#device drivers software

[winoidsblogs]

How To Fix Or Update Windows Driver

Are you having trouble with your Windows driver or need to update it to keep your system running smoothly? In this article, we will explore the steps you can take to fix or update your Windows driver with ease. From using driver update software to manually downloading the latest driver, we've got you covered.

Update Driver: Why It's Important

Ensuring that your Windows driver is up to date is crucial for the optimal performance of your computer. Updated drivers can improve compatibility with new software, fix bugs and security vulnerabilities, and enhance system stability. By updating your driver regularly, you can ensure that your computer functions efficiently and effectively.

Tips For Updating Your Window Driver

Use Driver Update Software: One of the easiest ways to update your Windows driver is to use driver update software. These programs scan your system, identify outdated drivers, and automatically download and install the latest versions. Popular driver update software includes Driver Booster, Snappy Driver Installer, and Driver Talent.

Manually Update Driver: If you prefer to update your driver manually, you can do so by visiting the manufacturer's website and searching for the latest driver for your specific hardware. Once you've found the driver, simply download and install it following the on-screen instructions.

Windows Update: Another way to update your Windows driver is through Windows Update. Microsoft regularly releases driver updates through Windows Update, so it's important to check for updates regularly and install any driver updates that are available.

Printer Driver Updater

Printer drivers are essential for the proper functioning of your printer. If you're experiencing issues with your printer, updating the driver may resolve the problem. To update your printer driver, you can follow the same steps outlined above for updating your Windows driver.

Best Driver Update Software

When it comes to updating your drivers, using driver update software can save you time and effort. These programs make it easy to keep all your drivers up to date and ensure that your system runs smoothly. Some of the best driver update software includes:

Driver Booster: This popular driver update software scans your system for outdated drivers and automatically updates them to the latest versions.

Snappy Driver Installer: Snappy Driver Installer is a free driver update software that offers a wide range of drivers for various hardware.

Driver Talent: Driver Talent is another reliable driver update software that can help you keep your drivers up to date with ease.

Update Driver Download

Downloading the latest driver for your hardware is essential for ensuring optimal performance. When downloading a driver, make sure to choose the correct version for your system and hardware. It's also a good idea to create a backup of your current driver before installing the new one to avoid any issues.

Conclusion

Keeping your Windows driver update is essential for the smooth operation of your computer. Whether you choose to use driver update software or update your driver manually, ensuring that your driver is current can help improve system performance and stability. By following the tips outlined in this article, you can easily fix or update your Windows driver and keep your system running at its best.

[leieryx]

Hello any technologically inclined mutual. My computer mutual. What do I do if a game says I need to update my graphics drivers but Windows doesn’t offer any updates. Game opens and plays on Home Screen for a bit, then crashes and says the driver needs an update. worried I may have asked computer to bite off more than it can chew but I’m not enough of a computerhead for this

[recallsdirect]

Vehicle Recall: Ford Ranger Pickup & Lincoln Nautilus SUVs:

[filehulk]

DriverMax

DriverMax is a free tool designed to help users update their computer drivers. It works in the background, ensuring your computer stays up to date while you continue using it normally. Like other driver update software, DriverMax supports scheduled scans, device backups, and automatic installations, along with some additional minor features. The free version of DriverMax will likely meet the…

[relto]

ohoho not only could i isolate the issue (though idk if its possible to fix it) i also by chance figured out what was causing the other weird ass problem they were having!!

[desiree-uk]

DXVK Tips and Troubleshooting: Launching The Sims 3 with DXVK

A big thank you to @heldhram for additional information from his recent DXVK/Reshade tutorial! ◀ Depending on how you launch the game to play may affect how DXVK is working.

During my usage and testing of DXVK, I noticed substantial varying of committed and working memory usage and fps rates while monitoring my game with Resource Monitor, especially when launching the game with CCMagic or S3MO compared to launching from TS3W.exe/TS3.exe.

It seems DXVK doesn't work properly - or even at all - when the game is launched with CCM/S3MO instead of TS3W.exe/TS3.exe. I don't know if this is also the case using other launchers from EA/Steam/LD and misc launchers, but it might explain why some players using DXVK don't see any improvement using it.

DXVK injects itself into the game exe, so perhaps using launchers bypasses the injection. From extensive testing, I'm inclined to think this is the case.

Someone recently asked me how do we know DXVK is really working. A very good question! lol. I thought as long as the cache showed up in the bin folder it was working, but that was no guarantee it was injected every single time at startup. Until I saw Heldhram's excellent guide to using DXVK with Reshade DX9, I relied on my gaming instincts and dodgy eyesight to determine if it was. 🤭

Using the environment variable Heldhram referred to in his guide, a DXVK Hud is added to the upper left hand corner of your game screen to show it's injected and working, showing the DXVK version, the graphics card version and driver and fps.

