Comment clocks set automatically (Score 0) 226
Most of my clocks set automatically now. If a clock is not set to SNTP and is software based, if the software isn't updated
then I guess they'll still have to set the clocks manually LOL.
Comment Gave up on Spotify (Score 0) 11
almost a year ago. Poking podcasts at me and what not. I JUST WANT TO LISTEN TO MY MUSIC!
I gave up on streaming since I just listen to the stuff from the 60's to the 90's, so I just listen to my MP3's.
Comment Re:F-Droid (Score 2) 19
Nope. Google is still set to kill F-Droid later this year when they turn on mandatory developer certificates which will require developers to pay Google and hand over their personal information, regardless of what app store they want to distribute through.
Nonsense. There's no reason to expect that mandatory developer certificates will kill F-Droid, at all. F-Droid will need one guy to pay the $25 fee and identify himself. Unless they can use the open source developer exception that Google has talked about (but hasn't announced any details, AFAIK).
This will essentially kill F-Droid for casual users (their main target is almost certainly NewPipe). Yes you can still use F-Droid but you'll have to do a 24 hour delay before you can install F-Droid.
That's a bigger issue, because Google's announced policy is to require that apps respect intellectual property, which would include not distributing apps that blatantly violate terms of service. Most likely F-Droid will have to stop distributing NewPipe if they want to be in Google Play. If dropping NewPipe is enough to kill F-Droid, then I guess that'll do it.
Comment Re:Well, we've been through this before (Score 1) 226
And, as usual, everyone in the North will roll their eyes at all the whiny babies in the rest of the country.
Those in the north will complain because the portion of the winter they go to work in darkness will increase, and it will be darker. Those in the center will also complain louder because they'll start going to work/school in the dark.
Those in the south will be confused about why everyone else is complaining, but they'll lose.
Comment Re:An AMAZING number of flaws (Score 1) 56
Actually, producing shoddy code is precisely what Microsoft is know for.
It's really not. 20 years ago, yes, but they've grown up and wised up. I know lots of excellent engineers at Microsoft, and I know they do good work, and they report that their colleagues do, too.
And note that I'm no MS fanboy. I hated them with a purple passion in the late 80s and early 90s, and swore off Windows entirely in 2001. I did finally break down and buy a Windows laptop a couple of years ago because I bought a CNC milling machine and the good software is Windows only, but that's the only thing I use it for.
Comment Re:An AMAZING number of flaws (Score 1) 56
It doesn't, they just turned AI on it for the first time.
I.e. "It does."
More precisely, "Everyone does".
Microsoft's code isn't especially shoddy, all large codebases that are getting AI review right now are experiencing the same thing.
Submission + - Physicists create first room-temperature quantum material (phys.org)
alternative_right writes: In a study published in Nature, LSU physicists have developed the first room-temperature quantum material capable of distinguishing and transporting different quantum states of light, overcoming one of the biggest challenges in quantum materials research. Led by Associate Professor of Physics Omar S. Magaña-Loaiza, the work establishes a general design principle for engineering an entirely new class of quantum materials, opening new possibilities for quantum computing, secure communications, sensing technologies and advanced energy systems.
Comment Re: distract - distract - distract (Score 1) 75
Are those files behind such a compromisable router? That would be the day
That would be funny... but also foolish. Iran is thrilled to have Trump right where he is, doing all the dumb things he's doing.
Comment Surprised it took THIS long (Score 0) 64
I still say BBK electronics was looking to break out of the Asian market and used OnePlus to do it. Carl Pei, the "founder" of that tiny little "startup" came up with a crazy marketing plan. Tell them you are developing a "top line" smartphone with a lot of features, rock bottom price. Use your "startup" website users forum and ads to spread the word. When the price is announced, it was WAY less than a flagship phone, so they called it a flagship killer. Oh! But since we are a poor startup, we don't have the money to make enough phones, so you have to have an INVITE in order to buy one.
I remember the feeding frenzy in 2014 when this came along. Users on their website would almost give up a kidney to get one LOL.
Phone was released, and lo and behold it was a pretty good phone but amazingly looked almost like the Oppo Find 7. And, people found out that the parent company, BBK electronics who owned OnePlus, also owns Oppo (among others). Then it was discovered that Oppo was the manufacturer building the OnePlus
phones too! (guess that is why they looked like a mirror of the Oppo phones, minus a feature here and there.
With each new phone, they got more expensive, started to look more "expensive" too. Flashy colors, all glass back, dumped CyanogenMod for Oxygen OS and on and on to the point, they aren't the "bargain" they once were. (especially the trade in value when you sell one).
Now that BBK/Oppo/OnePlus are known more outside of Asia, from a business standpoint, it does make sense to dump the OnePlus, push everyone on the
Oppo phone now. That is, if Oppo phones are approved for use in the USA and other countries, with all the bands, and, the carriers will allow them on their
networks.
