The General thread for Computers And Internet

[Chilidog]

Reddit is currently down for most users due to a "major outage" affecting the desktop and mobile versions of the website. Reddit's status page indicates the website is actively investigating the issue as of 12:18 p.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday.

Ahhhh

[Kriselda Gray]

IIRC the magick of owning more than a single Apple device happens when one signs them up to the same iCloud account, they ought to synchronize^(*), or the backup of one can be retrieved by the other. Your Dad may need some handholding to get that done correctly.

^(*) I seem to remember that the data will be synced, and I seem to remember that the same signup is used for the Apply AppStore and it remembers what was once downloaded.

You can also just plug them into each other, the setup process allows you to migrate from one machine to another pretty automagically.

Samsung works the same way

[pipistrelle]

Specifically, reddit is a mess today.

Did Musk buy it?

[Reality Check]

My dad had an interesting computer waiting for him when he was released from the rehab in his retirement community this week - a Mac Mini. My brother the software engineer at HP is a Mac person, and bought it for him.

I am still looking at mini PC's but your post got me thinking about how a Mac mini might make sense. I already have an iPhone and an iPad and pay for 200 GB of iCloud storage. With a Mac mini I could move back and forth from my phone or tablet to the computer and have all my pictures, contacts, calendar, and data. I would love to be able to do SMS/MMS text with a real keyboard. iCloud for Windows lets you do some of this but it really sucks and doesn't allow for texts.

Did your Dad's have 8 GB or 16 GB or RAM? How about SSD? I want the 512 GB.

[Dr. Ken]

IIRC the magick of owning more than a single Apple device happens when one signs them up to the same iCloud account, they ought to synchronize^(*), or the backup of one can be retrieved by the other. Your Dad may need some handholding to get that done correctly.

^(*) I seem to remember that the data will be synced, and I seem to remember that the same signup is used for the Apply AppStore and it remembers what was once downloaded.

You can also just plug them into each other, the setup process allows you to migrate from one machine to another pretty automagically.

Samsung works the same way

Yup. I got myself an all in one PC a while back. Best investment I've made. It has a touch screen and It's so compact. With the windows link on my phone I can be on my computer and use every single app on my phone, text from my computer etc. I'm thinking about finally getting another tablet as it's been a while.

[Kriselda Gray]

Samsung works the same way

Yup. I got myself an all in one PC a while back. Best investment I've made. It has a touch screen and It's so compact. With the windows link on my phone I can be on my computer and use every single app on my phone, text from my computer etc. I'm thinking about finally getting another tablet as it's been a while.

I have a phone tablet and watch setup that I love. I hardly ever use the phone because I can get calls and texts on both the tablet and the watch. I really only ever use PCs anymore to play games. And I don't have any that interest me right now, so I don't have any windows machines at all.

The watch is probably my favorite part of the setup. I can answer calls, read texts and send responses to texts by voice - it has a great voice-to-text capability - so if I don't have the tablet or phone out at the moment, I don't have to try and grab them and answer before it switches over to voicemail.

[RTH10260]

not allowed to spy on communications of US citizens but...

FBI, Pentagon helped research facial recognition for street cameras, drones
Internal documents released in response to a lawsuit show the government was deeply involved in pushing for face-scanning technology that could be used for mass surveillance

By Drew Harwell
March 7, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST

The FBI and the Defense Department were actively involved in research and development of facial recognition software that they hoped could be used to identify people from video footage captured by street cameras and flying drones, according to thousands of pages of internal documents that provide new details about the government’s ambitions to build out a powerful tool for advanced surveillance.

The documents, revealed in response to an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed against the FBI, show how closely FBI and Defense officials worked with academic researchers to refine artificial-intelligence techniques that could help in the identification or tracking of Americans without their awareness or consent.

Many of the records relate to the Janus program, a project funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or IARPA, the high-level research arm of the U.S. intelligence community modeled after the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA.




https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... arch-aclu/

[Reality Check]

I guess the FBI is all in on warrantless searches of private citizens but when it comes to executing a valid search warrant on Donald F--ing Trump not so much?



(Off topic so I do not expect a reply.)

[keith]

My dad had an interesting computer waiting for him when he was released from the rehab in his retirement community this week - a Mac Mini. My brother the software engineer at HP is a Mac person, and bought it for him.

I am still looking at mini PC's but your post got me thinking about how a Mac mini might make sense. I already have an iPhone and an iPad and pay for 200 GB of iCloud storage. With a Mac mini I could move back and forth from my phone or tablet to the computer and have all my pictures, contacts, calendar, and data. I would love to be able to do SMS/MMS text with a real keyboard. iCloud for Windows lets you do some of this but it really sucks and doesn't allow for texts.

Did your Dad's have 8 GB or 16 GB or RAM? How about SSD? I want the 512 GB.

