Aaron44126

What happens when you put one engineer on the API project. How a single engineer brought down Twitter https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/6/23627875/twitter-outage-how-it-happened-engineer-api-shut-down (...Though, apparently they have their Slack instance back.)

Yes, the lack of control over your own system is ... out of control. Another reason that I am on Windows LTSC which doesn't ever get forced updates to a newer version/build, just a monthly security update package. Windows LTSC works a lot like how older versions of Windows worked from a maintenance perspective (pre-Windows 10), so I'm OK there, but licenses are sort of a pain for ordinary users to acquire. In any case, I've been a Windows user for ... a few decades ... and a reasonably happy one for much of that time (once I got off of 9x and onto the NT kernel anyway), and I just have to complain about the direction that they have been taking things in the past few years. I'm very interested in switching to Linux as a daily driver at some point. I have done a fair amount of thinking on it and I have a literal list of things that would have to be addressed in order to make the switch. The main problem is, I use some professional software that isn't available on Linux, so basically I have to choose between three options, none of which I especially like: Try to run the software in Wine (...I've done some limited testing with this and it didn't go well). Run the software in a Windows VM which I basically leave running at all times. (What's the point of switching then? It's just going to make my whole setup that much more complicated.) Don't switch and just keep using Windows. Other than that, the other issues that I have mostly require time to overcome. One is that I would have to reimplement my custom laptop thermal solution on Linux. (Everything that I need for this is available on Linux, it's just a matter of stringing the pieces together.) The others just require time to understand how certain things work (full disk encryption + TPM unlock, remote access to a running desktop session, dealing with NVIDIA/Intel hybrid graphics, DPI scaling with Linux applications, DPI scaling with Wine applications, selecting a full system backup solution, .....and like 15 other things....), and then do some trial and error with the available solutions, and decide what I like. It sounds like a kind of fun thing to tackle, actually, but I don't really have time to commit to it these days. I've been thinking about making a thread about this over in the Linux subforum; my specific issues on switching to Linux are sort of out of scope for this thread. Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with macOS as well and Apple likes to shuffle stuff around even more than Microsoft does (or at least that was the case until recently). I do like Apple for a lot of reasons, but I don't think that I could switch to a Mac as my daily driver (though in some ways it would be easier than switching to Linux).

Well, actually the short MXM cards will work if you can get the heatsink mounted properly. I don't remember seeing anyone try it in the M6800 specifically. You'll have to check the position of the screw holes (should be the same) and make sure that copper parts of the heatsink cover the RAM chips & VRMs, and that there is no other physical obstruction, and then you should be good. The heatsink is mostly flat so you can just cover the important bits with thermal pads and let the rest of it just hang off the end.

Yeah, I know it's not a super deep connection, and I was definitely aiming the "complaint" sort of comparison at GNOME 3 in particular, not Linux as a whole. It just sort of rings similar on the "GNOME/Microsoft does what they want, removing features / ignoring the needs of the more techy users / largely ignoring feedback from such users (or at least not giving enough time for feedback before launching their redesign)", something that occurred to me when I read the article. Otherwise like you say it is a very different situation, I fully realize the situation on Linux is very different — not the least of which is that no one is tied to GNOME on Linux, but Windows users don't have an option to switch out the desktop environment. And I wanted to point out how much I respect Linus Torvalds's approach to running things (clearly different from the GNOME approach) and how I wish Microsoft would be more like that, especially when it comes to bending over backwards to not break/remove things that end users actually use, even if its a small number of users. 😛

