Why Johnny Won't Upgrade • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#461

Post by AnssiH » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

Retr0spectrum wrote: post #394

Fnoord wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I needed an all-in-one solution for streaming (Netflix, Prime, Spotify, Jellyfin, ...) so I went with an Nvidia Shield Pro on the HDMI port. Any smart TV is a dumb TV for me. I'll make it "smart" myself, the old fashioned way, as you described. One downside of HDMI is max 60 FPS, so its limited for gaming and OKish for interactive (such as navigation through menu or simple browsing) yet should be adequate for any vie…

60fps is not a limitation of HDMI. I have an LG OLED that has HDMI 2.1, which can do 4k120fps (at least). Unfortunately current-gen GPUs only support HDMI 2.0, so I am limited to 1440p120fps or 4k60fps for the time being.

You can use a Club3D CAC-1085 DP1.4-to-HDMI2.1 adapter to get 4k120 with current GPUs with LG 2019 OLED TVs.

No VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) though, so I'm just waiting for new GPUs myself.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#462

Post by jmnicolas » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:39 PM UTC

chmod775 wrote: post #215

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an open format for bookkeeping data? I suppose you have ledger-cli but that's hardly useful for normal people.

CSV file(s)? It's not like the underlying data is in any way complicated. A lot of software can export and import these. Those that can't export to CSV have usually another way of getting that data into a spreadsheet application, from where you can export it as CSV... And yes I know CSV technically sucks (varying encoding, lax standards, etc.), but it's the lowest common denominator for a lot of software.

SqLite is the solution to all our CSV problems.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#463

Post by d10r » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

bfrog wrote: post #445

Yeah I mean, nothing like the automated android updates that make the phone invevitably slower, less usable, and break previously ingrained interaction flows. See the gmail app for endless pointless tweaking. It solved email perfectly fine, now it includes meets and some asanine button panel on the bottom taking up a massive amount of space. My phone hasn't changed, but android has, and thus my phone is almost useles…

Disabling automatic updates is always one of the first things I do on a new Android phone. I would happily enable it selectively for a few Apps of my choice (e.g. the browser), but unfortunately the Play store doesn't allow that - unlike F-Droid. So I occasionally do update Apps I want to be up to date manually instead. Also reduces unpleasant surprises like randomly being logged out or randomly becoming incompatible with backend servers (seen e.g. with Mattermost).

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#464

Post by bitwize » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

grishka wrote: post #432

echelon wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could encode signal in inaudible high frequency audio that the Facebook app passively listens for.

I'm sure it does not because modern mobile OSes would alert the user to it, but even if it did, there's an easy fix: don't install the app. For when you do need Facebook, use the mobile website.

Currently you MUST install Messenger (or use Facebook's retro mobile site for old Windows Mobile phones) to send/receive messages.

Eventually, their mobile site will be nerfed and a popup will appear saying "Facebook is best experienced with the app".

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#465

Post by omaranto » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

Perfect timing. Chrome OS just had an update that makes bold fonts look very fuzzy. As far as I can tell that update contains no other changes, just severely fuzzy bold fonts.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#466

Post by unionpivo » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #438

unionpivo wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been in IT for over 20 years now. I have had orders of magnitude more problem with updates than with malware/viruses/hackers. The thing is with malware/viruses/hackers sooner or later something will get through any defences, so you need robust recovery system anyway. And most updates that brake systems are not even security updates. I wouldn't mind automated security updates, but many many many maybe most vend…

I have been in IT for over 20 years now. I have had orders of magnitude more problem with updates than with malware/viruses/hackers. Until you get hit by this.... https://www.giac.org/paper/gcih/201/microsoft-iis-superfluou... It was the first widespread IIS vulnerability that almost hit me. The tl;dr version: All you had to do was encode a shell command in the url bar if the site was running IIS and it would execute…

Oh we(organizations I have worked for) have been hit several times (not IIS, but once it was several wordpress sites we used, once it was outlook, once we never figured out - probably inside job, ... ). But that was 3, 4 times in 20 years.

Updates its 3,4 times per year. Like I said order of magnitude difference

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#467

Post by bentcorner » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

mattnewton wrote: post #142

stubish wrote: post #141

Taring everything with the same brush. There was a time, not so long ago, when it was impossible to install Windows over the Internet because so many other machines were compromised and your machine would, with certainty, also end up compromised before it had gotten as far as applying the latest service pack. Then we got automatic updates, and we all breathed a sigh of relief because things got better . We had empiri…

It’s funny you mention Microsoft, because I have a windows machine to play games on. It regularly updates itself and re-enables telemetry I had disabled, shows spammy news in the start menu and ads for Microsoft products in my toolbar, and reinstalls skype every time I try to get rid of it.

It sounds like many of you would appreciate the LTSC version of Windows: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/l...

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#468

Post by alex_anglin » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

mumblerino wrote: post #407

pbronez wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I made this same call. My LG Smart TV has advertisements in the menus and doesn’t have a particularly wide range of apps. So I got an Apple TV and disconnected the internet from the TV. Much better experience overall.

What can you even do with an Apple TV without internet? Did you jailbreak it?

You can stream to it over Airplay.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#469

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #441

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I multiboot Windows 10 Pro and a variety of Unixen. Been doing it for decades and it's been getting harder lately because Microsoft's updates have been acting more and more like they own the place. The most recent nag-you-to-use-edge update didn't just forget to restore the defaultness of my Arch EFI entry--a mistake I could forgive--it deleted it. Luckily I could boot into Debian and restore the entry because the as…

Maybe you have a setting in EFI that the clock is in local time, but just shifted it to show UTC?

So far as I know, Windows always expects the hardware clock to be in local time. I found some registry hack that fixes this, and I think that the update broke the hack which later triggered a network time sync.

Admittedly the situation was a bit janky in the first place, so I might share some blame in that case.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#470

Post by mcv » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

I have a happy story about an automatic software update that completely broke the software. Happy, because it was easy to switch back to a previous version.

It's about a game, Europe Universalis 4, which, 7 years after its release, still regularly gets major feature updates, sometimes dramatically changing how the game works. Years ago, one such update that added a lot of tactical depth to the game, ended up hogging so many resources on my aging PC that the game ground to a halt and became unplayable.

Fortunately, Steam allows you to easily revert back to a previous version of the game. Also useful when an update breaks save-game compatibility when you're in the middle of a game.

Sadly, a lot of software does not have that option. It should be standard, or our OS should enable us to easily revert back to a previous state of an installation.