exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Everything is a joke these days !


:sigh:

Today's odd conservatory find...


:shrug:

It’s a type of solitary wasp.

Well , that was a nine-hour battle to figure out...

This morning when I turn the computer on I was welcomed with this..


After running hard drive diagnostics, admittedly on the wrong hard drive, though the WD BLUE drive seemed to fail.. Still need to look into that..


My windows drive was actually on the Kingston nvme ..

I thought I would give Claudia a try which basically sent me on a wild goose chase of no great surprise.. It was hellbent on it being a memory problem.. Even though I could actually boot up Linux fine.. Claude would not have it ! I even did memory testing on Linux, 14GB out of 16GB.. Of course 2GB likely in use.. all passed fine.. Claude still claimed memory problem.. Told me to run memtest86..That was its own loader drama getting it onto a USB stick with a non-functioning computer !

So basically...


Claude would still not have it, claimed I had not run it long enough! I mean windows would literally crash within several seconds of trying to boot on this run for just under a hour in total! FFS!..

I basically suspected ESET again, After all this chaos which went on for weeks before HERE ..

Chicken and egg problem, could not disable ESET as need the GUI to do that. After battling with Claude, I notice that the modules had updated last night around 8.30pm... I said to Claude would it work if I just deleted the modules folder, then it had a massive rant of you can't do this you can't do that, you will make it worse, blah blah blah.. So I went and deleted the modules folder anyway and the computer booted right up !!

ESET lost its licence we could not update. That was another battle in getting the thing to register again! It updated and I rebooted and it blue screened again ! So obviously had a problem with ESET.

I remembered I had prerelease modules enabled after all the saga last time when they actually fixed the problem. So I deleted the modules folder again, but my licensing back in again, and turned off the prerelease modules so I just got basically "yesterdays" modules. and it worked ! So now I have disabled automatic updates.

I reported it to them because it could potentially affect other systems not just me, but I already know they will just say "EOL F...off". But I did my due diligence anyway. There was about an hour wasted as well because I was is constantly going round in circles with their stupid "AI chat bot".

So it leaves me with a bit of conundrum because the virus definitions may not be updated anymore :( there are things like AVG which may still run, but every antivirus program I have tried in the past has basically been completely useless no matter how good people reputation is of them.

Currently I do have a filtered IP address which filters out a lot of crap anyway even before it gets to my PC. Similar with various browser guard programs which should help protect things there. I really wonder if ESET is even earning its keep these days because it is not picked up anything or found anything for literally years now. But mostly it just flags up some websites has been blocked for whatever reason so that is probably where the greatest risks are. But not like I really browse the Internet on my PC anymore anyway...

Hopefully ESET will actually respond to see if I will still get virus definitions downloaded in its current state.. If not.. Then it presents a bit of a ponder for the future :(

Actually forgot I use a filtered DNS services, is part of the handguard services which also do a browser extension. "AdGuard DNS filter", composed of AdGuard Base filter, Social Media filter, Tracking filter and more..

I just noticed they even offer different block lists you can add.. There's loads of them..


Looks like there are basically hundreds of different block lists you can add. Basically blocks them at the DNS level so don't even get to your own route. The stuff that does get past is generally taken care of by the browser extension.. Of course is not going to be 100%, but what ESET is doing is probably not that much anymore past real-time system file protection and that kind of thing.

"Big broom - Cleans the Internet and protects your privacy! Blocks Ads, Affiliate, Tracking, Metrics, Telemetry, Phishing, Malware, Scam, Fake, Coins and other Crap." :lol:

I suppose is one advantage of using AI, rather than browsing lots of random size trying to find answers to questions, at least AI acts as some sort of filter by itself for malware and the like. Other than the forum and Facebook occasionally I don't think I really visit many sites any more anyway.

I’ve been looking at what people are saying about Claude lately, because it basically seems very dismissive and argumentative about almost everything I say.

Looking through the usual places on the internet, there were a lot of complaints a few months back that Claude was basically agreeing with everything people said. Even my girlfriend still thinks it just agrees with everything you say. I didn’t really believe that was the case, because when it pushed back, I generally accepted that the pushback was reasonable.

But after talking to Claude a bit this morning about something else, it seems exactly the same as the RAM problem I posted a couple of posts back. Even after it was proven wrong multiple times and a solution was found, it still kept pushing the narrative that the PC had a memory problem, which is just frankly ridiculous. Others on the internet are noticing similar things.

Some people have also noticed that it seems to be talking in “unintelligiblish,” and I think I know what they mean. For something that should be relatively simple, its replies write a page of text, and I’m even more confused after reading it than I was before. I repeatedly have to ask Claude for a single bottom-line, one-line answer, because after reading its response I’m more confused. It just does not make any sense.

It seems to skirt around actually answering the question directly and precisely, and instead writes a page of waffle without really explaining or answering what I asked. So it basically takes twice as long to get to the bottom of anything because of all the seemingly technical gibberish it has been writing these days.

Large thread on it here:

Stupid NHS rules strike again. I was talking to an 88-year-old woman earlier today, was telling me they want her to stop taking her tablets herself and the district nurse has to come and issue her tablets.

