The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

If you want the recipient to have the full context of the message, you can Forward the message in Teams to get all that. Otherwise, I categorically don't want Teams to screw with my copy and paste.

I can't forward a chat session in Teams into our work tracking system so that I have a permanent archived record of who said what about which server I was working on. So, while Teams may be more useful for you, it's that much less useful for me, and thank you Microsoft for implementing this "feature" without also implementing an option to switch it on or off.

[ownedbycats]

Microsoft 365 Copilot now autostarts with Windows. Can't find in Autoruns.

EDIT: Found it in Windows Startup Settings. not run why not Autoruns.

[BetterRed]

MS actually appears have done something right, got an email from them this morning about W10 Extended Support for a year for free, 3-4 clicks later and I was done.

There are reports it is only for the EEA (EU + EFTA), but I'm about as far away from there as one can get.

Copilot doesn't run here at start up, so maybe that's a "depends where you are" fearture [sic] too.

BR

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

MS actually appears have done something right, got an email from them this morning about W10 Extended Support for a year for free, 3-4 clicks later and I was done.

There are reports it is only for the EEA (EU + EFTA), but I'm about as far away from there as one can get.

Copilot doesn't run here at start up, so maybe that's a "depends where you are" fearture [sic] too.

BR

Yeah, that's recent. Like today recent:
https://www.windowscentral.com/micro...ertain-markets

Everyone else sticking with Windows 10 is still screwed into paying $30 to sign up for Microsoft's cloud backup service.

[Quoth]

BUT

It seems the user will still need to enroll into extended security updates, which will require the user to authenticate with a Microsoft account once every 60 days,

Nasty.

The only thing I've done in last 2 years on Win 10 VM or Win10 laptop* is run update, which is a total pain.
Applying NT4.0 hot fixes was less pain. Why is it so slow? Why is there often a huge delay on shutdown or restart?

[* I have other laptops which run Linux Mint, as does server and workstation.]

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The only thing I've done in last 2 years on Win 10 VM or Win10 laptop* is run update, which is a total pain.

Yeah. I updated my one remaining Windows VM to Windows 11 to avoid all that BS. I keep it around because every now and then I need to do a firmware update on something which doesn't have native Linux tools. I'm looking at you, Sony. I love your DualSense controllers and the fact that you actively maintain the official driver in the Linux kernel, but when are you going to give us a native tool for firmware updates and customizing?

Oh, and CUETools, though CUETools may run under WINE. Haven't tried it. I'll have to try next time I have audio CDs to rip.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Graham44

But, but, but .... it's technology so it must be wonderful and embraced

If you were prone to the odd 'conspiracy' you may even say AI's been designed to make people dumber and to accept what they are fed - not that I'm saying that mind you

This is a case where the quality of internet searches has definitely degraded. It seems like when you do an internet search it adds in a lot of things that you don't want. I miss the old days of putting a "+" in front of a search term to show that the item MUST appear in the search items, and a "-" to indicate items that are excluded from the search results.

I've mentioned this before, but I've had an issue with trying to search for the artist "Harriet" in Amazon. The problem is that I get a massive number of tracks which contain artists with the name "Harriet" but there's no way to filter out the ones that I don't want.

Considering the supposed abilities of AI, it seems like you could do a search where you provide a search term and then exclude items from that search. As an example (speaking to AI Assistant named AIA):

• AIA, show me tracks containing the artist "Harriet"
• AIA, from the last search exclude any tracks released before 2023.
• AIA, from the last search exclude any artists that are male
• AIA, from the last search exclude any artist not from the U. K.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

This is a case where the quality of internet searches has definitely degraded.

You might consider using kagi.com to search. It is a paid service, but the quality of results is often night and day better. They have a 100 search free trial. There are a number of testimonials on the web, including from Cory Doctorow.

[nana77]

Using Firefox, with DuckDuckGo, the first results are these ones (on a GNU/Linux distribution).

[Quoth]

Amazon search is the worst. Google is now poorer.

Who remembers AltaVista?

I was using DuckDuckGo, but been using Qwant which somewhat accepts -no

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Who remembers AltaVista?

It was my go-to.

A rant on Google "AI Overview".
Ask a yes/no question, get an answer.
Reformulate the question keeping the same sense, get a different answer.

I just saw some silly Dell promo video where they showed robots disassembling Dell brand computer monitors.
The speed they were going at was a fraction of what a toddler could do.
I presume that this could only work with Dell brand devices where they had all the mechanical designs.

This all came about because I was looking at the question of electronic recycling.
I have always gutted my own electronic recycling, removing the PCBs and then recycling plastic/metal enclosures in the regular recycling streams.
It seems to me that a good chunk of labor in electronic recycling is the disassembling.
I'm willing to do my share. In the US I dump my PCBs at BestBuy.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Renate

The speed they were going at was a fraction of what a toddler could do.
I presume that this could only work with Dell brand devices where they had all the mechanical designs.

This all came about because I was looking at the question of electronic recycling.
I have always gutted my own electronic recycling, removing the PCBs and then recycling plastic/metal enclosures in the regular recycling streams.

Seen the Dilbert animated cartoon as a child?
"The Knack"
May be on YouTube.

Also did you take apart mechanical alarm clocks at age 7?

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

This is a case where the quality of internet searches has definitely degraded.
Considering the supposed abilities of AI, it seems like you could do a search where you provide a search term and then exclude items from that search. As an example (speaking to AI Assistant named AIA):

• AIA, show me tracks containing the artist "Harriet"
• AIA, from the last search exclude any tracks released before 2023.
• AIA, from the last search exclude any artists that are male
• AIA, from the last search exclude any artist not from the U. K.

Single search with no special syntax, filtering, or refining (although all those are possible).

[BetterRed]

Today is our switch to DST day.

My only watch is an ancient Fitbit Charge. Once upon a time it synced with a Windows program from Fitbit. Soon after Google bought Fitbit it stopped syncing fitness data (steps, stairs, distance etc), Google pulled the plug on the Windows sync feature; but it still synced time. Now its stopped doing that even… it's now 1 hour and a bit behind.

"Oh-well." says I, "…better get a new watch, some local features had stopped working too - e.g. battery charge level."

So I looked for something similar, settled on the Samsung Fit3 - list price $AU149.

So I logged onto my Telstra account to see if they had them. They do and they're in stock. Great I'll have one.

"Do you want to use any of your 'bonus points'?" - yep, all of them… Next.
"Then that'll be $89.34, is that okay?" - sure is… Next.
"What's your delivery address?" - PO Box blah-de-blah… Next.
"What's your card number, exp date, etc?" - eh, oh well. 1234, etc… Next.

"Sorry there's a problem with your bonus points, delivery address or card details." - eh… Back… Back… Back… every field is red!

&^$@ it

Why don't they provide payment by Paypal, better yet why don't they just add it to the monthly bill which is auto paid!

[Quoth]

DST is an awful WWI invention by either British or Germans, depending on what you read.

Causes loads of problems and only really works in two bands, as it's pointless in the Tropics and too far north/south (Iceland).