UCyborg

I still consider this a big one. The UI design these days, it's like it came from the zoo.

I got another example where you can't judge YouTube video playback performance from Speedometer. Ended up with a new (smart) TV recently that's forever stuck with Chromium 85 based web browser on Tizen 6.5. Gets good 9 points on Speedometer, but video playback is smooth, including 60 FPS. Though I only tried up to 1080p, but since it's 4K TV, I assume it should handle 4K as well, at least at 30 FPS I hope. The web browser's user agent is: Mozilla/5.0 (SMART-TV; Linux; Tizen 6.5) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) SamsungBrowser/5.0 Chrome/85.0.4183.93 TV Safari/537.36 YouTube on 43' TV is quite something, lower quality content that looks blurry sitting the normal distance from plain computer's 1080p screen looks better when played at the same 1080p resolution on 4K screen, sitting the normal distance from it. I think Speedometer does give the clue about crunching through JavaScript generated user interface elements and other dynamic content. Off-topic, but you really have to do some research and not rushing it when you're buying a new TV, if it was up-to-me and especially if the TV was for me alone, I'd sit down and do some reading. You may end up with oddities that you'd think are no longer a thing in 2022 (not a typo, it's a model from 2022), like bad viewing angles. And these things seem to have become so thin that you may even end up with speakers that are worse than the similar priced TV from 10 years ago! It's not the end of the world, first world problems and all, but still. Though last time I was buying something bigger (for me), sitting down reading didn't really help me much, was still clueless at the end and had no idea what to buy.

Wow, the legendary WRT54GL! Introduced in 2003, Linksys still sells it in 2023! Anyone here still uses it? I got a used one a long time ago (hardware version 1.1), it's at least 13 years old by now. Back then my ISP only gave plain cable modem, these days they give modems with wireless access point built-in. Today, I use it to connect one and only desktop computer (that doesn't do wireless) to the home network, really just compensating for the lack of wiring in the new house (which isn't really new anymore), but I'd rather not talk about the house and related issues here. Surely wired would be better, even with new standards, the speeds the ISP offers aren't reached, it's especially bad with such an old dinosaur that is WRT54GL. Well, the speed for me at least would only be an issue if I wanted to download many gigabytes over the internet in a short time period, but at least with wire, there'd be one less radio wave in the air. The router currently runs Tomato by Shibby firmware version from 2016:

That's one thing I do like about this forum. What I don't like, and apparently MSFN is the kind of forum that attracts certain kinds of unpleasant folks (especially in recent years) and as such need such rules in place. I know one highly technical forum out there where you can eg. talk about Ukraine in off-topic and not only no forum user complains about off-topic on a technical forum, they don't need rules in place prohibiting politics talk. Though that forum is much more active than MSFN, even though they have cca. 25k less users in the database than MSFN. Maybe it's a coincidence, or maybe motorists are just more pleasant folks than computerists? I still bet on the former. One member here recently said something along the lines you can't really have normal conversation on this new MSFN anymore and I tend to agree, but it seems to go way beyond MSFN, it's more like new world. Regarding tire pressure, I suspected smaller differences from the recommended don't make much of a difference in the grand scheme. I wonder though, one mechanic I know about, he thinks "2.4 bar is enough for you since you drive alone and don't carry any luggage". The sticker says 2.5 bar on both front/back and 2.7 on the back if car is loaded with more people + luggage. I guess most would say 0.1 bar doesn't matter anyway. Then there's also factor of wear and tear, which may be uneven with non-optimal pressure. But when it comes to small differences, I imagine tire naturally deteriorates with time that you need to replace anyway before it would get bad due to use, except maybe if you drive a lot. I'd need about 2 decades to get to 200000 km with current needs, then you look at used cars for sale and some have over 300000 km when they're just 5 years old. I learned in recent times tires leave small bits of themselves on the road. Also watched the documentary that said sea levels may rise quite a lot in the following decades. Also there was apparently another crisis around the time when this thread was made that inspired part of the lyrics of Rammstein's Benzin:

Continuing on bitness matters, I still like to use 32-bit stuff on 64-bit OS to save a bit of RAM, also apparently some code sequences just execute more smoothly in 32-bit under certain circumstances. UXP based browsers feel noticeably smoother on my end in 32-bit flavor. Though I only have this aging system for reference and another low-end laptop with 2 GB of RAM from 2014, which could run 64-bit Win10, but it's just unbearable with 64-bit version. I got a newer laptop at work with 12 GB of RAM, where I didn't bother comparing, just threw 64-bit Pale Moon on it to not have to worry about exhausting 32-bit address space. Not sure if even AVX2 build makes much difference, these browsers really like to get "crapped up" and sluggish with use and need restart eventually anyway.

