That would be the real “wildcard” out of nowhere mobile OS, and would be amazing. For some reason I thought of it like a pro-wrestling “pop” where Android betrayed their long-time friend Linux mobile while fighting iOS. Just to then have “WAIT what’s happening?!?” then OpenBSD mobile’s music hits and runs down with a steel chair, and the fans lose their minds! lol

Good to hear that dd did the trick for you, and I will keep that one in mind the next time I need to re-install an OS on a drive that might be having the issues. SpinRite works by going sector by sector reading and copying the data, erases the sector, and then writes the data back. Not like something you would want to do all the time for sure. The creator of the program also said he will have the code go FOSS when he dies (pretty old but in good health). I am hoping that he is able to complete the full re-build he has in the works to have it work with how modern motherboards and controllers work (the current code-base is extremely old and requires turning off both Secure Boot and UEFI (or at least enable CSM) in order to boot the live USB (I think it still uses FreeDOS as the environment). There are ways to run it in a VM correctly, but I haven’t messed with trying that yet.

I also agree that it seems that really old cards and drives tend to not have the same issues as newer ones. Hell, I have even found that my floppies that are from the mid to late 90s and very early 00s tend to have a better chance of me still getting data off them. More of my mid to late 00s disks have issues with corrupted data. Found that out when going through a bunch of disks I had forgotten about, to get whatever I could last year.

I wonder if it was more like folks putting stuff together to just work (likely with demands of it getting done really quick). But then the folks that got it implemented forgot to change the default/placeholder stuff (at least for the passwords). Just like how basically all routers used to have the same log-ins that never got changed by the end-users because it “just worked” out of the box (even if the labels and setup clearly said to change them first thing). I really hate how companies of all sizes seem to think of IT/sec as something that is just a drain on money that could be used for making profits look better.

Mostly just a small-ish info dump in the event it helps anyone. All flash and nand media can self-wipe if not used for a couple of years (though nand can last longer but may start to slow down to SATA and slower). Even if in an active PC, the parts that are only read but not written this can happen. Learned that from some episodes of “Security Now” podcast and personally saw it happen with a PC I was trying to fix for someone. On the show one of the hosts has a commercal program called “SpinRite” that was made to help with HDDs that have non-moter/actuator issues revive sectors.

Some testers using it found that it also helps with nand that has drastically slowed down from reading spots that never really get writes come back to normal speeds. In my case, I tried it on the PC I was working on and it really did help (the OS was already borked so it wasn’t going to hurt trying it out) with it loading much faster. Obviously the cheaper the flash/nand the faster issues will happen.

I have seen some random motherboards offer basically a pre-erase on SSDs that are acting slow before you re-install the OS to make sure a more complete flipping of cells happens and not just a basic formatting that just zeros the first parts of data and leaves the other cells alone. In that case the data/OS isn’t the focus and wouldn’t need a special paid software (I am only aware of SpinRite just because of the podcast and bought it to support the host that makes it). I am not sure of any free/FOSS software that does the same full drive cell flips, but I imagine there are some (or will be as flash/nand is used more and more).

Main take away is that it is important to make sure to not just let flash drives/SD/nand drives sit without at least hooking up to a PC every now and then. My PS Vita fell victim to just sitting around dead for a few years along with the Vita card I had in it. Fortunately the ROM with the OS is still working and I was able to at least set it up again.

Might be a W for now, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they bring back the ties if they get US and IOF support to steamroll the Kurds. But maybe not, just know that they love to play both sides (normally Russia/former USSR and USA). Time and actions will tell as always. This would be a major chance to be on the correct side of history if it can put a dent in stopping the genocide of Palestine. And shames the US aligned Arab nations like Saudi Arabia that have done nothing as they certainly knew and know what the IOF/Zionists plan to do.

The “dumb TV” options are few (there are some but doubt their panels are as good), so the only “real” options are to go with the second option you gave. Depending on the size needed, PC OLED/AMOLED monitors are probably the best option pared with a HTPC or whatever other box. Sucks that a lot of the larger ones are also becoming “smart.”

I also see a lot of people that come in to have their PC’s fixed because of “viruses” that I am able to make go away by just turning off browser notifications. Which I also just install uBO or uBO Lite on almost 100% of browsers on PCs I work on (even if not related to the task at hand). Also I disable lots of the notifications for browsers and other programs in the Windows 10 and 11 notification settings.

Though I have been seeing an uptick of fucked up malware browser extensions that set themselves as “Your organization” policies that are getting harder to remove. In most of those cases I have found that they replace the shortcuts for the browsers to first launch shit from a self-reinstalling location in the root of C drive and/or in AppData. Shit is very frustrating. Mac OS also has some motherfuckers of hijackers that are even worse to get rid of.

Aside from those, the really fucked notifications come from the AV programs that can’t stop themselves from freaking out users. Like even if the user has for some reason paid for every single up-sell because of those notifications. They still show them shit like “You MIGHT be infected.” Though seeing those things have been great for me to point out how the user should actually cancel their subs since at that point it is just scare tactics and adware (which slows shit down).

