So I recently found out that the persistent audio dropping out for a second problem I’ve had for years is because the computer thinks the speakers are being unplugged and plugged back in again.
Aside from the obvious - a poor connection at the jack itself - which doesn’t seem likely with the regularity and duration of the glitch, what else could be causing this?
If it’s Windows, third-party driver problems are definitely a thing. Are they the latest version?
… they are now (which means the 2018 drivers Windows installed for me have been replaced by 2020 drivers)
I seem to recall having the same issue because my PC thought one of the unused audio jacks was being plugged in. So I ended up disabling all of the unused jacks on the motherboard and front-panel in the audio software.
I’m not an expert—barely even a layman, honestly—but the idea that a website address can now end with .zip strikes me as a potentially big problem. Am I missing something or is this development as silly as it looks?
It’s clearly intended for very local services in the USA. However, it will also be used to confuse people into downloading and opening .ZIP files with malicious content.
Previously what I thought. Can’t imagine that nobody involved in the decision understood what a zip file is.
Specifically I as an attacker send you an message which says “the files you want are in photos-for-bjb.zip, attached”, and your messenger client says “aha, photos-for-bjb dot zip is a web site, I’ll turn that into a link”. Then you click on it and get the malware.
The sort of thing I’d expect Google to do, but a very bad call by ICANN.
I’m embarrassed to admit drivers might have been the problem. Now I seem to be getting the occasional pop-up notice that flashes on screen too fast for me to read, at roughly the same frequency, but without sound actually dropping out. Seems to be an improvement.
After 3 weeks away from home, my dad’s computer tried to install windows updates.
And now there is no master boot record partition, the drive mappings are bonkers and I know unnecessarily too much about “diskpart” while waiting for data from 2003 to copy on my usb stick I brought. edit: learned from a friend that on an EFI system there is no MBR. So now I have new things to google and maybe fix the EPS partition which is apparently the equivalent of the MBR on an EFI system. This is very similar to what I tried yesterday so… maybe the next attempt will work. Editing here for clarification just in case. I don’t want to leave wrong information around uncommented 
I got a new work laptop yesterday as my old one is slowly dying. It’s the same as before: 13" MacBook Pro. I’m not a fan of Apple products, but having Mac and Windows machines to test stuff on is still necessary.
It managed to annoy me before I’d even turned it on.
They’ve decided to remove 2 of the USB ports, taking it down to just 2. This would be (sort of) fine, if the ports didn’t also double as where you plug in a charger. So that takes you down to 1 USB port if you don’t want to run on the battery.
At least it still has a headphone jack.
So that takes you down to 1 USB port if you don’t want to run on the battery.
Surely no one needs a mouse and a keyboard.
As I understand it, you are supposed to have a USB hub in your bag if you are being so gauche as to plug things into the perfect shape.
The 13” MacBook Pro is low spec. USB ports are not the only thing cheapened on it. It’s missing the mag safe charge port, hdmi, the screen spec is lowered, processor is subpar, etc.
I have the last generation intel version, which was similarly situated. The two ports are annoying, but I have a usb-c to all sorts of things hub that I use when I wanyto use external devices. It’s small, and does power pass through, so there is still a free usbc port. I mostly don’t plug stuff besides power into it, though, and I Don’t think many people do, either. Wires suck.
But they work. And they don’t suddenly stop working because your neighbour bought a new microwave oven.
I don’t have problems with wireless stuff stopping working. Mind you, I do have pro grade access points (connected with wires, duh), and enough of them to provide good coverage.
For Bluetooth, it mostly works. Let’s not talk about audio, or trying to use a device with multiple hosts, or, well let’s not talk about BT at all.
Mostly I’ll be fine as I just plug one USB drive in at any given time (as it’s quicker to copy stuff onto that and walk over to another computer than it is to transfer stuff over the network). I’ll only be annoyed by lack of peripherals if I’m ever back in the office.
My main annoyance is that they’ve been removed from the right of the laptop which is where the power outlet is (when I’m on the sofa or at my desk).
We use Google docs at work, via a single sign on connector of some sort. (I keep myself blissfully unaware of how these tholongs work). Sometimes, google docs asks for my email address, takes it, does an sso redirect, gets a good ticket, and gets redirected back to gdocs. Which asks me to verify if I recognize the account, which I just typed in. Why? Is this peculiar to us, or does that happen elsewhere?
Does anyone remember whether this programming trick has a name?
I want array x sorted based on some complicated transformation. So I store the transformation results in array y, then take a new array [0..n], sort that based on the comparator y[a] <=> y[b], and use the resulting order to index x.
I think that’s a schwartzian transformation. Also known as “duh, it’s been a lisp feature for sixty years. “.