As an undergraduate student in the early 1990s, I wrote all my class papers using WordPerfect for DOS. WordPerfect was a powerful desktop word processor that was used in offices all over the world. But WordPerfect was quite expensive; my student edition of WordPerfect cost around $300. When the new version of WordPerfect came out, I just couldn’t afford to buy it. Fortunately, the shareware market was starting to take off around this time. “Shareware” was a new model where software publishers released a program for free so you could try it out – usually for a limited time. If you liked it, you sent them a check and they mailed back a registered copy of the software. Shareware often had the same or similar features as the commercial software it aimed to displace, usually at a lower price. And that’s how I discovered the Galaxy word processor. Galaxy had all the features that I needed in a desktop word processor, but at about one-third the price. The registration fee for Galaxy was $99. There’s so many pieces of software that lost out in the market, and the further back in time we go, the more obscure these tend to get. I had never heard of Galaxy, but I’m glad someone took the time to write this article, ensuring – hopefully – it’ll be saved from obscurity for a long time to come.
Budgie 10.8 is a brand new release series for Budgie Desktop, featuring improvements to Budgie Menu, adoption of StatusNotifier support in System Tray, Magpie v0.x support, and more! I’m quite happy Budgie is back on track after a few leaner years. Development has picked up, there’s a clear roadmap, and it’s fun to follow along with the changes and improvements.
This post is a detailed discussion into user profiles, their directories, and how they are—to put it bluntly—in total disarray on Windows and Linux (I haven’t used a Mac in ages, but I assume the situation is very similar there, too). Applications treat the user profile as a dumping ground, and any user with a reasonably wide list of installed software will find their user profile very difficult to traverse after some time in use. There are platform conventions and attempts to standardise things on more open-source platforms, but a lot of developers resolutely refuse to change the behaviour of their software for a variety of reasons (some less valid than others). The first part is a deep dive into user profiles on Linux and Windows, and the conventions that have been established on these platforms over the years. The second section details how they are broken on each platform, and why they are broken. This happens to be one of my “pet peeves” as well. One the left, my home directory. On the right, my home directory but with all the garbage unhidden. This is bananas. First, it’s been my long-standing conviction that if you, as a developer, need to actively hide things from the user in this way, you’re doing it wrong and and you’re writing bad code. If you’re an operating system developer, don’t use hidden directories and files to hide stuff from the user – use clear directory names, encourage the use of human-readable file names and contents, and put them in places that make sense. Second, if you’re an application developer, follow the damn guidelines of the operating system you’re coding for. More often than not, these guidelines aren’t that hard to understand, they’re not onerous, and they’re certainly not going to be worse than whatever nonsense you yourself can come up with. Having a hidden .paradoxlauncher directory in my home directory displays just such an utter disrespect for me as a user, and tells me that you just don’t care, whether that’s you, the developer, personally, or whatever manager is instructing you to do the wrong thing. At the same time, aside from excessive symlinking, there’s really no solution to any of this. As users, we just have to deal with the results of incompetence and ridiculous crunch culture in software and game development.
Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t just let this one go. I tested all the popular Windows uninstallers and I didn’t like what I saw. I thought many of these programs had some rudimentary issues with their user interface, and they just didn’t work that well. How difficult could it really be to do something better? As it turned out, it was very difficult, actually. It’s 2023, and Windows users still cannot centrally manage their software. People have to create multiple uninstaller programs to finally make a decent one, and not only does it need to uninstall applications, it also needs to somehow find all the garbage files and registry keys these applications barf all over the system. We deserve so much better than this trash.
In the year 1999, Bandai announced the MobileWonderGate – a device which allowed connecting a WonderSwan to the Internet thanks to a collaboration with the mobile network NTT DoCoMo. This was primarily used by a selection games to provide downloadable content, as expected for this type of handheld attachment. … Oh, it also came with a web browser supporting a subset of HTML 3.2, tables, GIF images, reading Japanese websites, a bookmark system, and cookies. On a handheld competing with the Game Boy Color. Did i mention it also acted as an SMTP/POP3 e-mail client? However, this browser assumed you’re on NTT’s network; it utilized a special service called “mopera”, short for Mobile OPErator RAdio. Unfortunately, on the final day of 2004, this service was shut down. Since then, nobody could use a WonderSwan to browse the web, which naturally is the kind of injustice that just cannot be left uncontested. Hardware and software will never be buried by the sands of time as long as crazy people like these exist.
