Computers

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 Once upon a time I used to keep a copy of CD-Keys on floppy disk. On the theory I’d be more likely to lose the slip of paper or the jewel case than the actual disc. Most are still in a container in my closet.

Finally got around to fetching the old diskette out of my closet, and I find the dates interesting. In any case it’s time to migrate the files to modern media.

$ sudo mount /dev/fd0 /mnt

[sudo] password for terry:

mount: /mnt: WARNING: device write-protected, mounted read-only.

$ ls -l /mnt

total 84K

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 Armored-Fist3_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 BF2_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 BF2SF_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 CoD_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 CoDUO_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 Commanche4_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 DF1_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 DF2_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 DFBHD_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 DFLW_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 DFTFD_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 May 14  2006 DFX_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 Nov  7  2008 FEAR_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 30 May 14  2006 MW4-CL-MP_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 30 May 14  2006 MW4-IS-MP_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 21 May 14  2006 Quake4_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 48 May 14  2006 README

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 24 May 14  2006 RvS_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 SWAT3_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 SWAT4_Key

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25 May 14  2006 SWAT4TSS_Key

$

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 Various sad and comical things.

Decided to try an old SSD in my spare enclosure. But I found while my Linux machine blows away just fine on I/O performance: my NT partition maxes out at about 30 MB/s on Crystal Disk Mark and 11 MB/s on Windows time.

In fact every fracken’ thing I plug into my USB 3.0 port maxes out at that speed.

So decided to do a little poking around. My NT install comes from Microsoft, not from Dell, so there’s a minimal of their things tacked on. Looking for updated drivers, I was kind of just glad to see W10 well represented given the age of my Latitude.

Found a BIOS update and dared to do it. Going from A00 to A20 (2018) was a lot of versions.A001 I think was dated 2012, and the oldest available. Mostly it’s fixes and security updates. But low and behold upgrading my BIOS a terrifying number of versions forward: my USB 3.0 is working right.

That is to say, Crystal Disk Mark basically jumps from ~30 MB/s to 250 MB/s, and Explorer reports much more appropriate speeds itself.

Amusing to me, one of the features I kind of missed was the option of Secure Boot. Which was added in one of the many updates. Ironically, a cyber security report from the NSA actually has better descriptions of the new UEFI settings on my system than Googling them ^_^.

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 When I think back over the past fifteen years and the various systems I’ve used, I think a table of Bluetooth problems would look like this:

  • GNU/Linux on PC: 100% success, or no BT driver.
  • FreeBSD on PC: 100% success, or no BT driver.
  • Android on phone, tablet, television, and laptop: 90% success.
  • Windows NT on XP, 7, and 10: 25% success.
  • iOS on tablet: 100% success.
Actually, come to think of it, aside from the ruckus with Google changing BT stacks and a painful Nexus 7, I’m pretty sure the only operating systems that ever give me grief about Bluetooth are all ones baring the name NT!!!
I’d like to think it would suck less on a device with an integrated Wi-Fi/BT card. But applying USB BT to laptops and desktops has definitely been a painful experience over the past ~15 years.

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 Well, that’s kind of neat. Windows Defender can run Edge in a Hyper-V session as part of “Application Guard.”

Considering that browsing the world wide web is pretty much a living definition of remote code execution, it’s probably about time someone tried to make a standard feature of isolating the browser. If WSL2 is any indication, Hyper-V also offers great performance if your machine doesn’t suck.

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This long, tiresome week, I’ve opted to conduct an experiment: working out of my Windows partition. Since shoving my Chromebook in a closet ages ago, I’ve usually booted Stark  from my Debian partition. Well, this week I tried a little insanity.

So what worked? Well the important stuff. Namely WSL2 and Docker for Windows now enable me to do the things my Debian partition offers that actually matter. Yay for that. Being a busy week, I kind of put that part of the system through five hundred laps of abuse without a problem.

A very large part of my time revolves around command line environments one way or another, so a lot of my client machine’s job is being a glorified X-Terminal on steroids. Most GUI software I rely on is cross-platform within the desktop family trees, pardoning proprietary bits. Most parts I really care about are terminal friendly; most GUI parts involve interaction with others or specific tasks.

In particular I found it pleasant to have a Evernote’s desktop client. The web client’s not my cup of tea, beyond some of the editing shortcuts it shares with the Android and iOS clients. While most of what I do on my Linux partition was direct and to the point thanks to WSL, Evernote was a big shift.

What didn’t work so hot?

In a very unsurprising shortfall was Bluetooth. Twice I had to totally start from scratch pairing my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. To be fair, W10 20H1 launched with problems that are supposedly resolved. To be honest I’ve always had trouble with NT and Bluetooth: going as far back as the XP era. By contrast in a decade of combing Bluetooth and Linux: the only issue I’ve had is changing batteries 🤣.

