The computing stuff rant thread

[Mr Larrington]

No, stupid laptop, you have no need to start doing a scheduled full backup, because you've just finished doing one that I kicked off manually*.  Sadly, if I kill it it'll just try re-running every night until I relent.

* having awoken it from its slumbers for its six-monthly update frenzy.

[TimC]

Bluddy main desktop has fried its C drive (M2) for the second time. Having to download Win11 again and order a new 1TB M2 drive.

[perpetual dan]

Bluddy main desktop has fried its C drive (M2) for the second time. Having to download Win11 again and order a new 1TB M2 drive.

I think I’d be wondering about faults or lack of cooling at this point.

[Mr Larrington]

Hurrah!  I haz New! SHINY*!!1! iPad

Bah! It is slightly larger than my old b0rked iPad and thus will not fit in its case

* actually it's “Space Grey” and therefore not that shiny at all.

[TimC]

Bluddy main desktop has fried its C drive (M2) for the second time. Having to download Win11 again and order a new 1TB M2 drive.

I think I’d be wondering about faults or lack of cooling at this point.

The drive is fine. It was a slightly over-enthusiastic application of a WinZip Utilities Suite clean-up that borked some of the boot files - in a way which Windows couldn't repair (I won't be using that app again!). The vast majority of my stuff is on other drives, so reinstalling Win 11 from a flashdrive is fairly painless, apart from the need to rebuild the registry.

[spesh]

O hai Twitter!

I see the big box telling me to log in or sign up you splat all over Stuffs that people link to is now without the little “X” in the corner to make it go away.

Update: I managed nearly two weeks of avoiding the "Pop-up of Doom" by viewing Twitter timelines in a private window, but the shelf-life of that work-around appears to have expired yesterday, chiz.

As far as reading Tweets goes, I've just had a play with a couple of links recently posted in the Dread Lurgi thread:

WRT: https://twitter.com/JeremyFarrar/status/1492238922604322818?s=20&t=YcCPIpBcunCJi_5WApLgFA

Opening in a private window triggers the "Pop-up of Doom" when I scroll down past "More Tweets".

WRT: https://twitter.com/YouAreLobbyLud/status/1492217374686457856

I could scroll down the thread and replies without any issues, either in a new tab or a private window.

HTH

[Mr Larrington]

That Lobby Lud thread is longer than The Baroque Cycle, though, so I gave up long before reaching the end.

[Mr Larrington]

O hai iOS Mail!

Look, when I move those messages into that folder it’s because that’s where I want to keep them.  So don’t put them back in the fucking Inbox as soon as my back is turned, m'kay?

Kthxbai

[Kim]

Dear certbot, Pls to be reloading Dovecot when you renew the SSL certificates, like I told you to last time I had to work out what thunderbollocks was moaning about.

[Kim]

Pfsense.  That is all.

ETA: Also, people on forums who don't read properly and reply to "When I configure X, Y doesn't work" with "This is how you configure X"

[Mr Larrington]

So after getting a working version of Windows, installing two new and mean-looking memory modules, wondering what the actual fuck Nvidia have done with the Geforce Control Panel*, making the sound card work, reinstalling a metric fuckton of programmes and applying the equally hefty list of stupid updates and persuading Microsith that yes, I really do want to install get_iPlayer and so on and, moreover, forth, the only update in the queueueue is the Intel System one.  For which the “Download” button still doesn’t work, which was roughly where we came in last Friday.

With great trepidation Mr Larrington installs some Intel “check ur drivers” thing, which asks for a restart, which was where the whole thing terminally b0rked itself last time.  And Lo!  The box restarted, went off to Intel's webby SCIENCE, checked Stuffs and pronounced everything bang up to fucking date   Does this make the pending download go away?

No.  No, it does not.  Sadly the plague will probably prevent me from launching an arson attack on the Beast of Redmond even if I do manage to get to USAnia this year.  Bah!

* Answer: they've moved it to the poxy App Store where it doesn’t work unless you’ve installed the DCH version of the driver which Nvidia don’t actually bother to tell you about, the witless dugongs.

[TheLurker]

Yahoo! You! Bunch! Of! Incompetents!

What do you mean the reply-to address can't be verified?  It was fine this morning when I sent an e-mail message.  It was fine for the 20 years before this morning.  The BCS has not folded its tents and stolen silently away into the night in the last 12 hours so sort it out you bunch of blithering idiots.

It gets better, if you clear the reply-to address in settings, then rather than assuming it ought to use the base yahoo e-mail address it wails that you have to set one.  Hopeless.

And is there any help *anywhere* on their many pages that suggests corrective actions you may take?  That was a rhetorical question in case you hadn't guessed.

