A little note for those using Firefox browser. The latest update of an Intel driver apparently caused my browser to hang after several hops across the internet, particularly in graphics-heavy sites. This would produce an error message in Win 10 to the effect that firefox had been blocked from accessing graphics hardware, and the program would hang on the next requested hop to another site.
The cure for it apparently was to go to the video adapter on the hardware list and roll back the last update. We’re not totally sure this fixed it. But so far no more hangs.
Dunno if it’s Intel’s problem or Mozilla’s, but the two aren’t playing nice with each other.
So far not happened to me but I’m not usually on graphics heavy sites and my Dell XPS is about 3 years older than yours. Different video hardware no doubt.
I was going to claim this sort of thing never happens on those futuristic starships, until I realized:
1. Castor and Pollux (Heinlein’s Rolling Stones) IIRC, ran around with slide rules clenched in their teeth, or nearly so, because Heinlein had everyone doing astrogator calc in their heads, with slide rules. (I might be exaggerating; it’s been quite a while since I reread his stuff.) This was made more difficult by flatcats overtaking the ship’s hold.
2. HAL-9000 — Major A.I. software decision-tree priority conflicts, requiring the complete shutdown of the main computer, Daisy, Daisy, and all.
3. Matthew Broderick’s adolescent penchant for computer games resulted in the near-miss at global disaster. Not a starship, but they did have a megalomaniac computer, a very slow 1980’s modem, and there was a model pterodactyl, plus the computer’s initials were W.O.P.R., indicating a fondness for Burger King. Therefore, I’m counting it.
4. Star Trek — Despite a voice interface par excellence, the ship’s computer regularly seems to have trouble, plus at one point, appeared to have developed a crush on Kirk. (But then, apparently, so did every alien female in sight. Curiously, no other genders did….)
5. The Pride’s computer translation had some difficulties requiring hani language skills, plus a distraction involving chasing kiffish Dinner out of the air vents. But otherwise, not too many difficulties. We’ll even give the translation modules a pass due to the peculiarities of translating more than eight species’ languages.
6. The entire Death Star was vulnerable to a single shot up its tailpipe, so to speak. Their computers never had a chance. Also, how is it that C-ePO and various aliens can talk, yet nobody could put a translator module in R2-D2 after years and years, or give Chewbacca any sort of translator device? Oh, well, it/s a space fantasy, we/re supposed to overlook that.
I am quite sure I/m leaving out hundreds more examples, but I think we’re getting the idea that even hundreds of years from now and hundreds of light years away, ah, it may not be Windows or Macintosh, but they still haven’t quite worked out all the bugs. 😀
(Firefox is still my preferred browser on a Windows machine; and Safari is my default on a Mac. Hopefully, FF will fix their bugs soon.)
Firefox only fixes bugs that annoy the FF developers; otherwise the response is “Works for me; sucks to be you.” Bugs that annoy mere users? Some bugs are now past 12 years old despite multiple and ongoing complaints.
Marvin the Paranoid Android from the Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy had problems: “I just want you to know I’m feeling very depressed right now…”
The main computer on the ship Dark Star had an existential crisis about whether or not to drop nukes on its primary target.
Even Disney got into the act, with the robots on the Cygnus-1 developing problems (Black Hole)
And don’t forget “Danger, Will Robinson!” Will had to reprogram the Robot to purge its initial homicidal tendencies, helpfully installed by Dr. Smith. Talk about malware!
I’m currently (still) unhappy with Firefox for updating out from under NewsFox with their big security update. Until somebody bothers to get NewsFox to play nice with Firefox’s security update, I have not been updating my Firefox. I also run Windows 7. However, I may have been experiencing it. Not sure.
Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. It was true in the past; it is true now; it will be true in the future.
No particular issues here like that. This is a handmade v55.0.3 on handmade Linux. Just that it takes it in mind that some sites are insecure, or have messed up “Certificates of Authority” (deliberately or otherwise {“Don’t assume malice for what stupidity can explain.”}) and doesn’t connect.
Hi all – again I cringe using my Apple iMac computer. Not that there no problems, but I long ago abandoned Windows.
