Posts by David 132

Re: From 100 days to a lifetime?

This is one tech area where CI/CD or "move fast and break things" probably aren't the appropriate approach.

Re: Rage-Inducing Key-Combo Hijacking

Wait, is Unreal Tournament still a thing?

I know that about a year ago I hopped onto the UT (1999? Game of the Year edition) internet server browser, and found a surprising number of games still active. Even played a co-op map with some rando, who was probably as surprised as me to find a real living person sharing the map with him...

Pfft. Real men just do a port-scan for Internet-facing hosts that are exposing port 631, pick a random one from the results, and then send the print job there with a cover-sheet saying "Please post these pages to me at <my street address>".

Re: Traffic lights

Even better in this always-on era of social media - replace the traffic lights' display with an OLED that alternately displays the Twitterx, Bluesky, and Metaverse handles for that light.

If you want to know if the light you're waiting at rapidly approaching is showing GO or STOP... simply Follow @TrafficLightsNorthboundA437PastTheAldiButBeforeTheVapeStore (hoping that you copied the handle down correctly before it disappeared from the screen and was replaced by the Bluesky handle, which is of course completely different) and see what the council's Social Media Manager has posted to that account as the latest Status Update.

I are a genius and should be employed by the government.

Re: The two achilles of current encryption

Speaking of Firefox - indeed, this might have been what you were alluding to, I'm not sure - I have seen very little mention here on El Reg or elsewhere of the impending timebomb that will render older versions of FF (pre-128 or 115ESR) borderline unusable after the 14th of this month. DRM playback will stop working (big whoop, all my media is de-DRM'ed) but more painfully, add-ons will suddenly stop working.

More details here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/root-certificate-expiration?as=u&utm_source=inproduct

I am particularly irritated by this, because I've settled on v114 and disabled all updates (yeah, downvote me if you feel holier-than-thou.) I just got sick and tired of being constantly nagged to update - wait - reboot - wait - update - wait - reboot, and stepped off that treadmill. Remember when software was for the use of people, not the other way around?

If this comes across as grumpy and Luddite, well, so be it. But I am still cross at Mozilla for forcing me to update a perfectly serviceable version of FF and waste time turning off the inevitable new cruft ("we've added an AI assistant!" DON'T CARE. "we've partnered with..." DON'T CARE. "Let us show you sponsored..." yep, DON'T CARE.)

Re: This is something Google has heard that "power users" actually want

Hey, at least Holly had The Junior Colour Encyclopedia Of Space as factual reference.

Icon --> Queeg.

>Multiple diacritics on a single letter? Not that I'm aware of, but then I've never needed one.

Ṕ̶͕̗͖̩̕f̸̬͓̟̤́͌f̷̺͎̽͑͜͝t̵̻̎.̴͚̠̺͔̓́̂ ̷͇̖̄̅̌͝H̴̨͈̖͈̾̕o̸̲̝̽̂͌͠ẉ̷̞̦̼͆̀ ̸͚̺͎̖͛͒̈́e̸̞̰͊͊̕l̴̖͗͐́ş̶̪̤́̈́é̸̱̠̿ ̶̲̲̿̈́̽w̷̢̹͉͖̎o̴̼͐̅̿̑ͅu̸͖̠͎͘ḷ̷͆͜d̶̹̖̃̐̀͝ ̷̘̤̘̇̄͌͜͠y̷̬̱̋̎̀̽o̵̭̲͍̼͗u̵͙̣̜͓̓̀͆͝ ̵̦͉̙̎̇w̵̹̱̑ȓ̵̳̓̑̍ȉ̵̫̟̠t̴̖͌̿̍͝ẹ̶̟̒̈ ̷̙̐̒̂͝ḁ̵͍̣̈͂̕ ̷̛̯̳̩̠͝j̷̢̋̀͗o̵͚̬͐b̷̯̤̿̍̂̕ ̶̭̖̈́a̵̞̞̽p̷̲͆̐p̵̢̎͘l̷̛̻͑͑i̴̬̩̽̋͘ͅc̶̢̮̫̈̌͛͛à̵̖̺͈̌ț̵̳͊͑i̵̳͙̇ͅo̴̧͍̤̔n̷̛͙̥̈͒͝?̶̭̙͍̀

Re: On the bright side...

I've had several Teams meetings with colleagues so far today (US West Coast). As you can imagine, I am overjoyed to report that Teams worked and the meetings went ahead without issue.

Still, someone at Microsoft should be keel-hauled, if only for their mangling of the defenceless English language. "Problematic"? "Potential cause of impact"? Ugh.

Not one of the better offerings in the 007 canon.

Re: OK, might as well ask.

Thanks both of you for the pointers! I am old enough to remember when "Intel Graphics" was a byword for "can just about display a VGA screen at 25fps" so the fact that both of you have mentioned the Intel Arc cards is disquieting...

I shall investigate my options.

Thanks!

Re: I'm sure most of us won't miss it, but I will

Gods, yes. I've lost count of the number of Teams meetings I've been in lately - my employer having standardized on all things Microsoft - where we play the game of "everyone help the meeting host figure out which obscure glyph he/she needs to click on to bring up the 'record meeting' option".

Click the three dots, you say? Would that be the three dots in the window title bar next to the minimize button, or the identical-but-different three dots in the meeting toolbar underneath it and somewhere off to the left?

Anyone else remember when the guiding principles of GUI design were "discoverability" and "ease of use", or* am I just an old fart?

(*NB that was intended as an XOR but feel free to insult me and treat it as an OR.)

Interesting that you name-check BoJo when he hasn't been PM for a couple of years. Obviously, Starmer, being a freedom-loving Labour person rather than a nasty evil Tory, cancelled the Online Safety Act and all other restrictions on freedom of speech as the very first thing he did... oh, wait, he didn't.

With stuff like this, I tend to assume that it's what the Deep State (yeah, I know that sounds a bit tinfoil-hattish) wants, regardless of the colour of the government. The Home Secretary, on his/her first day, after being shown where the coathooks & toilets are and how to claim expenses, is ushered into a room for a "cordial chat" with representatives of MI5/GCHQ and is told exactly what the latter want, and oh, incidentally we have all your e-mails and private letters, and we know what you bought from Lovehoney, and wouldn't it be a shame if it were to be splashed all over the Daily Mail....

Re: This is entertaining

I do my engineering diagrams in MS Paint.

Signed,

B.S. Johnson.

Shadow Systems hasn't been seen here in a while; I enquired as to his welfare a few months ago. Hope he's not come a cropper.

Pint for him --->

Hmm. I always thought the user-facing libraries/components like Intuition and Workbench were also written in BCPL, at least for OS v1.2/1.3 - thanks for the correction.

Re: "Windows users very much want to see happen."

>and forcing me to force-shutdown the machine (losing any open files)

Have you tried setting the power button action to Hibernate? Perhaps hibernating the laptop, then waking it up again, would trigger it into detecting the dock-attached monitors? And would prevent data loss.

The ability to configure what the power & sleep buttons do is rather hidden in Windows 10/11; try typing "powercfg.cpl" at a command prompt as the quickest way to get to it.