by

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-3xx?wprov=sfti1

I’ve always wondered somewhat, just how much consideration was really put into using one orbiter to rescue another. Because, it’d probably be nice not to be blind sided when the problem is closer to needing a flying  tow truck than a memorial service.

In history though, I reckon the latter is how things turned out for NASA. Over the course of a hundred and thirty five launches: only two shuttles and their crews were lost. Catastrophic failures were the only true failures is probably a fair statement.

Actually, that’s a pretty good success rate if you ask me.

by

How a months-old AMD microcode bug destroyed my weekend [UPDATED]

Over the years, I’ve seen people and programs assume pseudo  random numbers are truly random often enough, and heard tell of broken hardware and firmware enough that I take all tendon binder generators with a grain of salt.

Because the only faith I have in random Numbers is the odds are pretty good that neither of us will will the lottery. And if it’s something like encrypting nuclear launch codes or grandma’s biscuit recipe, maybe you shouldn’t take it on faith that you won’t get the same value for infinity 😜

by

iOS 10 How-To: Print to PDF from anywhere in iOS using 3D Touch

One of the things that I miss about Android is the ease of printing. Android’s PDF oriented printing and ease of integration m meant that it was pretty trivial to get a save as PDF out of anything that can print, as well as send it to pretty much anything via standard protocols by picking an item from the system UI. Most times I print I either want a PDF or I want to use the office printer. Mostly though, I want a PDF.

In the case of iOS, well my iPad offers the option to print shit more often than my Android’s did. Which is nice in its own way. But to print to PDF: you have the usual case of swipe friend in elvish rather than just picking a damned list item. Likewise, the printing system as a whole sucks the further you go from having an Apple AirPrint capable printer instead of a really old net printer. Needless to say where I typically need to print, isn’t an office that replaces printers very often.

Which makes me wonder, just how many times have I had to help someone get the a younger version of Windows to actually print to the old printers at work…yeah, sometimes you’re better off with CUPS for that.

by

Insults to injuries:

When you’re about to use your desktop to login, load a slow ass webpage, to go edit something the app doesn’t offer, and you’re next thought is “Wait, my iPad’s browser is still faster than this thing.”

My desktop mostly remains because it does one thing very well: play Direct3D games. Because while its era of Core i5 is getting quite long in the toofers: it still can throw three pounds of GTX at problems my other machines can’t.

Actually, based on the few games that really stress the shit out of my desktop: I’m inclined to think the old Core i5-3570K is the real bottleneck. That is to say when games like Final Fantasy XV or Resident Evil 7 get a spike o lagocity, it coincides with the processor load looking like a tomahawk cruise missile hit in the family jewels.

That said: the machine has held up very well. Beyond those two titles: it hasn’t really blushed in the face of melting as far as 1080p gaming goes.

Expected decommissioning date has long since come and gone versus how long I had designed Centauri to service my computing needs. It’s mostly been economics, and the lack of need to retire it that the machine has endured. Which is why the last overhaul was migrating from the very first SSD that I ever bought to a considerable larger one.

The obvious catch to the age is, for tasks like web browser page load times, my iPad basically smokes my desktop :/. But the fruity thing can’t drive my GTX 780, nor will it ever natively run the games that dominate my desktop’s reason for existence.

Last time that I researched options for the longer term: it pretty much boiled down to two issues. The older Core i7 models that fit my motherboard aren’t easy to come by for a good price unless they’re second hand. Versus new: may as well buy a modern Core i5, but then it is in for a penny, in for a pound of ram. Needless to say, I don’t invision Centauri’s next significant hardware refit to be for quite a while.

Given how well Centauri has aged, and the odds that its GTX will need to retire by the time Centauri does, I rather wonder if whatever comes next in hardware will just be a laptop with a Thunderbolt eGPU dock or whatever nVidia equipped laptops look like by then. For now, I’m just happy the machine hasn’t died in a puff of smoke despite all the years of hard work, hehe. It remains one of the best computers that I’ve ever owned.

by

First world problems: temptations.

Part one of the first season of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is available for a really good price, right now. Which is to say about 50% off the original pricing, or about what it should actually cost, lol. And that puts it in the same price range of season two of Is This a Zombie?, one of my favourite series.

Both will eventually join my Blu-ray collection if I have anything to say about the next ten years, and the latter is one of the leading ideas of what Christmas time is going to look like.

Thus the trade off problem: that the latter will continue to be available at the usual price versus the former won’t float up to “Ugh, that sucks” pricing, before I finally can pull the trigger. And this is part of why budgets are depressing things o/. Actually, thinking about the definition of ugh pricing jacks makes me remember: better off getting one of my favourite series off eBay. Because through “Regular” channels like Amazon has too many digits to it, and as years go by even the original publisher isn’t a good source. SMH.

