Root Access

12:25 AM

Update on the stolen laptop: checked the security cameras, they can't find them within the past three days (when I wheeled the piles to the room I was working in). We're giving up on it

Journeyman Geek

:(

Canadian Luke

Only so much time to look at security cameras, on top of our other jobs

Anyways, I'm gonna pack up and head home

Journeyman Geek

hmm. Ars is moving to a bit of a fremium model arstechnica.com/staff/2018/01/…

though they're being nice and actually giving people additional things for supporting them, rather than paywalling stuff that was free <3

Ben N

1:06 AM

Released on GitHub: SprintDLL

Kind of like rundll32, except that it actually does what people think rundll32 does, and supports multiple function calls in the same process, and a lot of other neat stuff!

The syntax is not currently documented, but I will get around to this sometime

At least there are a few example commands

Bob

1:24 AM

@BenN rundll32 has done what people think rundll32 does since Vista :P

Ben N

Not in terms of actually parsing and passing arguments, though

e.g. try rundll32 user32.dll,ExitWindowsEx 0, 0 and you will not be logged off (or maybe you will, if you get lucky with the assigned window handle)

But sprintdll call user32.dll!ExitWindowsEx (int 0, int 0) works :)

bwDraco

1:43 AM

...the netbook did a genuinely absurd amount of paging file I/O over the last couple of hours. PrimoCache offloaded most of this I/O to the sacrificial portable SSD.

I mean, it did upwards of 10 GB of writes - and it would be safe to assume that the majority of them are to the paging file, since PrimoCache prevented about 25% of the writes from hitting the disk, and I/O to the paging file is often repetitive over a limited set of LBAs (the caching software operates at block level).

And there were more than 40 GB of reads over the same time span, with a cache hit rate of nearly 90%. (The cache is 8 GB in size.)

4

Q: Under what circumstances can I use rundll32 to invoke a function in a DLL?

I'd like to invoke the functionality found in various Windows DLLs from the command line. It looks like the rundll32 utility will do what I need - it takes a DLL name and a function name, and runs that function with parameters. I certainly hope there won't be any problems with that. What functio...

Bob

2:15 AM

@bwDraco meh, point being since Vista the stack corruption issue has been dealt with. None of that is news to me

KronoS

Hello all

Ben N

Hi!

KronoS

Anyone know what HitmanPro.Alert is? I've got a fresh install of Windows 10 and all of a sudden I have this running in the background....

Ben N

It's apparently an AV thing from Sophos

KronoS

Ah... that would make sense as I'm using Sophos for my Anti-Virus

bwDraco

2:19 AM

@KronoS Anti-ransomware software.

KronoS

I'm trying to debug some Windows 10 stability issues. It's all of a sudden just not very stable

I am running on the slow ring of Dev Preview, but haven't run into issues like this before

where Search and settings aren't working properly, and the fact that simple file access is causing things to freeze

I'm very very close to switching to linux as my primary OS

Ramhound

2:36 AM

If you boot into a minimal configuration does this behavior exhibit itself?

I wouldn't judge Windows on a unstable build of Windows 10. RS4 channel is not considered stable at this point, that won't happen, until they start pushing RS5 to the fast channel which is 2 months away

Bob

3:24 AM

@KronoS complaining that a pre-release is unstable seems a bit pointless

bwDraco

If you have a problem, use the Feedback Hub app to report a bug.

bwDraco

4:16 AM

inc.com/walter-chen/…

Bob

sigh

0

A: Will Compressing an Entire USB Flash Drive Actually Increase Performance?

