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Not what you think.  Roll with me here.
So, I retired 2 days ago from my primary customer. As a precursor to that, I've spent the last year looking at expenses, pensions, savings, etc. We had a large SUV that I will sorely miss (2007 Sequoia) but the wife drives 10 miles/a day and it just didn't make sense. So, she decided she wanted a new car. 6 years ago - yes - I bought my first new car in 40 years. So, she decided she was due and went out and bought a 2024 Mazda CX5. Typical crossover, more electronics than metal... it's actually a nice car and wasn't stupid expensive. Now for the user interface part...
3 months after buying it, she goes out to go to work. It doesn't start, battery is dead, and somewhere in the car there is a loud beeping.
Long story short - the battery failed, the beeping is from a device IN THE REAR HATCH, and this is designed to tell the owner you have a battery problem. There is nothing in the owner's manual about this, no indicators, etc. Mazda even has a smart app - nothing there. For the engineer or group who came up with this, please send me your address. 
For those of us who write software that communicates with people, please don't do this crap.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Yes, beeps and such are meaningless. With my Toyota 4Runner it took some time to realize that the beep I sometimes hear when I open the door is expected to remind me that I left the moonroof open -- which I know, because I just opened it, in an effort to not have the car heat up too much while I'm at work. I do not need a reminder, especially an ineffective one.
On the other hand, my wife's Jaguar F-Pace will occasionally display a message on the dashboard to explain some nonsense. Such as "Apply steering or the LKA will be disabled" -- WTE is that supposed to mean?! What's an LKA? Why would you disable it while I'm driving at freeway speeds (80MPH)? Do I even want it enabled in the first place?
I weep.
(Those were rhetorical questions.)
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Hey - at least they tried! Not just any group of engineers can break the management barrier! 
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Is the battery in the trunk? We had once a dead battery in a grocery store parking lot, and one of the staff was so kind as to come out to give us a boost. When he backed his car up to ours, I was thinking WTF?! I don't recall what kind of car he had, but its battery was in the trunk, so I learned something new that day!
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Well, smartphones and their offerings have made a whole generation (maybe two) stupider, so it's almost certain that they won't fare much better with a text-generating robot.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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As is the norm, SO already deleted the page at the link you provided.
That's good ole SO for you.
This is what I see[^].
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and me
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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At least for me that link goes to a page that says the author deleted it.
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Hello all,
Ready to pull the trigger and get a 5k2k 40" monitor.
Now I own two 24" QHD monitors which have the text slightly small, that would be 2560x1440@60hz with 122.38ppi.
The monitor I am about to buy gives 5120x2150@120Hz with 138.92ppi.
If I scale it to 125%... would it become 4096x1720@120Hz with 111.06ppi? <-- that's wrong, of course pixel density won't change. But font size at 125% here should be a little bit bigger than the font I have now in my current 24" QHD monitors right?
Thank you very much in advance!
modified 9hrs 10mins ago.
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Pixels are the smallest unit of a display. I don't think the ppi changes when you change your screen resolution.
It's just that more of the pixels will be used to display any particular thing on a lower resolution.
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GKP1992 wrote: It's just that more of the pixels will be used to display any particular thing on a lower resolution.
I always point this out when someone buys a 4K monitor, but then the text is so small they rescale to 200%. At 200%, you end up viewing the same amount of stuff as any 1080p display, only, you're using twice the pixels on each axis to render it. Fonts might look sharper, but that's lost on people who don't have the eyesight for it.
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dandy72 wrote: but that's lost on people who don't have the eyesight for it.
:raises hand:
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Note that even visually handicapped people benefit (sometimes a lot) from text/figures being sharp. It of course depends on the medical reasons for your handicap, but for some, blurring text over 1.5 pixels actually makes text more difficult to read than 33% smaller with 1:1 pixels.
Also, some of the magic done with vector/outline fonts such as TrueType to make the text look pleasant to people with normal vision (typically using grey pixels along some edges, where the 'algorithmic edge' cuts right through a pixel), can, for some visually handicapped people reduce the sharpness that their character recognition depends on. I have worked with people who loved the old pixel fonts (pre TT), because they were so much sharper!
So if you let your screen driver or screen itself scale your fonts (as opposed to doing the scaling at the TT level) to make them readable to those with reduced eysight, at least make sure to do it by integer factors (2x, 3x, ...).
I am not visually handicapped myself (but close relatives are). When I boot up my PC, the BIOS/UEFI displays a line at the bottom of the screen about how to activate the setup. I believe it uses a 7 by 5 bit matrix per character. My screen is 2560 by 1600 pixels, so it is small.. Yet I can read it from a distance of at least a meter. I have tested out various TT fonts at the same physical size: None come close to the readability of the pixel mapped matrix font used at boot up!
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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My question was meant to say something related to this...
I now have x2 24" QHD monitors scaled at 100%.
The new 5K 40" monitor scaled at 125% should have the fonts a little bit bigger than my current setup at 100%...
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I am amazed I have written that... ^^¡
Of course you are right, no pixel size change.
I meant the font size at 125% in the new display should be a little bit bigger than what I do have now at my QHD 24" displays...