Yes, not "wrong" but definitely not good design. They could fix it by just adding some text like "Microphone access is currently allowed" near the "Don't allow" button. (Or better yet, just have a drop-down or radio buttons like you suggested.) The whole thing with microphone access controls is kind of funny. This has been tacked onto Windows (I'm not sure if they added it in Windows 8 or Windows 10, but it did not exist before), and there are ways for apps to go "around" this function and access the microphone even if access is not allowed according to this control panel setting. —————————————————————————————— As an aside, I've been reading some of the complain-y articles by Felipe Contreras on the state of certain things on Linux, and this recent one on GNOME 3 strikes me as echoing some of my complaints about Windows 11. For those that don't know, GNOME is a desktop environment for Linux, and for a long time it was the most widely used DE, but in 2011 they released GNOME 3 as a major overhaul to much controversy. Things were dumbed down a fair bit, and there was no way to get back a GNOME 2-like environment, other than continuing to run GNOME 2 (or one of the forks that popped up). GNOME developers were chasing "hypothetical" less techy users with their GNOME 3 design and from their statements you can see that at least some of them think they know what the users want better then the users do, and the project as a whole just did its own thing without really paying attention to user feedback. (.....Sound familiar?) Which runs counter to Linus Torvald's own running on Linux (there is a video about it embedded in that post), which is a philosophy that I really like: don't break user applications or user workflows. If they make a kernel change and it breaks an application, the kernel change is nearly always reverted, even if the application was "in the wrong" in the way that it was developed or using the Linux API. Same thing for user workflows using Linux tools. They might be adding new things on top all of the time, but they won't take away options or workflows that people use. If something works in a certain way, you can expect it to continue to work that way after the next update. There is a video on the subject featuring Linus himself embedded in the blog post linked above. (Linux desktop environments like GNOME are outside of Linus's management.) Now, I know that the Windows team has a strong commitment to backwards compatibility for applications, and I comment them there. (Most applications written for Windows 95 still work on Windows 11, after all.) I just wish that they would also take an approach like that when it comes to core functions of the OS, especially those that "power users" are likely to use. Things like missing an option for seconds on the taskbar clock, not allowing free placement of pinned items on the Start Menu, removing pretty much all of the customization options with regard to the taskbar, not allowing rounded corners on windows to be turned off, and even adding arbitrary/unnecessary hardware requirements (CPU+TPM) just run counter to this philosophy and that's at the core of one of my major complaints about Windows 11. Or really, I guess I am complaining less about Windows 11 specifically and more about this new direction that Windows has been heading towards since Windows 10's launch. It's not just about the specific features that I just listed, its also about the fact that now I have to consider the fact that any (obscure?) functions that I make use of to make my life easier may not be there in the next release or the one after that. And that Microsoft apparently feels that they can change things whenever they want and not stick to a release schedule or allow users to defer updates. This is partly why I am on Windows LTSC, and also no longer using Windows's built-in file manager or application launcher (and I'd love it if someone could come up with a better/alternate taskbar...).

It needs to run elevated which is tricky. Windows will generally automatically decline to run such apps at startup. My suggestion would be to add a job in Task Scheduler, set it to run at login, and make sure "Run with highest privileges" is selected.

If you look at the service manual, you can see that both the CPU and GPU chips are right there on the motherboard, not separate. https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/inspiron-16-7630-2-in-1-laptop/inspiron-16-7630-2in1-service-manual/removing-the-system-board?guid=guid-7db6166b-f81c-4e7a-b7a9-434fe48cd6aa&lang=en-us (This is for Inspiron 7630; looks like there are three different "16 2 in 1" models.)

I'm a laptop guy these days, but I do have some old USB stuff still hooked up. Still hooked up to my USB hub at my desk is an Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive, which I bought in early 2008 (literally a few weeks before HD-DVD died as a standard). I bought it because I wanted to be able to play both HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies, and I was purchasing a new laptop with a Blu-ray drive built in. (That laptop was my Inspiron 1720, which marked my transition from a desktop to a laptop as my daily driver.) I do occasionally use this drive to rip DVDs to Plex. Oh, I also have a USB 3.5" floppy drive hooked up to the same hub, which originally belonged to my wife (before I met her), which she bought in 2003 to go with her new laptop that did not have a floppy drive built-in. I rarely use it but it has come in handy a few times to rescue some data that other family members had on floppy disks. (Still having an A: floppy drive listed on my current Windows system is kind of fun, ha.) I did a hardware purge a few years ago so I don't have much left in the way of old desktop hardware, but I still have a GeForce4 Ti 4600 graphics card (AGP) sitting in a drawer; I bought in 2002 when it was the best graphics card that you could buy ... the price for a top-of-the-line gaming GPU back then was around $300 USD.

