+OLD CS1 Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 37 minutes ago, Vorticon said: I'm starting to seriously consider using my old trusty (and internet isolated) TI for any task that can be performed on it. I mean what's wrong with TI Writer or Multiplan and my Panasonic KXP-1123 dot-matrix printer? Part of the reason I still run my Amigas. Nothing wrong with WordPerfect and my good-old HP LaserJet 4050 (or LaserJet 6L, for that matter,) until the plastic rots. Or my Commodore 128 with GEOS 128, geoWrite and geoPaint. I de-Googled my Sony phone and it broke a bunch of stuff, including a litany of apps, but nothing I cannot manage without. For some dumb reason, system updates rely on Google Services Foundation, so I have to manually update the operating system. When I bought my new car, I had Mazda completely disable the TCU (telematics control unit) which links the car to LTE/5G services and uploads telemetry (including GPS position) to Mazda every time you turn off the car. You will not find a digital assistant in my home, nor any "smart" devices Take control where you can. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 13 hours ago, OLD CS1 said: I turned on my TV for the first time in a couple of weeks to watch something off my Plex server. I was greeted by this notice which I cannot bypass. I accepted terms when I bought the device, and now I am being told that if I do not accept new terms, I can no longer use the product I fscking paid for! I kept my "smart" TV fully isolated from the Internet for much of its life, until She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed and my older son (not Turtles) decided they wanted to use it with Netflix. It was relatively easy to keep it isolated too: it required an Internet connection to set it up (why?), so I did so, but then immediately changed the password on my router so that the one stored in the TV went nowhere. That kept me from getting some really obnoxious Samsung updates that would have negatively affected my use of the device I'd paid for. Luckily, the Netflix phase has passed and I was able to isolate it once more, but I have serious issues with companies trying to usurp my control of devices or applications I've paid for. HP with their new "ink subscription" services that you can't opt out of and their patently illegal bricking of printers for using third-party inks. My printer, my ink, my choice. Microsoft with their increasingly strident attempts to force logons away from local accounts and funnel them into the online Microsoft ecosystem. They didn't buy my computer--I did. They don't get to decide how I will use it, even if the OS is one they produced. It was still relatively easy to avoid that quagmire when installing Windows 10, but the procedures to do the same with Windows 11 are much more complicated and are really only in the OS at all to satisfy the requirements of Enterprise customers, as the straight consumer versions make it nearly impossible to avoid. I suspect the next version won't even let you download the software onto your new machine without the Microsoft control links already being in place (as physical media have reached the point of being deprecated "dinosaur" fodder). I don't carry a cell phone either, as the ability to track my activities without my permission is a greater risk than I am willing to accept. Unfortunately, cars (a technology I do need, unlike cell phones) are reaching to point of complexity where similar levels of unwanted connectedness are becoming the norm. When the medicines I take start transmitting results back to the doctors that prescribed them, I'll have yet another technology to avoid. My TI doesn't do any of those things--making it a perfectly useful device in my eyes. It is a lesson many modern devices need to heed. . .and emulate. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Vorticon Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 It is not realistically possible to disconnect completely and still lead a normal life short of retiring to a deserted island Crusoe style. I've been resigned to that for a long time now and do my best to keep my online life as protected as possible. Here's one example: I don't use a password manager, but rather an ancient Casio Digital Assistant from the early 90's which does not have any online connectivity and I store all my passwords in it and keep it in a fireproof safe. I manually update it periodically and it has a backup battery. Good luck hacking into it he he... An old Palm Pilot will work just as well by the way. I am also in the process of dumping Google Drive and setting up an NAS instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary from OPA Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 (edited) 21 minutes ago, Vorticon said: It is not realistically possible to disconnect completely and still lead a normal life short of retiring to a deserted island Crusoe style. I've been resigned to that for a long time now and do my best to keep my online life as protected as possible. Here's one example: I don't use a password manager, but rather an ancient Casio Digital Assistant from the early 90's which does not have any online connectivity and I store all my passwords in it and keep it in a fireproof safe. I manually update it periodically and it has a backup battery. Good luck hacking into it he he... An old Palm Pilot will work just as well by the way. I am also in the process of dumping Google Drive and setting up an NAS instead. Yes I do something similar I have a Casio telememo analog watch and it has ability to store 30 phone numbers on its digital side with alphanumeric as well so I used that to keep my passwords secure. Also since I have 8gig Internet I setup a owncloud server on my main desktop with a ups and I am slowly getting everything to automatically backup to it even my pixel phone now with photos and videos, take a picture and bang it's automatically at home securing stored on my owncloud. Edited March 10 by Gary from OPA 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kchula-Rrit Posted March 11 Share Posted March 11 10 hours ago, Vorticon said: Google bricked my old but perfectly functional Nexus tablet with one of its updates and I could not revive it even with root access. I'll be damned if I ever purchase anything dependent on a Google service again. Same goes for Apple and HP who follow similar policies (HP even bricks printers if non-OEM ink cartridges are used!). I'm starting to seriously consider using my old trusty (and internet isolated) TI for any task that can be performed on it. I mean what's wrong with TI Writer or Multiplan and my Panasonic KXP-1123 dot-matrix printer? I was commenting to Better Half the other day about my Nexus that has been demoted to an alarm clock and photo/movie/PDF viewer. A marvel of technology and still works great, but it'll never see the Internet. Better has the same model tablet and got the nag about Google dropping support and that tablet has also not seen the Internet since! Shame, too; it has this beautiful planetarium program from Celestron that I would like to copy into mine. We're not willing to risk letting Google torpedo them! We bought an Apple-Pad from a friend, and they want my phone number to let me install a <beep> RPN calculator program! 8-( K-R. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted March 11 Share Posted March 11 I believe that I first noticed this phenomenon, during a stint servicing TVs in the '80s. People I came across, praised RCA XL-100 series(impossible to fix, despite all those removable modules), and the immutable SONY TRINITRONs. Never saw a small problem take out a SONY... always, major issues. One I've seen many times, involves the weakening of the picture tube. The emissive coatings on the guns, are slowly worn away over-time, presenting less loading, allowing the drive voltages to rise. A perfectly normal, and expected occurrence. When the beam-current, falls below about 94%-92%, the control circuit embedded in an I.C., cuts them off! Killing the picture. Although SONY, suggests that this is done to protect the driver circuitry. I can see no reason other than to engender others to covet the notion that SONY's, sets have a BETTER(stronger) picture ...based on user-experience. This protects their reputation for the best picture. While other manufacturer's sets, with a weak tube, continue to enjoy an extended service-life, albeit with a somewhat weaker picture. I for one, am neither amazed, nor amused. P.S. Best picture by-far, I've ever seen ...was on a 19/21 inch. Emerson, with an Orion, black-screen, tube. ... first time I ever saw florescent colors, in proper balance, and a bright, high-contrast image! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonACT Posted March 11 Share Posted March 11 Sony Trinitrons had some sort of panel device behind the tube's front glass that gave them a sharp picture, the trouble with that was it was held in place with wire - and you could see the wire going horizontally across the screen in 2 (maybe more, depending on size) places. Once you saw it (which you could easily when it was a monitor right in front of you) you hated it. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted March 11 Share Posted March 11 ...Went hand-in-hand with their strange lack of vertical curvature. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary from OPA Posted March 11 Share Posted March 11 New cpu design https://www.techspot.com/news/102201-startup-claims-100x-more-efficient-processor-than-current.html 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted March 11 Share Posted March 11 1 hour ago, HOME AUTOMATION said: P.S. Best picture by-far, I've ever seen ...was on a 19/21 inch. Emerson, with an Orion, black-screen, tube. ... first time I ever saw florescent colors, in proper balance, and a bright, high-contrast image! I do not remember the brand, nor do I know its innards, but I once had a TV on which everything looked as if it were painted. It was amazing. My parents got it at a garage sale as a second TV for our basement den, then it became mine for my TI. The colors it produced for my beloved machine were bright and vivid. The best picture I ever saw on a set. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted March 11 Share Posted March 11 52 minutes ago, Gary from OPA said: New cpu design https://www.techspot.com/news/102201-startup-claims-100x-more-efficient-processor-than-current.html My first car was a Monza. Quote Efficient's software stack also supports major embedded languages such as C, C++, TensorFlow, and some Rust applications, enabling app developers to quickly recompile their code for the Fabric architecture. So, AI? Seven years at Carnegie Mellon... Quote In Terminator Genisys (2015), the fifth film in the franchise, Judgment Day was postponed to an unspecified day in October 2017, attributed to altered events in both the future and the past. Sarah and Kyle Reese travel through time to the year 2017 and seemingly defeat Skynet, but the system core, contained inside a subterranean blast shelter, survives unknown to them, thus further delaying, rather than preventing, Judgment Day. Seven years... just sayin'. Anyway, FTA: Quote So what's their secret sauce? The details get pretty technical, but the key idea behind Fabric is optimizing for parallelism from the ground up. This should have been on our minds for a much longer time. At least since the days of the Connection Machine. The power of a (Cray Y/MP with a CM)x on a chip. Been waiting a long time for this. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 As if this month was not already filled with enough bullshit, my program manager sent a spreadsheet of available class dates. I was at a site so I tried to open it on my phone, and now Excel for Android demands that you log in to use it. So does Word and PowerPoint. Nyope! Time for alternatives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrhodes Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDMike Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 My pc with windows 11 decided to throw the door panel creating a heavy wind of fan pressure, sending ram to the ceiling and suddenly dropping all back to the seats. Oh... I've been reading too many Boeing articles lately. My TI parked next to the pc is just fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 Just thinking about tomorrow... Clears away the cobwebs, and the sorrow ...'til there's none. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary from OPA Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 The so-called TikTok ban is a trojan horse. The President will be given the power to ban WEB SITES, not just Apps. The person breaking the new law is deemed to be the U.S. (or offshore) INTERNET HOSTING SERVICE or App Store, not the “foreign adversary.” HR 7521 Updated.pdf 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveB Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 4 hours ago, jrhodes said: Tomorrow has been postponed due to a total lack of interest ... 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 3 minutes ago, SteveB said: Tomorrow has been postponed due to a total lack of interest ... Great. So, today will be longer? And I thought yesterday was bad. 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary from OPA Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 42 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said: Great. So, today will be longer? And I thought yesterday was bad. We have left over Monday issues to solve so Monday has been extended into Tuesday! 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 Oh, yesterday ...came suddenly... Mm mm mm mm mm mm mm... ------------------------------------------------ Tuesday, afternoon? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDMike Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 (edited) Then should I give up? I'm still trying to catch up from a Tuesday that happened about 18 years ago.. somehow I got off course Edited March 12 by GDMike 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 You are the reason I've been waiting all these years Somebody holds the key Well, I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home🏡 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reciprocating Bill Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 No need for blind faith... Sunday's on the phone to Monday Tuesday's on the phone to me 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atrax27407 Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 I think Microsoft issued a "patch" for the latest failed update for 22H2. The other day, when I signed on to Updates, it downloaded a very small file labelled "Comprehensive update for . . ." The entire download took less than 5 seconds. Then, today when I downloaded and installed the "Comprehensive update. . ." which appeared again, there were absolutely no issues with the download. Interesting! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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