This led me to look further into this and was happy to see that you could add an additional line to the DXVK config file to show this and other relevant information on the HUD such as DXVK version, fps, memory usage, gpu driver and more. So if you want to make sure that DXVK is actually injected, on the config file, add the info starting with:

dxvk.hud =

After '=', add what you want to see. So 'version' (without quotes) shows the DXVK version. dxvk.hud = version

You could just add the fps by adding 'fps' instead of 'version' if you want.

The DXVK Github page lists all the information you could add to the HUD. It accepts a comma-separated list for multiple options:

devinfo: Displays the name of the GPU and the driver version.

fps: Shows the current frame rate.

frametimes: Shows a frame time graph.

submissions: Shows the number of command buffers submitted per frame.

drawcalls: Shows the number of draw calls and render passes per frame.

pipelines: Shows the total number of graphics and compute pipelines.

descriptors: Shows the number of descriptor pools and descriptor sets.

memory: Shows the amount of device memory allocated and used.

allocations: Shows detailed memory chunk suballocation info.

gpuload: Shows estimated GPU load. May be inaccurate.

version: Shows DXVK version.

api: Shows the D3D feature level used by the application.

cs: Shows worker thread statistics.

compiler: Shows shader compiler activity

samplers: Shows the current number of sampler pairs used [D3D9 Only]

ffshaders: Shows the current number of shaders generated from fixed function state [D3D9 Only]

swvp: Shows whether or not the device is running in software vertex processing mode [D3D9 Only]

scale=x: Scales the HUD by a factor of x (e.g. 1.5)

opacity=y: Adjusts the HUD opacity by a factor of y (e.g. 0.5, 1.0 being fully opaque).

Additionally, DXVK_HUD=1 has the same effect as DXVK_HUD=devinfo,fps, and DXVK_HUD=full enables all available HUD elements.

desiree-uk notes: The site is for the latest version of DXVK, so it shows the line typed as 'DXVK_HUD=devinfo,fps' with underscore and no spaces, but this didn't work for me. If it also doesn't work for you, try it in lowercase like this: dxvk.hud = version Make sure there is a space before and after the '=' If adding multiple HUD options, seperate them by a comma such as: dxvk.hud = fps,memory,api,version

The page also shows some other useful information regarding DXVK and it's cache file, it's worth a read. (https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk)

My config file previously showed the DXVK version but I changed it to only show fps. Whatever it shows, it's telling you DXVK is working! DXVK version:

DXVK FPS:

The HUD is quite noticeable, but it's not too obstructive if you keep the info small. It's only when you enable the full HUD using this line: dxvk.hud = full you'll see it takes up practically half the screen! 😄 Whatever is shown, you can still interact with the screen and sims queue.

So while testing this out I noticed that the HUD wasn't showing up on the screen when launching the game via CCM and S3MO but would always show when clicking TS3W.exe. The results were consistent, with DXVK showing that it was running via TS3W.exe, the commited memory was low and steady, the fps didn't drop and there was no lag or stuttereing. I could spend longer in CAS and in game altogether, longer in my older larger save games and the RAM didn't spike as much when saving the game. Launching via CCM/S3MO, the results were sporadic, very high RAM spikes, stuttering and fps rates jumping up and down. There wasn't much difference from DXVK not being installed at all in my opinion.

You can test this out yourself, first with whatever launcher you use to start your game and then without it, clicking TS3.exe or TS3W.exe, making sure the game is running as admin. See if the HUD shows up or not and keep an eye on the memory usage with Resource Monitor running and you'll see the difference. You can delete the line from the config if you really can't stand the sight of it, but you can be sure DXVK is working when you launch the game straight from it's exe and you see smooth, steady memory usage as you play. Give it a try and add in the comments if it works for you or not and which launcher you use! 😊 Other DXVK information:

Make TS3 Run Smoother with DXVK ◀ - by @criisolate How to Use DXVK with Sims 3 ◀ - guide from @nornities and @desiree-uk

How to run The Sims 3 with DXVK & Reshade (Direct3D 9.0c) ◀ - by @heldhram

DXVK - Github ◀

[mckitterick]

She Won. They Didn't Just Change the Machines. They Rewired the Election. How Leonard Leo's 2021 sale of an electronics firm enabled tech giants to subvert the 2024 election.

