tal

tal, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

It depends on the definition of "support ended". Like, there are various forms of extended support that you can pay for for versions of Windows, and some companies do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Support_lifecycle

Support for the original release of Windows XP (without a service pack) ended on August 30, 2005.[4] Both Windows XP Service Pack 1 and 1a were retired on October 10, 2006,[4] and both Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP2 reached their end of support on July 13, 2010, about 24 months after the launch of Windows XP Service Pack 3.[4] The company stopped general licensing of Windows XP to OEMs and terminated retail sales of the operating system on June 30, 2008, 17 months after the release of Windows Vista.[114] However, an exception was announced on April 3, 2008, for OEMs producing what it defined as "ultra low-cost personal computers", particularly netbooks, until one year after the availability of Windows 7 on October 22, 2009. Analysts felt that the move was primarily intended to compete against Linux-based netbooks, although Microsoft's Kevin Hutz stated that the decision was due to apparent market demand for low-end computers with Windows.[115]

So for those, we're all definitely a decade past the end of normal support. However, they have their extended support packages that can be purchased, and we aren't a decade past the end of those...but most users probably aren't actually getting those:

On April 14, 2009, Windows XP exited mainstream support and entered the extended support phase; Microsoft continued to provide security updates every month for Windows XP, however, free technical support, warranty claims, and design changes were no longer being offered. Extended support ended on April 8, 2014, over 12 years after the release of Windows XP; normally Microsoft products have a support life cycle of only 10 years.[118] Beyond the final security updates released on April 8, no more security patches or support information are provided for XP free-of-charge; "critical patches" will still be created, and made available only to customers subscribing to a paid "Custom Support" plan.[119] As it is a Windows component, all versions of Internet Explorer for Windows XP also became unsupported.[120]

In January 2014, it was estimated that more than 95% of the 3 million automated teller machines in the world were still running Windows XP (which largely replaced IBM's OS/2 as the predominant operating system on ATMs); ATMs have an average lifecycle of between seven and ten years, but some have had lifecycles as long as 15. Plans were being made by several ATM vendors and their customers to migrate to Windows 7-based systems over the course of 2014, while vendors have also considered the possibility of using Linux-based platforms in the future to give them more flexibility for support lifecycles, and the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) has since endorsed Windows 10 as a further replacement.[121] However, ATMs typically run the embedded variant of Windows XP, which was supported through January 2016.[122] As of May 2017, around 60% of the 220,000 ATMs in India still run Windows XP.[123]

Furthermore, at least 49% of all computers in China still ran XP at the beginning of 2014. These holdouts were influenced by several factors; prices of genuine copies of later versions of Windows in the country are high, while Ni Guangnan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences warned that Windows 8 could allegedly expose users to surveillance by the United States government,[124] and the Chinese government banned the purchase of Windows 8 products for government use in May 2014 in protest of Microsoft's inability to provide "guaranteed" support.[125] The government also had concerns that the impending end of support could affect their anti-piracy initiatives with Microsoft, as users would simply pirate newer versions rather than purchasing them legally. As such, government officials formally requested that Microsoft extend the support period for XP for these reasons. While Microsoft did not comply with their requests, a number of major Chinese software developers, such as Lenovo, Kingsoft and Tencent, will provide free support and resources for Chinese users migrating from XP.[126] Several governments, in particular those of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, elected to negotiate "Custom Support" plans with Microsoft for their continued, internal use of Windows XP; the British government's deal lasted for a year, and also covered support for Office 2003 (which reached end-of-life the same day) and cost £5.5 million.[127]

For the typical, individual end user, one probably wants to have been off Windows XP by 2008.

tal, 2 years ago

I asked someone who wrote a huge reddit post about it, and they responded with "idk, I just looked at it and didn't get it."

UI labs record a person trying to use something for the first time so they can see what they get stuck on. Like, mouse movements, clicks, even eye-tracking.

Not saying that the Lemmy or kbin devs should be doing that right now, as they've got full plates. Or that Reddit did this. But understanding where and why people get stuck is a big part of working on UIs.

tal, 2 years ago

I like that kbin/lemmy we can choose whatever fucking avatar we want instead of being limited to customizing our snoz or wtf Reddit calls their mascot thing.

