[X] My Assistant

I've never installed a single software update on it, in the hopes that some day an exploit will be found to allow me to bootloader unlock (that's right, I am purposely leaving my phone vulnerable).

Sometimes there are advantages to that since newer software or hardware can become more crippled as the updates might actually take away or degrade features in order to encourage the users to purchase a more upscale product or buy the upgrade. For example, one free software that I use to convert video/audio on my PC is called AVC (Any Video Converter). It has the freeware version which also had a PRO version with more features. But the company came out with the ULTIMATE version to go alongside the PRO version as well. In the latest update, the freeware version became crippled such as the higher quality was removed or no longer available. The company doesn't make older versions available for download, so once your product updates itself online that's what you got. For example, the MP3 audio used to allow 320K bitrate, but the updated AVC allows a max of only 160K audio bitrate.

To stop smart aleck users who set a Recovery Point before changing even one program (automatic update not enabled), some data files are adjusted. Thus, even if the new program is installed, reverting to the recovery point just before the installation was done recovers some program features, but if I click on some of the features or any "setup" or "preferences" adjustment item, the program crashes. Heh heh Nice. The AVC people make good products and are thorough, so their people were thinking about smart alecks who remember to set recovery points. MSFT windows recovery points don't alter data files. So clearly the update changed some datafiles somewhere and without the original profile data, the functions crash. It's a nice way to protect intellectual property without being accusable of being shady.

@Anime Janai: is that a X000 or XX000 $ dollars TV?
No TV doesn't make it, they may call it "multimedia platform" or something at this point (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif)
Sadly, my settings and possibilities are much much more restricted, and the issue is to know if those limited things work as they should or not.

On another note, tried to run a linux live cd through hyper-v (windows 10 virtualization stuff) today.
Eventually had to find and kill the process to stop the virtual machine.
That thing seems less practical than I hoped.

I hate ASP.
[i.imgur.com] (IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/vcLYXR7g.jpg)
(Sorry for the terrible joke; props if you get it.)

Sometimes there are advantages to that since newer software or hardware can become more crippled as the updates might actually take away or degrade features in order to encourage the users to purchase a more upscale product or buy the upgrade.

100% agreed on that.
Apple products with their intentionally crippled battery life, or the way the first two iPhone models weren't able to record video officially despite being strong enough to do so (Apple wanted you to buy a 3GS). Or the way newer iPhones reduce their performance to "save battery life" …or make you buy a new phone.

For example, one free software that I use to convert video/audio on my PC is called AVC (Any Video Converter).

>2020
>using paid proprietary video encoding software
>still not using ffmpeg
Handbrake is also okay but that's mostly since it wraps ffmpeg; I find using ffmpeg directly to be more capable (even if its syntax is weird sometimes). Even over a decade ago I was using it to convert youtube videos for an iPod video.

It has the freeware version which also had a PRO version with more features.

Yeah, I remember that software; I saw it before I settled on ffmpeg years ago.

But the company came out with the ULTIMATE version to go alongside the PRO version as well. In the latest update, the freeware version became crippled such as the higher quality was removed or no longer available. The company doesn't make older versions available for download, so once your product updates itself online that's what you got. For example, the MP3 audio used to allow 320K bitrate, but the updated AVC allows a max of only 160K audio bitrate.

>2020
>using software that constantly phones home/checks for and then forces updates on you
Also:

CODE

ffmpeg -i infile.wav -ab 320k outfile.mp3

I've never paid a cent to make high-bitrate mp3's. But seriously,
>2020
>still using mp3

To stop smart aleck users who set a Recovery Point before changing even one program

>2020
>still using Windows/OS X
(assuming Windows, but OS X has "time machine" or some shit, too)

(automatic update not enabled), some data files are adjusted. Thus, even if the new program is installed, reverting to the recovery point just before the installation was done recovers some program features, but if I click on some of the features or any "setup" or "preferences" adjustment item, the program crashes. Heh heh Nice.

You could probably delete your prefs files and any and all registry keys AVC is writing; a well-written program should be able to regenerate them.
Of course, a well-written program doesn't crash if it encounters a corrupted or otherwise malformed configuration file. Correct behavior would be to alert the user and then to ask to reset all settings to defaults or quit.