I use my phone via my windoze 11 desktop all the time. W11 come with a phone app that simply connect to messages (2 way), photos, etc. Or it can mirror the screen and reflect all activity. I occaisionally do wordle on my phone via screen and keyborad for example.

However that may be limited to Android, and maybe even Samsung. I dunno if iPhone would work..

[Foggy]

My dad's Mac Mini was very low end, I think 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD, and I didn't delve too deeply but I did see you could get an SSD with 8 TERABYTES of storage, which is insane.

He doesn't need a super good desktop, he does most of what he does on a tablet.

I'm always talking about how my first PC had a hard drive with 125 megabytes of storage, and I have flash drives that hold a thousand times as much data (125GB). But 8 terabytes is ... a lot of data.

On my PCs, I require 32GB of RAM, I run a lot of crap in the system tray. But I don't Apple, so I don't know what kind of RAM you need.

[northland10]

Am I the only one dealing with funky internet iss7es?

A lot of sites seem to be running on reduced functionality.

Not really. My '7' key normally doesn't get mixed with the nearby 'u' key.

But just doing a restart tends to fix things up on connectivity iss7es. .

I blame the wrong key on connectivity issues as well. It's a bit harder sell when it is the wrong keys on a grand piano.

The piano does have a flashing yellow light right now, which reminds me, I need to water the piano.

[Reality Check]

I finally settled on mini PC to purchase. I decided to by a less expensive one for a first try in the market. I bought a Kamrui GK3 with an Intel 12th gen Alder Lake N95. It got decent reviews. It was priced around $300 but the day I bought they had a $40 off coupon I could apply. I just checked and they are running some even better deals now. It has16 GB of RAM and a 500 GB SSD. It only needs a 30 watt power cube.

I hooked it up to a 55" Samsung QLED TV and use a wireless mouse and keyboard. It does not have WiFi 6 but does have the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands. I use the 1 GB wired Ethernet port so the lack of WiFi 6 isn't any issue. My Century Link router doesn't support WiFi 6 either. One reason I choose this model over the $200 model is the 12th gen Intel processor came with Windows 11 Pro.

When I booted it chose an appropriate screen resolution that was much better than my 10 year old laptop. The only setting I had to change was scaling, which made the Windows icons too large for my taste. I am not a fan of Windows 11 but I have tweaked it to look more like Win 10. They have hidden most of the useful items like control panel even deeper than they were in 10 but they are still findable. ALso annoying is that you cannot change the height of the task bar without editing the registry. That's just stupid.

I have used it about 3 weeks and so far it works fine for me. Web browsing is snappy and on Speed Test I am getting 950 mb/sec up and down. I downloaded Libre Office, Thunderbird, and Firefox of course. I have even figured out how to sych my Thunderbird Calendar to my iCloud Calendar. It is not a trivial procedure but you only have to do it once or until Apple changes the server your iCloud account resides upon.

I ran Crystal Diskmark on the SSD and it's OK but not as good as a good NVME M.2 drive would run. I get around 500 MB/sec read and write on the 8 queue sequential benchmark. The only other cons are that it has no USB-C port and lacks a 2.5 GB Ethernet jack. Neither means anything to me right now. It would support 3 monitors if I so chose. It has two HDMI and one VGA port.

[Foggy]

That looks pretty cool.

[Reality Check]

That looks pretty cool.

The question on all these lower end mini PC's is will they hold up.

[Foggy]

The key, imho, is no moving parts.

[bill_g]

Moving parts can spell trouble fer sure.

[RTH10260]

Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet Pioneer, Wins Turing Award
The American researcher was recognized for his central role in inventing, standardizing and commercializing the ubiquitous networking technology.

ByBen Brubaker Staff Writer
March 22, 2023

Bob Metcalfe has always been a believer in the power of networking. In the 1980s and 1990s he helped popularize the idea that a network’s value grows rapidly with the number of users, a precept now known as Metcalfe’s law. Today, with the internet ubiquitous, he thinks on a grander scale. “The most important new fact about the human condition is that we are now suddenly connected,” he said.

Today Metcalfe was named the winner of the A.M. Turing Award, an annual prize considered the highest honor in computer science, for his part in ushering in our hyperconnected age. Fifty years ago, Metcalfe helped invent Ethernet, the local networking technology that links personal computers around the world to the global internet. He also played a central role in standardizing and commercializing his invention.

“Bob is one of the people who lived on both sides. He could see the big picture,” said Steve Crocker, a computer networking pioneer who worked with Metcalfe on a precursor to the internet known as Arpanet.

