Not a replicant

Pi-hole can block microsoft telemetry domains, just need to keep the blocklists up to date, and flush the Recall cache every day.

But you can feed a scrambled egg back to a chicken.

Last time I bought a Win 10 Pro DVD to install on a customer’s machine, it was AUD$195.00. And I still had to use powershell to de-provision some of the bullshit. Better than the Home version (AUD$165.00), at least I can use GPEDIT to disable some “features”.

Of course, a Windows licence on a pre-built Dell or HP would be a lot less.

“If you think this is expensive now, wait for 20 years” “Not a problem, I’ll be retired by then, it’ll be someone else’s problem”

I’ve got an Asus eeePC running WinXP. It’s air-gapped and the wi-fi is disabled in BIOS. All it does is play music, connected to dumb speakers. I update the music periodically via USB. Remarkably reliable and long-lived hardware.

Happened in 2022 to a 2017 MBP belonging to someone I knew. She went out and bought a new one, and put the old one in a drawer. She brought it to me in 2023, I investigated and found the shitshow - Apple saying “nuh-uh”, the ACCC (Australian consumer advocate) saying “you’d better”, then Apple quoting me $1100 because the ACCC never enforced it, and me getting it fixed locally for $550. It needed a new screen, not because the screen itself was faulty, but because the failing flex cable was integrated with the screen. Screw Apple.

Destination: Las Vegas

Ford car: “Visit Hard-on Henry’s for hookers and blow”

I’d say you didn’t actually remove the garbage. “Settings, apps, uninstall” doesn’t really get rid of it, the deployment package is still hanging around.

You need to use powershell to de-deploy those packages.

It’s a bit like the difference between “apt remove” and “apt purge”

There’s always the Microsoft telemetry blocklist in pihole. If you can’t stop the computer collecting the data, you can stop MS getting hold of it.

Do you tolerate the TPM/fTPM in your computer? Can you deactivate it? Can you query it? Can you tell it to do something?

https://www.sparkydirect.com.au/power-points/usb-powerpoints

The fellow who built my house in the early 1990s was thinking ahead. Dual circuits, one for lighting on 24VDC and one for power on 240VAC.

If you’re referring to 5VDC circuit for USB devices, you can get GPO plates with USB power sockets: https://www.sparkydirect.com.au/power-points/usb-powerpoints

I’ve got a fire suppression system. An agricultural sprinkler on each of the two roof peaks, fed by a pump from storage tanks. We’re off-grid (no mains) and already have the storage tanks - 2 x 22500litre/5000 gallons. With full tanks, the sprinklers should operate for ~7 hours, which is way more than necessary - three to four hours would be enough. The sprinklers “throw” interlocking circles of water, they intersect over the roof and saturate all the ground and foliage out to about 15 metres/50 feet. Water falling on the roof goes back into the tanks. The pump is electric, but being off-grd, we’ve got big batteries and a backup generator, so I’m confident the pump would run long enough for the fire to pass.

And JPEG2000 is what’s used in Digital Cinema Package (DCP) - that’s the file format used to distribute feature films. That’s not going away soon.

Firefox extension “easy youtube video downloader express” Silly name, great product.

What I’d like to know is how the hell do they manage corrosion in all that salty air? Sure, the op centre is probably filtered and air-conditioned, but if there’s one thing about marine environments, salt corrosion will happen, and you can’t put 30 coats of paint on a floppy drive’s components.

I was system operator for an IBM System/36 in the mid-late 1980s and that thing used two 10-slot magazines of 8" floppies for backup.

It was replaced in 1989 with an AS400 that used half-inch tape.

And that backup solution was replaced with an LTO library.

Didn’t someone get Debian running on a Talos II workstation?

Granted, that’s tinkering, but getting Debian to a workable state.

Gee, it’s lucky they didn’t start requiring an account for personal use… Oh, wait.

Same in Australia. The libnats (right-leaning) broke the fibre-optic rollout by claiming it would be too expensive, and replaced it in non-metro areas with wireless, claiming 25Mbps was adequate. They didn’t mention that slow internet would benefit the Murdoch -owned Foxtel satellite services. And here we are now with internet services worse than some poorer countries.

I chose Starlink because I will never get fibre optic, my only broadband option is geo-synch satellite, with speed and data caps, and 600ms latency.