That sounds fine on the face of it, other than the fact that the lady takes morphine at night time and the district nurses don't work that late at night and they cannot even just give her a tablet in the cup to take later either. So now everything is in turmoil because she can't take her tablets either way now.

It's just got totally stupid the amount of rules and regulations now, they obviously don't think of the consequences of their actions when coming up with all these rules because now she has to be in pain all night until the nurse comes out in the morning or even early afternoon to issue her the morphine.

Had similar stupid problems during lockdown because my girlfriend's dad needed tablets, but they were classed as vulnerable and couldn't go out of the house even if they wanted to, because taxi services and what not was not even running.

They were special tablets where the pharmacy literally round the corner could not issue them because they lost the license so the tablets were being issued to a library in the next town which they could not get to but all the libraries shut during lockdown anyway.

Eventually they found a pharmacy which could issue then which was miles away but they could not collect the tablets and the pharmacy could not deliver them either. I argued with the pharmacy why can't I go pick the tablets up and they would not let me do it even with a written note or even a phone call from her dad to pick up the tablets with permission it was just an outright no and and he needed the tablets.

Some firemen went around picking tablets up for people I believe in his own time which is also good but also stupid as to why the pharmacy would issue tablets to a firemen but not a basically family member with permission from her dad to pick up the tablets, just totally crazy.

Even more stupid, when her dad had sepsis and ended up in hospital, because the hospital did not have a license for the medication to issue it. They took him off his meds and he ended up in a psychiatric hospital for three months and he would not even let his wife or daughter issues his meds to him.

Honestly, all these rules and regulations are literally causing patients to suffer now, and it's just beyond ridiculous. Whoever is thinking up all these rules needs a serious kick up the rear end and sacking.

YAYYYY

General
Added an option to disable “pull to refresh” gesture under “Accessibility” settings to prevent accidental page reloads. (#41730)

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/41730

Finally something useful on android :thumbup:

Ebay not letting me login now :roll: honestly literally nothing works anymore !



In other news changed the battery in yet another solar light :roll: I've changed several now !

Not really surprising that these China back is literally only last a year and then they suddenly seem to fail. The battery charge does not really seem to know what to make of them and currently thinks they are 7mA batteries! Which sounds about right !


So those green batteries are being retired to the clocks now.. The other crappy Eneloop batteries which I had previously retired to the clocks, have now been promoted to the solar lights ! :lol:

In other other news.. Injectors have been playing up in my van for the past couple of months. I had this problem before when I was using esso diesel years ago or any sort of supermarket fuel. I have tried BP and shell as those of the anyone's local around here anyway.. Aside from Tesco and Esso but I won't talk to the bargepole!

Shell always seems to perform the best in the van.. BP used to be good but seems to have gone downhill since around 2019.. The van doesn't seem to run as well but ironically seems to run better on because it is probably not misfiring as much.. So pushing through redex though it at the moment. The air filter was changed not long ago.. Read the fuel filter was changed a couple of years ago but I think the problems actually started after I changed the fuel filter :lol: :roll:

Generally happens after about 20 minutes of driving up the dual carriageway.. Suddenly get a surge in power and jolted forward and then the engine starts rattling like mad and gets extremely loud if I try and accelerate any more.. Trying to find a local shop which sold Redex.. my god.. But also oddly if the engine is left for about an hour in and seems to work fine again.. So just have to see how it goes on over the next few weeks now it has Redex in it again. That would basically be annoying because I would have to put half a bottle of the stuff in every refill. The injectors from sticking open :roll:

It was the same sort of drama I had years ago when I was always putting Esso fuel in my van. I was constantly taking the injectors out and sending them to be serviced .. Then they would come back that there was nothing wrong with them at all.. Then I had the bright idea of changing the injector nozzles.. I recommend doing that because you are supposed to tighten them up to a certain talk which was basically impossible ! :lol: :roll: softer making things worse I found a set of Peugeot 306 injectors which looked about right. Very difference really was a different connector on one of them. So bit of hackery later and that's where it was basically left until the people started explaining the problems they were having with the fuel as well.. And still do... So not good if the fuel has now deteriorated in quality that is now causing my 22 year old van to misfire :(

In other other other news.. Figured out that the new windows which were fitted in the house in 2019, the bottom opening ones are sticking on the bottom right-hand corner.. Hardly does this on two windows now.. The landing window doesn't stick for gap seems to be borderline on the bottom left of that one..

Been trying to figure out why that happens but not really been successful. I can only assume either the brackets are bent or there is a manufacturing defect, or the frame itself has been installed bent it is very difficult to tell. All I know is that if I open two windows I have to really force them to the left to get them to actually close at all now :roll:

Have you tried fitting a suitable gauge inline fuel filter?

If the injectors are fine, thats what I'd look at next. Especially as your van is at that age where it may not be fit for ethanol based fuels and will just discharge rust from the tank and goo from the unsuitable fuel lines into the fuel. :(

I dont know if you are aware, but you can check here: https://www.gov.uk/check-vehicle-e10-petrol