6730b

Finally got the Dell Power Manager app to install (after x years and x failed attempts > "not compatible with your operating system" install roll backs (w10 ltsc 1809). Tried earlier app versions and lots of other possible workarounds, to no avail. Just recently had another go, digging the net for users reporting similar install fails, came over a reddit post stating that "Distributed Transaction Coordinator" must run, for unknown reason disabled in my setup. Miracle, Power app installed and working. That install fail was a recurring irritation on an otherwise perfect pc+os combination. The app may prove usefull or not, wahtever, very satisfying getting that install success, also dispelled doubts about ltsc having compatibilty problems.

Jut a late update, TPM update executed flawlessly.

Draconian - Rivers Between Us

In Flames - Sounds Of A Playground Fading

Time to congratulate w8.1 here (original installation + all updates, open shell). 9 years of astonishingly perfect & stable service, OS solid as rock. Same for the old Dell e7440, behaves like new (even the battery has aged well). Laptop in daily use, browsing \ email \ yt streaming \ music playing. MS continues to provide daily Defender updates. (so far) been enough security for my kind of net activity. & the old Tosh mentionned in post above also alive as well.

If of any remote interest (it's a 15" and some years old now) my Precision 5540 I7 is remarkably silent (highly appreciated). Even when quite hot (like at the bottom cover), fans won't start until having a very good reason to do so, ie real \ sustained use of cpu\gpu. & no coil whine and that sort of thing. So "completely silent under light work\internet browsing\picture editing\idle etc" laptops exists, problem, one must usually buy first then find out if lucky or not.

Degoogle and privacy, my take on the subject. Quite easy really to acheive a good rate without too much hassle, and still keep the useful \ needed bits available as options. They gracefully offer to disable (+ easy to uninstall things with ADB if one wishes going deeper). A reset \ new phone got no need to set up with any google (or phone brand) account or email. As for apps, pretty ok for me just starting with whatever the phone maker delivers in their setup (some will label an app bloat, some may label same app useful as gold), then tune into needs & wants > disable, uninstall, permissions, stop data activity etc. Got a google account, an absolute need for some short commando raids into the playstore to get things like banking apps updated. So enabling a few g-store related apps for a few minutes, then disabling and\or stop data access. As for general apps I use apkmirror etc. In my case a Samsung account is acceptable, fine to update their own set of apps. No real name or personal data there, no payment things etc. Looking at my google account (fake name & personal data etc), shows never bought anything, never been anyplace (am using Here WeGo, offline navigation, complete country maps predownloaded), never searched for anything, no sharing, seeing nothing except the list of apps in use. Of course they surely still get lots of info like region\cell towers\imei\phone brand whatever, but avoiding that and one moves into pigeon post territory. Example screeshot, in addition to the 'disbaled' a bunch of preinstalled stuff from both Samsung and Google have been ADB'ed away. + Netguard (screenshot) blocking all data except for those apps I use. Result is the wanted half-dumb\severly-notgoogle phones for normal daily routine (email\sms\internet\some social\bluetooth\photo etc), & can be non-dumb'ed anytime when needed. F.ex. monthly security updates, am keeping the related apps on the phone, only allowing them a short window of data\wifi access for doing the download. This imo is the major privacy tool, Netguard (and great for curbing data use if on a monthly quota). And the ADB program (with backup\restore\snapshots > useful after any failed late night experiments like ending up with a phone that can't make a call or take a photo lol, so make a plan and do some research :0) https://adbappcontrol.com/en/

Apple

Looking back at the SSD history, "OCZ's listed MSRP of $499 for the 32GB drive and $1,099 for the 64GB" (+40% in today's money). Better speed than HD's but no immense revolution, and surely questionable reliability\lifespan. Early adopters > "You can always tell who the pioneers are because they have arrows in their back and are lying face down in the dirt" :O) https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/03/ssds-in-2008-fast-speeds-200mbsec-over-price-cuts/

^^^^ The above affects only non-ltsc \ newer w10's? Posts probably belongs in the general w10 board. ltsc 2019 (1809) got KB5034127. btw no WinRE recovery partition om my system. As always, no issues, no new features.

