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Our company supplied laptops have been getting smaller each year. "Too heavy" they whine. Give me a tool - reasonable screen, ports, and "hard disk".
This round, the HP laptop has USB C, HDMI, audio, USB A. But it is nice and thin.
We were issued a USB C "dock" (4 in ^3) that has 2 Display Port, VGA, audio, RJ45, x USB A & x USB C.
Portable docks are available with differing sets of connections.
Or you can collect and carry individual dongles for each connection.
Yes, they boot very quickly, but the storage is not enough to have a full load of tools and local work.
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Some of the business-oriented laptops still come with more ports. I recently got a new Dell Precision laptop at work, and it has a pretty nice complement of ports. The Latitude line also has some similar models, and I think Lenovo also still makes some laptops with a variety of ports.
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Those things are not included in laptops for years now. Ever that craze started to make them lighter and thinner. But what makes this really bad is that more and more laptops are also reducing the number of USB ports included that you could use to attach USB based optical drives and/or Ethernet adapters to your device. I had to get a USB 3.1 hub to plug in both of those as well as at least one USB memory stick and a USB mouse/keyboard combo... 
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I don't know how to break this to you, but it's been over ten years since the last laptop I had with an internal DVD drive. It's how laptops are so slim and light. You can buy an external DVD drive for less than $50, for what little use you will have for it. Watching movies on DVD and ripping CDs are also activities that have been relegated to the dustbin of history.
I guess people assume that if you have a laptop, you want to move it more than six inches, so you will have wi-fi. For desktop use, you can get a port replicator that has video, ethernet, and usb. Ten years ago these were expensive parts that were customized to the laptop, but USB3 has made inexpensive generic ones available.
You are awakening from a technological coma. Check out music and video streaming, and USB monitors, but don't ask who's been president, because the answer isn't pretty.
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DARPA wants a decompiler that can not only produce easily modified code but which will be verifiable.
Why DARPA hopes to 'distill' old binaries into readable code • The Register[^]
Having used decompilers over many years I don't see that this is likely.
I suspect it will be similar to the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
If I am reading it correctly (the 'HAR') it is even supposed to use a new representational format. So one would need to understand that first.
Following is the comment from one person (paraphrased perhaps) ...
Along with being able to deconstruct, edit, and reconstruct binaries, the team said its processing pipeline is also able to comb through HARs and remove extraneous routines.
So static code analysis that removes unused code. Which means dynamic linkage is not allowed.
The verification part?
The team has also, we're told, baked in verification steps to ensure changes made to code within hardware ranging from jets and drones to plain-old desktop computers work exactly as expected with no side effects.
I am just stating that seems like a really bold statement. Seems like if they can just do that then they should trash the rest and just present that to the world.
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I'd agree that it's unlikely - but if it worked it would be a game changer*
* And they would probably get sued by Adobe, Corel, Microsoft, ... once it became clear it was used to remove anti-piracy measures ... at a guess 20 minutes after release.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: once it became clear it was used to remove anti-piracy measures ... at a guess 20 minutes after release.
lol
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It will make it easier for the military/etc to build malware while retaining the original functionality of the program.
Next they will ask that the new version of the exe should generate the same MD5 and SHA2 hashes.
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... and bought a new graphics card.
About a month before Herself broke her humerus I had to stop playing GTA V because some change at Rockstar had made it use a tiny little bit more video memory that previously, which was causing my venerable GTX660Ti to run out of memory*
Which meant I could play for minutes only before the sound started to stutter, and if I ignored that then it would randomly crash to the desktop. The only solution to this was to drop the game resolution from 1920x1080 to ... 800x600. Which was solid but ugly as hell and unplayable in the real world.
So I didn't play. And I've missed it.
No more! I have bought a new card - RTX4060 - which should be fine for a few years of life when GTA VI finally comes out**
It'll be here tomorrow (along with the Displayport to HDMI adapters I'll need) - I'm looking forward to this!
* I suspect that my triple monitor setup contributed to this, but I've been running that fine for years.
** Currently expected next year? The financial projections from Take-Two Interactive predicted a massive increase in sales in its upcoming 2025 fiscal year which starts in April 2024.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I also look forward to buying Nvidia Geforce RTX 4060 but it is to update my Bring Your Animations to H264/HEVC Video article to support AV1 encoding. Unless one of my users wants to sponsor me a 4060 for me to test AV1 video encoding...
I do not play PC games.
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Shao Voon Wong wrote: I do not play PC games.
Well, there's your problem then! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Sadly I'm just about done with GTA V. I've played it for years, my online character has over $2B, and I was down to just following a daily routine...I've accomplished pretty much everything there is to do in the game, including some personal goals I had set for myself (including surpassing my crew leader in terms of RPs).
After I started playing Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA quickly fell to the wayside. These days if I launch the game, I get bored within 5 minutes.
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i might have added to the caption: "this kind of fire-stick is a larval god that is evolving into our future master." [^]
«The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled» Plutarch
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i'm so busy working on a Ph.D. in forgetting right now that i often forget i am learning. !