This headline is entirely correct and I will stand by it. This is one of those products that I truly cannot wait to experience and review firsthand: LG is bringing the quirky, one-of-a-kind StanbyME Go to the United States later this month for $999.99. If you missed its international launch, which flew under the radar for many, let me catch you up: the StanbyME Go is a 27-inch 1080p LCD TV housed in a large suitcase that also contains a built-in battery and 20-watt speakers. The idea is that this thing can be a portable entertainment solution whether you’re at a picnic, on a family vacation, or just hanging out on the back patio. Maybe you’ll bring it tailgating with all your pals during football season. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination and the StanbyME Go’s three-hour battery life. This thing runs webOS and does tons of tablet things. This is a webOS tablet.
Microsoft has announced that on 29 July, 2024, the Xbox 360 Store on the Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 Marketplace on the web will close their doors. For once, one of these service or online store shutdowns is actually being handled well, as Microsoft states: This change will not affect your ability to play Xbox 360 games or DLC you have already purchased. Xbox 360 game content previously purchased will still be available to play , not only the Xbox 360 console but also Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S devices via backward compatibility. While it doesn’t mention downloading existing content you own, several other reports state this is possible. If so, this would make it the fairest way to shut down a service like this. On a related personal note, I should really order a replacement disc drive for my venerable Xbox 360 – an original one, still working other than the broken drive! – and fix it back up. I’ve got a huge collection of 360 games I want to keep being able to play.
It looks like Google is desperate to move more Pixel Tablet units, with the company widely using notifications from the Google Home app to promote the new tablet launched earlier this year. Many people report seeing a “Meet the Google Pixel Tablet” banner in their notifications, with a tap on it sending them straight to its product listing on the Google Store. Samsung received hefty criticism for a similar approach to promoting new devices in the past, but it still seems like Google is attempting to jump on board with this strategy. Disgusting. Samsung, Apple, and Google are now all guilty of this, and it should be illegal.
Microsoft is making it possible to remove a few more of the preinstalled Windows 11 applications. In the release notes for a recent Insider Preview, build 25931, the company notes: In addition to the Camera app and Cortana, the Photos app, People app, and Remote Desktop (MSTSC) client can be uninstalled. In addition, this build also deprecates Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) and Remote Mailslots.
About Chromebooks reports: This isn’t turning out to be a good week if you’re a Chromebook hardware fan. Previously planned Chromebooks with Nvidia GPUs are no longer in the works. This follows Monday’s news that Qualcomm Gen 3 Snapdragon 7c Chromebooks were canceled. Indeed, a reader comment from the Snapdragon post pointed out the Google code that explains, in no uncertain terms, that several ChromeOS baseboards have been canceled. I did a little more research and all three of those boards share one common feature. They all were designed to support Nvidia GPUs. This is such a great example of why I titled my review of Chrome OS Flex “a good start with zero follow-through”. Google puts all this effort and marketing into bringing Steam to Chrome OS officially, and even lets several OEMs manufacture and sell gaming-focused Chromebooks… Only to then let it fizzle out and not follow through with better, more gaming-suited hardware. You can almost taste the internal struggle between people wanting to turn Chrome OS into something bigger than what it is now, and the people who just want to shovel cheap plastic crap to schools. Whether you like Chrome OS or not, that just sucks. I want all platforms to get meaningfully better, but Google just doesn’t seem to care at all about Chrome OS.
I have struggled, literally for years, with Quicken being dog slow to start. It could take 30+ seconds to start. From what I could remember, this problem has existed since I first installed Windows 10. The title gives the answer away, but yes, it’s exactly what it says – some applications on Windows will load every single font on the system before loading the rest of the application. If you have a lot of fonts – say, because you’re a designer or illustrator or whatever – you’re going to feel this.
For the past several years, more than 90% of Chrome users’ navigations have been to HTTPS sites, across all major platforms. Thankfully, that means that most traffic is encrypted and authenticated, and thus safe from network attackers. However, a stubborn 5-10% of traffic has remained on HTTP, allowing attackers to eavesdrop on or change that data. Chrome shows a warning in the address bar when a connection to a site is not secure, but we believe this is insufficient: not only do many people not notice that warning, but by the time someone notices the warning, the damage may already have been done. We believe that the web should be secure by default. HTTPS-First Mode lets Chrome deliver on exactly that promise, by getting explicit permission from you before connecting to a site insecurely. Our goal is to eventually enable this mode for everyone by default. While the web isn’t quite ready to universally enable HTTPS-First Mode today, we’re announcing several important stepping stones towards that goal. It’s definitely going to be tough to get those last few percentages converted to HTTPS, and due to Chrome’s monopolistic influence on the web, any steps it takes will be felt by everyone.