The AVC people make good products and are thorough,

I have just illustrated that this is clearly false. A well written program can deal with configuration issues more elegantly than by crashing.

so their people were thinking about smart alecks who remember to set recovery points. MSFT windows recovery points don't alter data files. So clearly the update changed some datafiles somewhere and without the original profile data, the functions crash. It's a nice way to protect intellectual property without being accusable of being shady.

No; they could just be horrible at writing a parser for configuration files that they don't expect end users to manually modify (and which are also not forwards-compatible, i.e., the program does not anticipate to be given a future version's configuration information).
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (Hanlon's razor).

intellectual property

only exists to lawyers. It does not have a tangible form and is merely used as a way to hinder the exchange of information and knowledge. "Intellectual property" is the natural enemy of human progress in the same way patents are (especially software patents).

I agree with you on the idea that older software is sometimes better (office 2003 was the last decent version of MS office IMO); I simply disagree fundamentally on nearly everything else you said. Not trying to be accusatory really, I'm just a little irked with the "consumer" mindset so many people seem to adopt regarding software.

On another note, tried to run a linux live cd through hyper-v (windows 10 virtualization stuff) today.
Eventually had to find and kill the process to stop the virtual machine.
That thing seems less practical than I hoped.

>2020
>still not using Linux or a BSD as your host OS for a Windows VM

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jul 3 2020, 05:34

@Anime Janai: is that a X000 or XX000 $ dollars TV?

It was the Samsung SyncMaster 2333HD 23-inch 1080x1920 analog/digital monitor/TV which I purchased from Sam's Club for $228 many years ago (9 or 10 years ago? i can't remember). It now sits in the kitchen as the "kitchen and computer TV" that so many households have.

It came with a software CD disc which has a tool that communicates with the TV. I bought it because this TV had a lot of connectors: DVI, HDMI, analog RGB, RF, and D-sub VGA connector, plus it is also a TV monitor. The $228 price is deceptively "high" because back then, all LCD TV/monitors were high priced and were still coming own in price. As a benchmark, back then the basic 1920p was $178 and that had dropped to $128 at my local Costco in May 2020. This type of monitor was at the cusp of monitors switching from old lamps to LED lighting so it's a dinosaur. But it refuses to break down unlike those chinese ones other people buy and get rid of after 2 years when they mysteriously fail.

[www.samsung.com] https://www.samsung.com/us/business/support...-series-2333hd/
[www.newegg.com] https://www.newegg.com/samsung-2333hd-23/p/N82E16824001341

The monitor software also lets me create color profile settings for the adjustments I made. So I can perform those setup tests for different light situations and save them as samsung color profile data files that can be loaded by using the windows color management tool. On the kitchen computer, that is start-->settings-->control panel-->color management. The windows driver shows these two pictures, but I'm too lazy to use the camera to take pictures of the color screen going through all the various setups.


If you have an Amiga PC, this is the next step up monitor for you. If not, then it still works with regular PC if you can stand a tiny 23.6 inch display.

This post has been edited by Anime Janai: Jul 3 2020, 08:26

Zuckerberg AI malfunctioning?

microsoft ASP (active server pages) was a useful idea at the time for interactive websites that were database driven. Microsoft then they decided to bring ASP.NET into the Visual Studio fold for better integrated support. But then competing languages appeared due to fear by other companies that domination of the market by one company was bad.

As it turns out, programming language domination isn't the problem. The real problem is the inability of users to control the corporations and government from accessing all the info and tying it together. Is there any way to stop Google from seeing what privileged webpages you go to inside private membership sites? Will google see if you visit webpages tagged as Shoota or Loolicon and then set a flag in their database to send the data to the government? You don't own that data of your visiting websites because they own it and they can pass it on to whomever they wish.

So, in the end, ASP was not that bad. The behemoth putting all the Big Data together to develop a complete profile of the User is the real problem. One day, you aspire to be a major manager in a significant corporate program, but now, someone comes up to you and pressures you to leak corporate info or else your past use of certain private server pages will be disclosed and you'll lose your career position due to the corporate "zero tolerance" policy. While far fetched for the normal person, when someone becomes an important cog, they also become a target. Thus, these privacy issue become even more important as society seems to be headed towards a "zero tolerance" approach whether it be with China's Social Credit Scoring system or the USA's "zero tolerance" policies adopted by many corporations due to special interest groups urging corporations to circumvent the 1st Amendment by using zero tolerance policies to shape what the public can read, write, or discuss.

