People will probably just post a Powershell script on Github to make it update directly from the official servers without paying the extra fee. It’s funny how the most popular activation scripts are on Github, even though Microsoft owns Github and could easily just delete them.

Most people who are fed up with Microsofts crap simply don’t buy a new computer anymore. They just do everything on an iPad (maybe pro) or similar without Windows. Gamers switch over to consoles, with Nintendo and Steam deck being preferred. Those things may run Linux like the Steam deck or another non Windows OS, but the user won’t notice or care since they don’t interact with it.

The time of the desktop and to a lesser extent the laptop has come and gone. It’s only for enthusiasts and people at work. At work people probably just use the same couple of apps or even just a browser with a webapp and never really interact with the OS. If it’s even a full computer and not a thin client connecting to a virtual desktop environment. People don’t know or care about OSes. Maybe they’ll bitch about Windows at times, but they bitch about a lot of things at work and they have no influence over any of it.

That would depend heavily on how accessible the computer is and how fat your fingers are. And I can tell you, mine are pretty fat.

Back when token ring was designed normally networks would use coaxial cables for communication. No matter if it ran ethernet, token ring or something else, everybody would share basically a single cable. The cable would have T connectors inserted to connect a computer and the end of the cable needed something to terminate it. It didn’t need to be a single line, you could have splits and even a star like design, although there were limitations.

And you are right, any disruption anywhere on the line meant the network would go do. That might be someone removing the termination cap on the end, or simply the line being broken somewhere. However because computers were usually connected using T splitters, it didn’t really matter if the computer was connected or not. But the connection not being terminated properly could be an issue. Especially if there was another cable connected to the T before being connected to the computer.

Normally in a room the cable would be laid out like a ring although it usually wouldn’t be a closed ring, but instead terminated on one end. This meant each computer would be connected to its direct neighbors, but this wouldn’t be an active thing. It wasn’t like the computer could only transmit to its neighbors and then they needed to pass it on. It was like a shared line, where everyone could transmit and every computer would receive everything transmitted.

When everything switched over to the regular twisted pair cables we know today, it didn’t really change from a communications point of view. Every computer wasn’t connected to their neighbors but instead to a hub, but just like before anything anyone transmitted could be received by anyone on the network. It wasn’t until much later when things like switches became commonplace and not everyone got all the traffic.

Well there’s the stuff I personally dislike. Like the Elon cringe skits she does, or the super weird uncanny valley face filter.

But the biggest issue is she didn’t stay in her realm of expertise. She might know a lot about certain things, but then also talks about other stuff with the same level of authority. No caveats, no this is my opinion, she present it as fact. But the fact is she is really really wrong about a lot of shit. And just mixing and matching shit you know and shit you don’t know is a big no-no in science communication.

One of the most egregious thins she did was make a video about trans folk and talked about it like it’s a fad or even a disorder. She was not only factually wrong, she was spouting anti-trans propaganda. When called out she kept the video up and didn’t do anything like a follow up, correction or apology. She has some really boomer views about a lot of things and then presents it like it’s fact. Another panned video was the one about neurodivergence (autism) and there are more like that. There are multiple hour+ video essays about how she is wrong in these cases and they are worth a watch imho.

The annoying thing is, I don’t really know what she actually does know. Because she mixes everything and doesn’t stay within her knowledge base, now everything is suspect. So even the videos about physics where I think she does know what she’s talking about, I can’t trust. And even in physics it seems like she’s very hit or miss, I spoke to somebody at a party once that did his PhD on one of the physics topics she covered in a video. He said she was like 10 years behind the times and was wrong about several key facts. Some of these were just wrong because of simplification, which might be excused given the format, but others were plain wrong. Now I don’t know enough about the subject to make a judgement, but the dude I spoke to seemed to know what he was talking about.

Science communication is really really hard and it’s a skill not a lot of people have. Look at how big the teams of researchers at for example Kurzgesagt are and even they mess up once in a while. But when they get called out, they go back and delete the video or better yet post a follow up or recently even a replacement video. And they qualify things with sources and caveats, mentioning which parts are fact, consensus, speculation and opinion. They also make it very clear at the beginning of the video what a viewer can expect. That way we can qualify the information and know what in what light to put the information presented. Now I realize Kurzgesagt may be one of the best channels when it comes to short form YouTube video science communication out there and it isn’t fair to hold everyone to that standard. But there needs to be at least some level of due diligence involved imho.

