ovid is turning into a metaphor for something that is fatal for some and
asymptomatic for others, we're not allowed to say where it started, and no
one believes you if you say you have it. It has replaced 'migraine', whose
symptoms you could describe exactly as in Wolff's Headache, aura and
all, and your doctor still wouldn't believe you had one.
So I'm justified in saying that my computer has caught Covid from all those updates.
Windows bugs
This week, after a colleague sent me some files from their grant, I discovered a new bug in Enterprise Windows. If the file contains a certain combination of characters, Windows falsely claims that there's not enough space to copy it. I've been searching for the shortest file that shows the bug. So far I've gotten it down to 61 characters:
A-024723 81373956 PMC7919863 34265279 alcoholic fatty liver
On my work PC, any file that contains that string, whether it's in a Word document, an Excel file, or in a plain text file, won't copy to Linux. Windows pops up a message saying “The destination already has a file named [name of file]. ” Then it says “There is not enough space on [destination]. 61 bytes is needed to copy this item. Delete or move files so you have more space.” It then creates a zero-length file on Linux, causing the contents of the file, which in this case contained my colleague's grant proposal, to be lost. This only happens when Windows reads its own hard drive or a Microsoft OneDrive. If the file is on an SD card of thumb drive, Windows copies it just fine.
After some investigation, it turns out that Windows is scanning the contents of the file for some reason, maybe looking for malware, and getting it wrong—but only when it finds a Linux machine. I work around the problem by going through a thumb drive. There must be other strings that exhibit the same behavior. Maybe IT has imposed some obscure security setting, but I am increasingly convinced that W10 = Covid.
Firefox problem with Gmail
How else to explain the fact that on one computer, Firefox and Waterfox have no problem with Gmail, but on another it times out saying "Not connected. Connecting in 3:17 . . . Try now" and never connects, forcing me to re-start it. On another, Firefox has long delays connecting to Outlook 365, but Waterfox works fine.
This one isn't caused, as one might suspect, by Google trying to force us
to use Chrome. It's caused by Firefox spontaneously increasing its memory
footprint when it runs overnight from about 400MB to over 2 or 3 GB. You
can observe this in the Task Manager or by running Resource Monitor
(perfmon.exe /res), which shows free memory gradually dropping
to zero. Opening a tab for about:memory
and clicking “Minimize memory usage” helps, but the real
solution is probably to install more RAM.
Linux bug
It's not just Windows: Linux now does it too. The arrow keys in Nedit, a
Linux-based text editor that I used with no problems for a decade, now stop
working whenever I load several files at a time and then close one of them.
That never happened before; now it is a reproducible daily event.
The bug happens in the function CloseWindow where it calls
XtDestroyWidget(window->shell);
See Linuxsetup154 for a solution.
But why now? I was also forced to drop Firefox altogether on Linux when it
kept causing the machine to reboot. That's something only Chimera used to
do, but now it's common.
I won't even mention the fact that Team / Zoom invites disappear when you 'accept' the invite. The invite goes to something called Windows Calendar, which tells you when the meeting is but doesn't save the link. So if you accept an invite, you miss the meeting. (Yes, sometimes it's still in the Deleted folder, assuming Outlook 365 can find it, which is not a guaranteed thing.)
It's not bit rot, that dreaded computer fungal disease where all your software is floating upside down at the top of the hard drive. It's more like Long Computer Covid, and it's these forced updates that are causing it.
Forced Updates
It used to be that if we installed an OS and left it alone, the computer would run for years. I once set up a DNS server in Linux that ran for ten years without ever needing a reboot. It continued for another five after I left until the hard drive finally crashed. There was even a time when Windows could stay up for days, sometimes even weeks, without a reboot.
No longer. Every OS, even Linux, goes online and downloads new libraries whenever it feels like it, and it's hard to stop. If it happens while I'm working, the program I'm using suddenly starts acting wonky. I've gotten into the habit of rebooting a Linux machine almost once a week. The W10 computers reboot even more often, thanks to constant Bios upgrades and security changes.
Is it a coincidence that Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates have suddenly become BFFs?
mar 21 2023, 6:23 am