Quote: Neuroscientists today report the first results from experimental tests designed to explore the idea that "forgetting" might not be a bad thing, and that it may represent a form of learning—and outline results that support their core idea.
Last year the neuroscientists behind the new theory suggested that changes in our ability to access specific memories are based on environmental feedback and predictability. And that rather than being a bug, forgetting may be a functional feature of the brain, allowing it to interact dynamically with a dynamic environment.
In a changing world like the one we and many other organisms live in, forgetting some memories would be beneficial, they reasoned, as this can lead to more flexible behavior and better decision-making. If memories were gained in circumstances that are not wholly relevant to the current environment, forgetting them could be a positive change that improves our well-being.
[^]
«The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled» Plutarch
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Quote: forgetting some memories would be beneficial, they reasoned, as this can lead to more flexible behavior and better decision-making.
Ever looked for your glasses while it is literally right in front of you - on your face? This led me to a better decision-making rule to look for it on my face first, but as usual I forgot about the rule!
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Decades ago, Robert Heinlein's character Lazarus Long proposed a need to develop a new way of remembering in order to live longer lives without going mad. He suggested that experiences are accumulated in a linear fashion as time progresses, but as the mind assimilates experiences, it also creates creates connections to all other experiences; these connections grow geometrically without limit, quickly using all available resources. As we get older, we first begin to run out of RAM, then later the available disk space begins to diminish and fragment. His brilliant friend Andrew Libby told him that there is a solution, but sadly, Heinlein passed away without writing the book in which Mr. Libby reveals said solution. Perhaps we will never know...
Will Rogers never met me.
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Great story! I wonder what Heinlein had in mind.
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Heinlein was a damn genious and his books are really worth to be read.
I love "Friday" and "The moon is a harsh mistress"
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Very interesting. This aligns with what they know about people with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory - people who can remember everything about their own lives (can remember the shirt they wore on april 7, 1996).
Marilu Henner has HSAM and has written a book about it[^].
One of the things they discovered is that it is very difficult for these people to take action because they have difficult knowing which thing is important since they remember very detail of their lives.
They get caught up on all the minutiae.
Forgetting can be very helpful to weed out the unimportant.
If you really want to read a fantastic book about memory read the book, Moonwalking With Einstein[^].
I read it twice and it is super informative and a lot of fun to learn about how memory works.
It has been a few years since I read it and now remember the book I may go back and read it again.
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People suffering from senile dementia are the most learned of us all. /s
It is possible that a rearrangement of memory that places more emphasis on newly-learned facts is beneficial. I don't see what benefit completely forgetting facts would have.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I'm generally a happy person. My memories are a lot fuzzier than most I assume.
My wife has a fantastic memory. She really has great recall of details. It's her curse. Because with those crisp memories comes the emotion of the events. She remembers slights and traumas as if it it just happened. Generally she is not all that happy.
I remember that Joe Blow treated me like sh*t, not to give him the beifit of the doubt in the future, but the painful emotion of the time is long gone. It hurts when I see my wife relive some painful event. I wish I could help her forget.
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Might actually be the opposite. Your memory might be normal where the wife has 'exceptional' memory.
Memory is one of those things that people assume everyone else has the same. But fairly recently they have documented some very extreme differences.
Since I am aware of this I was in the position to identify this when I was having a conversation with a woman. I was able to pick up that she had an extraordinary ability to recall events in great detail even to the date when it happened. But convincing her that it was in fact unusual was very difficult.
You can read about one case by looking up the actress 'Marilu Henner'. (Keep in mind that stats related to her represent those identified and not necessarily the number that exist.)
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I agree that she is unusual. All jokes about women never forgetting aside.
She is also a super recognizer. She can see a famous face for a brief instance and is confident she knows who it is and is almost always right. She can see a child picture of a famous adult and quickly know who it is.
I am very far from that. I tend to need to hear their voice before I can have a level of confidence. Superman's disguise as Clark Kent would work on me. Change your hair, I probably won't recognize you for a while. I've always been that way. Don't get mugged, I'll be a lousy witness.
I think facial recognition and memory are tied together. She remembers the fine details that make up a face, me not so much unless I really, really, know it.
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Rich Shealer wrote: I tend to need to hear their voice before I can have a level of confidence...She remembers the fine details that make up a face, me not so much unless I really, really, know it.
Mild prosopagnosia is already known in study participants. I suspect given normal human distribution curves that it is far higher than known.
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Hi, Rich,
Are you asking for advice here for a relationship problem ... i'm unclear.
My ex-wife (American, divorced 30 Years ago) was hyper-empathic: over years having to be her therapist exhausted me, a factor led to divorce.
i would distinguish between "crisp memories" and reliving/obsessing negative emotions. If she wants to change that pattern, there are good modern therapies for that.
best wishes, bill (former board-certified therapist)
«The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled» Plutarch
modified 23-Aug-23 2:15am.
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