The Computer Thread

[Sorry, wrong thread. ]

edited 20th Oct '14 5:03:09 AM by LongLiveHumour

Firefox 33.0 is memory leaking so bad

Couple of questions:

1. ecoATM, the kiosks where you can hand over your old and/or damaged electronics for cash, any possible risks?

2. Been having issues with Shockwave Flash version 15.0.0.189. It keeps crashing every time I try to load it, forcing me to disable it to do anything in my browser. Current browser is Nightly 36.0a1.

edited 21st Oct '14 9:03:42 PM by tclittle

I just had a serious system error that seems to have been caused by the latest version of Norton 360. Half my apps locked up, forcing a restart, and when I restarted, the system continually BSOD'ed until I went into safe mode and did a system restore. At that point, Norton simply wouldn't load so I uninstalled it for good.

I'm done with Symantec.

Norton is one of the worst anti-virus products ever. Horribly bloated and false positives out the ass.

Mine committed suicide on itself

Are you sure it's Firefox itself i.e. firefox.exe? And not for example, plugin-container.exe?

Yep, it's firefox.exe. But I'm in the habit of keeping my computer running overnight, browser session left up and all, so I'm kind of asking for it.

When I first noticed it

edited 21st Oct '14 10:37:11 PM by Sixthhokage1

Did you leave it with at least 20 tabs open?

Nope. I've got like 5 tabs average.

After a very long and tedious ordeal, my reliable ol' Dell XPS is back to 4 GB of RAM. Thank goodness Best Buy was having a sale on DDR2, as that's all this old thing will take. Still wish I could build a new computer, but that'll have to wait until I get my van sold.

FTDI bricks competitors chips via silent driver update.

IIRC they already pulled that update, an are switching to non invasive methods.

Perhaps the authorities should make sure nobody working there has a goatee, waxed moustache and/or a black cape.

This happens a lot more than we suspect. In The '80s, cable companies had a "magic bullet": a signal that bricked cloned cable boxes. In The '90s, it was Intel and Microsoft hax0ring "counterfeit" programs and chips. Remember the debacle over Intels Pentium II serial number? A set of code was added to the chips that was readable by other programs.

Of course hackers figured out how to block it or fake it in assembler.

I suspect that many patches and homebrew upgrades will work around FTDI's new "feature".

edited 25th Oct '14 11:35:10 AM by TairaMai

Microsoft beefs up security protection in Windows 10

IIRC they already pulled that update

Yeah, but they're completely unapologetic. It's like "Sorry if you caught us stabbing people, we don't know why it made you upset but we've decided to stop for now."

The fact that they'd even consider doing something like this is newsworthy and highly alarming. Plus, it's almost certainly illegal.

I suspect that many patches and homebrew upgrades will work around FTDI's new "feature".

It's possible to fix if you know your way around EEPROM, but the average consumer is hosed. But the really galling thing is that they abused a security feature in order to deliver malware. It's an attack on the entire cybersecurity infrastructure, essentially.

edited 25th Oct '14 8:11:43 PM by storyyeller

I was going to comment that the company has a right to protect its intellectual property, but then I read the article more closely and there's no way for a consumer to know that a cloned chip was used, and therefore no reason to justify damaging their equipment. Plus, as was wisely pointed out, this jeopardizes consumer trust in automatic update mechanisms that are crucial to ensuring that software and hardware security is up to date.

Hey guys, for my birthday I am hoping to amass enough monies to buy myself a graphics card. Sadly, I don't know enough about them as I ought to, and your best advice would be greatly appreciated. I am hoping to get together at least 300 dollars, so use that as a starting point. Any pointers you would share?

This is pretty much my feeling on the matter. If they had a way to nuke the chips before they got to the user my feelings would be "well, sucks to be them". But this isn't the end user's fault. If they wanted to pull support for those chips it'd be fine(and, you know, fair. they shouldn't support what they didn't profit from), but frying them isn't their right at ALL.

300 should be plenty for a decent card. 1000 would get you a GTX titan but nobody really needs that kind of power. Though...

edited 25th Oct '14 8:43:27 PM by joesolo

I actualy have the exact same thing to say as Fighteer.

@El Rigo: Wait for a bit more (maybe a few weeks, maybe a month). At your price point the upcoming GTX 960 will arrive. Honestly though if you can get it up to $350 anyway you can already get a GTX 970. Which performs slightly better than a GTX Titan...

It's name's not as cool though!

That is the best idea I have heard all day.

dammit do I want to build a tower now...