Won’t belong now until “violating Chrome Web Store policy” will be applied to ad blockers.
The original iMac entered a computing world that was in desperate need of a shake-up. After the wild early days of the personal computer revolution, things had become stagnant by the mid-1990s. Apple had spent a decade frittering away the Mac’s advantages until most of them were gone, blown out of the water by the enormous splash of Windows 95. It was the era of beige desktop computers chained to big CRT displays and other peripherals. In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to an Apple that was at death’s door, and in true Princess Bride style, he rapidly ran down a list of the company’s assets and liabilities. Apple didn’t have a wheelbarrow or a holocaust cloak, but it did have a young industrial designer who had been experimenting with colors and translucent plastic in Apple’s otherwise boring hardware designs. The original iMac is simply a delightful machine. I vividly remember that the reception and administrative workers at the orthodontic department at the hospital in Alkmaar used them, and teenage me would peek past the reception desk to catch glimpses of the colourful machines. I still love the original iMac.
FreeBSD is a compelling and cutting-edge operating system that provides a wealth of features and advantages. FreeBSD’s deep OpenZFS integration, completely customizable packaging, and the ability to manage a huge fleet with a small team make it a clear contender for consideration in your next infrastructure build. This one’s written by a company that, among other things, sells FreeBSD and OpenZFS support, so take that into account when reading the article.
That raises an obvious question: when should we expect the Go 2 specification that breaks old Go 1 programs? The answer is never. Go 2, in the sense of breaking with the past and no longer compiling old programs, is never going to happen. Go 2 in the sense of being the major revision of Go 1 we started toward in 2017 has already happened. There will not be a Go 2 that breaks Go 1 programs. Instead, we are going to double down on compatibility, which is far more valuable than any possible break with the past. In fact, we believe that prioritizing compatibility was the most important design decision we made for Go 1. I’m not well-versed enough in either programming or the Go programming language, but this seems like good news for Go programmers.
A necessary correction to an earlier post: support for Haiku has not been upstreamed into GCC. From the Haiku development mailing list: It is definitely our goal to get Haiku’s GCC toolchain upstream, and that commit does indeed nudge us a little in that direction… However it’s a small portion of a larger commit adding architecture support. Good to have this cleared up.
Debate continues to rage over the federal Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which seeks to hold platforms liable for feeding harmful content to minors. KOSA is lawmakers’ answer to whistleblower Frances Haugen’s shocking revelations to Congress. In 2021, Haugen leaked documents and provided testimony alleging that Facebook knew that its platform was addictive and was harming teens—but blinded by its pursuit of profits, it chose to ignore the harms. But when Blumenthal introduced KOSA last year, the bill faced immediate and massive blowback from more than 90 organizations—including tech groups, digital rights advocates, legal experts, child safety organizations, and civil rights groups. These critics warned lawmakers of KOSA’s many flaws, but they were most concerned that the bill imposed a vague “duty of care” on platforms that was “effectively an instruction to employ broad content filtering to limit minors’ access to certain online content.” The fear was that the duty of care provision would likely lead platforms to over-moderate and imprecisely filter content deemed controversial—things like information on LGBTQ+ issues, drug addiction, eating disorders, mental health issues, or escape from abusive situations. Since then, Ars Technica reports in this detailed article, the law does seem to have been amended in positive, constructive ways – but not nearly far enough to make it workable and not prone to massive abuse. Sadly, it seems the bill is poised to pass, so we’ll have to see what the eventual, final version will look like.
ZFSBootMenu is a bootloader that provides a powerful and flexible discovery, manipulation and booting of Linux on ZFS. Originally inspired by the FreeBSD bootloader, ZFSBootMenu leverages the features of modern OpenZFS to allow users to choose among multiple “boot environments” (which may represent different versions of a Linux distribution, earlier snapshots of a common root, or entirely different distributions), manipulate snapshots in a pre-boot environment and, for the adventurous user, even bootstrap a system installation via zfs recv. In essence, ZFSBootMenu is a small, self-contained Linux system that knows how to find other Linux kernels and initramfs images within ZFS filesystems. When a suitable kernel and initramfs are identified (either through an automatic process or direct user selection), ZFSBootMenu launches that kernel using the kexec command. Interesting bootloader, for sure, but I am curious to know how many people use ZFS on Linux. Are there any distributions that use ZFS by default?
Certain font-related CSS properties will render your site completely inaccessible if their value is declared using pixels even once. Just read it and absorb the information.
