This is why many of the expensive Dock options from HP / Dell / Lenovo, etc come with a non-detachable USB-C cable. You can’t have the “wrong” cable because the one you need isn’t removable.

Nah, I don’t blame you. The list of crap that I had to allow under “required” to read the article was preposterous.

But why does the HDMI forum not want a open source 2.1-compliant implementation?

To my knowledge they’ve never officially said but you can be sure that it has to do with Content Protection and that means DRM. An Open Source HDMI 2.1+ driver would make pirating much simpler, probably trivial and they don’t want that.

It’s possible anyway of course but there are a couple of hardware hoops to jump through and that’s enough to keep most people from doing it.

A couple of them have been built and they’re just sitting there unpowered

Most of them in California because that State simply cannot get its shitty power grid sorted out. The damn thing barely works at the best of times due to a combination of corruption, greed, and Government interference.

As an example the utility company promised Digital Realty and Stack Infrastructure that they’d have the power ready for them by the time their DCs were built but…SURPRISE…they lied. The only fault for DR and SI here is trusting a California Utility to deliver on their promise.

Power availability is actually a primary consideration when choosing a location for a Data Center. Sometimes they’ll site a DC even if there isn’t enough power and then build out the power generation that they need.

An example are the two DCs that Microsoft is building in Cheyenne, Wyoming and the absolutely massive 1.2 Million panel solar farm being built to power them. https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/05/11/massive-1-2-billion-1-2-million-panel-solar-farm-planned-for-south-cheyenne/

This is at least the second time that Microsoft has done this in Cheyenne. In 2016 they contracted for 237 MW of Wind Energy, which led to the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farms being built / expanded. https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2016/11/14/latest-energy-deal-microsofts-cheyenne-datacenter-will-now-powered-entirely-wind-energy-keeping-us-course-build-greener-responsible-cloud/

No matter what you think of AI the folks that engineer these DCs aren’t stupid. They are well aware of their extreme power requirements.

My good person I’ve been tracking this whole REAL ID mess since before it was passed back in 2005. Please read my entire comment before replying and let me clarify a few things for you:

I’ll start by saying that a “REAL ID” isn’t a separate ID card. It’s a regular ID, typically a Drivers License or State ID, that was created in compliance with the REAL ID Act. If you want to know what the criteria are you can read them here. (PDF Warning)

It’s a cash grab because it would be much cheaper & easier to standardize state ID requirements and use the existing infrastructure…

Yes and this is one of the things that the REAL ID Act of 2005 did! It created a standardized set of ID requirements that leveraged the individual States existing infrastructure for creation. You are apparently unknowingly arguing for people to follow the regular process and get a REAL ID! The process described in this article is for individuals who either choose to or cannot go through the regular process. I have more information on this farther down.

…rather than issue an entirely new ID through an entirely new database controlled by the feds.

That is a exceptionally strained way to describe what is happening. If an individual doesn’t have a REAL compliant ID or a Passport then they can to go the TSA website and pay a $45 fee for a one time background check. If / when that background check is completed they are given a token that they can present to the TSA Agent at the gate and that token is only valid for 10 days. This is not another form of ID, it’s proof of a recent background check.

The states certainly view this as a revenue source…

Please explain how a state gets any additional revenue from this process. All of the money for this temporary background check is going to the Federal Government.

…and the feds view it as an “information” source.

While you aren’t wrong this is going to impact less than 5% of travelers so there’s not much information to be gathered and the feds already have most of it anyway.

It should be noted that, to my knowledge, all the “non-compliant” states (where you can’t use state ID in place of Real ID) are States that are controlled by Democrats…

Here is the “farther down” I referenced earlier. Let’s start with the fact that all 50 States were issuing compliant REAL IDs by September of 2020.

So there is no state where what you are saying is true and there hasn’t been for at least 5 years. Every State has the ability to issue identification that is compliant with the REAL ID standard it’s just that some States choose to continue issuing IDs that don’t. Even California which was recently in the news about this started issuing REAL IDs back in 2018, it’s just that many people either did not or could not get them.

Even today some States, such as California, will issue both compliant and non-compliant ID cards and which of them a person gets depends entirely on what they want or can qualify for. If an individual qualifies for a REAL compliant ID and wants it then they can get one. If they can’t qualify for or don’t want a REAL compliant ID then they can get a Standard ID.

…so there’s an additional layer of shenanigans that appears partisan.

That’s what you’ve been told but it isn’t true. You may be surprised to learn that some of the very last States to start issuing REAL compliant ID’s were Red States! Oklahoma for example didn’t start issuing them until two years after California! Not only that but many of the Red States that fought REAL ID, Oklahoma, Arizona, South Carolina and Idaho to name a few, also still issue “Standard” IDs just like California and other Blue States!

