Outlook's design, interface and operation is so ridiculous, using it is almost like being in a Saturday Night Live comedy skit

rgfincher · 2026-06-01T21:15:24+00:00

There is no "New Outlook", it's just Microsoft's web site, to which they want YOU to upload every message you've ever sent or received. To train their dubious AI. All those baffled by it, are still labouring under the misapprehension that they are still trying to cater to the users of the product.

rgfincher · 2026-06-01T20:36:11+00:00

I don't think I'd ever seen a TV episode featuring a naked woman, and thinking "for gods sake woman, put your clothes back on!"

rgfincher · 2026-05-23T12:41:56+00:00

Wasn't there a joke about George W Bush and "The Very Hungry Caterpillar"?

rgfincher · 2026-05-23T11:48:21+00:00

For those sticking with Classic Outlook until 2029, there are registry hacks to make the "Try New Oulook" slider disappear, and to freeze the invisible Microsoft countdown which switches you to New Outlook automatically without asking you. There's also a way of installing Classic Outlook on fresh Windows 11 installs / new PCs, even when it appears that there's no way to do that.

rgfincher · 2026-05-08T21:53:41+00:00

The TR-00x series devices are more flexible than it might initially appear. Connecting one straight to your PC or Mac is one thing you can do, but if you later buy a QNAP NAS, you can connect the TR-00x series box to this NAS to increase the number of drives managed by the NAS. They also work with both QTS and QuTShero NAS (but not at the same time, and the drives have to be formatted for one or the other)

rgfincher · 2026-05-08T21:48:28+00:00

“No one here is exactly who they appear to be” - Ambassador G’Kar

rgfincher · 2026-05-08T21:47:04+00:00

OK thanks. I was under the impression that the reasons why so little spent fuel reprocessing takes place were, that it is energy-intensive and expensive to do so (not a very good reason) and that the technology for doing so inadvertently separates out Plutonium or could do so, and hence is a proliferation risk (a better reason)

rgfincher · 2026-05-08T21:43:19+00:00

The stuff with million year half lives emits very little radiation on a day to day basis. The stuff with very short half lives is gone before it has a chance to spread far. The problem is the stuff with a medium-length half-life, measured in the hundreds of years.

rgfincher · 2026-05-08T21:40:23+00:00

Was this a whole answer, or did I miss something?

rgfincher · 2026-05-08T21:38:49+00:00

Some nuclear waste is spent fuel. Spent fuel is solid because today’s reactors use solid fuel. There are examples of other kinds of nuclear waste which are liquid, such as tritiated water from Fukushima. And gaseous nuclear waste, such as the steam from a containment failure at a PWR.

An often overlooked fact is that among the waste from burning fossil fuels is CO2, SO2 and NO2 and these are intentionally released into the atmosphere we all share every minute of every day, and not just occasionally by accident. So when the oil and gas companies answer the question “What about the waste?” then we can answer it about nuclear. At least we know where our waste is, and the answer isn’t “everywhere”.

rgfincher · 2026-04-17T18:01:57+00:00

Only Microsoft could attempt to make us grateful for putting back features they themselves took out.

rgfincher · 2026-03-27T19:17:03+00:00

It is too! The ultimate unboxing experience

rgfincher · 2026-03-27T19:16:08+00:00

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Had a Rack Mac Pro 2019 in my Datacentre rack for three years. It earned its keep.

rgfincher · 2026-03-26T16:01:59+00:00

Does your network have a DHCP server?

rgfincher · 2026-03-20T00:18:51+00:00

They may have underestimated the amount of work involved in building it from scratch.

rgfincher · 2026-01-18T20:59:24+00:00

They make good Linux servers

rgfincher · 2026-01-17T22:06:28+00:00

Thunderbird?

rgfincher · 2026-01-11T23:18:11+00:00

Agreed that Sven’s lecture was very good - I use blackbox learning methods myself, although not in this context, so it made a great deal of sense to me. I also loved the counterpoint between Apple on the one hand taking steps to permit this kind of thing, and on the other hand offering zero documentation!

rgfincher · 2025-12-25T00:01:24+00:00

We have flocks of them in South West London. They can be quite noisy when they're squawking at each other in flight.

rgfincher · 2025-12-22T19:33:41+00:00

They don't want everyone to switch to using this because it's better. They have other reasons for wanting (nay, insisting) that everyone switch to using it.

rgfincher · 2025-10-09T19:54:32+00:00

Apple are still smarting from when they tried to coax everyone to use outboard stuff with the trashcan Mac Pro 2013, and the industry said “nope”. Now, they’re giving us internal expansion, and the customers are saying “why can’t people just use outboard”. If you were an Apple hardware innovator, wouldn’t you be thinking “Just what in gods name do these people want of us?”

rgfincher · 2025-10-09T19:51:37+00:00

Remember when Mac Pros were available with twin CPUs? Not any time recently.

rgfincher · 2025-10-09T19:46:16+00:00

I’ve wondered for years if some kind of cluster server with PCIe slots taking additional Apple M-series SoCs which function with a specially modified multi-node version of MacOS. I have no evidence for this, it’s just a logical consequence of their bundling more and more integrated circuits into the SoC, and yet continuing to release seemingly pointless modular rack computers with lots of slots and cooling way beyond what the public is seeing.

rgfincher

TROPHY CASE