[Mr Larrington]

Yahoo! Mail! Is! Fucking! Shit! And! The! Only! Reason! I! Keep! Using! It! Is! Because! It's! Too! Much! Hassle! To! Change! Everything! After! 25! Years!

[TheLurker]

Aye, Inertia. The eighth deadly sin.

Having stuck resolutely to the olde style unadorned by bells & whistles web-mail and only enabling the abomination that shall not be named when wishing to send attachments I have found it to be quite adequate.  I shouldn't complain too much, after all I don't pay a great deal for it, checks... hmm ah, yes precisely nothing*.




*No cash anyway, heaven only knows what use they make of the drivel that passes for information in the messages I send.

[perpetual dan]

I’ve been setting up an instagram account, prompted by a need to know what I’m talking about for a work project. I rarely use fb these days. And now I’m reminded why.

I’ve followed a handful of art and cycling accounts and made one hello world post. No cross over with fb, some with other services. Now they’re doing that creepy thing where they suggest real world friends that you wouldn’t get just from the accounts I’ve followed. Which can fuck off.

And it can fuck off some more because they’ve blocked me from following any more accounts.

[Mr Larrington]

Q: What kind of a moron posts a spammy comment to a blog post that:

• tells the commenter that comments are moderated before publication, and
• is well over two years old?

A: No idea, but some slack-witted turbocunt did so this evening to the Automatic Diary

[perpetual dan]

My phone is threatening an update. The update gives me three version numbers and a patch level. The first of the three version numbers is the same as is on the system now. The security patch level is "1 September 2020" which doesn't seem very recent, especially when the last update was April 2021. Do I trust this?

Also, when I look at the "whats new" it should tell me what's actually new, not "a software update can include but is not limited to". I know what an update is FFS.

[Mr Larrington]

Q: What kind of a moron posts a spammy comment to a blog post that:

• tells the commenter that comments are moderated before publication, and
• is well over two years old?

A: No idea, but some slack-witted turbocunt did so this evening to the Automatic Diary

It gets worse.  Some cretin just submitted a comment to a post from 2009 

And another thing: fondleslab, why are you putting tokens in random places in posts to this forum rather than where the fucking cursor is

[Mr Larrington]

Windows!  You used to be able to execute those .bat files wot live on $NAS from any PC on the network.  And since I was obliged to reinstall Windows on the big bugger upstairs, you can’t because you claim you can’t acces them.  But I can still edit them, save them as something else and run them just fine

WTF is that all about, eh?

[SoreTween]

WTF is that all about, eh?

My guess would be authentication. You've rebuilt the big bugger with the same old username and password but something knows it is a different user.  Check the file permissions & groups on the nas first, the new user may have read & write but not execute permission. Otoh it could be something on the winblows box only letting you execute files you've created. That's a world of pain I'm happy to say I can't help with having walked away from microsoft.

A recursive chown any help?

Back in the server 2008 days thanks to a project I was on I got fairly proficient at small domains, group policies, active directory and all that shizzle. I almost converted my home environment to a domain mainly to a) eliminate authentication issues and b) simplify regular password changes¹. Transition to server 2012 when it landed would have been ok. But then Windows 8 & Nein 10 landed and I was very glad I hadn't tied myself in more tightly.

¹Fashionable back then.

[CommuteTooFar]

This problem arises because there are many people with the same name. It is important that John Smith can not access John Smith files.  So when you built your new box you became someone else. Windows uses Security Ids (I am sure exactly what the are called).  Your new security can be added or ownership of the file changed to your new security id. You need to be logged in as the administrator of the NAS to do this.  Security is necessary but a pain.

[Mr Larrington]

But presumably Windows thinks the /me on Box A and the /me on Box B are different, so how is it that it used to work and now doesn’t?  Especially since Box A has been re-Windowsed at least three times over its lifetime yet has only started misbehaving since the last one

Edit: also there doesn’t appear to be any way of accessing the thing from the command line chiz.  The instructions from Seagate are very simple; go to “Services” in the webby interface and poke the button to enable SSH.  Which in my case I have not got

[Mr Larrington]

O hai, game!

I see you are “Unable to cache model instances”.  Would it be asking too much for you to tell me WHICH model instances you are unable to cache, that I might, y'know, try to figure out how to fix it rather than just relying on guesswork?

Kthxbai…

[Mr Larrington]

Thanks to guesswork, I think I have worked out what the above means.  And I hope the magic number of model instances that it cannot cache MOAR than is 255.  Because having spent a Several of days assembling a handful of gert big files from a metric fuckton of ickle ones, I have spent another Several taking the fucking things apart again and wondering why my model-counting not-Rocket SCIENCE counted the bloody things wrong the first time

[Kim]

Our long-serving Procurve switch appears to have some sort of droid-rot, where it pretends to work but stops switching packets on some of the ports until power-cycled.  Bah!