Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:I can't make much of it. (Score 3, Interesting) 64

On some Dell tower PC's from around 2008, the notification was that at the next boot, the BIOS firmware showed a message saying something like "A single bit memory error was detected and corrected, press F1 to continue."

I have some sticks of RAM (in a box of junk somewhere) that caused the message on the hottest days of the year.

Comment Re:Reminds me of old FM radios (Score 3, Interesting) 87

That worked because receivers made before about 2010 all converted the desired station down to 10.7MHz using a local oscillator signal.

The local oscillator frequency can be 10.7MHz above or below the desired frequency so the effect is different between different models of radio.

The local oscillator signal leaked out of the radio very weakly but enough to be picked up on another radio a few feet away.

These days most of the crappy ten-dollar domestic radio receivers use a single chip silicon tuner. They have a couple of chips on a circuit board, they don't contain a load of coils, capacitors and tuning cans like old radios.

Silicon-tuner radios have much lower LO leakage because the signal generation circuitry is in a tiny silicon chip.

Comment bitlocker from new (Score 4, Informative) 207

It is now common for laptops to be shipped with the harddrive/ssd encrypted with bitlocker. Many people are unaware of it.

If you don't create a Microsoft account then later if the laptop goes wrong and won't boot you can't access your files by connecting the harddrive or ssd to another machine. Without a Microsoft account you can't get the bitlocker key.

If a laptop with bitlocker boots to a login screen then the bitlocker key has to be stored in the laptop, in which case it can be obtained by soldering wires to the I2C bus and using a logic analyzer. It is way beyond the technical ability of the average person but can be done.

To mitigate that, some corporate laptops are set up to erase the TPM if the laptop case is opened. You opened such a laptop to add more RAM and can't access the email that was used for the Microsoft account?, any files you didn't back up separately are gone forever.

Comment Re:Seems like one of the few valid use cases (Score 4, Insightful) 28

But they don't. NFT adds nothing here. It guarantees nothing here. Only by assigning shared ownership (via copyright law) and contractually agreeing on payout terms do you get that. And then, you don't need NFT to do it.

Just like every other use of "the blockchain" and related "technology;" the only actual use is convincing someone else to give you money. So ask yourself: are you convinced, or are you the one making the money?

Also, why has no one made PtbarneumCoin?

Comment Re:Irrelevant (Score 1) 23

E3 was pretty relevant in 2000. It was still fairly relevant in 2013 when the stumblings of Microsoft with the XBox One (that is, the first XBox One, not the XBox One S or X, or the original XBox) lead to Sony's wildly successful "this is how you share" video a day before E3 and their press conference, and them basically dominating the generation.

Its relevance has been going downhill since, though, since everyone realized they didn't really need E3 to have a conference or communicate with fans, etc., given this newfangled Internet thing all the kids were watching videos on anyway.

Comment But why this (Score 1) 74

I mean, when we were kids, it was child actors peddling goods on TV, in movies, magazines, or whatever. Commercials, movies, shows... anything for kids was basically to sell merchandise after the fact. Remember video game magazines? Saturday morning cartoons? Unless you lived under a rock, had no TV, were permitted to see no movies, read no magazines, etc (I knew a few kids like this), your entire childhood was steeped in targeted commercialism.

Surely you realized this at some point. Which is why I have to ask: why this? The medium and format changed a bit, but little else.

Comment Re: Walled garden (Score 1) 76

"exactly where you wanted to go"

Google: usually takes you where you want to go, unless your search happens to include a single trending term in which case you will never what you're after.

Bing: takes you to the knockoff of where you want to go, with a bunch of extra "features" thrown in; if you use Microsoft products, tends to sneak in like a creepy landlord

Apple: would take you to one of 3 curated sites, and that's where you want to go; if you don't think so, no, that's where you want to go; it would be impossible to ensure privacy and security and comply with the CCP otherwise

DuckDuckGo: takes you to the 4th page of Google search results

Comment ** Addendum (Score 2) 14

I meant to add: This assumes this is a problem anyone (who can) actually wants to solve. I would not. With "CODB" fines, the company makes money, the government makes money, the people in charge can claim they've done something, people who otherwise don't care can reassure themselves something has been done, and the few left aren't enough to matter.

Anything else would cost those-involved money. The thought of implementing the above would likely scare the crap out of everyone involved.

Comment A wonderful solution (Score 2, Interesting) 14

There's a wonderful 2-part solution:

  1. Halt stock trades for 3-6 months
  2. Directly fine all investors

The first prevents this from turning back into "cost of doing business" where you can sell a bit of stock to pay for your profits. If you put everyone making money suddenly on the hook, you can bet change will happen fast, as people dump stock on reports companies are misbehaving (as they-personally will be liable), or sue the company for damages.

Comment Actually (Score 1) 119

If you just want a device you can slap up, click a button, and use.. well, that's what you're paying extra-plus-privacy for.

However if you want to do a bit of legwork (fingerwork?), this stuff is actually amazingly accessible. Grab yourself some Pi Zero 2 W (or Pi 4 depending on reqs), something from like the camera department or some kind of speaker/mic board or whatever you want. (There are plenty of sources and plenty of hardware variety for this stuff.. adafruit is just recognizable.)

Want a custom voice assistant? You might think Mycroft, but they want signup for most of their stuff.. try Rhasspy instead; a bit of work but actually surprisingly easy to set up, and surprisingly easy to customize. Want a security camera? Search for "raspberry pi camera motion detection" and you'll get articles and videos all over.

With the relatively low cost of the hardware, in a weekend or few you're likely to end up with a better, private network of gear that works how you want, than you would have off-the-shelf anyway.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Just Say No." - Nancy Reagan "No." - Ronald Reagan

Working...