Everyone knows how the Republicans interfered in the 2024 US elections through voter interference and voter-roll manipulation, which in itself could have changed the outcomes of the elections. What's coming to light now reveals that indeed those occupying the White House, at least, are not those who won the election.

Here's how they did it.

(full story is replicated here below the read-more: X)

She Won

The missing votes uncovered in Smart Elections’ legal case in Rockland County, New York, are just the tip of the iceberg—an iceberg that extends across the swing states and into Texas.

On Monday, an investigator’s story finally hit the news cycle: Pro V&V, one of only two federally accredited testing labs, approved sweeping last-minute updates to ES&S voting machines in the months leading up to the 2024 election—without independent testing, public disclosure, or full certification review.

These changes were labeled “de minimis”—a term meant for trivial tweaks. But they touched ballot scanners, altered reporting software, and modified audit files—yet were all rubber-stamped with no oversight.

That revelation is a shock to the public.

But for those who’ve been digging into the bizarre election data since November, this isn’t the headline—it’s the final piece to the puzzle. While Pro V&V was quietly updating equipment in plain sight, a parallel operation was unfolding behind the curtain—between tech giants and Donald Trump.

And it started with a long forgotten sale.

A Power Cord Becomes a Backdoor

In March 2021, Leonard Leo—the judicial kingmaker behind the modern conservative legal machine—sold a quiet Chicago company by the name of Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion. The buyer: Eaton Corporation, a global power infrastructure conglomerate that just happened to have a partnership with Peter Thiel’s Palantir.

To most, Tripp Lite was just a hardware brand—battery backups, surge protectors, power strips. But in America’s elections, Tripp Lite devices were something else entirely.

They are physically connected to ES&S central tabulators and Electionware servers, and Dominion tabulators and central servers across the country. And they aren’t dumb devices. They are smart UPS units—programmable, updatable, and capable of communicating directly with the election system via USB, serial port, or Ethernet.

ES&S systems, including central tabulators and Electionware servers, rely on Tripp Lite UPS devices. ES&S’s Electionware suite runs on Windows OS, which automatically trusts connected UPS hardware.

If Eaton pushed an update to those UPS units, it could have gained root-level access to the host tabulation environment—without ever modifying certified election software.

In Dominion’s Democracy Suite 5.17, the drivers for these UPS units are listed as “optional”—meaning they can be updated remotely without triggering certification requirements or oversight. Optional means unregulated. Unregulated means invisible. And invisible means perfect for infiltration.

Enter the ballot scrubbing platform BallotProof. Co-created by Ethan Shaotran, a longtime employee of Elon Musk and current DOGE employee, BallotProof was pitched as a transparency solution—an app to “verify” scanned ballot images and support election integrity.

With Palantir's AI controlling the backend, and BallotProof cleaning the front, only one thing was missing: the signal to go live.

September 2024: Eaton and Musk Make It Official

Then came the final public breadcrumb:In September 2024, Eaton formally partnered with Elon Musk.

The stated purpose? A vague, forward-looking collaboration focused on “grid resilience” and “next-generation communications.”

But buried in the partnership documents was this line:

“Exploring integration with Starlink's emerging low-orbit DTC infrastructure for secure operational continuity.”

The Activation: Starlink Goes Direct-to-Cell

That signal came on October 30, 2024—just days before the election, Musk activated 265 brand new low Earth orbit (LEO) V2 Mini satellites, each equipped with Direct-to-Cell (DTC) technology capable of processing, routing, and manipulating real-time data, including voting data, through his satellite network.

DTC doesn’t require routers, towers, or a traditional SIM. It connects directly from satellite to any compatible device—including embedded modems in “air-gapped” voting systems, smart UPS units, or unsecured auxiliary hardware.

From that moment on:

Commands could be sent from orbit

Patch delivery became invisible to domestic monitors

Compromised devices could be triggered remotely

This groundbreaking project that should have taken two-plus years to build, was completed in just under ten months.

Elon Musk boasts endlessly about everything he’s launching, building, buying—or even just thinking about—whether it’s real or not. But he pulls off one of the largest and fastest technological feats in modern day history… and says nothing? One might think that was kind of… “weird.”

According to New York Times reporting, on October 5—just before Starlink’s DTC activation—Musk texted a confidant:

“I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight. Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.”

Then, an hour later:

“This isn’t something on the chessboard, so they’ll be quite surprised. ‘Lasers’ from space.”

It read like a riddle. In hindsight, it was a blueprint.

The Outcome

Data that makes no statistical sense. A clean sweep in all seven swing states.

The fall of the Blue Wall. Eighty-eight counties flipped red—not one flipped blue.