The truth is that the REAL ID Act was passed 20 years ago and enforcement dates were known about literally years in advance. This fight isn’t new nor is it Red vs Blue. I never liked the REAL ID Act but I like the recent hyper-partisan misinformation hysteria surrounding it even less.

This latest thing from the TSA is just a way for people who don’t have or can’t get a REAL compliant ID or US Passport to fly domestically. It’s not an information gathering conspiracy nor is it a revenue generator, it’s just another sad and stupid act in the Security Theater that is the TSA.

It would only make sense if it was a one time fee, and you got your ID as a result.

You can pay a one time fee and get your REAL ID any time you want by going to your local DMV.

We also know it’s not about security, or you couldn’t fly without one.

You’re not supposed to be flying without one (or a valid passport) now. All they’re doing with this policy is potentially making it possible if you’re willing to pay an extra fee and wait (potentially several hours) while they do a background check. Even then there’s no guarantee you’re going to be let on the flight.

We know it’s a cash grab because they’re counting on a “built-in” amount of flyers who won’t have or will refuse to get ID with privacy issues.

IMO it’s not a cash grab it’s an incentive to get with the program by getting the proper documentation.

The whole thing is stupid but I don’t believe it’s a cash grab.

I think they are claiming the media outlet is nothing but propaganda, sort of like Russia Today. Do I have that correct comrades?

Vehicles are expensive in all Western Countries.

I think it unlikely that the United States will have a National Digital ID system anytime “soon”. We may eventually end up with one but I’d be shocked if it doesn’t take at least two decades. As an example the Real ID Act was passed in 2005 and multiple states were still fighting in 2025. It doesn’t even completely take effect until 2027!

Didn’t GIMP release an entire UI overhaul earlier this year?

Same here.

I really liked The Duke. It was one of the first controllers that actually fit well in my large adult size hands!

Sure but as @[email protected] noted MS is ending support for EWS in M365 in less than 12 months! So it took them 18 years to release something that still doesn’t fully work (no Calendaring support, WTF?) and won’t even be usable by this time next year.

🤦

If it only supported outdated Exchange servers that would be one thing

The only Exchange server that ISN’T outdated at this point is the 4 month old Exchange Server Subscription Edition. All other versions are now EoL and have no support. So unless you have a very particular need to keep your EX environment On-Prem then you may as well migrate to EXO.

If you are already using EXO then Thunderbird’s new EWS support will stop working next October.

I have a Win11 PC sitting here with a Core i5 8500t, 16G of RAM, 1T M.2 SATA NVME, attached to a three position KVM. Hooked to that KVM are three monitors (2 x DP, 1 x HDMI), wireless keyboard & mouse, Creative USB T60 speakers, and a USB WebCam (logi 970e). Since it’s a PC I use for work it’s Entra joined and InTune managed running Managed AV, MDR, and a DNS Filtering Agent. Oh, and the drive is encrypted with BitLocker.

So I basically have as much USB attached crap as you do, sans hard drives, and it’s going through the USB Hub that’s built into my KVM.

Time from power off to usable desktop for that machine is under 40 seconds.

Your external hard drives are a likely culprit. I’d guess that they are either on an older interface or your PC is set to do a full AV scan of attached drives at boot.

Don’t get it twisted, Microsoft and their products piss me off on a daily basis. I’m not defending them.

I’m glad they have it but adding EWS support at the end of 2025 is nothing to brag about. EWS came with Exchange 2007, almost 20 years ago!

I literally don’t turn my computer off because even with an SSD windows takes so long to boot up properly.

I admin several hundred Windows PCs so I’m pretty confident in saying that your computer is either a moldy potato, something is wrong with your hardware, or you have a very unusual software load. A modern Windows 10/11 desktop should go from power off to logon screen in < 30 seconds and from logon to desktop in < 30 seconds. Even an 8th Gen Core i5 with 8GB of RAM, a SATA SSD, and a full stack of security software will be ready to use in 60 seconds or less.

Whatever your problem is it ain’t “windows”…and I’m typing this comment from my home PC running Linux.

Yeah, it’s a real shame that they never got around to writing a 9th and 10th Amendment…oh…wait…

they argued that not criminalizing abortion gave women rights that the constitution did not explicitly protect(?)

No they didn’t. They decided that the question of legality should be returned to the States because Roe v Wade was decided based on a 14th Amendment Right of Privacy through Due Process. Your comment is about the practical outcome of their decision in some places.

Frankly I still think RBG had the correct legal argument and that Roe should have been decided on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

I’m sure they have no problem writing an opinion that allows bans on gay marriage.

Except they had the opportunity to do just that and refused. So obviously they have some kind of problem with it.