The computer/OS/interface/webpage annoyances thread

glennmagusharvey

For what it's worth I found out what might be the cause of my external hard drive constantly turning itself off whenever idle.

In Device Manager, there's an item "USB Mass Storage Device" that appears under "Universal Serial Bus controllers" only when an external drive is plugged in, and right-clicking it and clicking Properties produces a dialog box with a tab labeled "Power Management" with an option for "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power". It was checked. I unchecked it. Now it no longer turns itself off after a while.

So, in conclusion, it seems it was the computer turning it off, not it turning itself off.

However, the twist is that this Power Management tab only appears here on Windows 10. For some reason, it is absent in Windows 8.1.

glennmagusharvey

EDIT: see next post

Lubuntu's documentation pages are down.

e.g. https://docs.lubuntu.net

Whoops \ Exception \ ErrorException (E_NOTICE)
Trying to access array offset on value of type null

[other error messages]

glennmagusharvey

I have been informed that lubuntu.net is not an official website of the project.

lrdgck

There is a new update to Firefox. From what I can gather, aesthetic changes suck.

Stormtroper

Man, I've spent these past twelve hours trying to sort out issues with AMD graphics card drivers.
I doubt I'll manage to get this to work but it's worth a try I guess.

glennmagusharvey

I've spoken in support of portrait-mode monitors before, repeatedly, I think, to not waste space on the sides of screens when reading and writing documents, among other applications.

glennmagusharvey

[9:42 PM] Glenn Magus Harvey (FL-23): okay who here posted this and why can't i find it?
[9:42 PM] Glenn Magus Harvey (FL-23): https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/why-financial-confessionals-viral/600358/
[9:43 PM] Glenn Magus Harvey (FL-23): oh it's a post by [person A] in #policy
[9:43 PM] Glenn Magus Harvey (FL-23): seriously why does it not show up when i do a search for theatlantic
[9:43 PM] Glenn Magus Harvey (FL-23): does the stupid search box not actually look at plaintext?
[9:43 PM] Glenn Magus Harvey (FL-23): why do apps these days hate plaintext so much
[9:53 PM] [person B] (NM-01): Probably because it's one full word, you need to actually search for "https://www.theatlantic.com/"
[9:53 PM] Glenn Magus Harvey (FL-23): that's just stupid
[9:54 PM] Glenn Magus Harvey (FL-23): it's literally surrounded by punctuation
[9:54 PM] Glenn Magus Harvey (FL-23): anyway
[9:54 PM] [person B] (NM-01): actually it's even worse than that, you can't search past the period lol
[9:54 PM] [person B] (NM-01): you just have to search for everything before the first period :elmo~1:
[9:56 PM] Glenn Magus Harvey (FL-23):
> actually it's even worse than that, you can't search past the period lol
see
if this were IRC, where everything is processed, displayed, and stored in plaintext, this would not be a problem

glennmagusharvey

IJBM: websites that auto-sign-you-out within minutes

lrdgck

I bought a new computer for like a gajilion of monies, at least in my personal terms, thinking now I'm gonna run all the games I will feel like. Resulting observations: a) I still can't, and my old computer was doing reasonably fine with most of those that run on the new one; b) last time I was up to date with computer performance must have been like twenty years ago (I failed to catch up with dedicated gaming graphics cards); c) whichever imbecile it was who designed the new computer apparently saw no use for PgUp/PgDn or the F-keys on their own, as they're all reachable only as Fn+[another key]; d) I just don't see myself mustering enough drive to actually turn it back to the shop anymore. Oh well.

Stormtroper

last time I was up to date with computer performance must have been like twenty years ago

That's more outdated than I expected, I thought your computer would be more of a The Witcher era one.
I noticed my coding speed went up after I started being more conscious of the PgUp/Dn keys. The F keys thing is weird though, those are always useful.

glennmagusharvey

I make heavy use of Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, Delete, Ctrl, and the arrow keys when typing.

