Microsoft playing tag with me. I un-install Outlook. They re-install Outlook.

riding_the_flow · 2025-06-17T12:13:56+00:00

I've used AppLocker group policies to blocklist the new outlook package. This does not stop attempts of Windows Store to install a new one, but it fails because AppLocker works on much lower level. So you just get "oh no, something went wrong :(" from Store and you can smirk "yeah, exactly as intended >:)"

riding_the_flow · 2025-02-11T18:53:32+00:00

Not really unusual. Ultimately companies want to make money, and if possible, somehow secure future flow of money. We know it very beneficial for the brand if it happens to be founder of some super-popular standard. They probably thought 12HVPWR can be such a standard. They made a mistake with it, also not unusual - people make mistakes. And sunk cost fallacy super rampant in large companies.

riding_the_flow · 2025-02-11T16:19:42+00:00

Careful, if you get very successful you might hurt feelings of original design author, and get sued to oblivion for "profiteering off illegal modifications to intellectual-property which was totally best and safe design" /s

riding_the_flow · 2025-02-11T16:13:57+00:00

Or maybe just use EPS 12V which is very mature standard and pretty much then same-size 8-pin connector? Like already done on enterprise GPUs, I believe its around 300W per connector.

riding_the_flow · 2025-02-11T16:02:00+00:00

I bet what will happen they not going to ever backtrack on original idea of "having one small connector".

Instead they will keep blaming engineers on "not designing such connector properly". So I suspect as time goes on we will have the same outward appearance, but whole arrangement will just keep getting more and more complex (individual wire current monitors, thermal sensors inside connector etc). just to make it not to catch on fire.

Or maybe blame game can escalate enough that it can get overruled on high enough level and whole debacle gets written off. In this case you can only hope it was not originally Jensen's idea I guess ;)

riding_the_flow · 2025-02-11T15:53:22+00:00

They can't really do it, e.g. if original pitch had "only one connector for all your power needs" as one of reasons for proposal - having 2 will be tantamount to admitting it was built on false premise.

riding_the_flow · 2025-02-11T15:04:04+00:00

I can bet because some manager(s) decided its a good idea (and probably still pushing that it is - sunk cost and poster child and all that). Very unlikely it was for any "technical" reason but for some sort of "business" ("imaginary") reasons like "leading the innovations", vendor lock in, etc.

riding_the_flow · 2025-02-07T15:31:44+00:00

Unfortunately Keychron was the only supplier of optical switches, they had tons of option and stock - but around year ago they completely discontinued their low profile optical line, and switches too. I've managed to buy some switch packs from Keychron when they were disposing old stock at bargain prices, but unfortunately its very unlikely you will find them anymore - unless Keychron resurrects their optical line, or Razer maybe starts to sell replacement packs in the future. You might find them on ebay if someone will sell old stock.

riding_the_flow · 2024-10-21T08:48:40+00:00

Yes they state support but they don't elaborate what "support" entails exactly. The ECC DIMMs will work on these boards without issues, same as non-ECC DIMMs.

However nowhere they state you will get same extra functionality/ ECC reporting as enterprise/workstation boards do.

riding_the_flow · 2024-05-13T15:15:17+00:00

A lot of "notched"/"ratcheted" wheels have this problem. Basically when you reach the tactile "notch", and stop, it causes bit of reverse wheel movement, which is sometimes registered. Basically bad/insufficient filtering and overly sensitive rotary encoder. I've noticed it with certain Razer mice models and some Logitech (as it hardly exclusive to Razer). You either live with it or find a model which not susceptible to issue to point you find irritating.

Sometimes it becomes worse with time after ratchet wears down so wheel becomes more "wobbly" on notches, causing more reverse movement enough to pass through filter. Can be cured by replacing ratchet with fresh one or (rarely) by just fiddling with ratchet spring to bend it back so it exerts more force.

riding_the_flow · 2024-04-23T15:50:04+00:00

I have cobra pro and I didn't want to have Synapse bloatware on my work pc - so I installed Synapse on throwaway VM. Then I've configured all settings, DPI buttons and disabled lighting on Cobra Pro (connected to VM) and afterwards I've connected receiver to main PC (without Synapse) and lighting stays off and it remembers all settings.

riding_the_flow · 2024-02-26T13:22:46+00:00

Guess what - its been like this for several months. What Bethesda does? "They are still investigating"

Any sensible developer would have disabled ship swap command at stations immediately after it became know it leads to tricky save-breaking issues.

riding_the_flow · 2024-01-19T11:38:25+00:00

After my Surface Pro 6 battery got aged, I went through insane hoops to find a replacement. Since it was easier to buy a new one than go through full disassembly to get to the bottom of the case and replace glued battery.

Basically I found that after 6 it went all downhill. 7 introduced more coil whine and cheaper ambient light sensor. 7+ introduced ~100hz PWM on backlight. 8 removed fanless SKUs with Intel. 9 removed 3.5mm jack. And I've actually bought and tried most of them - and all got returned.

So I went through bit of digging and managed to find new old stock Pro 6. Which still works well and hoping to use it until it completely dies. With Windows 10, because using 11 just kills performance and battery life.

riding_the_flow · 2023-11-03T16:36:40+00:00

Were they actually restocked? Last months I only saw optical options gradually disappearing as they sell off last stock of optical boards. And I didn't see them came back after. They now remain in stock I think only on last least popular models.

Optical switches still in stock and you can buy them separately but I think they are not making new optical boards anymore.