Yes, both. Using the built-in display. I rarely use an external display with this system. It has happened infrequently (occurrences could be weeks apart) and a reboot clears it up. I'd been trying to track it down to a background app or service but hadn't spent much time on it. I guess I'm not sure if past occurrences of this issue had the same root cause but I sure will be checking on it if it happens again. My only purpose for making this comment was to indicate that there may be an issue with the NVIDIA audio driver causing issues that apply to systems other than mine. I think it will be used for any audio output to a display that supports audio and is connected to the NVIDIA GPU. (All Windows audio output needs a sound driver to go through.) And it's clearly not "dormant", even if it is supposed to be, I caught it loading a whole CPU core on the System process while there were no external displays connected at all. I appreciate your suggestions but I won't be bothering with that. The solution that I have concocted for myself is causing literally no problem at all, including no work required to repackage the NVIDIA driver when I want to upgrade to a new version. (I'm sort of tired of doing that from my days of running Quadro M5000M on the Precision M6700, which as an "unsupported GPU" required an INF mod for every driver update. Though I did end up scripting that down to one command.) And I was also able to quickly create another stub/dummy driver for the "light" part of my Pro IntelliMouse which causes a 5-minute login delay if a second user logs in to my system, something I've also been meaning to do for a while.

...Why bother? It's going to be a pain to investigate since the issue does not occur consistently. (I have had microstutters in the past as well that went "uninvestigated" but I am now suspecting this was the cause. It's also not hard to find other people with a similar problem on Reddit/etc.) On top of that, having the NVIDIA audio driver enabled does nothing beneficial for me. With my config, there is no situation where it would be needed, since even if I did attach an external display with audio, it would go out via the Intel GPU and use Intel’s audio driver. I don't see any reason to spend any further time messing with it, I'll just stub it out and be done; just one less thing that can cause problems. (If I do another NVIDIA driver install without the audio driver included, then I'd have a device sitting out with an "!" error in Device Manager because no driver is installed, and also probably Windows Update trying to force the driver down on me anyway.)

Uh, errors in Device Manager are gross. So, I went and spent 20 minutes to learn how to put together a dummy/stub driver that replaces the NVIDIA High Definition Audio Controller device driver, doesn't cause an error, but also does absolutely nothing so it should not have a problem (I hope). It is literally just this. I signed it using the same method that I previously used to sign modified NVIDIA drivers, so Windows doesn't even complain about it. This INF can be modified (different device ID and class) to create a stub driver for any device.

In BIOS setup, wherever the BIOS update options are, there is an option for BIOS "capsule updates" that you can toggle on and off. Turn that off and Windows Update will not be able to update your BIOS. (You will still be able to update using the downloadable .exe from Dell's site.) The mechanism used is, if "capsule updates" are enabled then you will see a "Firmware" device in Device Manager. Microsoft ships an update to this "driver" and that will trigger the BIOS update whenever it loads. You can roll the "driver" back to an older version to stop this (and also take steps to prevent it from being updated again via Windows Update) ... but all of that is unnecessary if you just turn "capsule updates" off.

Yeah, the key thing here is that the behavior has changed without warning. You can try on Windows 10, and File->Exit will only close the current window. (This was also the case on Windows 11 until earlier this week when they pushed out this update.) Maybe I'm just old fashioned. One could go back and forth over which behavior is more appropriate, but that's not really what I care about. I think that behavioral changes to Windows components should not be disallowed, but they should be reserved for major revisions and the user should have some input as to when such a major update gets applied. That way, you know when to expect changes, and otherwise there is no chance for workflow disruption. Microsoft always used to stick with this, until pretty recently. Now, it's just fair game as to when they want to change pretty much anything, and users are just along for the ride... As a case in point, Rafael Rivera notes that he was using Alt+F,X instead of Alt+F4 just because it is less of a stretch on the keyboard, and it's basically muscle memory for him (having been the way Notepad has worked for ... 30 years?), and now he has to learn a new behavior (assuming Microsoft doesn't promptly restore the old behavior).

