did that resolve?), rarely fully itemizes "cumulative updates, often improperly labels updates as "security update" and "important" when they are, in fact, neither.

This will include things people have begin to take notice of and avoid (such as non-security "important" updates, telemetry and spying updates, etc).

If you use Windows Update to update your systems, you will start to lose control over what updates get installed and what ones you can defer or avoid.

If you're a knowledgeable home or small business user, you may want to look into alternative means of obtaining the actual important security related updates (and only those) from utilities like WSUS Offline Update, as WSUS method will remain unchanged (at least for now, right?).

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