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The 2000 to XP crossover was a weirder time period than you'd probably guess. A lot of big organizations weren't just switching their Windows version, but also going through a tough but necessary switch away from Netware to Windows Servers and NDS to Active Directory. AD needed a different level...

The Windows News widget is giving me air quality alerts today. We really are living in the worst possible timeline.

I don't have a KillAWatt but specs say it tops out at 55W if you crank up all the performance settings in the firmware. Extremely reasonable, and I suspect you wouldn't be doing that much, anyway. It has OcuLink, a second m.2 and an honest to god USB 4 port on it, so it really does have at...

I gave up on using my HX 370 mini desktop as a VM host and I've changed it into a sort of ultimate fat client PC and even my main daily-user system. I have a couple minor gripes with it, but this thing is for the most part an absolute dream. I can assign 8 or 16GB of its DDR5-8000 RAM to the...

No harm done. At least you didn't misconfigure sendmail or accidentally alter routing tables to point to the tertiary backup ISDN line or something.

If I remember right, that site uses 10th gen i3 NUCs with 8GB RAM. Very modest systems but entirely capable of doing day to day work. They're on a domain but with very minimal management. Next time I remote in to a site with newer clients I'll check what their desktops are doing but my general...

Also in the name of BS no one asked for, MS365 users are getting a bunch of new widgets to do things like Mail and Calendar, replacing the apps that Windows used to ship with, I guess, and a file search tool specifically to deal with all the places where people trapped in Microsoft's ecosystem...

That is a configuration I'd like to see. Are the enforced GPOs/Intune Policies absolutely absurd somehow? Shit tons of compliance auditing? I don't ever have to deal with Teams and I've been pissed at Outlook since before you were born but I'm looking at a pretty normal client system in active...

8GB is absolutely acceptable for a low-spec client device, even with a half dozen browser tabs and Excel. Don't ask me about Outlook or Teams because those are things I don't have to deal with, but even with Gmail absolutely eating 1GB RAM all by itself, I spend enough time on 10+ year old...

Sometimes the order that OSS projects does in fact seem pretty goofy. Guessing Chromebooks have funky sound to skip out of paying somebody a licensing fee on a low cost device. Sound is something I absolutely expect to work but I might not notice on if it doesn't on a Linux PC. One of the...

As a counterpoint, the fact that millions of mainstream notebooks (not Chromeboos) with deeply crappy Celerons still get sold for more thab $250 suggests that to some degree OEMs are insensitive to actual performance. I saw a HP something or other Windows PC with an N100 and 128GB of EMMC but...

Yes, we used to segregate /var, although one of the biggest reasons to do so was that mail spools live there if your system was running any kind of mail server. Chromebooks are kind of goofy on Linux in my experience. I always seen to run in to headaches with either touchpad gestures or the...

Segregating /home from your other data is a pretty good idea regardless. It's a lot easier to switch your OS when you know your user data is on a completely different drive from the one you're installing to. I wish the Windows installer would make user folder location a standard part of the...

Something I have just realized is that there really aren't contemporary, budget Intel notebooks any more. There are some Celeron-grade options, but it's almost impossible to find a sub-$500 laptop with a current Core-series CPU in it. Even the modest Core 5 120U mostly lives in $500+ models. I...

It's easier to remote in to a session that's on a single coherent system than to try something like that. I've never had good luck with true portability.

I picked up a Meike 35/2 lens for my A7iii for $160. I am actually shocked how well it works for such a low cost camera lens. It has an ultrasonic motor so it works really well for video and it focuses quickly. My Canon RF 1.8 is still a better lens overall but as a native lens for my Sony, I'm...

Libraries are full of woke and thoughtcrime and if you can find a librarian under 50 who isn't at least secretly a blue-haired queer (he typed, noting his own hair choices) commie socialist antifa with a crippling addiction to merino wool yarn and subversive board games, you clearly found the...

There's a giant "it depends" that's based on your expected workload. Do you need fast burst transfers or sustained IOPs? I bought 4x Acer GM7000 2TB drives for $115/drive yesterday. They're somewhat above average in terms of performance but at the price, I couldn't find anything better. The...

Rufus, my favorite way to make bootable installation media, is in the Windows Store now. I don't know if it's any different for being in there, but since some of its key features involve disabling and ignoring Windows installation requirements, but I'm happy to see it there if only to keep from...

sed, have you ever actually used OS/2? It really was a great idea for its time, especially if you were looking at it versus Windows 3.1 or even NT 3.5. The big down side at the time was just getting a PC with the resources to run it alongside the DOS and 16-bit Windows software you probably...

Man, I don't think anything Compaq made deserved a decent reputation even into the mid-90s when 486s started to become mainstream. I should note that was the point when product lines started to segregate and we got consumer and business systems, but Compaq was always one of those companies that...

~$10/month to get a Fax-enabled number from these guys. This is pretty reasonable. Efax wants $25/month so screw that. Apparently most of the demand for Fax still exists because Faxing was straight up excluded from a lot of compliance regulations. One of my customers lives and dies by a $25...