Did you add the "UpgradedSystem" registry entry (and then reboot) as described in the very first post in this thread? [Edit] Checked the specs of your system. It's a newer one. 11th gen and up (2021 systems and newer) don't support this fan control mechanism. I'm not aware of any software that can control the fans on these systems.

And I was referring to the power limit (≈100W), not the clock speed limit ...

How hard is it to tell a guy he can't use the Internet ..... SBF tries to revise bail conditions after judge noted suspicious VPN use https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/03/sbf-tries-to-revise-bail-conditions-after-judge-noted-suspicious-vpn-use/ I feel like prosecutors aren't trying to have is bail revoked mostly because he won't shut up and there's a pretty decent chance that some stuff he says now will come back to bite him when the trial happens.

Yeah, it's not just tabs that it tries to close though. It makes sense if you close a window then it will try to close all of the tabs. But what happens is, if you have multiple Notepad windows open (whole separate windows, not just separate tabs), File->Exit in one window will try to close all of them, and that could definitely be seen as weird, especially if you are used to separate Notepad windows being "unrelated" to each other. (You can open multiple Notepad windows just by firing up the app multiple times.) It will stop and ask about saving things if there are unsaved changes, but I can see a case of "Where did that window go ...?" happening if there were not unsaved changes. There must be a setting for this because this is not the behavior that I experience. If I try to close it and there are unsaved changes, I am prompted to ask about saving them. There are actually five options (Yes, No, Cancel, Yes to all, No to all) — and I can actually remember when they added those "Yes/No to all" options, I was very appreciative because before that I would have to go through several prompts answering "No, no, no, no" to get it to close. (I tend to do "scratch work" in Notepad++ and it's normal for me to have multiple tabs filled with junk that I do not want to save.) I know that I have turned off the session management function that causes it to reopen the same files that were open before when a new instance is started. I don't find that to be desirable behavior in most apps, I want a clean slate when I open it. Maybe that has something to do with it. [Edit] It looks like the option might be in Preferences, under Backup, "Remember current session for next launch" (disabled for me). There's also options in there about how often to "snapshot" the session and where to save the session backup files.

Yeah, the thing is (speaking as someone who has done some iOS dev work), there's no supported mechanism for a programmer to get at the messaging data on an iPhone or to send messages (other than the simple Bluetooth messaging interface), Apple has that locked down. Intel's solution also uses the Bluetooth messaging interface with the same limitations, and "third-party" iMessage solutions that I have seen rely on jailbreaking an iPhone/iPad or running messages through an actual Mac. Doing any better would require cooperation from Apple. Now, Microsoft may be able to strike some agreement with Apple allowing them to get to things in a way that no one else can. There is precedent for this; as an example, they did recently start offering iCloud Photos integration in the Windows 11 photos app, and that required collaboration between Microsoft and Apple to make happen. On the other hand, Apple has made statements in the past making it clear that they view iMessage as something that they want to keep locked down, as a way to keep people in the Apple ecosystem, so I don't know if they'd be willing to "partner" with Microsoft on that. (This was around considering whether to offer an iMessage app for Android.) They may be forced to cooperate soon, though, again looking at the new rules coming out of the EU digital markets act.

Ugh. So, starting yesterday, I was getting microstutters both when trying to watch fullscreen video and also in games. I could probably have rebooted to clear it up, but I like to know why when stuff like this happens, so I left it alone and this evening I dug into it. I noticed that the "System" process was running a high load (about 4% reported by Task Manager, but that's a full CPU core's worth). I dug in there with Process Explorer and saw that it was a "PoFxReportDevicePoweredOn" thread doing the bulk of the CPU work. ...Some device keeps powering off and on again? Further digging with xperf revealed the problem device to be VEN_10DE&DEV_2288&SUBSYS_000010DE — that is, the NVIDIA "High Definition Audio Controller". And sure enough, as soon as I disabled that in Device Manager, the problem immediately stopped. Everything is running silky smooth again. Not sure why the NVIDIA audio controller was even doing anything at all? Audio still works fine with the device disabled (through the Realtek audio controller). I'd presume that this is for routing audio to external displays, but I do not have any connected. The system is running with graphics switching / Optimus on and I do not even have the option set to attach external displays to the NVIDIA GPU. Everything goes through the iGPU. As far as I know, with this setup there is no way to engage the NVIDIA audio controller. Not sure who to blame (NVIDIA / Microsoft / Dell / combination). I'll probably just leave it disabled...