Nothing new, especially when you look beyond conventional computers. Guess 32-bit is going the same way 16-bit did once. I remember 64-bit games started appearing in a more mainstream fashion back around 2014. That's almost a decade ago. Apple's last OS with 32-bit support was macOS Mojave from 2018, mainstream Linux distros did it around 2015-2018, it was only a matter of time when Microsoft would follow. There's still WOW64 on Windows. Intel was ambitious and wanted to give us pure 64-bit arch back then (IA-64), but it failed. Wouldn't it make hardware design simpler? Statistically, 32-bit is simply outnumbered and it hardly makes sense to load 32-bit OS on a half-decent computer in probably a vast majority of cases. Heck, mine didn't even cost 1000€ back in 2009 and I haven't really ran anything but 64-bit systems on it. Hardly anyone who talked about building a decent new rig back then suggested putting 32-bit OS on such, unless he was drunk. Shouldn't they be using PVS-Studio or something to catch those?

Indeed there was a change. Thanks, I'm aware of other options, just never got around to set any of them up as the extension always worked well enough. I managed to fix the old XUL Ant Video Downloader extension yesterday, the code that captures the stream URL, I changed it so it removes ump=1 parameter. No clue what it does, didn't dig into it, guess it appends something extra that their client understands. The content type of that "UMPed" stream it sends with that parameter is application/vnd.yt-ump.

Rolling resistance is higher with under-inflated tires, so engine has to work harder, hence consumes more fuel.

@RamonUn I'm no web dev. so can't comment whether server-side or client-side approach is better, but there's also this way: https://jpegxl.io/tutorials/css/ --- I noticed yesterday that even current Ant Video Downloader for vanilla Firefox doesn't download videos properly off YouTube anymore, same issue with the old patched XUL version to handle the difference in request type, manually running FFmprg to merge the streams downloaded with either extension variant results in an error regarding the video stream: Invalid data found when processing input. Certain Invidious instances can still be used, though. Oh well, guess my days of casually downloading stuff off YouTube via browser extension have come to an end.

That and I'd have to have at least faintest idea what to do, which I don't. I don't even know what to expect from such tinkering, but I can't imagine they would be significant enough, also considering the experience messing with Windows XP in that way back in the old days, with significantly weaker hardware at disposal. Heh, the most noticeable improvement I did on that computer was overclocking 2 GHz Intel Celeron by a whooping half-gigahertz. Also did it with cheap low-end NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440, just put the graphics processor's frequency straight to the max RivaTuner allowed without showing any warning. CPU overclocking might have contributed to the early demise of the motherboard, which was then replaced. CPU had locked multiplier, so other components took some strain as well. But I had the faster computer for a while. What else was the teenager without regular income supposed to do? Back to today, maybe the best result would be ability to open 5 more tabs in Firefox. 4 GB more RAM would probably up that to 50 while a brand new computer - maybe 500?

Can't speak for others' definition of "best", personally I've been sticking with PotPlayer for several years.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160612-heres-the-truth-about-the-planned-obsolescence-of-tech https://cellularnews.com/mobile-phone/planned-obsolescence/ https://www.androidauthority.com/yearly-smartphone-model-obsolete-3097285/ https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140218-why-your-old-tech-holds-treasure

Another example are smart TVs, LG for instance uses webOS, SAMSUNG uses Tizen. Google is everywhere of course, so there's also Android TV. Also infotainment and such systems in cars, Volkswagen and their friends definitely use Linux on their infotainment systems. After peeking inside the archive with the software of one such infotainment system in the example below, one may recognize the familiar update.zip file structure if the person has ever flashed homebrew Android on their smartphone. Filesystem of system partition: Also the infamous systemd:

Digging an old post, I know, but for informative reasons, TVs these days tend to be able handle such streaming services, eg. HULU specifically supports SAMSUNG TVs from 2016 and later. https://help.hulu.com/s/article/supported-samsung https://help.hulu.com/s/article/supported-devices Should be much better than watching on the phone...

Including Mypal 68? Edit: Right, the first test I found says unsupported, though there are microphone permissions in browser's settings.

Oops, I take it back, it gives VSynced rendering (however that is possible in windowed mode), so no screen tearing when scrolling pages or watching videos. VSync could just be the default of NVIDIA driver, I remember from testing simple OpenGL example code few years back not explicitly taking care of VSync, it was active on NVIDIA and inactive on AMD. But yeah, as it is, one must accept other glitches it comes with, seemingly misaligned viewport of any browser window or z-fighting with GUI popups overlaid over the main window, eg. those popup menus of various extensions. I'm not sure this pref is working or working correctly, things seem to start crashing after I fill the RAM most of the time any tab gets the chance to was unload. Does it take free space in pagefile into account to determine it should unload tabs? Maybe it would only do it if page file was also filled, but that situation is best avoided.

On the other hand, one might realize one day he's accumulated bunch of savings, grew old and hasn't really lived. Can't say that chasing "latest and greatest" is really "living", though some people want new stuff every once in a while just to break the monotony.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/windows-11-ditches-several-power-user-file-explorer-options-in-newest-preview/ ChatGPT integration, built-in support for more archive types, removal of some good 'ol Explorer options from the GUI...