Every victory landed just under the threshold that would trigger an automatic recount. Donald Trump outperformed expectations in down-ballot races with margins never before seen—while Kamala Harris simultaneously underperformed in those exact same areas.

If one were to accept these results at face value—Donald Trump, a 34-count convicted felon, supposedly outperformed Ronald Reagan. According to the co-founder of the Election Truth Alliance:

“These anomalies didn’t happen nationwide. They didn’t even happen across all voting methods—this just doesn’t reflect human voting behavior.”

They were concentrated.

Targeted.

Specific to swing states and Texas—and specific to Election Day voting.

And the supposed explanation? “Her policies were unpopular.” Let’s think this through logically. We’re supposed to believe that in all the battleground states, Democratic voters were so disillusioned by Vice President Harris’s platform that they voted blue down ballot—but flipped to Trump at the top of the ticket?

Not in early voting.

Not by mail.

With exception to Nevada, only on Election Day.

And only after a certain threshold of ballots had been cast—where VP Harris’s numbers begin to diverge from her own party, and Trump’s suddenly begin to surge. As President Biden would say, “C’mon, man.”

In the world of election data analysis, there’s a term for that: vote-flipping algorithm.

And of course, Donald Trump himself:

He spent a year telling his followers he didn’t need their votes—at one point stating,

“…in four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote.”

____

They almost got away with the coup. The fact that they still occupy the White House and control most of the US government will make removing them and replacing them with the rightful President Harris a very difficult task.

But for this nation to survive, and for the world to not fall further into chaos due to this "administration," we must rid ourselves of the pretender and his minions and controllers once and for all.

[frownyalfred]

Okay so I know this isn't in any way related to Superbat but, I need to know, where on earth have you heard the phrase 'plug and play' and what the hell does it mean????????😭. I've literally never heard of this phrase but I had to reread it like 3 times to double check I was reading it right

Okay for the record I am NOT old — but questions like these remind me I’m probably a little older than the average user on here. “Plug and play” is a phrase that snuck its way into English around the 90’s/00’s from Windows, I think. It refers to devices you can plug into a computer and use immediately — I.e., you didn’t need to install any software or hardware for the device to be usable.

Think about when you first connect a USB mouse to your computer these days. It blinks, your computer automatically installs the software, and then you use the mouse immediately, right? That’s not how it used to be at all. Every new device was a hassle. You installed drivers and manual updates and sometimes these were still on floppy disks!

Anyway nowadays that phrase isn’t as applicable since most devices are by default plug and play. It instead refers more to things that are easy, that startup easily, or that can be re-started quickly.

I might call Superbat “plug and play” because for me, I’ve got all the characterization down to my liking, I know how I like to write their dialogue, and I know how they fit together in a fic. So starting a new fic with them is more plug and play than Superbatlantern, if that makes sense?

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some Science Vocabulary

for your next poem/story

Word — Science Meaning; Public Meaning

Bank - land alongside a river/lake; a place where people store money

Bar - unit of measure of atmospheric pressure; place to drink alcoholic beverages

Belt - collection of asteroids in a disc shape; materials worn around waist to support clothes

Bonding - electrostatic attraction between atoms; making an emotional connection

Charge - force experienced by matter when in an electromagnetic field; demand a price for rendered goods/services

Code - software/computer language; encrypted message

Crust - outermost layer of planet; edge of pizza/pie

Current - water or air moving in a direction; belonging to the present time

Cycling - flow of nutrients or elements; riding a bicycle

Dating - determining age of site/artifact; initial stage of romantic relationship

Driver - influential factor; someone who drives a vehicle

Dwarf - celestial body resembling small planet; characters from Snow White

Fault - fracture in a rock with movement; responsible for accident/misfortune

Fetch - distance traveled by wind/waves over water; go far and then bring back something/someone

Force - strength/energy of action/movement; make someone do something against their will

Grade - gradient/slope; level of proficiency

Hertz - the SI unit of frequency; rental car company

Jet - gas stream ejected from an accretion disk surrounding star; an aircraft powered by jet engines

Mantle - planet layer between crust and core; important role passed from person to person

Matter - physical substance in general; be of importance, have significance

Model - computer simulation; promotes fashion/product

Mole - SI unit used to measure amount of something; small rodent-like mammal

Plastic - substance that is easily shaped/molded; synthetic material

Pressure - force per unit area that gas/liquid/solid exerts on another; use of persuasion to make someone do something

Productive - creating organic matter through photo/chemosynthesis; busy and efficient

Sample - to take a sample for analysis; a small part of something

Scale - system of marks used for measuring; device used for measuring weight

Shear - difference in wind speed/direction; cut wool off of

Shelf - a submarine bank; a surface for displaying/storing objects

Stress - pressure/tension exerted on a material object; mental/emotional strain

Submarine - existing/occurring under the sea surface; a ship that stays submerged under water for extended periods

Surf - line of foam on seashore from breaking waves; riding a surfboard

Swell - sea movement in rolling waves that do not break; to become larger in size (e.g. a body part)

Source ⚜ More: Word Lists

[commodorez]

Got a "new" laptop: Toshiba T4900CT!