Metcalfe’s career has grown in parallel with our networking capacity. He was born in Brooklyn in 1946 and studied electrical engineering and industrial management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When he moved across town to Harvard University for graduate school, the U.S. Department of Defense was just ramping up its investment in Arpanet. Metcalfe proposed building an interface connecting the network to Harvard’s mainframe computer, but the university turned him down. He turned around and made the same proposal at MIT, where he was hired as a researcher while still a Harvard graduate student. When he presented a thesis describing the work to his dissertation committee in 1972, he failed his defense — the topic wasn’t theoretical enough, they said.

By then Metcalfe had already accepted a job at the Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, in California. The lab’s director, Bob Taylor, told him to come anyway and finish his dissertation from Palo Alto. Once there, Metcalfe started building another Arpanet interface for a new PARC computer, while searching for a theoretical topic to satisfy Harvard.

At the time, computer networking was as much a theoretical challenge as an engineering one. The fundamental problem was how to share access to a network among many users. Telephone networks dealt with this problem in the simplest possible way: a connection between two parties locked the communication channel for the duration of a call, making that channel inaccessible to other users even if it wasn’t being used to its full capacity. This inefficiency isn’t a big problem for phone conversations, which rarely lapse into silence for long. But computers communicate in short bursts, which are often separated by long stretches of dead time.




more details of his bio and work to follow at the link https://www.quantamagazine.org/bob-metc ... -20230322/

[RTH10260]

‘Unprepared’ Twitter among tech firms to face tough new EU digital rules
Designation as ‘very large online platform’ along with 16 other major names means big penalties for breaches

Dan Milmo Global technology editor
Tue 25 Apr 2023 17.48 BST

Twitter is among the tech firms that will face the toughest level of scrutiny under a new European Union regulatory regime for monitoring digital platforms, after warnings from Brussels that the Elon Musk-owned platform is unprepared for the new rules.

The company, which Musk bought in October 2022, has been designated a “very large online platform” under the bloc’s Digital Services Act, which means complying with measures such as publishing an independent audit of its compliance with the legislation.

It will be joined by 16 other major names including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Wikipedia, Snapchat and TikTok.

Twitter has been repeatedly warned that it is not ready for the new rules, with breaches risking a fine of 6% of global turnover and, in the most extreme cases, a temporary suspension of the service. Under Musk’s ownership Twitter has reduced its workforce from 7,500 people to about 1,500, leading to fears that moderation standards and its ability to comply with the act would suffer as a consequence.

In November last year, the EU’s commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton, implied that Twitter was in danger of non-compliance with the act, telling Musk that the company will have to raise its efforts to “pass the grade”. Breton added that Musk had “huge work ahead” to comply with the DSA. However, a readout of the November meeting with Musk added that the Tesla CEO had “committed to comply” with the DSA.

In January, Breton again urged Musk to “progress towards full compliance with the DSA”, with Musk replying that the DSA’s goals of transparency, accountability and accurate information were aligned with Twitter’s.

Under the rules for large platforms, they must carry out annual risk assessments outlining the risks of harmful content such as disinformation, misogyny, harms to children and election manipulation. The moderation systems and measures put in place to mitigate those risks will also be checked by the EU.

The big platforms will also have to publish an independent audit of their compliance with the DSA, as well as how many people they employ in content moderation. They must also provide details of their algorithms and allow independent researchers to monitor compliance with the act.

Platforms will also be banned from building profiles of child users for companies to target them with ads. Those platforms that can be reached by minors must also put in place measures to protect their privacy and keep them safe. Users must also be able to report illegal content easily.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, confirmed Twitter’s designation as a VLOP on Tuesday, while Google and Microsoft’s Bing will also have to comply with similarly strict regulations after being designated “very large search engines”. Tech platforms must reach at least 45 million monthly active users in the EU in order to be designated VLOPs or VLSEs.

There are also regulations for smaller platforms such as publishing transparent terms and conditions.

Breton said on Tuesday the “countdown is starting” for the companies designated with special status under the act. “Today is the D(SA)-Day for digital regulation,” he said.

Guillaume Couneson, a partner at law firm Linklaters, said complying with the VLOP and VLSE provisions was a “challenge for everyone” and not just Twitter. The designated companies now have four months to comply with the act’s obligations including the first annual risk assessment.

“It is not a long period of time to implement strict and in some cases burdensome obligations,” said Couneson.





https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... ital-rules

[Foggy]

Today we switched over from AT&T to Google Fiber.

Pichai owns me.


Fast AF, tho, I will say that. 920 Mpbs fast (that's fast).

[Frater I*I]

Today we switched over from AT&T to Google Fiber.

Pichai owns me.


Fast AF, tho, I will say that. 920 Mpbs fast (that's fast).

So you're ready for the virtual meetups then...

[Reddog]

Today we switched over from AT&T to Google Fiber.

Pichai owns me.


Fast AF, tho, I will say that. 920 Mpbs fast that's fast).