I’m sure I left out some other stuff, there is a lot to find if you look for honest critique. I’m sure there’s also a lot of unwarranted hate out there, but also a lot of stuff that’s warranted.

Sabine Hossenfelder can fuck ALL the way off. She sucks man.

What do you mean? We just migrated that software to a Windows XP VM running on Windows 7! That was just 15 years ago, it’ll be good for another 15 for sure.

Yeah I’ve had that one happen. Big team, more than a year of work, thousands of hours, over 1500 of my own hours. Internal presentation to the team at the customer end, they loved it and couldn’t wait for actual launch day. We were all so proud and everyone was happy.

Alas that day never came, the customer went bankrupt due to one of the investors pulling out. Nothing to do with us, just some bean counter did the math and decided they were better off letting the company fold.

I spoke to one of the people at the customer we had worked with throughout the project. She was devastated it was all for nothing and she lost her job as a result. By the time a new investor came around to pick up the pieces, she had found a new job. Spoke to the former ceo of the customer, he had a new job for a couple of days a week at the company that bought up the remainders. He fought to get the project going again, but the new company is very non IT focused, oldskool. So they vetoed it. I later found out one of the project leads was consulted and he had pretty much killed any chance. I always disliked that dude, but he got a pretty good deal out of it or so I’m told.

That’s just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

Crossposted it! Thanks, I didn’t know that community existed.

My first computer was an MSX (the model in the vid, not the same one alas) in 1984, it opened up the world of computing for me (hence my username having the 84).

I have DOS 2.0 running on that thing with FAT16 support, so that means folders and it can (in theory) handle 4GB of data. If I would have told my young self that, my head would have both literally and figuratively exploded.

Function generators have come down in price so much the past 10 years or so. In the past a good function gen was a very specialized expensive piece of kit. These days you can get a pretty decent unit for not much money at all.

When I first got this monitor powered up, the vertical deflection was totally collapsed. Turned out two transistors were acting weird. They weren’t broken exactly, but not acting like they should either. Without a function gen I would not have caught that as quickly as I did.

Wow that’s awesome man. Glad you added the ‘since childhood’ part, I was feeling a bit old.

I’ve fixed up a lot of CRTs, but this one is kinda special, since it goes so well with the MSX system.

Sounds like a skill issue, fuck them kids

The sonic shockwave moving through the clouds visible on some of the footage was amazing and then the shockwave bounced on the ground and back into the clouds a couple of seconds later, so amazing to see. I hate Elon Musk, but that they pulled this off is incredible.

It can’t hurt to give it more cooling capacity. But it probably doesn’t matter much. It will run a a bit warmer with the sticker, but still be well within what the hardware can handle. Since it normally isn’t a performance critical component, it won’t run too hot and cooling it more gives no benefit.

All the same, I kinda hate it when they put a big heatsink on something and then cover it up with stickers. But the size of the heatsink is usually part of the marketing and not an actual design requirement.

Led lights need constant current with a limit on the max output power. Chargers output a constant voltage. Too high of a voltage can be damaging to leds and if they get too much current they burn out quickly. So there is a difference between for example a phone charger and a proper led power supply. Also modern phone chargers communicate with the phone to deliver the right amount of power and often will fall back to a very low amount when a “dumb” device is connected.

That said, the led light might have a power supply or power converter builtin. In that case you can supply just about anything with enough power into the input and it will be fine.

If the light wasn’t expensive and a random charger works, just connect a random charger. It probably isn’t worth looking for the perfect power supply.

In the future due to climate change we need to time our launches into space in between hurricanes. Oh wait no that’s the present.

Based

Very true, I would do the same and feel my stomach drop farther each time.

Hmmm command not found, let me just try the same command a couple more times, this time it will work right?

In IT teaching users to actually read and understand errors is always an uphill battle.