"Snoo". It's a space alien.

tal, 2 years ago

I think that "magazine" is fine. As is "sublemmy". But I kind of am not enthusiastic about having two different words for them, unless there are future plans for them to act very differently.

From a user standpoint, unless he's talking about the internals of the server involved, there isn't really a difference. Saying "sublemmy/magazine" is just verbose and annoying. I'm on Kevin, but I want to be able to refer to magazines/sublemmies in a way approachable to all the people reading the content.

tal, 2 years ago

Whilst I was trying to get a grip on how Lemmy & kbin interact, Lemmy seems to have blocked kbin access.

That was lemmy.ml, not all of Lemmy. Lemmy.ml is an important instance -- one of the larger Lemmy instances, and it is run by the Lemmy devs -- but it's still but one instance among many.

tal, 2 years ago

Kbin doesn't presently auto-hyperlink the !sub text.

I expect that it will in the future.

tal, 2 years ago

Shows up in site searches on Google, as the other response points out.

I don't know about the update frequency.

tal, 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse#Fediverse_software_packages

tal, 2 years ago

The only time it's disappointed me was when I was trying to use it -- among a variety of other substances -- to deal with something other than sticker goo.

A few years back, a bunch of electronic devices were sold in the US that used some sort of rubberized coating that gave them a nice grippy feeling. Unfortunately, it turns out that after a couple of years, the coating degraded and turned into an incredibly sticky mess. I had a Grundig G6 Aviator shortwave radio that was affected, as well as a few other devices. It felt a bit like sticker adhesive, but trying to clean the stuff off with Goo Gone didn't work well (ultimately, isopropyl alcohol and a lot of elbow grease wound up being my most-successful combination).

But for what it is actually billed for, adhesive residue, I've had good experiences.

Note that Goo Gone, or at least the variant I have, has a quite-strong citrus smell, which I assume is there to mask some less-pleasant smell that the active ingredients have. So when I use the stuff, everything nearby smells like oranges for a while. Haven't had a situation where that's a problem yet, but thought I'd mention it in case it would be an issue for anyone else using it.

tal, 2 years ago (edited 2 years ago)

A couple points:

The lighter fluid that the parent poster is talking about, Ronsonol, is not the stuff that goes in butane lighters, nor is it the "lighter fluid" used to start charcoal barbecues. He's talking about the stuff that goes into Zippo and similar refillable lighters, stuff that's also called "naphtha".

If you want to use it as a solvent with much frequency, you can get the stuff at dramatically-lower unit prices in much larger containers than what Ronsonol is sold at.

https://www.amazon.com/2-Pack-VM-NAPTHA-QT-KLEAN-STRIP/dp/B01LWRQPWK/

Keep in mind that this is potent stuff and can damage some surfaces. For example, another user is talking about using Goo Gone above to remove adhesive from paint on a wall. Naphtha is more-or-less paint thinner -- your wall's paint will dissolve in it. It'd be fine on glass, what OP is intending it for, but if you use it elsewhere, be careful with it, try it on a small amount of the surface somewhere first to see if it damages it.

It can also cause skin irritation. Probably not a big deal unless you're regularly using it, but worth keeping in mind.

I also have a container of white spirits, which are similar but less volatile.

tal, 2 years ago (edited 2 years ago)

If it's a rubberized coating on new devices, it may be a similar formula that doesn't have the degradation problem. I haven't personally had any devices do that in several years (not saying that there aren't products that do, mind).

And I remember that when the coating was new, before it broke down into a horrible sticky mess in a few years after purchase, it did feel pretty good to me. And it seemed pretty durable -- like, it didn't wear through or anything.

Just that when the Stickyocalypse did happen, it was awful.

I remember reading on Reddit once that people who bought a variety of dress shoes with a particular type of substance used in their soft soles had something similar happen. For a few years, many types of shoes from different manufacturers would break down and degrade in the closet. You take them out after a couple years, and they just crumbled apart. Wasn't a sticky mess, but I bet that people who rarely wore those shoes were pretty irked.

googles

Here's an example of one manufacturer that sold affected shoes. Apparently the problem was polyurethane being affected by hydrolysis.