The purpose of compression is to save disk space and speed up file transfers. Opening and editing files, though, will always be slower, since the operating system will have to decompress them every time you do these things.

not only is the answer wrong, they can't even get their accusations in the comments correct

hm. I forgot my keys

Bob

4:42 AM

@JourneymanGeek i.imgur.com/SIbHn6b.gifv :D

Aldi catalogue has a $599 computer (SFF?) with an "Intel Core 13"

Ramhound

Seems expensive

for an i3 :$ I would wait for the Meltdown/Spec fixed processors :$

bwDraco

> :$

Journeyman Geek

5:07 AM

@Bob or old gen or laptop or

Bob

5:28 AM

@JourneymanGeek point is the "13"

Journeyman Geek

ohhhh

Dyslexia? ;p

bwDraco

@Bob amazon.com/Nikon-COOLPIX-Digital-Camera-Optical/dp/B00U2W4JEY

Not a fan of these sorts of cameras. The pixel-level image quality goes to crap towards the long range of the zoom range.

But 24-2000mm equivalent zoom? That's a very alluring proposition regardless.

Bob

@bwDraco "pixel-level image quality"? it's optical zoom, not digital

though of course it won't be near a long prime lens

bwDraco

@Bob The lens isn't equally sharp throughout the zoom range.

By the time you get to the far end of the zoom range, diffraction hits really hard. f/6.5 on a 16-megapixel sensor that's only 6.2x4.6mm in size does not look great.

I tend to prefer larger apertures over zoom range.

Obviously, you'd hit physical constraints (a wider aperture necessarily means a larger lens) but 30x zoom with an aperture no slower than f/4 is far more useful to me.

amazon.com/Panasonic-DMC-FZ300K-Megapixel-2-3-inch-Dustproof/dp/…

^ 24x zoom, f/2.8 constant aperture.

Lower resolution, sure, but 12MP is fine for a compact camera.

I tend to feel that more than 12MP isn't useful on a compact camera when diffraction already greatly limits optical resolution.

amazon.com/dp/B00KOUIBZW

Loses some zoom range and is a bit slower, but uses a much larger sensor (1-inch format, 13.2x8.8mm).

I have a Nikon Coolpix S9900 and I've never liked the image quality at long zoom or in less than ideal lighting.

Journeyman Geek

6:31 AM

@bwDraco its hilariously overzoomy

bwDraco

lol

Journeyman Geek

this hurts my brain to read. And I mean physically, and probably mentally too

Journeyman Geek

6:48 AM

yanno, I think its actually a troll ._.

Bob

I did notice the same thing about Homer. But in his defense, Odysseus went though ships like potato chips. — T.E.D. ♦ yesterday

Journeyman Geek

7:11 AM

@Bob instagram.com/p/BeYXHxcHGMC

:D

IE .9?

lol

7:27 AM

good morning

bwDraco

7:40 AM

roar

Journeyman Geek

8:34 AM

@Bob Looks like my usual daiso is closing :(

they're opening a smaller one nearby with a large don don donki in the same building

(another japanese discount store)

Bob

9:03 AM

@JourneymanGeek :(

smaller daisos just aren't the same

Journeyman Geek

yup

and the other two big ones are in town and in Jurong

Bob

also, they seem to have ditched the small knives (and ceramic knives) here :(

@JourneymanGeek welllllllll technically "in town" isn't that far? :P

Journeyman Geek

ah! We have small knives. Haven't seen ceramic in a while

@Bob actual effort

Bob

@JourneymanGeek yea, I had to buy one at Target two weeks ago

the horror!

Journeyman Geek

actually the new one is literally 10 minutes away

also lost the only nearby stationary store though the new daiso and don don donki ought to have stationary when they open

Journeyman Geek

9:53 AM

._.

THe stuff I run into on the internet, searching for something else...

Wikipedia:Stack Exchange is eating our lunch

Wikipedia is currently experiencing an editor retention problem. At the same time, Stack Exchange is growing faster than ever. It may help to compare and contrast our methodology with theirs. == Reputation == On Stack Exchange, users are officially ranked by "reputation," a score which loosely measures the value each user creates for the site. Beyond a certain level, users are effectively regarded as minor deities and relative differences in rep become less important. Of course, all users are still accountable for their actions. Reputation does correlate rather strongly with participation, but...

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