Email. Faxing is just a print driver on everything made this millennium. There are services like eFax if you don't feel like using a land line just to deal with faxes.

Give GoG some credit. They're the people who let you keep installation media for your purchases and install them anywhere you want. Probably a better deal for your Hentai Furry BDSM Clown Porn title than the service where most people have their badges and game play activity available for public...

As of this writing, there isn't much time, but as a protest over the recent actions of Steam and itch.io to de-list certain adults-only game software, Gog.com is giving a bunch of those games away. Many of the games in question are X-rated visual novels but Postal 2 and Agony aren't.

I have both an AMD Thinkpad P14s (Ryzen 7 8845) and Intel (Core Ultra 165H) for the weekend. They both came from Amazon and I bought one of each just because. For having the same name, they're NOT the same computer. The AMD version is a little bit lighter and has a smaller screen, while the...

I've tested it over OpenVPN, Wireguard, Tailscale, Hamachi and Zerotier. They all work fine, though Tailscale seems to be the fastest option, at least for moving the same 15MB .CR3 file back and forth. I'm hesitant to try access over a Cloudflare tunnel since they do tell free tier users...

It took me about 90 seconds to get Copyparty running and about ten minutes to get it running with what I feel is a reasonable config with limited security and correct volume mapping. The main advantage I see to it at this point is that it's much, much faster for access on my Android, ChromeOS...

For the next two weeks (middle of August 2025), Humble Bundle is offering CorelDraw Suite (functionally Photoshop + Illustrator for the Adobe-inclined) for $70.

Copyparty looks all kinds of interesting to me. Especially for the media controls and ability to deduplicate content. I haven't deployed it anywhere yet but it's on my agenda for this week.

Apparently, one of the updates currently being tested in Windows 11 25H2 is an update to the Mixer application that will allow sound output from multiple devices simultaneously. Android has been able to do sound to multiple bluetooth devices or output to both speaker and bluetooth for years, so...

We're old. Except sed.

I have to watch sugar too much to have a popsicle-filled life. 😭

The main value I have for the X1 is as a tablet that can be taken apart without destroying the damned thing. I have an old Surface Pro that I had to chip the screen off completely to get to its drive, so I usually show those systems off side by side as a teaching aid.

I'm not sure if this is a tech tip or Malware removal but I'll post it since someone asked me to type it up for their needs anyway. Group Policy Objects for fun and profit. At specific issue is Copilot, but I addressed OneDrive while I was at it since I just hate it that much. 1. In general...

Somewhere in my piles of discarded nonsense, I have a Thinkpad X1 tablet. I liked the form factor but it was actively unpleasant to use for either Windows 10 or Linux. To its credit, it is the only tablet PC I've ever seen that can have internal parts swapped, so for example I could add more RAM...

Your lenses likely have decent value if you have any beyond the standard kit option, or you may find a young person who would just be happy to have a camera body at all and pass it on to them. If you happen to know a young mother, I've yet to meet one who didn't want one who didn't want to take...

My goal with this new guy is to get a Tamron or Rokinon 35 - 150/2-2.8 FE mount lens. They're relatively affordable and the variable aperture zoom is all on the fast end of the scale. It's a lens that doesn't have an equivalent in Canon's ecosystem and truly could be a single lens for almost...

I just found Operese, someone's project to upgrade Windows 10 straight in to Kubuntu. It maintains user data folders, but the install can be kicked off directly from Windows, which seems pretty sweet to me. There isn't even a working web site for it yet, but the project is interesting enough...

I hit up a "Bin Store" today, a place where they re-sell returned items from Amazon and other big internet retailers. I found a new, complete Sony A7 iii with the 24-70/3.5 - 5.6 kit lens for $200. Absolutely nothing wrong with it except the retail box was mangled. Full frame, 24MP, 4k30...

Gross

You say that now but the disease only spreads unless you kill it with fire. Or cilastatin. But fire is better since it doesn't promote resistance.

You're dead to me.

I think I can click "Scan Now" an awful lot of times for $30, but your mileage may vary. To be clear, I have asked that people buy MBAM, but they're people who have displayed the special talent of having infections literally every time Iook, in spite of other precautions I have taken to keep...

These are the drawbacks to apartment living for sure. My current issue is that my mechanic shop doesn't seem to be responsive about getting a list of parts for me to buy. I want to obtain Honda OEM parts. I'm aware that most parts that could be used on my car will be Chinese knock-offs and I'd...

That's actually great news. Gödel, I'm more of a Hide the Pain Harold sorta guy. That's pretty true to life experience at the moment.

If you haven't done so in a while, maybe run Malwarebytes on your PCs. A crap ton of formerly legitimate chrome and edge addons got re-classed as malware over the weekend after updates made them all part of a web scraper network. I had a color picker tool installed in Chrome that seems to have...

Winamp has an EQ.

I still don't have a place to do the work, jtr, nor any appropriate tools. Nor anyplace to put ramps when I am not using them.

Sadly, I don't have access to anyplace with facilities for safely working on a car. I suspect my landlord would take exception to me trying to do any serious work in our parking lot and it's not like I live in the best area. I don't know anyone with tools for car work either, so given the...