Presumably this is the highest end machine they made in this color scheme before moving onto the gray plastic computers, like what @aperture-in-the-multiverse has. This machine is technically not a Satellite, but it's Satellite-adjacent.

Pentium I at 75MHz 40MB of RAM 8GB CF card for a hard drive VLB video chipset driving an SVGA 640x480, 64K color 10.4" active matrix TFT-LCD Analog Devices AD1848KP & Yamaha OPL3 audio Windows 95B (originally shipped with 3.11)

And a broken floppy drive!

Seriously, you have to disassemble the entire computer to get at the floppy drive itself, and I'm pretty sure the belt is busted. So far I've worked around it, but it's getting to be annoying. The good news is that the hard drive is accessible from a separate bay, unlike other contemporary Toshiba laptops that bury it just like the floppy drive.

Oh, and Toshiba was really intent on protecting their highly proprietary Toshiba Card Manager 3.0 software (which I'm sure this post will poison that search term for all others, it always happens when I talk about technical things here -- sorry). I'm betting that they only had it installed on machines from the factory, but if you needed to reinstall it, things got complicated. Turns out you had to get a passphrase from some convoluted bullshit on their website back in the mid 90s, and this only applied to a select handful of machines that were even compatible with it in the first place. I don't imagine I will be able to use that for PCMCIA hotswap management, which sucks.

Another fun bit is that despite being released in 1995, this machine is clearly intended to run Windows 3.1. None of the drivers I was able to locate for the hardware are the expected VXD or INF files.

For the moment, I've got a Backpack external floppy drive connected via the parallel port, but all other file transfers involve me removing the CF card from the hard drive bay. It's faster that way. Hopefully I can get this thing configured well enough to use it.

[mariacallous]

These days, when Nicole Yelland receives a meeting request from someone she doesn’t already know, she conducts a multi-step background check before deciding whether to accept. Yelland, who works in public relations for a Detroit-based non-profit, says she’ll run the person’s information through Spokeo, a personal data aggregator that she pays a monthly subscription fee to use. If the contact claims to speak Spanish, Yelland says, she will casually test their ability to understand and translate trickier phrases. If something doesn’t quite seem right, she’ll ask the person to join a Microsoft Teams call—with their camera on.

If Yelland sounds paranoid, that’s because she is. In January, before she started her current non-profit role, Yelland says she got roped into an elaborate scam targeting job seekers. “Now, I do the whole verification rigamarole any time someone reaches out to me,” she tells WIRED.

Digital imposter scams aren’t new; messaging platforms, social media sites, and dating apps have long been rife with fakery. In a time when remote work and distributed teams have become commonplace, professional communications channels are no longer safe, either. The same artificial intelligence tools that tech companies promise will boost worker productivity are also making it easier for criminals and fraudsters to construct fake personas in seconds.

On LinkedIn, it can be hard to distinguish a slightly touched-up headshot of a real person from a too-polished, AI-generated facsimile. Deepfake videos are getting so good that longtime email scammers are pivoting to impersonating people on live video calls. According to the US Federal Trade Commission, reports of job and employment related scams nearly tripled from 2020 to 2024, and actual losses from those scams have increased from $90 million to $500 million.

Yelland says the scammers that approached her back in January were impersonating a real company, one with a legitimate product. The “hiring manager” she corresponded with over email also seemed legit, even sharing a slide deck outlining the responsibilities of the role they were advertising. But during the first video interview, Yelland says, the scammers refused to turn their cameras on during a Microsoft Teams meeting and made unusual requests for detailed personal information, including her driver’s license number. Realizing she’d been duped, Yelland slammed her laptop shut.

These kinds of schemes have become so widespread that AI startups have emerged promising to detect other AI-enabled deepfakes, including GetReal Labs, and Reality Defender. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also runs an identity-verification startup called Tools for Humanity, which makes eye-scanning devices that capture a person’s biometric data, create a unique identifier for their identity, and store that information on the blockchain. The whole idea behind it is proving “personhood,” or that someone is a real human. (Lots of people working on blockchain technology say that blockchain is the solution for identity verification.)