OnePlus had a good run, but their time is over.
Submission + - Records Are Made to Be Broken: Patch Tuesday Raises Triage Stakes (darkreading.com)
schwit1 writes: When Microsoft vice president of engineering Tom Gallagher warned in May that the company's monthly patch releases could soon grow larger because of AI-driven vulnerability discovery, few likely expected the numbers would surpass 600 just two months later.
But with fixes for 622 unique CVEs, Microsoft’s July 2026 Patch Tuesday update is the largest by far in the program's history and offers a preview of the growing prioritization challenges organizations face as AI dramatically increases the volume of flaws requiring attention.
July's update contains fixes for three zero-day vulnerabilities, two of which attackers are already exploiting and one that's publicly known but remains unexploited. The patch update also includes fixes for more than five dozen critical vulnerabilities, many of which Microsoft identified as flaws that attackers are more likely to exploit. The total includes 416 vulnerabilities in Windows, 82 each in Office and Office 2016, 46 in Edge, 27 in Microsoft Developer Tools, and 17 in SharePoint Server.
"If people want a severity hook, July has 26 vulnerabilities with a CVSS base score above 9.0, and 13 of those sit at 9.8," said Josh Taylor, lead cybersecurity analyst at Fortra, in an emailed comment. "That matters, but CVSS is still only one part of the risk story. The real triage problem this month is the mix of exploited issues, a publicly disclosed BitLocker flaw, and a massive concentration of vulnerabilities in Windows and Office," he said. And rather than focusing on volume, patching teams need to prioritize the exploited vulnerabilities and their exposed infrastructure first, Taylor added.
"Today, July 14, 2026, marks a pivotal moment in our industry," researchers from Nightwing said in a statement. "We are officially moving past the traditional 'Patch Tuesday' approach and entering an era of continuous, high-volume security updates" and continuous patching.
But with fixes for 622 unique CVEs, Microsoft’s July 2026 Patch Tuesday update is the largest by far in the program's history and offers a preview of the growing prioritization challenges organizations face as AI dramatically increases the volume of flaws requiring attention.
July's update contains fixes for three zero-day vulnerabilities, two of which attackers are already exploiting and one that's publicly known but remains unexploited. The patch update also includes fixes for more than five dozen critical vulnerabilities, many of which Microsoft identified as flaws that attackers are more likely to exploit. The total includes 416 vulnerabilities in Windows, 82 each in Office and Office 2016, 46 in Edge, 27 in Microsoft Developer Tools, and 17 in SharePoint Server.
"If people want a severity hook, July has 26 vulnerabilities with a CVSS base score above 9.0, and 13 of those sit at 9.8," said Josh Taylor, lead cybersecurity analyst at Fortra, in an emailed comment. "That matters, but CVSS is still only one part of the risk story. The real triage problem this month is the mix of exploited issues, a publicly disclosed BitLocker flaw, and a massive concentration of vulnerabilities in Windows and Office," he said. And rather than focusing on volume, patching teams need to prioritize the exploited vulnerabilities and their exposed infrastructure first, Taylor added.
"Today, July 14, 2026, marks a pivotal moment in our industry," researchers from Nightwing said in a statement. "We are officially moving past the traditional 'Patch Tuesday' approach and entering an era of continuous, high-volume security updates" and continuous patching.
Submission + - How Microsoft's "Little Workaround" Created a Major Pentagon Threat (propublica.org)
joshuark writes: ProPublica Reporter Renee Dudley heard Microsoft was running tech support for the U.S. Defense Department through China, the country’s biggest cybersecurity adversary.
The arrangement was called “digital escorting.” She thought it sounded like a conspiracy theory — until she started looking into it. This is the story of what she found and how her investigation changed government policy.
Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.
The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.
National security and cybersecurity experts in the Trump administration contacted by ProPublica were also surprised to learn that such an arrangement was in place, especially at a time when the U.S. intelligence community and leading members of Congress and the Trump administration view China’s digital prowess as a top threat to the country.
Microsoft uses the escort system to handle the government’s most sensitive information that falls below “classified.” According to the government, this “high impact level” category includes “data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin.” The “loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability” of this information “could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect” on operations, assets and individuals, the government has said. In the Defense Department, the data is categorized as “Impact Level” 4 and 5 and includes materials that directly support military operations.
“If someone ran a script called ‘fix_servers.sh’ but it actually did something malicious then [escorts] would have no idea,” a former Microsoft engineer who worked on the escort system, told ProPublica in an email. That said, he maintained that the “scope of systems they could disrupt” is limited.
In an emailed statement, the Defense Information Systems Agency said that cloud service providers “are required to establish and maintain controls for vetting and using qualified specialists,” but the agency did not respond to ProPublica’s questions regarding the digital escorts’ qualifications.