3 million times faster than my first modem, (and I’m sure others on here).
Amazing to me, the changes in 35 years.
There are a couple of companies installing fiber, (not google), digging up streets all over town. Hopefully we can upgrade soon.

[tek]

8 million times faster than the acoustic-coupler modem I built for my senior project when getting my EE degree. (it was nominally a "bell 103" modem, but I didn't do a great job on the PLL so it pretty much maxed out at 110 baud).

Wasn't a big problem, though, because computers were powered by steam back then.

We've had gigabit fiber available since we moved in here 3ish years ago, but that' $70/mo and 500MBps is $19/mo. Don't need that extra hit, even though I do a lot of work-work over the internet.. like booting servers in Virginia with a virtual CD from my local PC.

A lot of Massachusetts is going municipal fiber because Comcast/Spectrum/Verizon didn't give a f'k. Now the big guys are getting religion, but not very quickly. Amazing what a bit of competition will do. The city where the Undisclosed Secure Location is keeps making noise about municipal fiber, but not ever actually doing anything.

[Foggy]

Well, ol' Wifehorn is thrilled to be a Google Fiber customer, thus far.

She was worried about the Tee Vee lineup. Now consider: I am not going to disclose her age, but this is a lady who used to have to get up off the couch and walk over to the Tee Vee to change channels. They didn't have remotes, and they only had a few channels, and everything was black and white. It was a primitive era, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

She was a little girl in the very beginning of Tee Vee, and she has seen it all.

But she told me yesterday that she's very happy with the new setup, and she taught herself how to do streaming video and so forth. Which is good, because I do computers. I don't do Tee Vee. She's on her own with nothing but a fiber optic cable and a router, and she is thrilled with the results. She has Netflix and I have Prime Video and I don't even know what else she has, but she's happy with it, and we're paying more than $100 less than we paid AT&T for their Tee Vee service.

[Foggy]

In this house, Saturday mornings are for computer maintenance chores (and Sundays are for Fogbow maintenance ).

Lo and behold, when I rebooted ol' Wifehorn's main computer I discovered that she had installed a whole brand new browser called OneLaunch, which is an 'ad-supported' browser, in other words malware (unless she really wants to see even more ads than she already does). And she made it her default browser.

And she set it to open two new windows when the machine starts, so she can get started right away on her new malware browser that will show her way more ads than Chrome or Firefox.

Now, the beauty of this thing is, when I asked her about it - and I knew this was coming 110%, no question whatsoever - she had no idea that she had done any of it.

The most she could tell me was, it was some sort of update, and it was a Google thing (well, OneLaunch is a fork of Chrome). But she was stunned to learn that she had installed a whole new browser that she really doesn't want and wouldn't have installed if she had any idea what those funny little buttons she's clicking were.

They put buttons on her computer screen, so she clicks them. And then I find out later what she did that she didn't intend to do and didn't know she had done it.

One time, oh man, maybe a dozen years ago, we were at the beach and her laptop wasn't charged up, so I - reluctantly - let her use my laptop for an hour.

She installed 4 malware programs.
Without knowing it.
In an hour.
And had no idea that she had installed anything on my computer.

So today's episode, in which she installed a whole new malware browser, and made it her default browser, and set it to open two new windows on startup, all without the slightest clue what she was doing, is a good reminder of how insanely dangerous she is around computers, and why I haven't let her so much as touch any of my machines since she installed four malware programs in an hour without knowing it.


I love that lady till the day I die, but I don't let her touch my computers, nuh uh.


OneLaunch.

Off Topic

I got a hero story about her too, I'll put it in my thread.

[Mr brolin]

SWMBO is a lovely, smart, empathetic person who until her recent retirement had been a senior person in corporate travel for about 100 years. She taught folks the weird arcana of Galileo, Amadeus and other weird booking and billing systems with the most obscure command line like entry.

But...... I am quite sure when she was born, God said.. "Lo, the world has too much order, it needeth more sand in the gears. This lady she be gifted the gift of The Seething Mass of Entropy!!!!!, go forth and confound the tech savvy".

I jest not, she doesn't even need to touch technology to make it break, she just needs to be close to it or have some tangential link and Poof. It stops working.

Even though I loath the Apple ecosystem with a passion, I had to end up getting her an iPhone and ipad, locked down to the n'th degree. The "house" desktop is a Lenvo all in one which is again locked down so she can't install anything.

The network connection for her devices and the AIO is a dedicated wireless connection just for her, running through a Raspberry Pi with Pi-Hole running to block all the advertising and tracking and supplementary anti malware software......And at least every 2 weeks or so something still breaks and I will have to remote in. Since when it happens something else usually goes "erk, thump, dead" i need to have not one but 3 ways to access, Open VPN, Zerotier network connection and SSH via a TOR hidden service.

The joy of fambly tech support ...