Aaron44126

NVIDIA has launched the 530 driver branch today for "enterprise" GPUs. https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/199989/en-us/ There is also a corresponding GeForce release (but no Studio driver release yet). https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/199991/en-us/ A new feature is NVIDIA RTX "Video Super Resolution", available on Chromium-based browsers with Ampere GPUs or better (and will presumably be available in other browsers & apps later on...?). They will do AI upscaling to maybe do a better job cleaning up low-resolution video for high-resolution displays than the standard scaling algorithm does.

From Microsoft today, we have some news on the next feature updates coming to Windows 11 (available today on-demand, or will be rolled out to everyone on March 14 with the security update). https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/continuous-innovation-coming-to-windows-11-in-march/ba-p/3754057 Without sacrificing quality? Right... Windows 11 quality continues to be suspect for me. Apparently you haven't been able to sleep a Windows 11 system with a game controller connected until this month. Regarding pushing forward without testing carefully enough, they were recently offering Windows 11 upgrades to Windows 10 systems that don't even meet the hardware requirements for Windows 11. Anyway, this feature drip without regular (non-business) end users really having a way to control when changes are pushed upon them also continues to be an issue. (Maybe I have concerns about the AI-enhanced Bing search taskbar widget that is being added...) Not that I expect this to ever change... So, here are some more details about the update. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/02/28/introducing-a-big-update-to-windows-11-making-the-everyday-easier-including-bringing-the-new-ai-powered-bing-to-the-taskbar/ OK, there's some appreciable stuff in here. Screen recording in the Snipping Tool is cool (I've always wondered why Windows doesn't have a built-in screen recording function), as well as tabs for Notepad. Better iOS support for the phone link app is welcome as well, for iPhone users anyway, but apparently that is not going to be production-ready and will be available for Insiders only for now. https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2023/02/28/previewing-phone-link-for-iphone-users-on-windows-11-with-windows-insiders/ Looking forward to trying it all out ..... in another ≈21 months when there is a long-term support version.

On the topic. There are announcements today about new features coming to Windows 11 in March. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/02/28/introducing-a-big-update-to-windows-11-making-the-everyday-easier-including-bringing-the-new-ai-powered-bing-to-the-taskbar/ One that caught my eye is "Introducing Phone Link for iOS in preview". Apparently, Microsoft is (finally) adding their own iOS integration and it includes messaging support. Wonder if it'll work better than Intel's.... (Glad to see progress in this area, but I'm still not likely to upgrade to Windows 11 until towards the end of next year, at the earliest. Maybe I'll give this a try in a VM after the update is out.) [Edit] There's another article specifically about this. Looks like it might be available to "Insiders" only for now? Kind of misleading since most of Panay's post was about features included with the March 14 production update to Windows 11. https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2023/02/28/previewing-phone-link-for-iphone-users-on-windows-11-with-windows-insiders/

That's one way to get off of Windows. I have given it deep consideration. I use other Apple products (iPhone, Apple Watch, Apple TV, etc.) and I'm aware of how slick the interaction between devices in the ecosystem can be. I'm also quite familiar with macOS (I was system admin for many years for a school that used Macs in labs and for faculty/staff systems). And, it would be easier to transition my "workload" to macOS than to Linux, just because of the applications available. I even have a Mac Mini that exists to allow me to build iOS apps (but mostly I use it to do iMessage from my Windows PC via a VNC connection). I also applaud Apple for having the best rating for "treating end user privacy as more important than a higher profit margin" among the big tech companies (though they are not perfect in that regard). ...But... Man do I dislike the keyboard layout on their laptops. Give me a numeric keypad, home/end and PgUp/PgDn keys please...... It's not a great platform for gaming; the library for native games is pretty limited, and I wouldn't look forward to have to fight to get whatever Windows game that I want to play working through VMware Fusion / Crossover / etc. Apple does what Apple does — no guarantee that an app will still work when the yearly OS upgrade comes around, in particular if it is an older app (or game) that is no longer maintained, and it relies on something that Apple has deprecated or targets an older architecture. (Apple has consistently offered a backwards compatibility solution when they switch platforms, and that is in place with "Rosetta 2" allowing Intel x64 macOS applications to run right now. They have also consistently removed their backwards compatibility solutions after a period of time has passed, and I expect that will happen with "Rosetta 2" in due time.) Microsoft and Linux both have a much stronger commitment to backwards compatibility.

Hoping the EU actually makes good on this, we could see some additional options for third-party iMessage integration in the next year or so... https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/29/23001295/eu-law-digital-markets-act-message-interoperability-whatsapp-imessage https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/25/apple-forced-to-allow-third-party-app-stores/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act

I used M5000M for a while but my understanding is was that there is no way to push it above the stock power limit ...

