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Comment Cool, I guess (Score 1) 70

This reminds me of how in the 1980s, things like FPUs and MMUs were separate chips. Do you want an 80387 with your 80386? Do you want a 68851 with your 68020? But then the newer CPUs just came with that stuff.

Even if 90% of the machines sold over the next few years never use it (think of how many 80386 chips were running MS-DOS as a "fast 8086" and never went into protected mode), it's nice that on the software side you'll eventually be able to expect it. In 1988 you couldn't assume floating point was fast for everyone, but by 1998 you could.

Comment Re:It's weird (Score 1) 48

...or SmartTube, which also supports SponsorBlock.

What I'd really like to see is an alternative YouTube client that supports Invidious, so you can move your subscriptions off of YouTube's servers. Invidious works pretty well in a browser window, but an app that runs on Android TV, talks to an Invidious instance (I run my own; it's pretty easy to do), and includes SponsorBlock support would be great. I might even be willing to cut a few bucks loose for such an app. :)

Comment Re:HPE DL380 Gen 11 Server - Locks out SAS Drives (Score 1) 166

Is this real? Do you have a link to verify this?

They've been doing this for several years already, starting at Gen 8 with their "SmartCarrier" trays. This caught me out when I bought a server and some drives separately and set about bringing up the assembled server. See here for more information. I was eventually able to bring it up after putting the drives in a different knockoff SmartCarrier-compatible tray that I found someplace.

Comment Re:gross EU government (Score 3, Insightful) 20

Google is free to completely ignore these bullshit requirements and stop doing business in Europe.

For whatever reason, they have chosen to keep transacting with Europeans. Perhaps they chose poorly, and should have instead consulted Slashdot posters about whether or not making tons of money is worth the outrageous indignity.

Comment Re:Ya don't say (Score 1) 40

Doesn't adding the disclaimer truly fix the problem, though? Apparently nontechnical users didn't understand what incognito does, so a sufficiently-well-written disclaimer ought to be able to fully correct the misunderstanding.

On the techie side, we all know that a browser setting isn't going to somehow magically keep other peoples' computers from remembering users' requests, but non-techies didn't understand that magic isn't a thing, so Google's understandably under some pressure to better-document the incognito feature.

Comment All the same problems as DRM (Score 1) 67

Imagine the [unlikely?] case where someone wants to implement FACstamp on their own computer. Can they?

They'd end up facing a similar problem as DRM standards: whoever backs it can't allow any independent implementations, because that would undermine the purpose: preventing people from signing the "wrong" data.

So this FACstamp idea requires proprietary software for every step of the process, with a key obfuscated or hidden inside a TPM chip or something like that. Wanna write something that is interoperable with it? You can't.

Comment Re:Alternative (Score 1) 196

Authors can license textbooks instead of selling them, but do they?

I guess I wouldn't be surprised if kids these days (yes, I'm old) are agreeing to EULAs when they open their textbook apps. But I know for sure that tens of millions of people still alive today, purchased textbooks instead of licensing them. If those textbooks still exist, then the knowledge is attainable without any contracts, so there's no means of discriminating against computers.

Just avoid the weird textbooks (ones that require special software to read) and anyone's LLM can get around the problem you're describing.

Comment How do you stop? (Score 1) 113

Maybe you can really get this stuff moving fast toward the midpoint, but how do you stop at the destination?

With onboard propulsion you would just flip the craft at the halfway mark, and fire the rocket (or whatever) in the other direction, but if this is using the momentum from Earth photons to go, I'm drawing a blank on how to decelerate. Do I have to .. *shudder* .. RTFA?

Comment Re:Don't buy HP. (Score 2) 30

I just got my ET-3760 running again after it had clogged so badly it wouldn't print anything. (This cleaning kit works pretty well for fixing that problem, BTW.) I have had to replace the overflow tank (or "ink maintenance box," as the replacement was labeled), but I've not yet run across the page-counter issue you mentioned.

Between that and an HP LaserJet 1320 that's probably approaching 20 years old now (so it predates HP's enshittification by quite some time), my printing needs should be all set for the foreseeable future.

Comment Technically yes (Score 1) 148

My rips from 20ish years ago are all in Vorbis and so I still play Vorbis files occasionally, but it's slowly becoming less frequent. For the last few years I've been re-ripping all my old CDs to FLAC, but I'm super-lazy. Every few months I have a burst of giving-a-fuck and I'll rip another boxfull, but then I put it aside for another few months. I suspect it'll be years until I get rid of the last Vorbis file, if ever.

Everything new is FLAC.

I do still use Vorbis for Navidrome's on-the-fly transcoding for my remote players (i.e. phone), but probably ought to upgrade to Opus.

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