Astralia - Solstice

Draconian (as usual, sorry for the male vocals lol) Sleepwalkers Sorrow Of Sophia

And survived another one :O) along with a mysterious 'TPM 2.0 firmware update'. Both labeled CRITICAL Mixing such updates with Bitlocker = suspense until sucessful boot. Got 100% trust in bitlocker itself, but way less in new firmwares' possible implications (and in own deads ...or misdeads lol). Of course got backups of contents and keys ready if anything should ever go overboard.

^^^ Using several Seagate 2.5", alive and well after many years.

Seas of Years - The Ever Shifting Fields

Wisihing everyone a good time, now and next year !

12\23 kb invited in. Nothing added or removed, nothing broke, nothing changed. As expected from the best OS on the planet :O) btw, anyone looking for ltsc (and nearly everything else), check out godeal, 'legal greymarket', has been offering keys (comes with working iso download link after purchase) for many, many years. Example https://eu.godeal24.com/windows-10-enterprise-ltsc-2021-1-pc.html?g24=g31205 (Please edit post if contrary to any forum rules. Thanks)

Am (very?) critical of many of Musk's whims (example twitter) and pseudopolitical-social derailments. ...but what he managed to create, like tesla & spacex ?? Profound and unending admiration. Especially the spacex tech, remember seeing the first successfull rocket return landing. What an achievement. Now, he surely did not design the inside and engines of the spaceships, but got that immense skill in gathering and inspiring the best brains available, and keep everyone working towards a goal. But for twitter seemed he did the opposite, best brains (and now best advertisers) left \ fired, ftm his behavior looks like he's aiming for, and would welcome, trouble and crashes instead of sucessful landing and prosperity.

Some retro :O) Journey - Lights

"Elon Musk said the account of right-wing extremist Alex Jones would be reinstated on X -\- The move from the billionaire Musk, who has promoted conspiracy theories himself and elevated a number of extremist voices since taking over the platform, is likely to impact X even further as companies distance themselves from the troubled platform, which has seen hate speech and conspiracy theories surge in the wake of his decisions." Yeah, free speach!! Like in another time, Musk sure would have reinstated Heinrich Himmler. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/09/business/alex-jones-restored-x-elon-musk-poll/index.html

^^^ interesting viewpoints. Still satisfied with FF here. esr & normal, noscript + ublock origin (+ some firewall preventing FF's own background chat). But... was expecting to see changes in YT behavior, nothing so far. Seems ublock (+ noscript?) still does it's job. Anyone attacked by ads lately, remedy implemented ?

The guy reminds me of John McAfee, seems to share some similar psychological (psychiatric?) 'features and assets' 😃 McAfee did try a US presidential run, but still remained sane enough to not try to transfer humanity to mars (or whatever Musk is secretly dreaming of) 😃

It's winter here... so what's better than Insomnium - Winter's Gate (As always, sorry for the 'vocals', the rest (power, arrangements, production, musicians) is great. Am wishing more bands in this style would do instrumental versions of their albums :O)

"Don’t advertise. Go f*** yourself” The mad genius, seems madness steadily takes the upperhand. What next, run for president? 😆 Could be an interesting show (would be 2 ego-nutcases in the race, tearing each other apart). https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/11/elon-musk-on-x-antisemitism-controversy-dont-advertise-go-f-yourself/

Apart from potential hacking, this is the weakness of relying on having one's stuff out there somewhere. Whatever did happen, maybe not impacting many this time and may be fixed, still makes one think the days of personal backups on large HD's are not over (...should not be over). "The horror of logging in only to find everything since May has vanished" https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/27/google_drive_files_disappearing/ "We’re investigating reports of an issue impacting a limited subset of Drive for desktop users" https://support.google.com/drive/thread/245055606/google-drive-files-suddenly-disappeared-the-drive-literally-went-back-to-condition-in-may-2023?hl=en