AFAIK there are no other Dell laptops with CPU heatsinks that will fit this one; however, many Dell Precision laptops of this era had separate "one pipe" and "two pipe" versions of the CPU heatsink, and which one you got depended on which CPU you ordered the system with. (I actually upgraded the CPU heatsink in my Precision M6700 from "one pipe" to "two pipe".)

I haven't run into this. To start with, is your program shortcut present in either C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu (global) or C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu (user-specific)? (To show on the Start Menu, a shortcut should show in one of these locations even if the actual program is installed on another drive.) Does your program show in the full alphabetic list of programs on the Start Menu, and just not in search? Are you on Windows 10 or Windows 11?

...Anyone do Star Trek? I didn't care much for Picard season 1 and 2, but the reunion in season 3 has me interested (I've enjoyed the first two eps). The premiere is available to watch for free for a week, no subscription required (U.S. only).

(Can probably manage desktop-class performance with something like this... Who knows about battery life though.)

Twitter's Slack (primary internal communication tool) has been down since Wednesday, and it was apparently intentionally disabled by someone at Twitter (even though Twitter has also been shirking the bill so it would have probably been cut off eventually anyway), making the remaining Twitter engineers' jobs even more awesome... Twitter shut off its internal Slack, and now ‘everyone is barely working’ https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/24/23613288/twitter-slack-jira-outages-performance-degradation (Also includes some notes on the state of getting the "algorithm" ready for open sourcing.)

Had a similar thing, ordered a top panel display enclosure for my Precision M6700 (17" system) because I needed new hinges; I ordered the part from eBay and the seller sent me a 15" enclosure! Obviously didn't even come close to fitting. And they didn't respond at all when I went to request a refund. Fortunately its a pretty clear case, I sent some photos to eBay support and they refunded me directly. (If I recall, I had to wait a few days before being able to engage eBay support because they really want you to work it out with the seller directly.)

Eh. From my perspective, Windows 3.x + 9x was one thing (house of cards OS with pretty regular BSODs)... but with anything on the NT base, BSODs are almost always the result of hardware issue, driver issue, or an issue with other low-level third-party software. Whenever I run across one (very rare) I always take the steps to figure out exactly what was at fault. (Microsoft has really good documentation for diagnosing, but that can require going in through windbg/etc. and I get that not everyone knows how to do that.) The only times that I can remember it being a genuine Windows issue have been related to bugs around a brand new OS release / upgrade. My big issues with Windows 11 are the continued push towards trying to make money off of users beyond the license payment (data monetization, pushing people to Bing search to get ad revenue, aggressively pushing people to Edge to grow the install base so that they can make money off of their eCommerce "features", etc....), which I think is a generally yucky business practice ... and then the fact that they launched it in the state that they did, with no time for a proper feedback cycle, missing / dumbed down features compared to Windows 10, and so on. (Wrote all about it in my article linked in sig.) Nothing against anyone who is now using Windows 11. It's mostly fine. There are some genuinely good enhancements in there mixed in with the muck (WSA, VRR improvements, new versions of core apps like Notepad and Task Manager with real improvements). ...I'm just not going to support that direction of the product. The words are extreme but there is truth in there for sure ... Now, I don't necessarily think that they are "evil", but rather just looking for ways to make more money (it's business after all) and they are obviously not operating with the end user's best interest as the top priority in some cases. This has also gotten worse since Windows 10's release... these sorts of things happened way less in Windows 8 and earlier. Again, as one example, just look at how hard Microsoft is hawking Microsoft Edge. It's not just an advertising campaign; they've taken real, technical steps and embedded them in their products. They purposefully made it a hassle to switch the default browser to something else (rolled back after public pressure). Even now they will inject code into the Google Chrome download page to display a banner and try to convince you to stay on Edge (this article is from two days ago) — I do not want my browser modifying the page being served (unless its for malware/phishing protection). They're definitely taking real steps to try to tell people what they want or influence the products that they use, which I would argue is inappropriate and far beyond the "job" of an operating system or web browser.

I was wondering about this too. Will he post it on GitHub? Will they take pull requests? It could be a way to "improve" the algorithm without having to pay Twitter SWEs to work on it. ...Though really, nothing Elon Musk does with Twitter makes much sense so I hesitate to speculate on anything. I wouldn't be surprised if he releases "something" as open source but it's just a part of a bigger system and largely uninteresting. He does have a propensity to rush things through, and with news suddenly that this will be available "next week" I sort of doubt that Twitter folks have had much time to put together a nice or well-documented package.