Another is the networking side. Seems like W10 is happy enough to use my static/dns setup for Wi-Fi at work, and DHCP for my Wi-Fi setup at home. It’ll even deal with the DNS suffix at home. But sometimes it thinks my home network has no Internet connectivity because it’s trying to use my work DNS servers with my home connection. I suppose, considering the era NT comes from: I should just be glad that W10 has a concept of different configurations for different wireless connections. But annoying.

Shifting from Davmail / Thunderbird to the various Microsoft things, I mostly have two comments. One: easier setup. Second: different quirks. On the flipside, Davmail has a spectacularly accurate manual. And Thunderbird probably has more bugs and quirks than it’s competition, lol. I could actually replicate my Linux setup on W10, but would rather not during the experiment.

Explorer is probably the gold standard of file managers. Compared to Thunar, it sure is. But I found it amusing how it was a sticking point. On occasion Explorer total death hangs until I eject my SD card. In the kill explorer from taskkill /f and then restart the damned thing just to get my panel back kind of hangs. Although, I’ve probably seen more crashes from X file managers than you can shake a stick at, it’s compensated by *nix having a far superior command line environment.

More minor were things like my internal web server. Easy enough to replicate my simple lighttpd setup in IIS, and to lock it to my connection at work. Most of my stuff is either static, Perl CGI, or bash based; so the only thing that’s not operational with trivial effort is a few CGI scripts done in bash.

And then there’s the part that should really scare me: I didn’t hate the experience. By comparison using Windows 7 and its predecessors generally lead to cursing and gnashing of teeth.

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I Tried to Live Without the Tech Giants. It Was Impossible.

Most people don’t go to such an extent to avoid the big tech companies, even for an experiment it is a bit super thorough. But makes a solid point.
“Critics of the big tech companies are often told, “If you don’t like the company, don’t use its products.” My takeaway from the experiment was that it’s not possible to do that. It’s not just the products and services branded with the big tech giant’s name. It’s that these companies control a thicket of more obscure products and services that are hard to untangle from tools we rely on for everything we do, from work to getting from point A to point B.”
Perhaps the question we really should be asking ourselves is whether or not these companies are a necessary evil.
Would such services exist, or be anywhere near as good without the help of such companies? Miss Hill points out the dominance of Google Maps and the interaction with things like Uber, and I think that’s kind of key. We had GPS navigation long before we had Google Maps and smart phones, but which would you rather use? Part of what made Google Maps what it is today is the insane investment: sending people and hardware off into the wild blue yonder to build a better dataset than simply importing maps and satellite photos could. Who the hell has that much money? Well, Google did. Some clown in their parents garage might be able to kick start the next Apple or Amazon, but they’re not going to be able to afford to run Google Streetview without monopolistic funding.
As things worked out, I’d say Amazon turned out to be a pretty great idea. But twenty six years ago: we’d probably forgive you for thinking Bezos was crazy instead of anticipating he would become several times richer than God, building one of the world’s most well known enterprises along the way.
See, we build our success upon the success of others—and our success is often in enabling others to succeed. The question is can we do that without the ginormous bankrolls and the infrastructure that entails.
I’d like to think we have yet to see the last great American tech company. But without a governmental strongarm, I don’t think we will ever see these empires displaced. Not until landmark paradigm shifts cause them to exit a market, or for profitability sake they choose to exit or destroy one. You’re not going to beat Google Maps unless they’re incompetent and you’re hyper lucky and clever at just the right time: or they choose to shutter the entire operation. That’s just how it works at scale.
Yes, I’m pretty sure that we should refer to them as monopolies. But are they ones we need, or are they ones we can ill afford? As someone who long resisted Google and Facebook, I find that a very intriguing question.
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ARM-Based 12-inch MacBook Specs Include A14X Bionic SoC, up to 16GB RAM, 20-Hour Battery Life & More

To me it would make sense if the first Macintosh to sport Apple’s ARM system on a chip was the basic MacBook. It’s entry level enough to support up selling more powerful machines, and down low enough to write it off if the horse power cells to wow everyone’s eyes out of their sockets.
“Looking at these rumored specs, it honestly looks like Apple wants to repurpose the discontinued 12-inch MacBook to sport its own A14X Bionic SoC. Since the A14X Bionic is expected to be made on the 5nm process and not have a ridiculously high TDP, the 12-inch MacBook’s chassis should be sufficient to cool the chip“
Which would also be inline with modern Apple and Samsung devices. Not to mention, if it’s not busted: why fix it?