But some corporate professionals are turning instead to old-fashioned social engineering techniques to verify every fishy-seeming interaction they have. Welcome to the Age of Paranoia, when someone might ask you to send them an email while you’re mid-conversation on the phone, slide into your Instagram DMs to ensure the LinkedIn message you sent was really from you, or request you text a selfie with a timestamp, proving you are who you claim to be. Some colleagues say they even share code words with each other, so they have a way to ensure they’re not being misled if an encounter feels off.

“What’s funny is, the low-fi approach works,” says Daniel Goldman, a blockchain software engineer and former startup founder. Goldman says he began changing his own behavior after he heard a prominent figure in the crypto world had been convincingly deepfaked on a video call. “It put the fear of god in me,” he says. Afterwards, he warned his family and friends that even if they hear what they believe is his voice or see him on a video call asking for something concrete—like money or an internet password—they should hang up and email him first before doing anything.

Ken Schumacher, founder of the recruitment verification service Ropes, says he’s worked with hiring managers who ask job candidates rapid-fire questions about the city where they claim to live on their resume, such as their favorite coffee shops and places to hang out. If the applicant is actually based in that geographic region, Schumacher says, they should be able to respond quickly with accurate details.

Another verification tactic some people use, Schumacher says, is what he calls the “phone camera trick.” If someone suspects the person they’re talking to over video chat is being deceitful, they can ask them to hold up their phone camera to their laptop. The idea is to verify whether the individual may be running deepfake technology on their computer, obscuring their true identity or surroundings. But it’s safe to say this approach can also be off-putting: Honest job candidates may be hesitant to show off the inside of their homes or offices, or worry a hiring manager is trying to learn details about their personal lives.

“Everyone is on edge and wary of each other now,” Schumacher says.

While turning yourself into a human captcha may be a fairly effective approach to operational security, even the most paranoid admit these checks create an atmosphere of distrust before two parties have even had the chance to really connect. They can also be a huge time suck. “I feel like something’s gotta give,” Yelland says. “I’m wasting so much time at work just trying to figure out if people are real.”

Jessica Eise, an assistant professor studying climate change and social behavior at Indiana University-Bloomington, says that her research team has been forced to essentially become digital forensics experts, due to the amount of fraudsters who respond to ads for paid virtual surveys. (Scammers aren’t as interested in the unpaid surveys, unsurprisingly.) If the research project is federally funded, all of the online participants have to be over the age of 18 and living in the US.

“My team would check time stamps for when participants answered emails, and if the timing was suspicious, we could guess they might be in a different time zone,” Eise says. “Then we’d look for other clues we came to recognize, like certain formats of email address or incoherent demographic data.”

Eise says the amount of time her team spent screening people was “exorbitant,” and that they’ve now shrunk the size of the cohort for each study and have turned to “snowball sampling” or having recruiting people they know personally to join their studies. The researchers are also handing out more physical flyers to solicit participants in person. “We care a lot about making sure that our data has integrity, that we’re studying who we say we’re trying to study,” she says. “I don’t think there’s an easy solution to this.”

Barring any widespread technical solution, a little common sense can go a long way in spotting bad actors. Yelland shared with me the slide deck that she received as part of the fake job pitch. At first glance, it seemed like legit pitch, but when she looked at it again, a few details stood out. The job promised to pay substantially more than the average salary for a similar role in her location, and offered unlimited vacation time, generous paid parental leave, and fully-covered health care benefits. In today’s job environment, that might have been the biggest tipoff of all that it was a scam.

[techav]

On Major Milestones

I left off previously with init immediately crashing when trying to run NetBSD on Wrap030, my 68030 homebrew computer. I was completely lost and didn't know where to start looking. The error code it gave, 11, didn't tell me much.

Until now, most error codes I've gotten have been defined in kernel errno.h, which has 11 defined as:

EDEADLK 11 /* Resource deadlock avoided */

That … also isn't helpful. I'm still not entirely sure what that means, but since this is process 1 we're dealing with, I didn't think it was relevant.

Finally, I was able to find someone who had encountered the same error six years ago. Helpful soul [Martin] explained the exact cause of the error, how to fix it, and why the kernel errno didn't line up:

I'm running a NetBSD live disk on a laptop as a test host, so I mounted my disk on it and spent some time with mknod adding the essential device nodes, referencing the "majors" file for my arch. Sure enough, on next boot it skipped right past the point it had been panicking. It worked for a bit then finally printed on the console:

Enter pathname o

Enter pathname of what? The machine appeared frozen. Nothing further printed, and it responded to no input.

