The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

[Travis B.]

My Mom is using Windows 11 on her laptop, and for quite a while now, if I understand her correctly, every time she is finished with booting, her browser (Firefox) starts on its own, even when she's not interested in using it. Any ideas on what might be causing this, and how to stop it?

Firefox is probably set to start up automatically on login. From a bit of googling I found this.

[Raphael]

My Mom is using Windows 11 on her laptop, and for quite a while now, if I understand her correctly, every time she is finished with booting, her browser (Firefox) starts on its own, even when she's not interested in using it. Any ideas on what might be causing this, and how to stop it?

Firefox is probably set to start up automatically on login. From a bit of googling I found this.

Oh, thank you!

[Raphael]

I just got an email with a pdf attachment where the email itself contained a helpful link to where I could download Acrobat Reader if I wanted to read the pdf.

Huh. I remember links like that were quite common in emails and on websites related to pdfs 15 to 20 years ago, but they had gotten a lot rarer recently. Kind of like a blast from the past.

[Raphael]

Why do I hear very, very quiet, almost inaudible, sounds coming from my computer when I move my mouse around? I have an SSD. Shouldn't that only happen with HDDs?

[Travis B.]

Why do I hear very, very quiet, almost inaudible, sounds coming from my computer when I move my mouse around? I have an SSD. Shouldn't that only happen with HDDs?

Maybe that's the fan on your computer changing speed with changes in processor load (and thus heat generation)?

[Raphael]

Why do I hear very, very quiet, almost inaudible, sounds coming from my computer when I move my mouse around? I have an SSD. Shouldn't that only happen with HDDs?

Maybe that's the fan on your computer changing speed with changes in processor load (and thus heat generation)?

Hmm. That would have to be very quick changes in fan speed in reaction to changes in processor load.

[bradrn]

Why do I hear very, very quiet, almost inaudible, sounds coming from my computer when I move my mouse around? I have an SSD. Shouldn't that only happen with HDDs?

I believe it’s related to power mode switching, actually. (I don’t understand the details but that was what I gathered when I looked it up.)

[jcb]

Why do I hear very, very quiet, almost inaudible, sounds coming from my computer when I move my mouse around? I have an SSD. Shouldn't that only happen with HDDs?

Maybe that's the fan on your computer changing speed with changes in processor load (and thus heat generation)?

Hmm. That would have to be very quick changes in fan speed in reaction to changes in processor load.

When I replaced the stock heatsink and fan on my CPU with a larger heatsink and more efficient fan, I was surprised by how much of a difference it made. My CPU is significantly cooler, and noticeably quieter. So yes, a CPU fan really can be that loud.

[Raphael]

Not really fun and actually rather boring fact: For somewhat complicated reasons, earlier this week, I copied as many of my personal files as possible into one large directory somewhere on my pc, with no subdirectories whatsoever. Most of the personal documents, and all of the music files, other sound files, video files, and pictures. Turns out those are 2205 files with a total size of about 288 or 289 gb.

[Travis B.]

I ordered a PicoCalc kit to run zeptoforth on a few days ago and have been busy working on drivers for it. I have now implemented an 8-bit SPI display driver and most of an I2C keyboard driver. After I put the finishing touches on the keyboard driver the next thing will be to implement a terminal emulator for it to tie the screen and keyboard together.

[Travis B.]

Someone clued me in to why DHCPv6 might not be working with my new router, and indeed after taking their advice DHCPv6 started working again.

[kosen444]

Gotta love when the internet (or a helpful friend) comes through like that

[Travis B.]

Gotta love when the internet (or a helpful friend) comes through like that

The matter is that this wasn't like trying to use DHCPv6 under Linux but rather I've been writing my own IPv6 stack for zeptoforth (of which I am the primary author) on the Raspberry Pi Pico (2) W, named zeptoIPv6, which makes it much harder than simply googling a solution for someone else's prewritten software.

[Raphael]

An observation and a question, both technology-related.

I've noticed three things about the internet in our time:

1) A lot of interesting or sometimes downright important documents published on the internet are only available in pdf format

2) More and more people use smartphones as one of their main ways, their main way, or even their only way of looking at things on the internet

3) Reading pdf documents on a smartphone is usually a pain in the butt

Which makes me wonder: how does everyone else manage this? Are all other people, perhaps, by now, using smartphone apps that somehow present pdf files on smartphones in reasonably readable ways, about which I only haven't heard anything yet because I'm so out of touch?

[Ares Land]

I have the same problem. If you ever find a useable app, let me know

If I need to closely review the document, I'll use a computer. Otherwise, I'll make do with zooming.

It's more than just PDFs. I was a web developer when smartphones became popular, and our clients consistently hammered the message that the design had to be mobile-first. I'm surprised that 15 years later, this still isn't the case. The user experience is very often much better on a computer.

Why is that? Testing on mobile phones used to be a pain, and I'm afraid that's still the case.

[alice]

It's more than just PDFs. I was a web developer when smartphones became popular, and our clients consistently hammered the message that the design had to be mobile-first. I'm surprised that 15 years later, this still isn't the case. The user experience is very often much better on a computer.

Why is that? Testing on mobile phones used to be a pain, and I'm afraid that's still the case.

It's not just attention spans which are getting smaller

[Raphael]

Thank you for showing me that I'm not alone.

Unless you actually want to print out a document, I don't see the point of having it in pdf format. epub is a lot more user-friendly.

[Ares Land]

It's technological inertia, I guess. There's plenty of software and libraries for producing PDFs; epubs probably not so much.
I don't know how often people have apps that can handle epubs. I have an epub reader on my phone, but how many people do?

[zompist]

It's technological inertia, I guess. There's plenty of software and libraries for producing PDFs; epubs probably not so much.
I don't know how often people have apps that can handle epubs. I have an epub reader on my phone, but how many people do?

If only we had some technology, a "hypertext markup language" if you will, that allowed humans, desktop computers, and smartphones to all read the same document, reformatting it to fit the screen available... ah well, we can dream...

More seriously, for ten years or so devs (or the marketing department) were obsessed with turning all those chaotic gray web pages into precisely formatted things that looked just like a marketing brochure. CSS was a step in this direction, but its perfect enscapulation is the PDF: it looks the same on any browser and it looks like it prints.

Then people with smartphones came in and expected documents to fit their smaller windows again. Pesky users!

[Raphael]

If only we had some technology, a "hypertext markup language" if you will, that allowed humans, desktop computers, and smartphones to all read the same document, reformatting it to fit the screen available... ah well, we can dream...

I'd say the problem with html is that it requires most graphics and illustrations to be in their own separate files, which makes transporting an illustrated document as a whole more complicated than necessary.