Does LibreOffice uses Hunspell or its own dictionary for spell checking?

If you have an Amiga PC, this is the next step up monitor for you. If not, then it still works with regular PC if you can stand a tiny 23.6 inch display.

• Does it handle 15.6khz horizontal sync rates for RGB?
• Does it correctly handle 240 line progressive signals in addition to correctly handling 480 line interlaced signals? (i.e. - does it not try to "deinterlace" 240p, which was never interlaced to begin with)
• Does its color gamut meet or exceed full sRGB coverage?

I'll likely stick to my Commodore 1942, since its tube is still very low mileage.

Also, 16:9, yikes.

Does LibreOffice uses Hunspell or its own dictionary for spell checking?

Relatively sure it uses Hunspell's.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jul 4 2020, 23:38

OnlyOffice flags word contractions as spelling error. It's the worst office suite in terms of English spellchecking.

Whatever spellcheck the samsung browser and SMS app use, it doesn't recognize curse words or lewd stuff, and it doesn't let me add to the dictionary.

Whatever spellcheck the samsung browser and SMS app use, it doesn't recognize curse words or lewd stuff, and it doesn't let me add to the dictionary.

Samsung browser?
You disappoint me.

But yeah that's a common attitude to take towards "undesirable" words.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jul 6 2020, 22:00

Whatever spellcheck the samsung browser and SMS app use, it doesn't recognize curse words or lewd stuff, and it doesn't let me add to the dictionary.

South Korea's government has that pseudo Great Firewall of theirs against porn sites. So it's no wonder their socially-responsible browsers and dictionary don't try to help you spell porn terms better. In the past, if users tried to access disapproved material, the Korean internet would display a Warning message.

One of my external drives, a 2TB Transcend drive, every now and then is getting a single byte bad sector. I'd been prompted by Windows to fix the error with Check Disk tool probably 5-6 times last year. This year it's 3 times. When I used the tool's bad sector recovery setting, it reported several files were affected by the bad sector. Should I be paranoid about my data, transferring everything to a brand new drive then ditch the old one altogether? The drive is already more than halfway full as I'm using it frequently to back up my files. A bad sector even, a single byte in size (as reported by Windows Check Disk), is still bad, right?

South Korea's government has that pseudo Great Firewall of theirs against porn sites. So it's no wonder their socially-responsible browsers and dictionary don't try to help you spell porn terms better. In the past, if users tried to access disapproved material, the Korean internet would display a Warning message.

Man, you're really reaching hard there. Spell checkers → censorship.
Meanwhile you use almost exclusively socially irresponsible software, so your opinions on software are meaningless to me.
I just judged him for supporting them for different reasons (mostly relating to bad experiences with exynos3/exynos4 devices).

One of my external drives, a 2TB Transcend drive, every now and then is getting a single byte bad sector. I'd been prompted by Windows to fix the error with Check Disk tool probably 5-6 times last year. This year it's 3 times. When I used the tool's bad sector recovery setting, it reported several files were affected by the bad sector. Should I be paranoid about my data, transferring everything to a brand new drive then ditch the old one altogether? The drive is already more than halfway full as I'm using it frequently to back up my files. A bad sector even, a single byte in size (as reported by Windows Check Disk), is still bad, right?

Usually I thought disk drives had ways to mark bad sectors and avoid them.
But if you're getting more and more slowly, yeah, your disk is dying and you should get off it as soon as possible.
One of my disks has had a single bad sector for the last three years, but the moment I see them growing beyond that the disk is no longer to be trusted. They tend to either be one-and-done deals like a mole or else spread rapidly like a cancer.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jul 7 2020, 10:25

Samsung browser made it really easy to add AB+ in (so I can use youtube) and it seems faster than DDG mobile browser, which I also use. They both have page rendering quirks though.