Anyway, point is, the industry moved away from that particular fiasco after a couple of years when the problem came to light, switched to similar substances without the problem. I wouldn't be surprised if the electronics industry has done the same.

tal, 2 years ago (edited 2 years ago)

WD40 is great for dealing with things that are rusted in place, which is what it's supposed to be used for. It's just that it's not a great lubricating oil, and people often recommend it for use as that. Too thin and leaves a waxy residue to repel more water from rusting the surface, which you often don't want in things that you're lubricating.

tal, 2 years ago

I don't smoke, but I absolutely adore the sound that a Zippo makes when flicked open and struck, and wanted to get one a while back. I was kind of appalled at the fluid pricing -- the Zippo-brand fluid is even pricier, and I've seen the Ronsonol fluid itself recommended as a lower-priced alternative.

There are a lot of other things that people can burn in the refillable lighters, but I went through various testing that other people did and tried some myself, and none other than naphtha are really satisfactory. Some -- like white spirits -- aren't volatile enough, and won't maintain a consistent flame. Some, like gasoline, or low-water-content isopropyl alcohol, are too volatile and evaporate even more quickly than the regular fluid does or risk making an out-of-control fire.

Also works for the hand-warmers, which use the same fuel (and go through a great deal more of it than the lighters, so it's more-important there).

On an side note, I really wish that lighters of that sort would introduce some type of gasket that isn't dissolved by the fuel to help reduce the fuel vapor leaking out of the device when closed, or maybe some sort of other mechanism that seals the fuel reservoir off when the lighters are closed. As it stands, for a regular smoker, the fuel loss isn't a huge deal, but for someone who infrequently uses a lighter of the sort, the fuel loss is much more obnoxious -- it only takes several weeks for the reservoir to empty itself, in my experience.

tal, 2 years ago

I use Goo Gone for sticker adhesive removal. Works fine on various surfaces in my experience.

tal, 1 year ago

Han is the captain. The captain of a ship makes the calls as to what it does, and the Millennium Falcon came back.

I think a better question is why Luke gets special recognition versus the other pilots. I mean, he happened to be the one to make the final shot that blew up the Death Star, but everyone else in the squadrons went in too.

tal, 2 years ago

They should really have used a polling site off Reddit to avoid that, but then, I suppose that if Reddit honestly got caught fiddling the scores -- like, say, a huge instant jump at the end -- that would be pretty catastrophic from a PR standpoint for the admins doing it.

tal, 2 years ago

I assume that he's comparing the migration of Digg users to Reddit when Digg rolled out its very unpopular v4 interface to Reddit making the current changes to their policies today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_revolt#Digg_v4_revolt_and_migration_to_Reddit

In the past, Reddit has cited not wanting to be in Digg's shoes as a reason for keeping around the old.reddit.com interface for users who did not like the new one, so not wanting to do a Digg v4 is a consideration that I believe has been on the minds of the company in past years.

tal, 2 years ago (edited 2 years ago)

For the US, June 2023:

https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/mortgages/todays-mortgage-rates-for-june-26-2023-rates-trend-higher/

For a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage, the average rate you'll pay is 7.06%

The average rate for a 15-year, fixed mortgage is 6.46%

tal, 1 year ago

republic candidate

Republican candidate

tal, 2 years ago

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Diagnostic_Port.txt&sortOrder=Sort+by+Date&topic=Hardware+Design

Expandability, or the lack thereof, was far and away the most controversial aspect of the original Macintosh hardware design. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was a strong believer in hardware expandability, and he endowed the Apple II with luxurious expandability in the form of seven built-in slots for peripheral cards, configured in a clever architecture that allowed each card to incorporate built-in software on its own ROM chip. This flexibility allowed the Apple II to be adapted to a wider range of applications, and quickly spawned a thriving third-party hardware industry.