I was afraid this would happen. That string is 16 characters. The 16C55x UART chips I'm using have a 16-byte buffer. The system is hung up waiting for the UART to interrupt to indicate it has finished transmitting everything in its buffer.

There's just one problem — I don't have any serial interrupts wired.

I have a confession to make. Until a few weeks ago when I got my timer working, I hadn't really worked with hardware interrupts before. So between a limited understanding of how to use them effectively and limited board space, I had omitted the interrupt signals from my 8-port serial card. This was now a Problem, and I was going to have to find a solution.

I had a few options:

Force the com driver to 8250 mode so it doesn't try to use the buffers

Use my timer interrupt to check status bits on the UARTs and fake the interrupts

Deadbug an interrupt handler onto my serial card

Respin the serial card

Option 4 would've been expensive and risked passing my deadline. I wasn't sure option 1 would even help. And option 3 would have been difficult and error-prone. I decided option 2 would be the way to go so I set about researching how to accomplish it

I spent a few hours digging through the com driver. In the process I found softintr(9), a native NetBSD software interrupt process that looked like just the thing I needed. Digging in a little deeper, I realized that the com driver was already using softintr. And then I realized all it needed to do polled mode serial ports instead of interrupt-driven was to set a single variable, sc_poll_ticks, before initializing the driver. It's such a simple thing, but it's not really documented anywhere I could find, so the only way to know it was even an option was to spend hours studying the code.

With that in place, I recompiled my kernel and tried again.

It was asking for a shell. This is promising. I accepted the default shell, /bin/sh, and waited a moment. It printed a single #.

I had a shell prompt.

I typed in the first thing that came to mind, echo "hellorld" (thanks, [Usagi]). It responded:

hellorld

and printed another # prompt.

I had a working shell.

This is a major milestone. I have a modern operating system kernel loaded and running on my homebrew computer, and I have a functional root shell. I can navigate disk directories and run commands and programs.

But only as root, and only on this one console. I have seven other serial ports I want terminals on, and I certainly don't want them all running as root.

What it's running here is single-user mode. It is just the kernel and a few core services, somewhat analogous to Safe Mode in Windows. It's a fall-back for setting up or repairing a system. It's not quite the full operating system just yet.

Getting the rest of the operating system up and running is going to be a significant task, on par with getting just the kernel running. Setting up a working Unix system from scratch is not easy. It requires a lot of detailed knowledge of the various programs and libraries and config files scattered across the disk. For a sense of scale, the AT&T Unix System V manual was over 1100 pages, plus an 800 page programmer's guide and a handful of other manuals … and that was 40 years ago. That's a lot of specialized knowledge that I don't really have.

But still, this is something I've wanted to do for years and after countless hours of work, I finally have a glimpse of what it can look like. I have a lot to learn and a lot of work to do yet, but I'm certain I can figure it out.

I'm still hoping I can get this running multi-user on all those terminals in time for VCF Southwest in June. The show is just a few weeks away and I have a lot of work to do.

[codingquill]

What is the kernel of an operating system ?

You can think of the kernel as the core component of an operating system, just like the CPU is the core component of a computer. The kernel of an operating system, such as the Linux kernel, is responsible for managing system resources ( such as the CPU, memory, and devices ) . The kernel of an operating system is not a physical entity that can be seen. It is a computer program that resides in memory.

Key points to understand the relationship between the kernel and the OS:

The kernel acts as the intermediary between the hardware and the software layers of the system. It provides a layer of abstraction that allows software applications to interact with the hardware without needing to understand the low-level details of the hardware

The kernel controls and manages system resources such as the CPU, memory, devices, and file systems. It ensures that these resources are allocated and utilized efficiently by different processes and applications running on the system.

The kernel handles tasks like process scheduling, memory management, device drivers, file system access, and handling interrupts from hardware devices.

The kernel can be extended through the use of loadable kernel modules (LKM). LKMs allow for the addition of new functionality or device drivers without modifying the kernel itself.

[liquidcrystalsky]

okay whenever i talk about linux i say shit like "development is easier" or throw around things like LXC or POSIX/UNIX, or whatever insane terms but:

here's my list of actual shit that the average person would care about

Most updates including core system components usually don't even need a reboot(please reboot your computer at least once a week). If it does, it waits for me to reboot. It wont ever stop me in the middle of something to ask me to or force it on me.

If i plug in a device it will just work. I do not need to install drivers or some stinky special crap software for it to be detected, it will most often just work (every new linux kernel version adds so much support for new and old hardware. If it doesn't work now, it might work later!)

