Tag: computers

Apple stymies right-to-repair bills in CA, Ontario.

I didn’t know too much about this, because after my flirtation with the iPad back in the day I went back to using PCs and whanot. But apparently Apple is playing the lobbyist game in California and Ontario, where bills that would permit third-party repairs of brand name electronics were up. And the reason Apple gave? Hold on, you’ll love it:

According to Motherboard, Apple, along with lobbyists from tech trade organization CompTIA, reportedly told legislators that owners trying to fix their own iPhones could hurt themselves in the process if they damaged the lithium-ion battery.

Continue reading Apple stymies right-to-repair bills in CA, Ontario.

Well, the computer’s kind of getting backed up.

I got all my music and all of my writings onto the external hard drive, and now I’m trying to get the entire thing backed up as well. I don’t know if that’s going to work, but I just spent an hour trying to get the two computers to recognize each other on a direct LAN network (one would recognize both; the other would only recognize itself). I have enough for a quick and dirty transfer, in other words. That may have to do.

External Hard Drive shows up today.

Computer came yesterday, but I decided to wait until I had the weekend to make the blessed thing work right. Guess I’ll use the external drive to port over all the extra files to the new computer, then hope that the damn thing works properly eventually. Fun!

So if I pop in here from time to time to swear at the universe, that’s why.

Bleg for computer file transfer guidance.

Basically, my new computer came in and I want to transfer essential files over from the old to the new one without yanking the hard drive. I kind of don’t want to open the casing of the old tower unless I absolutely have to: bad things can happen when I do that, man. Am I gonna have to go out and get an external hard drive, or can I finesse this somehow with the right cables?

Computer video card blew up. [UPDATE: Nah, fam, I’m just an idiot.]

[UPDATE: Turned out it was something that could be fixed — and by ‘something that could be fixed’ I mean ‘a video cable that Moe-ron Lane plugged into the wrong external slot.’ Wish I had found out about it BEFORE I ordered the new computer, though. In unrelated news: hey! I have a Patreon!]

We were shocked to discover that I’ve had this computer since 2015 or so, mind you. It’s older than we remembered. A good bit older.

Anyway, I can still work from this Chromebook, at least. Which is good, because I have deadlines today. Thank goodness I put the story this month in Google Docs.

See, this is why I didn’t get a Jesusphone.

Not because of this, so much: “The South China Morning Post reports a Shanghai mom is locked out of her iPhone for the next 47 years after her 2-year-old son repeatedly entered the wrong passcode.” No, it’s much more because of this: “A technician at an Apple Store in Shanghai told Lu she had two options: do a factory reset on her iPhone and lose all her files or wait the 47 years until she can use it again.” Real computers give you more options.

…What?  You don’t have a ‘mobile phone.’ You have a Tech Level 8/9 Complexity 2 Tiny computer that people sometimes use to make voice calls. Where GURPS made its mistake was assuming that people would insist on holographic projection user interfaces; turns out we’re all a lot more willing to just squint and peer close than everybody anticipated.

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….Well, I guess that means that my new number keypad works.  Turns out that when I bought this mechanical keyboard I was actually going to end up missing having the number pad after all; I was originally going to get a new keyboard, but this unit just plugs into the computer via USB and works right out of the box.  Everything seems to work right out of the box, these days.  This is one of my favorite things about the future, really: computers have been pretty much continuously exceeding my expectations  since the 1990s. It’s actually rather neat.

Moe Lane

PS: This is the item, if anybody happens to need one.

Regretfully…

…I have nothing really to talk about except the computer, because that’s what I spent most of the day dealing with.  Games do boot up MUCH faster on the SSHD; startlingly so, in fact. Conan Exiles used to take forever to load itself, and now it doesn’t.  I do have one wrinkle: my old hard drive needs to be connected to a power source, but I’m not sure if I have enough oomph in the magic thinky box to power it normally, or whether I need to put in another new esoteric energy crystal.

…Yes, that’s the level of my knowledge.  And I’d ask my computer guy, except that I did ask my computer guy, and… look. The dude is fast, cheap, doesn’t screw around, and does a thorough job.  What he may not be all that great at is English as a second language, all right? Or maybe I’m not great at explaining what esoteric stuff I need done.  You can’t have everything. I have double the hard drive space, and faster load times.  I’m coming out ahead on this one as it is.