If you haven’t, you should try Split Second. Racing game but with wild destructive world traps (you can trigger stuff like a commercial aircraft crashing into the track and stiff like that.

For real! Every time I spend real periods of time with Linux (and a random year with a MacBook Pro a friend wanted to get rid of). It always hits a point where I need to view images and can’t find anything that matches IrfanView. I have tried XnView and it is way too much with regards to the UI and features I don’t need. The most frustrating thing (and this applies to most others I tried) is handling going through a folder of images that are different resolutions. IrfanView has the option to both scale the program’s window based around the image size, and also be set to scale images if the are larger than my display resolution.

It is a very weird combination of those two things that drives me nuts. There are settings in XnView that kind of work but break. Like it might adjust the image that is large, but then the program’s UI will not shrink to fit a small image (the window will just stay large and have large black borders). Or it will shrink the window to the width of a large image, but not scale and the height will still require scrolling up and down to see all of it. The funny part is that I don’t even look at my saved images all the time. But shit is like a hard slam on the breaks at high speed.

I did end up just dealing with the kind of weird clunkyness of running it via WINE while on the Mac as it was my only PC at the time. Which was still better than not having it for my use-case. Just weird how it has been the only image viewer (with mid-level editing options) that has “felt” correct ever since I first tried it out over like 17 years ago.

What we are constantly bombarded with in the capitalist hype train bubble is fucked. Just watching so many corps tripping over themselves to force shit into things that really and truly don’t need (or in shit like health insurance to auto-deny life saving care) is maddening. It is being used without concern over if it is even more than alpha stage. Just like how we see stuff like the games industry just launching games broken as hell as if they are completed and for full price. The stealing of work is very much in-line with capitalism, just as it always has been with regards to physical resources.

But it can have benefits beyond the above stated bubble cashing in and out. It could be very useful in socialist/communist nations. That is because under those systems, the ownership would be collective and benefits shared right back to everyone. But should be carefully applied and not for profits over lives. So really such advancements would make more sense in socialist/communist settings.

Also places like China actually do apply the death penalty to greedy leaders of companies. Which helps compared to the US and other capitalist nations that place those same greedy leaders on pedestals beyond true punishments.

More than likely would mass post “Knock knock…” and wait for the first “who’s there?” reply.

Given the massive take down. I think you mean “I wonder who ‘worked’ in the cartel’s IT department.”

At least that is something that is getting better and better. Though I do hope that if Steam OS and Proton keep pushing things at the rate we are seeing. Maybe Linux will get used enough to justify more devs to make real Linux releases of games instead of just Windows releases. Apple finally getting their stuff able to run things at similar levels of gaming PCs is also kind of helping with breaking out of Windows only code.

It might not be the answer, but I have had some games do very weird shit in the past (AMD GPU as well but on Windows). I found out that some games really don’t like if you have applied AMD settings that override the game’s graphical settings. Do you just have the AMD kernel driver, or have you installed the one with the Adrenalin from the AMD site? If you installed the Adrenalin software, you might want to try setting all the options for the game to only use game settings and not allow the AMD software to take over. If it is the one that ships with the kernel, then I am not sure how to change stuff that might be trying to override the game. Maybe see if there is a Proton version that might be better?

Not the person you were replying to, but you can use Obtainium to check for and install updates from the github releases in a similar way to F-droid.

That sounds awesome! I might have to try that out for my archived podcast eps or audiobooks that aren’t in an audiobook with chapters format already. Shit is annoying to lose my place just because I had friends in the car and needed to put on music.

I think that your example of the App Store and the Microsoft Store is helpful! I work on both systems at my job fixing computers for consumers. The only thing I dislike about the App Store is that it doesn’t let you install things without first signing in with an Apple ID (the spam levels of pop-up messages trying so freaking hard to make you sign in is infuriating). But the MS Store feels like all the worst parts of the Play Store and really fucks things up if it breaks. I will likely remember your reply the next time I think about Flatpaks and Snaps though. lol

I wasn’t aware of Snaps being used in-place of regular installs with apt. Are they shown to be Snaps in the name of the program when using apt search? And if there is a Snap and a regular deb, do they both show up (again if using apt search)?

I am currently only on Linux on my Steam Deck and I do have two RPi’s (though I don’t actively use them) so I don’t have personal current knowledge of differences between Snap, Flatpak, and App Image beyond that A: Snap always brings up lots and lots of hate in comments and B: is from Canonical.

But is it possible that they might choose to use Snap for having more program options due to Ubuntu being such a “mainstream” distro? I know lots and lots of programs do release Flatpaks, but are there more of them or does Snap have more? Real question since I am aware of how heated some threads get with folks being really “fuck Snap” or “it is fine.” Mostly just curious since I am more and more likely to move my main PC to Linux as my main OS after Windows 10 is dead.

Anyone know if they plan to add other parts of the desktop version to the Android version? Would be nice to see at least the calendar. The RSS stuff would be cool too.