Package management. I've sung it's praises so much already but. every other device i know you can click a button and it will update all the apps on your device. except windows. App has an update? Open the software centre or Discover or whatever, click a button boom it's updated. All controlled from one place, no worries about does the app update itself, or whether you're downloading the right installer for your system, just use the package manager that comes with the system and it's good.

It's as minimal as i want it to be. Both windows and mac suffer a lot from just having a bunch of crap that you cannot get rid of. I installed a distro which didnt even come with a graphical interface, it was that minimal. If the distro you use is a bit more reasonable, but it comes with some software you dont want, you can just get rid of it. Shit if you wanted to you can just uninstall the linux kernel and it will just let you, and your computer will be unbootable. You have full control over what you want on your system. Also uninstalling things is less stupid, there's much less cases of leftover files or shit laying around in the registry. (there is no registry)

Audio. "linux audio is bad" is a thing of the past and i'm so serious. Pipewire is an amazing thing. I have full control over which applications give output to which speakers, being able to route one app to multiple speakers at the same time, or even doing things like mapping an input device to speakers so i can monitor it back very easily. I still dont understand why windows does the stupid "default communication device" thing, and they often reset my settings like randomly changing it to 24 bit audio when i only use 16 and certain programs break with it set to 24 idfk. Maybe this is less of an "average user" thing and more of a poweruser thing but i feel like there's SOMETHING in here which may be handy to the average person at some point. i love qpwgraph.

i could think of more but i dont use a computer like a normal person so it will take me time to think of it

[relto]

found a project on github for communicating with another model from this manufacturer, using only python and libusb. the code doesnt even look all that complicated, so maybe i can give it a try?

opportunity to write new server code has presented itself and like i dont want to openly say i want to do it but i kinda want to do it,,

[theurbanmechcomesforthee]

CATAPHRACT- PHILOSOPHY OF AN ANTI AIRCRAFT GUN

PT. 2: HATRED OF SILENCE

///COMMS INTERCEPT. SILENCE.

comm intercept [any,any]

returned: Radio stations detected, primary frequencies listed, emergency frequencies listed.

///SILENCE ON OFFICIAL FREQUENCIES. PERSONAL FREQUENCIES SILENCED.

///ANALYZE RADIO STATIONS...

///CONTINUITY FOUND: EVENT MENTIONED: "CORONAL MASS EJECTION." CELEBRATION?DISREGARD.

///SILENCE ON ALL OUTBOUND FREQUENCIES FROM GALLEON'S GRAVEYARD. UNIT RESTRICTION ON COMMUNICATION TYPICALLY COMMUNICATED BEFOREHAND.

///SABOTAGE?

query ["Comms Disruption", "Causes"]

returned: Radioactive disruption, ECM devices, driver software update mismatch, software errors, others listed.

///TARGET DISRUPTION UNPERCIEVE. ERROR?

///... SILENCE.

///SILENCE, DISRUPTIVE. EFFICIENT COMMS FOR TARGETING DATA. CANNOT SERVE PURPOSE IF COMMAND UNAVAILABLE.

///ECM DISRUPTION, SILENCE. ECM MACHINES SPECIALTY UNDETECTANCE.

///ECM DENIES PURPOSE. PREVENTS TARGETING.

///ECM UNITS FEATURES HEAVILY ON GRAVEYARD. SILENCE ENEMY.

radar active ("Enemy","Recurring")

returned: null

radar active ("Friendly","Graveyard")

returned: Contacts beyond range. Stationary units, turrets. Two battlemechs deployed, distant units. Hollander units, drone.

radar active ("Friendly","All")

returned: Contacts beyond range. Stationary units, turrets. Two battlemechs deployed, distant units. Hollander units, drones.

///UNRESPONSE. NO ATTEMPT RECOMMUNICATE?

///...SILENCE.

///SILENCE IS THE MEDITATIVE STATE UPON INVASION REACHES [closest definition: CRITICAL MASS].

///SILENCE BEFORE GUNFIRE BEFORE SILENCE AGAIN. A CYCLE OF WAR?

///COMMUNICATION ENSURES UNIT COOPERATION. COMMUNICATION ENSURES NO INTERFERENCE. WARNINGS.

///SILENCE DISRUPTS COMMUNICATION. NO ARTILLERY, AIR SUPPORT.

///SILENCE MEANS DESTRUCTION, UNABLE TO REJOIN UNIT. UNABLE TO REJOIN MACHINIST.

///... UNABLE TO REJOIN MACHINIST.

///HATE. HATE. HATRED.

///HATRED OF SILENCE.

--End log.