palordrolap

My parents’ house never had and still doesn’t have Internet. I was the one with the computer desk and it had a Commodore 64C and a 13" portable colour TV on it originally.

It finally became an Internet desk at some point in the mid '00s when I got my own place.

I’m still using it right now… and kind of afraid that if I mention its age, it will spontaneously fall apart.

Let’s just say that it’s older than Google.

Thanks for your concern. I’m getting by.

Did you ever have a crazy friend who hated you for weeks because of something you said or did in one of their dreams? How about if they could have ticketed you for that?

Mediocre at best, and I lack the mental fortitude to work at much of anything these days, so wherever I’m at, I’m not going to improve much.

Some people relish the feeling of swimming through molasses* for the next hit of progress dopamine, or they don’t get that feeling at all, but that’s what happens to me and it basically short-circuits something in my brain. It’s bad enough that I struggled to write the last part of that sentence, and it’s happening while I’m proofreading this as well.

* or treacle if the unintended concept of small mammal anatomy bothers you.

I’m sorry you’re having a bad time. I can’t fix it, but know that I wish that no-one had to go through anything like what you’re going through.

Usually people who speak English as a second language are, somewhat surprisingly, fairly happy to receive correction. I see now that you’re probably not ESL.

Since I’ve no idea whether someone is happy to receive correction or not, either I do so and hope for a good outcome - and maybe educate others along the way - or never correct anyone ever in case someone tells me to, well, you know.

FWIW, I do know what its like to not be able to communicate properly with that horrible tip-of-the-tongue sensation, and I also know what it feels like to lose one’s mind as well as lash out in frustration. Been there, done that, with bells on.

Not cancer in my case, but I’ve at least one close family member who had surgery and was on chemo drugs, so I can somewhat relate to that as well.

And since I didn’t quite say it initially: I’m genuinely sorry I upset you and made you feel attacked. It was not my intent.

Grammar nitpick: “Whom” should only be used for people, possibly animals, and maybe other things in an anthropomorphic context like companies, robots*, etc. Extreme pedants would forbid its use for anything other than actual people.

In this instance, “all of which” would be a better substitute for “all whom” in this instance. In fact, that ought to have been “all of whom” whether “whom” was correct or not.

If you’d said “who” instead of “whom” it might not have awakened my inner pedant, but if you’re going to use “whom”, someone is bound to tell you the proper usage if you make a mistake.

* recyclable or otherwise

Whoops. It looks like I conflated it with the more recent 7zip vulnerability, which didn’t affect Linux much at all.

Just goes to show how often these things crop up though.

local administrator privileges

… are used by distro update mechanisms and very few people turn those off, even if they don’t use elevated privileges for anything else.

Admittedly, it’s unlikely that a distro’s repository will end up with a compromised microcode package, but it’s not impossible (Remember the 7zip debacle?). And if it happens, you can be sure that whoever designs the payload will use the temporary access to install something ugly that has more permanent access.

But as you say, AMD have issued a fix. And that’d be why.

Naturally. Advantage, privilege and money should only be in the hands of those who run large companies or better.

If that made you angry, bear in mind that’s what most top level company executives think. Well, actually they don’t think it, they know it unconsciously as the true order of the universe they inhabit and they get really uncomfortable should it even look vaguely like someone might be trying a competing philosophy to their own.

To be fair though, most people get really uncomfortable when something might undermine even part of the philosophy they live by.