MiXplorer - https://mixplorer.com/

A file explorer allowing for me to transfer files over the network. When Solid Explorer suddenly didn’t seem to want to do network transfers anymore (likely because Windows updated something), I waited for that app to update to fix the issue. It never did. I found that MiXplorer was a good alternative that transfers files over the network just fine and works nice and fast as well. The interface takes a bit to get used to (meaning it isn’t the same as Solid Explorer) but the app is certainly worth using. Importantly, I can transfer files over the network without issue again.

Notably, this app is free to download (from XDA) however the Google Play version is not free. The Google Play version (which supports development) is a one time paid fee.

Someone may want to know if you are a Democrat or Republican (for advertising, for gerrymandering, whatever). That person may not be able to ask you a direct question like that though (or may feel that you may lie about the answer to such a question anyway).

As such, they likely carry out occasional surveys asking people who are Democrat or Republicans for their opinions on something else. Once they find something else that can strongly correlate your political affiliation with a specific opinion, they know of a new question they can ask someone. That new question should generally reveal what your political party is most likely and they can then proceed with that “most likely” answer.

So “who cares” is those who cannot directly ask you something. They will ask you something else and use that answer to deduce the information they cannot obtain directly.

Reddit, about yesterday, started to implement a change…

They have the old Reddit interface and then the one that replaced it (“new Reddit”) and the current interface you see on Reddit replaced that. People don’t like the most recent interface iteration but had the option to go to “new Reddit” or “old Reddit” by vising the appropriate links.

Notably, each newer interface seems to be more stressful for the servers to run. Still, likely a decent amount of folks don’t like the newest interface so likely the load balances out.

Yesterday though, they “pulled the lever” and “new Reddit” is no more. (This was announced about a month ago at this link but they only got around to doing it yesterday.) Those people trying to access “new Reddit” are redirected to the latest interface. You have the option to use the oldest Reddit interface or the newest one but not the “new Reddit” one. Since the latest interface seemed to use the most server resources before, it is interesting how Reddit seemed to have their severs overloaded a bit when they made the switchover.

On Reddit, people have been upset in /r/help that this has happened but Reddit will likely continue on with this change anyway. Old Reddit will continue to be supported (at least for now anyway).

ArsTechnica has a bit more detail. I’ll quote the important bit below.

… try to reboot affected machines over and over, which gives affected machines multiple chances to try to grab CrowdStrike’s non-broken update before the bad driver can cause the BSOD.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/07/crowdstrike-fixes-start-at-reboot-up-to-15-times-and-get-more-complex-from-there/

This seems like an interesting application of a “race condition”. They are hoping that the update outraces the program starting up enough to crash…

Though others have said multiple states have laws against changing prices during the business day.

Suddenly it makes a lot more sense why Walmart doesn’t want to be open 24 hours a day…

Notably, Digg updated which also involved a worse interface and didn’t have an “old Reddit” interface you could access. Going to a site that was like the old interface involved leaving Digg and joining Reddit.

That is likely why you can now access older Reddit interfaces. They feel that many people will stay if they can find a way to use the new interface (and they may be right about that). The Digg approach of forcing all to use the new interface was a step over the line for Digg and Reddit likely fears a similar thing could happen to them.

I wonder what’s happening?

In general…

Microsoft is being pushy and has started to enjoy that far too much.

This started with things that could be argued as things that users shouldn’t control (like refusing to patch update… you can’t really refuse anymore).

It then pushed to things that is a little less defensible (you were asked to update from Windows 7 to Windows 10… but they really don’t want you to say no).

Once you are on the newer Windows 10 or 11, features just arrive that you have no say about because Microsoft determined it is better for you (you have AI, now AI on your taskbar, in fact you have an AI key on your taskbar, you will use Microsoft AI… the AI will just sift through your entire computer so that it can jump in front of your face to emphasize that you should use their AI!).