But Jef Raskin had a very different point of view. He thought that slots were inherently complex, and were one of the obstacles holding back personal computers from reaching a wider audience. He thought that hardware expandability made it more difficult for third party software writers since they couldn't rely on the consistency of the underlying hardware. His Macintosh vision had Apple cranking out millions of identical, easy to use, low cost appliance computers and since hardware expandability would add significant cost and complexity it was therefore avoided.

Apple's other co-founder, Steve Jobs, didn't agree with Jef about many things, but they both felt the same way about hardware expandability: it was a bug instead of a feature. Steve was reportedly against having slots in the Apple II back in the days of yore, and felt even stronger about slots for the Mac. He decreed that the Macintosh would remain perpetually bereft of slots, enclosed in a tightly sealed case, with only the limited expandability of the two serial ports.

Mac hardware designer Burrell Smith and his assistant Brian Howard understood Steve's rationale, but they felt differently about the proper course of action. Burrell had already watched the Macintosh's hopelessly optimistic schedule start to slip indefinitely, and he was unable to predict when the Mac's pioneering software would be finished, if ever. He was afraid that Moore's Law would make his delayed hardware obsolete before it ever came to market. He thought it was prudent to build in as much flexibility as possible, as long as it didn't cost too much.

Burrell decided to add a single, simple slot to his Macintosh design, which made the processor's bus accessible to peripherals, that wouldn't cost very much, especially if it wasn't used. He worked out the details and proposed it at the weekly staff meeting, but Steve immediately nixed his proposal, stating that there was no way that the Mac would even have a single slot.

But Burrell was not that easily thwarted. He realized that the Mac was never going to have something called a slot, but perhaps the same functionality could be called something else. After talking it over with Brian, they decided to start calling it the "diagnostic port" instead of a slot, arguing that it would save money during manufacturing if testing devices could access the processor bus to diagnose manufacturing errors. They didn't mention that the same port would also provide the functionality of a slot.

This was received positively at first, but after a couple weeks, engineering manager Rod Holt caught on to what was happening, probably aided by occasional giggles when the diagnostic port was mentioned. "That things really a slot, right? You're trying to sneak in a slot!", Rod finally accused us at the next engineering meeting. "Well, that's not going to happen!"

Even though the diagnostic port was scuttled, it wasn't the last attempt at surreptitious hardware expandability. When the Mac digital board was redesigned for the last time in August 1982, the next generation of RAM chips was already on the horizon. The Mac used 16 64Kbit RAM chips, giving it 128K of memory. The next generation chip was 256Kbits, giving us 512K bytes instead, which made a huge difference.

Burrell was afraid the 128Kbyte Mac would seem inadequate soon after launch, and there were no slots for the user to add RAM. He realized that he could support 256Kbit RAM chips simply by routing a few extra lines on the PC board, allowing adventurous people who knew how to wield a soldering gun to replace their RAM chips with the newer generation. The extra lines would only cost pennies to add.

But once again, Steve Jobs objected, because he didn't like the idea of customers mucking with the innards of their computer. He would also rather have them buy a new 512K Mac instead of them buying more RAM from a third-party. But this time Burrell prevailed, because the change was so minimal. He just left it in there and no one bothered to mention it to Steve, much to the eventual benefit of customers, who didn't have to buy a whole new Mac to expand their memory.

tal, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Posting from a kbin.social account to avoid the lemmy.today issues -- on lemmy.today, the current behavior looks like the messages in the queue go out when the instance is restarted, but not until then. It's running 0.19.1.

I am not the admin there, but wanted to make that available in case other instances are affected and trying to diagnose similar behavior; federation problems themselves can cause communication problems in trying to understand the issue.

tal, 1 year ago

I can see your comment from lemmy.today and on lemmy.ml and on kbin.social.

I can see a response to you from @dandroid on lemmy.today and on lemmy.ml. I cannot see that response from kbin.social.

tal, 2 years ago

https://www.navyband.navy.mil/music/ceremonial-music/bugle-calls/taps.mp3

tal, 2 years ago (edited 2 years ago)

The Navy also had a recording of Taps on YouTube, but what with the ad-blocker changes happening at YouTube right now, figured that the Navy site would be a preferable source.