I wonder what % of internet users roll without extensions? Didn't even Mozilla say back in the day that most of their users don't use extensions?

Ya think? In this case, svchost.exe hosting RpcSs and RpcEptMapper services has unusually high RAM usage. Before Win10, I rarely used hibernation and usually always performed full shutdown, so things would clear up every day. I keep fast startup enabled, so it basically hibernates every time I shutdown. I do full shutdown every two months at least. One laptop at my house running Win 1903 (I think, it's definitely 190x) at one point in time wasn't fully shutdown in about a year and half, it has 4 GB of RAM and then it must have used little over 3 GB out of 4 GB on idle (showing desktop without any applications opened), likewise caused by one or more Windows services. My installation seems to have extra unusual faults so I'd have to reinstall anyway if I hope to get rid of them. I probably should've stuck with Win10 1809, but I felt like trying out newer builds at some point in the past and now I am where I am...

I'm not sure about the lumping those tools with extended kernels. I used nLite years ago on XP to add drivers and apply TCP half-open connection patch. I don't bother with that anymore, modern Windows do basic AHCI out-of-the-box and having the rest of the drivers right after installation vs. installed a bit later, well, I don't find the latter problematic. Not sure about stripping either. I don't really know how to approach it, stuff breaks easily and my interest list is short, almost non-existent as it is, so messing with Windows isn't on it, troubleshooting problems that occurred because something is missing even less. I turned off some scheduled tasks and put some services from auto-start to manual, although the latter seems pointless as something else turns them on soon anyway. I'd like to upgrade to the Windows version that doesn't memory leak over pro-longed period, I haven't found it so far, though I haven't tried Win11 yet. Seems more of a hassle than it's worth at this point, even if it miraculously solves memory leaks, which I still think is doubtful. Stuff never works right anyway.

In case of that particular software, the target users are mostly other companies. There's no OS checks anywhere, the policy is as simple as "We support whatever Microsoft supports". And most of the other companies do have their IT infrastructure up-to-date, so the inability to run the software isn't an issue in practice. Clients are all Win10/Win11 + Chrome/Edge (or Firefox at few places), the dominating server OS appears to be Server 2019, the oldest that still hangs around at few places is Server 2012. Since the release of Server 2022, there are occasional queries "We intend to upgrade our Server 20xx to Server 2022, will your software work on it?". There are probably still few clients out there that have kept older hardware around and get by with the older version with less features/more bugs.

Browsed for a good while with the current version of the browser on XP x64 today, I've set it to use 8 content processes, got to about 36 tabs before my 4 GB of RAM was close to being fully filled and before the stability issues were noted. My page file is 1 GB, peak usage was 414 MB at the end. What's interesting when being close to full, things started crashing when I minimized the browser, not before, and left the PC for a while. Then the active tab was crashed and it seemed to have unloaded a bunch of other tabs, some of them crashed when attempted to restore them, some crashed "cleanly", some were accompanied by error boxes hitting software breakpoint, which had to be dismissed. Opened tabs included 2 YouTube tabs, 8 Ball Pool, the rest were websites with text and pictures and some with many pictures. Well, I still had that IgnoreException shim I mentioned here active with parameters: ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION:1;ACCESS_VIOLATION_READ:1 The first one was put in place as the old Mypal had issues with Web Assembly stuff, the second was due to error box on exit. The first one isn't needed with current version of the browser and the latter for preventing the error box on exit has to do with forcing OpenGL compositing. I've since put layers.* prefs on about:config page back to default, so now only shows basic compositing in about:support. Not sure there was much benefit with OpenGL compositing, maybe a bit with scrolling smoothness. Somehow, after got the tabs recovered and reached close-to-max RAM utilization again and got to writing this post, the entire browser crashed and the OS had no idea where it crashed. Strange that it survived the first time, but not second time. Wonder if having IgnoreException still in place had some bad influence. I have removed it now. OS is still running, no BSOD, despite going full multi-process mode and also having Actual Window Manager hooked in the background, though in the past, I got BSOD in win32k.sys if I did some pause/resume cycles with the AWM to test for conflicts with some software. Finally, all of this was done with all of Mypal's DLLs rebased to optimize RAM usage.

They won't anyway. They don't care about your user agent. Let me give you the perspective from the actual developer (source: I work at the company that does specialized hardware and software, the software controls the hardware, the user interfaces with the software via the web interface). It goes like this, the developer visits https://caniuse.com/ to consult about the feature he'd like to use to achieve some result quicker and easier and preferably his code easier to read/maintain/whatever. The website says most current browsers support this feature. The feature is used to implement whatever he was going to implement. Use some old browser on an antiquated OS? Too bad, too sad, you're a minority not worth their time.

@mina7601 OK, I re-quoted, just in case, but seriously, you're taking this to your heart too much. I wasn't angry or upset at all, I was merely trying to point out one would really have to get out of their way to actually write their post 3 times. I feel old. Maybe not in a literal sense, but I feel like I've already seen everything that was there to be seen and I'm just waiting for the death to come pick me up.