On the other hand, this is the situation on my current computer...

glennmagusharvey

also i need to dust this off, badly

lrdgck

That's more outdated than I expected, I thought your computer would be more of a The Witcher era one.

Well, yes, it was not that old. I meant it in the sense of assuming that a modern computer in a given price range will just happen to have good enough graphics card without me having to consciously check for it. Which, as I was appalled to discover, was not a well-founded assumption. Last time I bought a new one it kinda worked, but it was a few years younger the games I wanted to play back then, so I guess I kinda lucked out on that.

Stormtroper

I just learned that when mobile Chrome asks you whether to save a file that already exists (per the name), it's not asking whether to overwrite it, if you select "yes" it'll automatically rename it to something new.
I guess it's better than not being able to save without overwriting, but I wish it had been clear on what it was going to do so that I wouldn't skip on saving fodder for the images thread only because it was called something like "image.png".

lrdgck

My mouse went foul. After some tinkering it looks either like the left button is permanently "on", or that it treats the power being switched on as a click and nothing else. I'm wondering. I should have a solder within my reach. Perhaps there's an old mouse to be dismantled for spare parts, too. If all of that's true, I might have a try at fixing it myself. Or, me being no electronic engineer, the fault lies somewhere I can't pinpoint and it won't matter.

glennmagusharvey

I have been meaning to take apart a boombox (i.e. portable stereo) whose audiocassette audio connection to one of the speakers is iffy (but the speakers work fine for CDs and radio) and try to fix it.

I think I opened it up once and then closed it back up without fixing anything.

I also don't really have the tools for this. Like, I don't even have a voltmeter for detecting electrical connectivity. Nor do I have the experience.

fourteenwings

Firefox's new update is a lot to take in but this was particularly egregious;



It's like a magazine quiz suddenly.

glennmagusharvey

I would have expected red to be the color they'd describe like that, but oh well.

fourteenwings

Too on the nose?

glennmagusharvey

fourteenwings wrote: »

Too on the nose?

?

If you were thinking in the direction of recent political relevance, I wasn't; I was just thinking of how red is stereotypically associated with fire and aggression, whereas blue is stereotypically associated with water and serenity.

That said, it would be amusing if it was just a randomly-assigned set of six descriptors.



Sidenote: I haven't used actual Firefox in years. IIRC at first it was because mainline Firefox didn't let me manually choose what cookies to accept or decline, and later it might have also been that doesn't even let me choose to default to keeping cookies only for the session.

fourteenwings

If you were thinking in the direction of recent political relevance

I was thinking about communism.

I would have quit using Firefox during the 64 debacle when they broke all the add-ons, but then I got over it and kept using it. It'd feel weird to be to do otherwise, even though Mozilla the company has long lost it's mind (and relevance).

I'm just glad they haven't turned it into a Chrome-knockoff yet.

fourteenwings

Today I learned you can use Google Lens to read the information on a QR Code (relevant for modern Android phones and WiFi passwords).

Feels like the sort of thing that would be the clue in a mystery story.

lrdgck

Anyone knows of a browser plugin that turns off internet at a given hour? Like, so I couldn't keep procrastinating past a certain hour and would have to go to sleep.

edit: I mean, I understand I could do it by fiddling with system settings, but that sounds like something I could mess up my system with a bit too easily.

glennmagusharvey

lrdgck wrote: »

Anyone knows of a browser plugin that turns off internet at a given hour? Like, so I couldn't keep procrastinating past a certain hour and would have to go to sleep.

edit: I mean, I understand I could do it by fiddling with system settings, but that sounds like something I could mess up my system with a bit too easily.

Try LeechBlock

Stormtroper

Ah, I couldn't remember that name. But yeah, LeechBlock is good.
If what you need is to turn off the 'net as a whole instead of just for your browser, there's a good chance your router has settings to do so (probably under parental controls).