It’s unclear whether other cloud providers to the federal government use digital escorts as part of their tech support. Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud declined to comment on the record for this article. Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the inspector general — whose office is supposed to operate independently in order to investigate potential waste, fraud and abuse — told ProPublica they were not authorized to speak about the issue and directed questions to DISA public affairs.
The arrangement was called “digital escorting.” She thought it sounded like a conspiracy theory — until she started looking into it. This is the story of what she found and how her investigation changed government policy.
Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.
The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.
National security and cybersecurity experts in the Trump administration contacted by ProPublica were also surprised to learn that such an arrangement was in place, especially at a time when the U.S. intelligence community and leading members of Congress and the Trump administration view China’s digital prowess as a top threat to the country.
Microsoft uses the escort system to handle the government’s most sensitive information that falls below “classified.” According to the government, this “high impact level” category includes “data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin.” The “loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability” of this information “could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect” on operations, assets and individuals, the government has said. In the Defense Department, the data is categorized as “Impact Level” 4 and 5 and includes materials that directly support military operations.
“If someone ran a script called ‘fix_servers.sh’ but it actually did something malicious then [escorts] would have no idea,” a former Microsoft engineer who worked on the escort system, told ProPublica in an email. That said, he maintained that the “scope of systems they could disrupt” is limited.
In an emailed statement, the Defense Information Systems Agency said that cloud service providers “are required to establish and maintain controls for vetting and using qualified specialists,” but the agency did not respond to ProPublica’s questions regarding the digital escorts’ qualifications.
It’s unclear whether other cloud providers to the federal government use digital escorts as part of their tech support. Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud declined to comment on the record for this article. Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the inspector general — whose office is supposed to operate independently in order to investigate potential waste, fraud and abuse — told ProPublica they were not authorized to speak about the issue and directed questions to DISA public affairs.
Comment Re:Zorin or Mint? (Score 1) 103
Yeah but you're a greybeard Slashdotter, hardly a representation of a normal person
Valid! (Including the gray and the beard, though my hair is still mostly black. Mostly.)
The point, though is that there are lots of grandmas with varying levels of computer knowledge, many of whom can and should be moved to a Linux system that is harder to screw up. Or, honestly even better, a good Chromebook.
On that topic, I did that for my father-in-law around 2010. I got tired of cleaning up the mess he made on his Windows laptop, so (with his permission) I upgraded him to Debian. It was hugely lower-maintenance for me.
The really funny thing about that particular case is that my father-in-law was a retired Full Professor of Computer Science! His problem wasn't that he didn't have the background or ability to manage a system himself, it was that he didn't want to. At his life-stage, the computer was a tool that he used, mostly as a web browser to buy parts for the farming and antique furniture refinishing that were his passions. Also, he had very thick fingers and constantly fat-fingered stuff, literally. What he really needed was a Chromebook with a full-sized laptop keyboard (a bigger-than-normal keyboard would have been even better), but Chromebooks didn't exist yet.
Comment Re:Zorin or Mint? (Score 1) 103
You know that's a lie because apparently grandma is using a computer. I've yet to meet one of those.
I'm a grandpa and I'm using a computer. My wife is a grandma and she's using a computer, too.
Comment Re:Apple is moving some manufacturing out of China (Score 1) 66
Nope. The straw man is that US jobs are the only concern.
Thats a aloe and you know it.
Also you falsely act as if step 1, fabs, is somehow inherently the end of the process. That too is wrong.
You are the one that said: “There are bigger points.” Why do you lie so much?
Comment Re:We will see (Score 1) 74
and they are not yet charging for the "tokens" what they need to charge to become profitable
We recently got access to Claude Enterprise and found how expensive it is. We were given $45 a month of budget. Everyone in the team blew through that in 2 days. And considering this is still being "subsidized" I honestly don't see what's the future for "AI Coding".
So, $22.50 per day, or $113 per week. How much does one of your people cost, all-in, including benefits? It's unlikely that it's less than $100k per year, and very likely at least double or triple that, if not five times or more. At $200k/year for 50 weeks, that's $4k/week. At the current token price, the AI makes a $200k engineer 3% more productive, the company is breaking even. If it makes them 1.5X or 2X as productive it's a clear and unquestionable win, even with higher token prices.
As for me, think AI makes me about 5X more productive than I would be without it, and that's just considering volume of work. Honestly, I think the quality is a little higher than I'd do myself -- not because the AI writes better code than I do (it definitely does not), but because I'm able to be pickier and do more and larger refactors than I would if I had to do the grunt work myself. Also because I have Claude write documentation that, frankly, I just wouldn't get around to if it were me. The documentation is not nearly as good as if you gave me a dedicated technical writer... but the $2500 I spend per month in tokens would come nowhere close to paying a writer, even if we ignored the coding productivity.