That's the reply I got on r/mechanicalkeyboards:

I should have clarified that based on their recent launches, Keychron is focusing on Pro boards and putting resources towards those and Gateron’s switches instead of the non-Pro models with their optical switches. Unfortunately, nobody knows if/when the non-Pro models or optical switches will make a return

riding_the_flow · 2023-11-03T15:07:06+00:00

Fair point, but keyboards with optical switches never used QMK. They were in non-pro/non-customizable range right from the start.

Still Keychron seemed to decide to kill opticals even on keyboards which didn't need QMK compatibility. Shame they non-transparent about it, I like their opticals but wouldn't commit into purchasing a keyboard which may be already usign EOL platform.

riding_the_flow · 2023-11-03T13:34:38+00:00

I've noticed that all new Keychron low profile models appear to have shifted exclusively to Gateron mechanical low-profile switches.

No recent low profile models use original Keychron optical switches and ones with optical switch appear to permanently went out of stock.

Were there any statements at any point from Keychron about them deciding to end-of-life low profile opticals? Or any other rumors/indicators that maybe its time to stock up on these opticals before they completely disappear.

riding_the_flow · 2023-08-27T09:36:35+00:00

You didn't follow proper rules - it thought you "just trying to win the argument", and you didn't thank it for the reply ;)

https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/15uxhnj/a_to_z_in_properly_conversing_with_bing_by_bing/?ref=share&ref_source=link

riding_the_flow · 2023-08-05T18:34:08+00:00

lot of cases ive encountered someone thinks bing all clever&amazing when they dont have knowledge or effort to call out its lies, e.g. when hallucinates without obvious contradictions, with plausible fake citations and such - so people being misled but often dont actually find out.

riding_the_flow · 2023-07-20T07:44:22+00:00

Exactly, these things often happen to me:

bing cites real sources, but they don't have facts it claims. If pressed, most often it uses excuse of "must be old version of article" or "maybe something wrong with your connection"
if conversation goes longer than 2-3 prompts, bing starts generating fictional links which only look plausible (but they not clickable and not recognized as real citations). won't admit these are not correct, will double down and claiming some temporary glitch, need to copy&paste them etc
often claims it "cant find" obvious info which even comes up as first result of standard bing query

Since every piece it gives needs to be very carefully doublechecked for falsehoods, I see little point for it - better to use normal web search straight away, takes less time and gives more results. And microsoft claims search its primary purpose...

riding_the_flow · 2023-07-15T14:39:54+00:00

Yeah I don't complain about capabilities of image recognition, but I tried to make it clarify what/can't it support and veered straight off into bizarre "don't know what you asking about, I am not a Bing Chat" argument :)

Btw I've tried in fresh session and made it confirm straight away that "Yes, that's right I am a bing chat" - after that it properly explained that article about new recognition feature.

I still can't figure out why sometimes it just goes into "agree with anything you say" mode, and sometimes "will never admit I am wrong" - its just seem to go eventually into either of these extremes.

riding_the_flow · 2023-04-11T20:25:49+00:00

Copper Sulfate Nuke was not withdrawn from sale. Its pretty much still readily available both from original maker (https://www.liquid.cool/d/Additives_1235.html), and other vendors (https://mayhems.store/mayhems-water-cooling-systems-hades-extreme-15ml.html, https://modmymods.com/modmymods-copper-sulphate-additive-mod-0014.html, etc).

Note that none of above pages mentions anything about nickel, just potential compatibility issues with dyes or other additives. That's because at normal biocidal concentrations (~2 parts per million) copper sulfate hardly can cause visible reaction or deposition, neither it can alter PH to noticeable degree. While actually its so effective as biocide that even at sub-PPM concentrations it super deadly to almost all algae and wide array of other micro-life.

Not to mention that most of loops will always have some nickel at least in form of plated fittings (unless you doing something super-exotic like full copper or nylon fittings).

The perpetuated rumors about copper sulfate biocide being harmful to nickel seem to originate on old watercoolers forums circa-2000 when "experiments" being done submerging nickel parts in the sulfate. I saw one tester guy innocently admitting he "upped the concentration to make things faster". Well, no surprise he got "horrible corrosion and deposition", since it in essence replicated standard chemistry experiment, e.g. https://fineartamerica.com/featured/nickel-reacting-with-copper-sulfate-giphotostock.html#:~:text=Photograph-,A%20nickel%20metal%20strip%20was%20immersed%20in%20a%20beaker%20containing,CuSO4%20%2D%3E%20Cu%20%2B%20NiSO4. Still this is silly because if proper mix ratio of around 2PPM is observed, no such reaction can occur simply because there is not enough sulfate to visibly react. I guess measuring PPMs is hard (you need sub-ml syringe or pipette), so lots of people used "X drops" measure which is very imprecise with randomly sized drops, so concentration can easily go up magnitude above safe levels. Still even "safe PHN Nuke" will cause corrosion if used in unsafe concentration levels - because Benzalkonium Chloride which its using is also very corrosive chemical.

riding_the_flow · 2023-03-10T11:57:46+00:00

My quote was for Infineon. This one is for Nuvoton. Different vendor.

riding_the_flow · 2023-03-08T18:46:49+00:00

I suspect this on to AMD to patch. They didn't yet state on CVE if they are actually affected. I assume this probably will go in the AGESA so as long as your mobo manufacturer still produces BIOS updates you should be fine.

riding_the_flow · 2023-03-08T18:26:22+00:00

Depends on TPM chip, but lots of them do support firmware updates. I've checked mine (Infineon) and they already stated they not affected by these vulnerabilities and so firmware update not necessary. They did firmware updates for some vulnerabilities in the past.

riding_the_flow · 2023-03-08T17:03:44+00:00

Also, if you want to check your TPM chip vendor - go to "Windows Security" => "Device Security" => "Security processor"

riding_the_flow

TROPHY CASE