Information. https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2023/02/28/previewing-phone-link-for-iphone-users-on-windows-11-with-windows-insiders/ There are some compromises compared to what you'd get by just using a Mac, or the phone directly. (Doesn't fetch message history, can't send images, can't reply to group messages, ...) I think that they're basically doing the best that they can with the limited Bluetooth messaging interface that Apple provides (that you'd use to, say, reply to incoming messages using the dictation system in your car). But if it works well for what it does do, that'll be something anyway.

The headline feature for moment 2 (the whole thing about AI-enhanced Bing search), as far as it relates to Windows itself, apparently boils down to: The update will add the search box back to the taskbar if you previously removed it. (I always remove it, it takes up space and you can search just by starting to type while the Start Menu is open.) If you try to search using the search box on the taskbar, it behaves the same as it did prior to the update. ...But if you click the search box and do not type anything, you will notice they've added a big button to "try the new Bing" and some prompts to engage with their AI chat thing — interacting with this just opens Edge and takes you to a Bing web site. (...They don't care about your default browser, you'll get Edge.) So, basically they've just added another advertisement for Bing (& Edge). https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-11-moment-2s-headline-feature-is-nothing-but-an-ad-for-bing-and-edge/ This, this is how you do an update. Override user preferences, and try to nudge people someplace where you can collect some ad revenue. 😕

Yesterday's "optional" Windows 11 22H2 moment 2 update breaks some Windows 11 customization tools (ExplorerPatcher, StartAllBack, Start11, etc.). An update to these products will be required. https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-explorerpatcher-startallback-start11-break-on-windows-11-moment-2-kb5022913/ StartAllBack has posted an update already, and Start11 posted a "beta" update which you can find on their forums with a full release imminent. Interestingly, Microsoft has acknowledged this in their known issues page (so they must know there are people out there that dislike their feature removals around the taskbar and start menu, right??). https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/status-windows-11-22H2#third-party-ui-customization-apps-might-cause-windows-to-not-start-up And on the subject of "this should have been tested more before shipping" (common theme with Windows 11), the new tabbed Notepad shipped with a regression that could be obnoxious to some. If you try to close just one Notepad window with File->Exit (or the Alt+F, X keyboard sequence), it will try to close all of them. Maybe you could argue that this is appropriate behavior — you asked to "Exit" Notepad so it should close out everything. But, it is a difference from how it behaved before, and behavioral changes to core apps like that shouldn't be made willy-nilly. https://twitter.com/WithinRafael/status/1630691488635166720

It's definitely there in the F12 boot selection menu. Look off to the right (not in the main list on the left). (Repeatedly tap the F12 button when the Dell logo is displayed to get it to go to the boot selection menu.)

You need to take Dell's Intel RST executable to another PC, run it, and choose the option to extract the files. In the pile of files that comes out, you should be able to drill down and find a folder named "f6flpy" or similar, and inside there, a folder with a small number of files including a .inf file and some .sys files. This is the RAID driver. Copy these files to a flash drive and point the Windows installer to them when you get to the "load driver" part of drive selection. If you haven't made your RAID array yet, you want to do that before you try to install Windows. At the Dell startup screen, hit F12, and from the boot selection menu, there is an oddly named option (something generic like "device configuration") that will get you to the RAID setup screen.

The command prompt features are available on Windows 10 but you have to download the separate "Terminal" app from the Windows Store. (It's provided by Microsoft.) It's a slick app and highly configurable. I easily added a Ubuntu Linux WSL shell option to the menu to go along with the default "cmd" and "PowerShell" options, customizing the color to have a dark purple background (like "real" Ubuntu). Microsoft has bundled it with Windows 11 and made it the default console. Notepad has not been updated on Windows 10 (as you noticed). However, Notepad is sort of a last-resort text editor for me. I generally fire up Notepad++ (free) if I'm not using a dedicated code editor like Visual Studio; UltraEdit is also nice (not free).