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User: mattventura

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  1. Re: It was the first standard for video? on In Memoriam: VGA (hackaday.com) · · Score: 1

    What's the advantage of having an overly thin laptop? I can see the advantage of weight reduction or less power usage. But what exactly does a slightly less thick laptop do, other than make it less structurally sound and force more stuff to be non-upgradable?

  2. Re:What the doctor ordered... on Running "rm -rf /" Is Now Bricking Linux Systems (phoronix.com) · · Score: 1

    Then rm rejects the argument because you have to specify --no-preserve-root in order to actually delete /. You haven't actually been able to rm -rf / for years now.

  3. Re:Captain Obvious to the rescue!!! on Running "rm -rf /" Is Now Bricking Linux Systems (phoronix.com) · · Score: 1

    I think the transition of malware from mischief to profit puts a stop to that. I can change voltages on my motherboard with a software utility, if someone wanted to cause hardware damage they could easily do so in malware.

  4. Re:Android? on Microsoft's Windows Phone Platform Is Dead (windows10update.com) · · Score: 1

    Or they just scrap their phone business entirely and continue making money by patent trolling the Android phone manufacturers.

  5. Re:If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me on Microsoft's Windows Phone Platform Is Dead (windows10update.com) · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The whole "partner preinstalls" thing is why I was so disappointed with Android. I thought it would be a nice alternative to the Apple walled garden, and that either Google would force handset manufacturers to not preinstall crapware or at the very least would allow me to install a stock OS install like I can do with a computer full of bloatware. Then, not only did neither of those happen, but Google requires a paid license for the stock apps as well as access to their app store. And of course, the "real" versions of the apps (as in the ones you'd find on a handset, not the AOSP ones) aren't even open source.

    Android had the potential to be something good, but they ruined it.

  6. Re:Article paid by Apple to boo over it. on Microsoft's Windows Phone Platform Is Dead (windows10update.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft has strength in its future ecosystem where apps will run on Xbox, phone, desktop, tablet, tables, HoloLens, IoT, and so on. IF they get that going, it could blow all the others away. Of course that's future and not today, so this strength is only hypothetical and as of this moment they don't get many points here.

    No, no, no, just no. The whole "homogenize mobile and desktop" line of thought is what gave us garbage like Windows 8. Targeting all devices means you have to follow the lowest common denominator. That, or implement platform-specific code, which is basically what you'd be doing for any cross-platform program to begin with. Programming aside, an app will often (even unintenionally) be designed around one platform, so even if it "works" on other platforms, it's not a particularly good experience. For example, an app designed for mobile might not have proper keyboard shortcuts on the desktop version, or an app designed for a desktop might involve too much typing to be usable on mobile.

  7. Re:Idea for anti-troll group on Newegg Sues Patent Troll After Troll Dropped Its Own Lawsuit (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    The problem is that sometimes the victims of patent trolls are also patent trolls themselves. See: Microsoft.

  8. Re:No Thanks on 1 In 3 Home Routers Will Be Used As Public Wi-Fi Hotspots By 2017 · · Score: 1

    The real reason it's a load of shit is because if they have the spare bandwidth to provide hotspot services without impacting my network performance, that means they could use that bandwidth to provide me with better service. But they don't.

  9. Re:Love - hate affair on Apple Court Testimony Reveals Why It Refuses To Unlock iPhones For Police (dailydot.com) · · Score: 2

    In what way are they above the law? Apple doesn't comply with requests to decrypt phones because it's not physically possible for them to do so. If law enforcement told me to walk on water, being unable to do that doesn't put me above the law.

  10. Re:Ia my impression wrong? on 2016's First Batch of Anti-Science Education Bills Arrive In Oklahoma (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Probably the closest group on the liberal side in terms of kookiness, is the so called SJW's. But that is a very small and not organized group, and most people recognize them for what they are. Not a real threat, more part of the noise.

    While they're mostly a joke in the US, that's unfortunately not true in other countries. Look at the president of Canada, for example.

  11. Re:Just use whatever the Germans do on France Says AZERTY Keyboards Fail French Typists (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    European keyboard layouts are overall a mess. I'd imagine French isn't the only layout with such problems. Not to mention the ISO-style left shift and enter keys are less efficient than their ANSI counterparts. If they could make international layouts based on ANSI, it would speed up typing a bit, plus reduce manufacturing costs because PC/keyboard manufacturers wouldn't have to design and build two different layouts. They could just print whatever symbols they need on the keys and be done with it.