Man, you're really reaching hard there. Spell checkers → censorship.
Meanwhile you use almost exclusively socially irresponsible software, so your opinions on software are meaningless to me.
I just judged him for supporting them for different reasons (mostly relating to bad experiences with exynos3/exynos4 devices).
Usually I thought disk drives had ways to mark bad sectors and avoid them.
But if you're getting more and more slowly, yeah, your disk is dying and you should get off it as soon as possible.
One of my disks has had a single bad sector for the last three years, but the moment I see them growing beyond that the disk is no longer to be trusted. They tend to either be one-and-done deals like a mole or else spread rapidly like a cancer.

A replacement drive it is. New graphic card is on hold. USB ext. HDD comes first.

One of my external drives, a 2TB Transcend drive, every now and then is getting a single byte bad sector. A bad sector even, a single byte in size (as reported by Windows Check Disk), is still bad, right?

When there are bad sectors, make sure your defragmenting utilities don't have automatically scheduled defrag for that drive.

File examination tools, outside of the scandisk/chkdsk, can report which files reside on which sectors. If you have sector numbers, then those tools can reveal the filenames. If you have the filenames, then you can selectively attempt to copy off those files to a different drive and see if you can recover them. If those files were made using parchive or RARlab's recovery record feature, then you can attempt to recover the bad portions. If not, then you'll have to try to extract what parts of the ZIP or subdirectory you can, re-download it again, or use bittorrent to correct it. For example, if you have a very large file such as a video, you don't want to re-download all of it again. If it's no longer active on public bittorrent, you can try to make a private torrent and have a fellow file-hoarder friend download your torrent and repair it that way.

Parchive
[en.wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchive

If your drive was made by Seagate or Western Digital, then try their proprietary disk analysis tools.

Samsung browser made it really easy to add AB+ in (so I can use youtube) and it seems faster than DDG mobile browser, which I also use. They both have page rendering quirks though.

Y u no firefox?
I even have userscripts in firefox.
I use ublock origin though.

When there are bad sectors, make sure your defragmenting utilities don't have automatically scheduled defrag for that drive.

Uh, that's not how bad sectors happen... "Automatic defragmentation" occurs in some form or another on basically every modern filesystem, as data is being written (i.e., not scheduled to happen periodically). Hell, my Amiga with an operating system from 1991 does this. FAT32 is the only filesystem still in common usage which I can think of that doesn't. And if you run an antivirus on your machine you're likely subjecting it to similar disk thrashing (I don't run an AV; nor do I run windows).

And running proprietary software won't fix a hardware problem. modern-ish disks automatically reallocate sectors without the need for that, until they run out of extra sectors at least. But it doesn't mean you should reasonably expect the disk to remain usable in the distant future. Your advice seems half-baked.

Just use dd_rescue or similar, make a backup of the entire disk image in one go and then pull what you can from the image later.
Much less likely to create more bad sectors if you're just reading the disk surface once than if you read it once to check what file is in what sector and then again to try to copy it off.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jul 8 2020, 10:25

I still have firefuchs on my phone, but stopped using it. I honestly can't recall why I stopped.

I still have firefuchs on my phone, but stopped using it. I honestly can't recall why I stopped.

It can be fun in a creepy way. Once in a while, I'll leave my browser display on so that I can receive push messages from Google as its computers track where I am wandering inside the store. Some of the stores even have their internal aisles mapped out as seen on my google display. Hooray for A.I. type software that can figure out aisles simply because a zillion other android phones traveled that same path.

With the Firefuchs display on, Google will occasionally push a question to me such as "Does this location <name here> have an ATM?" or "Is this <brand name product> sold at this <store location I am at>?". Even a few times, I've walked over to an aisle and looked up the product that Google wanted to verify was being sold or not being sold. Then I tap the corresponding entries on the phone to answer Google's questions.

Maybe one day, if I leave my phone on at night, Google will push some message based upon inference data such as "We noticed your phone is co-located to your wife's phone in the bedroom of your house. Your fitbit data has accelerated heartbeat and subvariances in pressure show you are taking faster than normal breaths. Would you like to purchase <insert male birth control pill recently approved by FDA>?".

The more tools a behemoth has, the more tools it can release updated versions of with features optimized for the collection of data on behalf of making money of course. Who knows if governments would order companies to collect other types of data to develop its own version of unofficial social credit scores. You already know China collects data on users and based on that, it even developed criteria to rank people as VIP or not as they use certain facilities.