On a positive side, my very strong aversion to dust collectors and nick knacks means decorating my home didn’t involve a decade of debt, so much as stuff that’s been in my family since before I was born, lol. This does of course, not prevent me from having to dust stuff once in a while. Yeah, let’s not think about that.

by

You can guess how it is around here.

Coincidentally, Willow typically chooses a spot nearby where she won’t be disturbed by my movements, and Misty just wishes I’d stop fidgeting, lol.

by

Watching Small Soldiers (1998) for the first time in a very long time, I think there is just so much wrong with the story that you’ve got to remember the suspension of disbelief factor. Even as a kid, I found it amusing that it calls for compressing at least a decade of R&D into three months to create a children’s toy: that would have to cost more than most people’s first car, just to break even. That’s the least of the issues versus reality.

Thing is, much as when I was a kid, the concept is entertaining enough that I can do that suspension of disbelief thing 🤪

Reality holes aside, there’s a lot more to it that makes it an entertaining yarn. Actually, I kinda wish they had made a sequel just for the hell of it.

by

Windows 10X Leaks Show A Mobile OS World I Want No Part Of

There’s probably two kinds of people that crept out of their terminals over the decades. Those that want what they’re used to, and those who want something new. You can hazard a guess as to which the author is.
Personally, I don’t really care about having a “Desktop” experience on my laptop, so much as desktop class processing power. Why? Because it’s software that’s become the bottleneck.
There’s a reason why we still say “Desktop” experience but laptops came to dominate the PC world. As the laptop form factor evolved: it came to run the same software as the microcomputers people were already using. We were just pulling off a functional desktop, and no one had the resources or the inclination to optimize software for a mobile device, nor learn how to navigate it. Yet laptops largely came into the own because they are mobile devices, and able to run the same applications as our desktops with close enough processing power to be worth it. Whether your mobility is every day or every month, a laptop is a mobile device compared to hauling a tower, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and a cart with a car battery around.
So needless to say, the most fucks anyone has had to give in the land of desktops is where laptop capabilities and older desktops intersect on specs. Beyond that, software developers don’t tend to distinguish much between desktop and laptop.
But now phones and tablets exist, and make your desktop centric human interface guidelines look more like a calculator watch than something that adapted your fingers. Laptops are becoming more tablet like over time, and the software experiences have to adapt to the changing norms of hardware or face the long roads to obsolescence and extinction. 
by

iPadOS Challenge – Ditching the Laptop for a Week

The issues of file system and persistence from about 15 minutes onwards, are the two I notice most frequently, being a tablet whore from imported from another platform.

How Brad describes the gap between a folder and the photos app as a file system, is a real systemic problem to the operating system. Because traditionally, iPhone doesn’t have a file system for people to go mucking with. And while that’s usually a good thing in my opinion, there are just times when having the whole files thing at your fingertips is productive. Considering that iPadOS 13 is the first time Apple shipped a real file manager, and the Files app actually shipped two years ago, I have some forgiveness for that one. Because let’s be honest, the platform has spent most of its life without any real file system.

The way I look at this is pretty simple. Open app → go browse file crap, isn’t how I want to use my machines. But being able to stuff a file in a folder with special meaning to apps, is a handy thing.

The issue of persistence is a simple reality. iOS, and Android prioritize what you’re doing, and have a history of, by modern standards, very memory constrained environments. One of the things I liked about Android Jelly Bean and the rise of 2 GB of memory was how rare things would get reaped. In Android land, it’s kinda disappeared as an issue as devices begin to have comical levels of memory for a mobile. iOS also works pretty well but occasionally blurps. I mostly see grumbly things in the sense like Evernote → switch app, lock screen, whatever, and then → Evernote again, often my position is reaped. I might be in a previously snapshotted note or I might have to wait for the note to refresh, and have to go reset my cursor position. That gets old, when you’ve got like ten screenfuls of text in a journal entry. To keep your current task fast, you’ve got to reap your previous tasks in some form.

Difference is if you workhorse your desktop: you will grind it to a halt. That’s why our machines now have oodles and oodles of memory, and slow spinning platters are going the way of to floppy diskette. ‘Cuz speed and good over cost. If you’ve ever experienced what true virtual memory trashing is like then you’ll never want to trade a blazing fast system for crap again. Compared to what an iPad offers, you can do a hell of a lot of shit before a modern desktop will have comparable pressure.

For reference, my desktop has three times the memory of iPad Pro, and my laptop has four times the memory installed. My iPad has two to four times as much memory as most iPad models, depending on whether you’re looking at what’s currently supported or production history.