They points all have the same theme. Microsoft knows best, you will do what Microsoft wants, and Microsoft won’t really take no for answer but may let you say “bother me later”… maybe. Once you are really pissed off, your only option is to leave a Microsoft operating system… which Microsoft is pretty sure you can’t figure out on your own (more reasonably, you won’t care to put in the work to learn another way) so Microsoft OS it is! Microsoft is a tad worried that those people are starting to wander off to get Google Chromebooks or just use their Android smartphones… those take less effort and more people are opting for that…

Still, Microsoft is relatively sure that people will just put up with what they are doing. I’m pretty sure they will… until they won’t. Microsoft will be fine so long as they don’t cross the line into the “until they won’t” territory. Once they won’t put up with that nonsense anymore, it is far harder to woo them back to a Microsoft OS in the future.

There is a website of a person who catalogs Texas Instruments calculators. You can wonder over to the graphing calculator section to see how many different graphing calculators they made along with a bit of information on each one.

http://datamath.org/

I guess faster loading could be it? But generally it’s more of a layout problem than a bandwidth one.

There was a website which I allowed ads on to help support them. One day, I went to that site in my browser and my laptop fans spun up at that time. Turns out that ads on that site caused my processor usage to spike near 100%. A reload fixed the issue. Once that same thing happened 2 to 3 more times, I just blocked all ads on that site from then on.

There are times that people can’t throw the resources of an Intel i5 processor towards rendering the advertisements on one website. I would think that is more common these days with Chromebooks running the modern equivalent of a Celeron processor. Phones also don’t have much processing power to give and will warm up and drain batteries all towards the all important goal of “render those advertisements”.

I think people tend to allow advertising until it becomes a major problem that needs resolved (such as if the site is bogging down your computer or if the advertising makes the site unable to be read easily). Since those people would then need to fix the issue and hopefully fix it for good, it is easy and efficient to just block out all advertising forever.

Looking around a bit, it seems like you have a myAudi app which you register your VIN to which then lets you access the additional features.

https://www.audiusa.com/us/web/en/about-myaudi/vehicle-functions.html

Problem with that is that it implies that you are the one purchasing the features for that vehicle. If the vehicle is sold as used then you unlink the VIN from your account so that the new buyer can register the VIN to them. Then the new buyer seems to have “nothing” and has to “purchase any of those features permanently” again.

With such a system in place, I could imagine that a proper Audi dealership can be authorized to “continue a permanent subscription” to a new used car buyer (or Audi can just offer those sorts of upcharges at the point of sale).

Regardless, permanent only likely applies to your ownership and not to the vehicle itself.

The quote about what is a hard brake exactly or heavy acceleration is most relevant to my thoughts. Without any context, are you hard braking to avoid dangers? How many hard brakes are acceptable? What is the penalty for hard braking, etc?

What happens if your specific vehicle has a sensor somewhat out of spec that keeps errantly triggering harsh braking? You wouldn’t know the sensor is activating, you wouldn’t know that the information is being fed to your insurance, and you wouldn’t know why your insurance is priced as it is. You have no transparency as to what is going on nor any realistic way of fixing the issue (because the vehicle runs fine after all and nobody can define what “harsh braking” even is).

Such a hypothetical situation is unlikely but even several dozen or hundred examples is a bit too much…

Also, since you are never directly informed that you are harshly braking or accelerating, you are unlikely to improve how you drive to avoid those things. If you had a notification that the braking action was a bit too harsh then you could strive to avoid that in the future… not so much if you are never told that in the first place.

If you don’t know, Reddit updated their interface in February and made it worse by doing so. People who tolerated the older “new” interface can find a way to use that (at new.reddit) while the older interface is still there too (old.reddit).

Still, it seems like Reddit keeps making changes to drive away their older user base which hypothetically is drawing in new users (otherwise it seems a bit silly for them to be doing those changes).

>> "We are an AI company now! Hey Bob, do you know AI?"
## "No... ?"
>> "FIRED!  Joe, do you know AI?"
## "I can learn about..."
>> "FIRED! Bill, do you know AI?
## "... yes?"
>> "You can stay. I'm heading to the next floor to ask if they know AI!"