Do you think that is right?
Thanks!
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A small point. When a zoom / scale operation is done, I've heard that it internally does some kind of interpolation - nearest neighbour, bilinear, bicubic, etc., which ensures that the image does not look blocky (to a certain level of zooming in). So, effectively, it can be construed as a 'change', 'increase' in screen resolution, isn't it? Am not sure how to quantify such an apparent change in resolution.
modified 2hrs 20mins ago.
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What problem are you trying to solve?
Meanwhile, since I cannot find a way to message you directly, I have a CNC problem I'd like to ask you... email is cgilley@bravesw.com
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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I use Mozilla Thunderbird and have an old hotmail account (tied to microsoft outlook).
I received an email today from MS that states:
"Action Needed – You may lose access to some of your third-party mail and calendar apps"
It kind of feels like a phishing email but I think it is real.
Have you received any of these?
Email goes on to say:
Quote: Update your sign-in technology before September 16th, 2024 to maintain email access.
The safety and security of your information is top priority for Microsoft. To help keep your account secure, Microsoft will no longer support the use of third-party email and calendar apps which ask you to sign in with only your Microsoft Account username and password. To keep you safe you will need to use a mail or calendar app which supports Microsoft’s modern authentication methods. If you do not act, your third-party email apps will no longer be able to access your Outlook.com, Hotmail or Live.com email address on September 16th.
What do you need to do?
If you are receiving this email, you are currently using an email or calendar app that uses a less secure authentication method to connect to your Outlook.com email account. You will need to upgrade your third-party mail and calendar app to a version which supports modern authentication methods.
Microsoft provides free versions of Outlook for your PC, Mac, iOS, and Android devices which can be easily downloaded and connect to your email account. Using an updated version of an Outlook application will ensure you are connecting in the most secure way.
I don't know what technology it is actually talking about that will need to be updated.
Anyone know what they're nattering on about?
Thanks
UPDATE
I bolded the part that seems to indicate what MS is talking about. But what are "modern authentication methods".
This is honestly a very uninformative email that is trying to inform people of "something".
modified 10hrs ago.
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It's probably legit.
You could log on your account via the official website.
(obviously, don't click on link in the emails.)
A quick google returns something similar for gmail.
"Beginning September 30, 2024: third-party apps that use only a password to access Google Accounts and Google Sync will no longer be supported"
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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Yeah, I was guessing it was legit -- but it did seem quite weird.
What I was really interested in is: "What are they even talking about? What is the technology that will be supported? What change is being made?"
Thanks
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No, that's not quite it.
I think they are saying "3rd party apps won't be able to authenticate if they don't use XYZ technology."
But they never seem to explain what XYZ technology they are talking about.
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I guess it means that unless you authenticate yourself using Microsoft's authentication, Microsoft cannot provide authentication to the mail software, in case the application asks for it. And Microsoft authentication is The Only True Authentication, isn't it?`
Ok, so my mail provider asks for another kind of authentication, one that certainly is good enough for it to both deliver my mail and accept my outgoing mail (through Thunderbird). It never made use of any Microsoft authentication, and it won't ask Microsoft to authenticate me. Of course: If the mail provider and Thunderbird really had the habit of doing that, they would have to update to match new current MS authentication. (I guess that's what MS is talking about.) But they don't.
Of course: When I do not log in to my MS account before using email or anything else, MS is loosing the opportunity to track all my work at the computer. If I use a mail system that asks for MS to authenticate me every time, MS would know of all my mail reading and which mail software I am using. Maybe even that of my mail provider - I haven't looked into the MS authentication protocol, so I do not know what kind of context info they demand.
I am quite sure that MS has no authority to interfere with the authentication between me, Thunderbird and my mail provider, on the grounds that 'We have got something even better - and besides, it gives us a mechanism for tracing your mail reading habits'. I will access my email as I have done for years, no matter which alternative authentication MS offers.
If I have to log in using my MS account (that isn't often!), the first thing I do after having completed the task and logged out is to reboot the PC, and then try access an MS service requiring MS login, to ensure that there is no hidden link to my login left behind.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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I recently vowed I'd never purchase an M5 product again after more than $100 USD worth of kit just up and died on me. Not one unit. 3 of them.
Enter Makerfabs. Good build quality. Nice kits. Little bit on the expensive side but see build quality.
They've been my go to lately. However, recently Arduino got updated, and so did PlatformIO, and it broke every single RGB interface makerfabs board because of an interconnected series of issues.
Arduino on the ESP32 runs along side of and sort of on top of the ESP-IDF. The ESP-IDF is necessary to control RGB interface screens. Since Arduino was updated, what was also updated was a major version change of the ESP-IDF it runs along side, breaking code.
Authors that have developed graphics libraries that can interface with these screens have yet to update their libraries to support the latest bits.
As such, you need reference an old version of Arduino to get it to work.
Well, one of the old permalinks to that older arduino package dried up and is no longer available.
So you can't even build for these devices anymore.
After some digging and some help from a friend we finally found a workaround. I'm so relieved.
I have a $50 piece of kit from them in the mail to me right now (i ordered it before i found out about the above)
I just want some hobby kits, not anxiety.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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