Everyone stay cool,
Jonathan up here in sunny New Hampshire
I have found things disappearing or loading without my asking, and finally traced THOSE problems to the touchpad. I don’t use touchpads. This one’s default is ‘on,’ as in ‘really on’. It was so sensitive I was touching it off, and it would do wild and wonky things because it is set up for ‘gesture.’ Now it is set up for ‘off’. That should make life easier. If I want it, I just go to Settings/Devices and turn it on again.
I know, right? It took me months to get the touchpad to stop taking over the computer. I tried turning it off in all the settings, but that didn’t seem to work. I finally taped several layers of my business postcards over it. That mostly prevents cursor !surprise!. Not to mention I have my fax number, which I’m prone to forget, right at hand [pun intended]). I love Dells, but they have their moments. . .
I have Dell toplevel repair contracts, so I get service, but they are experimenting with alloting certain machines to certain agents, so I get to contact a certain person (fortunate he has me, because I can understand his accent: I’m not sure all would)and I am going to have to tell him, alas, it helped, but it did not work.
I have the least unworthy suspicion that Microsoft has done something to make Firefox not work, although the driver in question is Intel. I detest Edge, and I loathe Bing, and I am going to go on restarting the browser periodically if that’s what it takes to evade these two until Firefox figures out a fix.
Somewhere in Firefox settings there’s something about “Use hardware acceleration”. Try turning that off. New machine should be fast enough that it won’t seriously impact graphics rendering, other than maybe on stuff like Google Street View (and maybe some online games).
Um, lemme find it…
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/upgrade-graphics-drivers-use-hardware-acceleration#w_i-still-have-problems-with-my-graphics-card-in-firefox
See also “disable WebGL”, next item down the page. That might affect stuff like online …um, whatcha call that clay-modeling style of 3D app… and maybe games again, but shouldn’t affect anything else.
The real problem is that FF’s codebase is a trainwreck, and last I heard was something like 2x the size of that for Win95 (itself 16 million lines of code).
Me? I don’t even install FF; I use SeaMonkey, or in a pinch, PaleMoon. Cuz I want an application interface, not a bloody cellphone interface.
Oh, yeah, right. I forgot about those. They affected me too. SeaMonkey uses the same codebase as FF. Can it be that different, and still be compatible with current webpage designs?
We really have to blame the demands of webpage designers as much or more than Mozilla for the current state of FF!
Then there’s that “thing” I try to forget, since I only need my new Windows box once a year for TurboTax. The worst thing M$ has come up with since “Clippy”! “Cortana” is it? “Let me tell you what I think you want to do so you don’t get ‘confused’.” “Sorry, I’ve been playing with computers since 1966. I think I know what I’m doing by now.”
I use FF latest version v61.0.1 (64-bit) on a PC, and haven’t had any major glitches recently. And I thrash it a bit. So I guess it’s incompatibility with the graphics card, which others have suggested. No cellphone interface here!
On a mobile device I use Opera, which is far superior to FF IMNSHO.
I used Firefox for many years, but I don’t like the direction they’ve gone in.
I now use Pale Moon, which forked from Firefox several years ago. It has the old Firefox look, and many of the old add-ons work with it, but it’s been continuously improved and updated, and has diverged from Firefox. I’m happy with it. (It has a Linux version too, Paul!)
Yes, I did look into it when it was last mentioned here. But the problem is all the support libraries, dependencise, it requires do not mesh with my builds.
Ah, the resourcefulness of the Wavy Navy! I sort of like the look of PaleMoon—I don’t need a suite: I’m using MailWasher Pro to tame the flood of mail and it’s working with Mozilla nicely, so I don’t want to fuss with that. But PaleMoon seems to have virtues. I’ll look it over and see how that works. Prior to that, however, I think I will apply that acceleration issue fix and see how that does with what I’ve got now. I’m curious. And that sounds like it might be a problem.
Legacy?
The last few days, maybe a week, I’ve been getting a red triangle warning sign (not safe!) when I visit this site. It’s in the URL bar before the address.
Maybe a certificate needs updating?
I trust CJ and Jane enough to keep visiting, despite the warning, but when Jane or Lynn has time they might want to look into that.