Doesn't make any sense to me either. 🤷‍♂️ (But it will be interesting to look at ...)

Elon Musk says the Twitter "algorithm" will be open sourced next week... (Something he "promised" to do back when he originally announced his intent to buy Twitter.) https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1628122949185159168

I've never really taken a hard look at these laptops but a high-end barebones option is interesting. I took a look at the keyboard layout and it is not great. "End" key, but no "Home" key? (I'd rather see them put that in place of the "Pause" button, which I don't think anyone really uses...) No dedicated PgUp/PgDn either. Are there any BIOS settings or tools provided to mess with the fan behavior (other than picking from a couple of thermal profiles)? (Not planning on switching laptops anytime soon, just sort of filing this away for future reference. I'm not convinced that my next laptop will come from Dell.)

I mean ... I poked around with Linux as an alternate OS back in the 2001-2003 range and was generally confused by everything. I'm really comfortable with it now — despite not using it as a "daily driver" OS, I interact with it regularly on servers/VMs/WSL. (I actually pretty frequently pull up a WSL bash terminal on Windows to handle some sort of work that is just easier to do on Linux.) What made the difference was I took a class on it in college and learned all about navigating the terminal, bash scripting, grep/sed/etc., file system permissions, doing compilations (gcc, makefiles, etc.) and writing some simple C programs that use regular Linux system calls (rather than the C standard library) to just get a feel for the mentality behind how everything works. I'm not really sure what the starting point would be without some kind of base like that. It's easy enough to install Linux and get a desktop with a web browser and "app store", but as soon as you want to do anything even a little bit complicated, you're going to be hitting the terminal, and nothing is really explained for you. Finding a book, course, or some YouTube tutorials like @Etern4l mentioned would be critical.

You know, it was sort of slow going at first but I'm about 20 hours in and I'm really loving it. (I'm expecting my run will be in the 60-70 hour range. I only play about an hour a day so it'll take me several weeks...) I'll say that they keep adding more and more mechanics, there's a lot of depth and things to mess with (but fortunately you can ignore a lot of it if you want). I have played all of the previous games in this series and I'd say that it's probably my favorite modern JRPG series right now (dethroning Final Fantasy which has struggled to have good entries since, I dunno, IX — I did enjoy XV which I played this past summer, but it felt sort of like an incomplete game in some ways). This game's story isn't especially connected to the previous ones so I think it could be played standalone, but there are some references here and there (and I expect it might become more connected as I get towards the end, XC2 was like that).

I've always been into emulating older consoles but haven't spent much time with "modern" ones. My kids took over my Switch so it's easier to just play on my laptop so that I don't have to compete for time; I dumped my games/saves, and I've been playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3 in yuzu. (Amazing how far this has come along in a short time, basically every game I have thrown at it runs fine, and many of them can get a 4K upgrade.)

C0 is not the stepping value, it is what CPU-Z is reporting at the "revision". (..."Stepping", consistently reported as "2", is also the value that I would expect to be incremented if there was an actual hardware revision on the CPU.) So they're different between the two tools ("C0" in CPU-Z vs. "22" in Intel's/HWiNFO). I wonder if CPU-Z is just pulling in more bits for the revision field...? I checked CPU-Z on my Precision 7560 and it reports the CPU revision as "R0", so they're not rendering that field in hexadecimal like Intel and HWiNFO are. Anyway, it would seem that HWiNFO or Intel's tool are a better place to check then.

NVIDIA graphics driver 517.89. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=7H7T3

Intel is indicating that the revision value changes when the microcode is updated. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000055672/processors.html

You can get rid of it, Microsoft even has official documentation (see my most recent post above), or Google around and you will see a simple registry tweak.

I've been looking at Linux for a long time but the "laundry list" of things that I'd have to tackle to switch from Windows is too much for me to handle given my current level of "free time". But getting games to work is honestly among the things that I am least worried about at this point. With Steam+Proton you can play most Windows Steam games with little configuration effort needed (a lot of games are running on Steam Deck this way), and something like Lutris can get you easy access to non-Steam Windows games. Windows programs can run under Wine (with varying degrees of success or tweaking required, depending on the app) — Wine is actually the base that both Steam+Proton and Lutris use to do their thing. But generally I see Linux as a good choice two classes of people at sort of opposite ends of the computing spectrum: Lower threshold — Those who have very limited "computing needs" and can mostly get by with a web browser and basic apps. Upper threshold — Those who have more advanced computing needs and also don't mind spending time learning, experimenting, and tweaking to figure out how to make everything that they need work. ...For people in the middle, they're likely to just end up frustrated. There have been strides made on lowering the "upper threshold" in the last few years but still a long way to go, I feel.