  12. Re:I'm sure they did not claim this... on Volvo Promises 'Death-Proof' Cars By 2020 (extremetech.com) · · Score: 1

    Ejection seats

  13. Re:What I do for my passwords on The Most Popular Bad Passwords of 2015 (dice.com) · · Score: 1

    #3 is unrealistic. It would require someone to specifically be targeting me. When a password list gets leaked, they'll try the username/email+password at other sites. If it doesn't work, they forget about it and move on to the next. It's enough security to not be the low-hanging fruit.

  14. Re:do most accounts need to be secure? on The Most Popular Bad Passwords of 2015 (dice.com) · · Score: 1

    The worst is the ones that have some sort of restriction on what characters you *can't* use in the password, because it means whoever programmed it had no clue what they were doing.

  15. Re:News for Nerds? on 10-Year-Old Muslim Boy Probed For 'Terrorist House' Spelling Error (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    The funny part is that every story that seems to not fit manages to get an above-average number of comments. I don't think I've seen an actual tech story in ages with 1000+ comments, yet there's at least been a few shooting and terror related cases with 4-digit comment counts.

  16. Re:Use case on Benefits of a Homebrew Router (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    What's wrong with "fixed config" here? It's not like network technology is going to change significantly soon. If you've got two gigabit interfaces and enough horsepower to route between them at line speeds, you'll be set for a long time. Sure, if you start feature creeping it might become an issue, but I'd rather use the right tool for the job.

  17. Re:Power on Benefits of a Homebrew Router (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Because it's negligible past a certain point. Who cares if it uses 25w instead of 5w, that's a whole $2 a month for me.

  18. Not really, Intel beats AMD so hard in IPC that even with half the cores they still tend to pull better multithreaded performance. Just like how you could have a well-designed 4-cylinder engine that outperforms a poorly-designed 8-cylinder.

  19. Re:Way to build trust on Clinton Hints At Tech Industry Compromise Over Encryption (huffingtonpost.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Technically, you could say the same about Trump. There's no way some of the stuff he wants to do is actually going to happen. Mexico isn't going to pay for a wall, and a database of Muslims is blatantly unconstitutional.

  20. Re:Trump just says stuff on Trump Says He'd Make Apple Build Computers In the US (businessinsider.com) · · Score: 1

    You won't stop drug traffic with a wall. Here's a list of some of the ways cartels get drugs past the border:
    1. Using cranes and catapults to put things over the fence
    2. Ultralight aircraft
    3. Boats, subs, and semisubs
    4. Tunnels
    5. Ingesting drugs and traveling to the US normally
    At best, a wall fixes people cutting through the fence, and poor attempts at #1. But if there's a market for drugs, they'll find a way to get them there.

  21. Re:What's the big fuss? on Use Code From Stack Overflow? You Must Provide Attribution (stackexchange.com) · · Score: 1

    The problem is that you will no longer be able to directly post code that is covered by a license which is not compatible with the license SO uses. So you wouldn't be able to post GPL code, for example.

  22. Re: How very Republucan... on Netflix Decides To Crack Down On VPN Users (netflix.com) · · Score: 1

    Same argument as taxi medallion holders vs Uber. Clearly, customers have spoken, and they prefer Netflix. If the CableCos want customers back, they should actually be competitive rather than anticompetitive things such as exclusive contracts.

  23. Re:Don't try to do too much in one program on The Best Ways To Simplify Your Code? (dice.com) · · Score: 1

    It's not necessarily about doing too much, it's about doing stuff that nobody was even asking for to begin with. Notice the common trend with Lennart's software is "the current solution is bad in some corner case, let's replace it with something that's worse in every other situation". Perfect example is the new interface naming standards: all it does is fix a few corner cases that could already be done with udev rules, at the expense of less simplicity for general cases.

  24. Don't worry, Poettering and friends are doing their best to turn Linux into Windows.

  25. Re:WebGL has had similiar issues on Nvidia GPUs Can Leak Data From Google Chrome's Incognito Mode (softpedia.com) · · Score: 1

    It's true that zeroing upon reallocation is slow, but wouldn't zeroing in the background before deallocating do the trick?