I’m visiting through my Android phone, in case that makes a difference: it might be a problem at my end, though this is the only place I visit that has the warning.
That’s likely due to http://www.cherryh.com not being encrypted. There’s http in front, not https, and some browser manufacturers deign such sites unsafe. They are switching from showing a green lock or some such on secured connections to warning signs on unsecured connections.
“Google Chrome users who visit unencrypted websites will be confronted with warnings from tomorrow.
The changes will come for surfers using the latest version of Google Chrome, version 68. Any web page not running HTTPS with a valid TLS certificate will show a ‘Not secure’ warning in the Chrome address bar from version 68 onwards. The warning will apply both to internet-facing websites and intranet sites accessed through Chrome, which has approximately 60 per cent market share.”
We see that frequently on our library computers, where a website that doesn’t have https rather than http will pop up a scary warning screen on Chrome. Few people have the knowhow or guts to drill down and proceed to a site when Chrome does everything short of completely blocking you from going to sites it deems ‘unsafe’. When the alternative is IE or Firefox, that percentage is vanishingly small. It still doesn’t prevent injection of bad code on sites that do conform to HTTPS, just gives a false sense of security.
Just checking in…CJ’s site has a valid, up-to-date SSL certificate and you can access it as https://www.cherryh.com or https://cherryh.com — but that’s not likely to solve the browser-generated warnings which are (I think) being generated by out-of-date internal links to CJ’s WordPress image/asset library. I’m searching for a WordPress extension that can change internal image/asset links from the old http:// format to the now-required https:// format. If anyone knows of such an extension, please let CJ or me know 🙂
That may be why I look like a screaming crab since I changed my registered email address at Gravatar.
bless you, threadbender. I’m totally at sea where it comes to that matter.
OTHO—Reziac, I turned off firefox acceleration and have not had a recurrence of the problem. Yet.
Underground Lake of Liquid Water Detected on Mars
It’s 20km across, and 1.5km below the surface. The depth will make it very difficult to investigate.
This potential discovery/evidence is really, really exciting! I hope it can be duplicated/”seen” with upcoming monitoring of Mars. Frustrating that another spacecraft examining the surface of Mars is unable to “see” it due to using different frequencies, I think it was. I want more!!!
I saw that via SciShow on YouTube (Hank and John Green are affiliated with the channel).
Their report says findings indicate this could be liquid water, but it could also be very cold, very high in varitius salts, and may be mixed with sediments, i.e., muddy. But they say the tests run indicate it can’t not be water, either, and yes 20km wide in a lake under the ice cap.
The SciShow report says the scientific studies caution it’s likely inhospitable to Earth life, and yet extremophiles on Earth can live in that and do feed on the stuff they expect is in the water. But they are choosing to be cautious. They say, though, that it could still be an excellent source for microfossils and any larger-scale fossils, if such exist. And, yes, it’s a prime spot to search for life, just in case it might be there. They say if Mars did have life before it lost most of its atmosphere and heat, that this would be a great place to look, and that it’s possible that Martian lifeforms might have adapted to the harsh conditions. Maybe. But they think it’s not too likely.
So — This is still a huge reason to be excited! Liquid water, in a 20km wide lake, under an ice cap and with sediments in and under the water! The potential for life and/or fossils, still!
Now, we just need a spacecraft to go and look for fossils or existing life. — Ah, the SciShow report also said the ice above the water is over 1km thick (1.2 or 1.2km, I think it was), and so any search for samples would have to drill an ice core, and then search the water.
But independent testing of the data to be sure others draw the same conclusions, and doing a search of the area, are well worthwhile.
Fantastic stuff! — If there really was life on Mars at some point, or one of Jupiter’s or Saturn’s moons, it vastly increases our understanding of what forms of life can be like and how they work, and it tells us that life in some form may be more common throughout the galaxy. If we don’t find life in those places, then it tells us there are more specialized conditions required to sustain life. Either answer, or some other answers we don’t know to expect, would do a great deal to expand our understanding of life and of other worlds (planets and moons) in our Solar System and throughout our Milky Way galaxy. Great stuff!