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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • Hello there, fellow Ontarian!

    In seriousness, Ford is a great example of my point because he talks to how people feel. It doesn’t matter that it’s bullshit at best or whitewashing of his latest grift at worst, he’s at least acknowledging enough voters’ concerns and fears, and while tossing a bauble here or there (eg, booze in corner stores, buck a beer) to look like he’s doing something for the common person.

    His opposition doesn’t do this. Stiles gets ignored, and Crombie just seems like a weak Ford impersonator.

    The polticial left needs to do better. Yes that would probably mean getting called socialist, but since that’ll happen anyway they may as well own it.


  • Maybe, just maybe, liberal democracies need to do a better job solving problems for constituents and less time fellating billionaires.

    That might help.

    I mean, when I see a right-wing populist telling me they can fix all my problems, I know they’re a lying, opportunistic piece of shit, but I can also see the appeal because at least they’re saying that there’s problems and that they’ll do something, which is more than milquetoast centrists will do.



  • I can’t catch quite the drift what x86/x64 chips are good for anymore, other than gaming, nostalgia and spec boasting.

    Probably two things:

    • Cost- and power-no-object performance, which isn’t necessarily a positive as it encourages bad behaviour.
    • The platform is much more open, courtesy of some quirks of how IBM spec’ed BIOS back before the dawn of time. Yes, you can get ARM and RISC-V licenses (openPOWER is kind of a non-entity these days) and design your own SBC, but every single ARM and RISC-V machine boots differently, while x86 and amd64 have a standard boot process.

    All those fancy “CoPilot ready” Qualcomm machines? They’re following the same path as ARM-based smartphones have, where every single machine is bespoke and you’re looking for specific boot images on whatever the equivalent of xda-developers is, or (and this is more likely) just scrapping them when they’re used up, which will probably happen a lot faster, given Qualcomm’s history with support.

    I’d love to see a replacement for x86/amd64 that isn’t a power suck, but has an open interface to BIOS.





  • It is, though. Studies in disinformation have proven this. This is why right-wing bullshitters are so eager to engage in debate: just getting the chance to show up and be refuted in a legitmate setting, like a major newspaper, gives them an audience for the ideas and credibility, that their position is one worthy of refute.

    This is how we got the alt-right in 2015: by taking neo-Nazis seriously.

    This is what the media doesn’t understand, and why fact-checkers are getting–correctly–rolled on social media. Every time you bring up one of these lies, even to fact check it–especially to fact-check it–you give it credibility.

    This is why the Harris/Walz campaign’s tactic of ridicule is working so well. Instead of saying “No, you’re wrong about XXX because YYYY and ZZZZ”, they’re saying “What is wrong with you? You’re weird.” The latter doesn’t give the lie any oxygen.









  • Yeah, XP was pretty good.

    I was a young sysadmin during this era, I don’t know if I agree with this sentiment. It got tolerable by the time of the last service pack, but it was a security nightmare otherwise and didn’t offer much over Win2k.

    That said, I’m not a Windows fan in general, but I’d class the following as the “good” ones:

    • NT 3.5 (user-mode GDI FTW!)
    • Phone 7.0 (this was probably what I’d call the Practically Perfect version of Windows. WP7 is just so good)
    • NT 3.1 gets an honourable mention
    • 8 (after WP7, this is the first version of Windows that was pretty much stable on day one. Say what you will about the UI, the core was the best Microsoft has ever one; ditto fir Server 2012)
    • 10 (8 but with refinement; I’m cautious putting it here because you can see the genesis of the decisions that gave us 11)
    • Vista (a lot of what people like about 7 really came from Vista, like the WDDM driver model and the improved security infrastructure; Vista, like NT, came out before hardware was commonly available that could run it)

    Anchoring the bottom

    • 98 & ME (IE integrated everywhere and the security nightmare it begat deserves a special place in hell)
    • 1.0 (you had to be there, but this thing made Atari TOS look sophisticated)
    • 95 pre-OSR2 (VxDs, DLLs and a login screen you could bypass with an escape key!)
    • NT4 (it wasn’t bad, per se, but I still resent how unstable it was versus 3.5)
    • CE and pre-5.0 Mobile (hey, guess what, replacing your battery wipes your device because we didn’t implement persistent storage!)
    • 11 (10 without most of the redeeming features, plus an Android launcher for a Start menu. Now with extra spyware!)

    A lot of people really like 7 and 2000, but I tend to think of those as polish releases of Vista and NT4. They’re Microsoft eventually fixing their mistakes, after having everyone drag on them for years.


  • psvrh@lemmy.catoTechnology@lemmy.worldWhy don't cell phones have BIOS?
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    30 days ago

    ARM doesn’t specify a standard firmware interface like x86 PCs do.

    I mean, they could, but ARM comes from a different era, where interoperability isn’t a requirement and devices are disposable instead of upgradeable.

    There no incentive, no IBM PC to be compatible with, not even an Apple, Macintosh, Conmodore Amiga or Atari ST to make peripherals for. ARM devices, even the rPi, are one-and-done.