> ...we could have made something extremely minimal. Instead UEFI goes hard in the opposite direction...
My initial suspicion was that this was about preparing the ground for closed computing regardless of the surrounding hardware.
That this hasn't happened suggests it's just my imagination gone wild, it's a missed opportunity for (say) Microsoft, or the folks behind it had good intentions. Occam's Razor, I guess?
TL;DR UEFI builds an open platform even if the actual code is closed, while "simple" alternatives make closed platforms with open source code.
Raw coreboot/uboot like approaches give you open source but closed platform - the simplicity means you need considerable resources to do something else than the original maker wanted to do with it.
UEFI (and before it, Microsoft attempts at semi-standardizing PC low level interfaces, effort on ACPI, etc) are an effort to provide an open platform no matter the opennes of code, availability of deep dive docs of individual computer models, and handling the fact that computers arez in fact, complex.
If you want a general purpose computer that explicitly targets the idea that it's owner can just plug in CD/USB/netboot a windows/Linux/BSD installer media, without waiting for new release just to have a bootable kernel on s new machine, there's s lot of inherent complexity. Especially if you want to be able to boot a version from before release of the board you're using without significant loss of functionality (something that devicetree cannot do without special explicit work from physical device vendor, but is handled by ACPI through bytecode and _OSI checks for supported capability levels from OS).
Especially if you also want to make it extensible and reduce cost in integrating parts from different vendors (aka why UEFI with hardcoded CSM boot started taking over by 2005).
It's much easier not just to integrate a third party driver for example for network chip when the driver will use well defined interfaces instead of hooking into "boot BASIC from ROM" interrupt, especially when the driver can then expose it's configuration in standard format that will work no matter if you have monitor and mouse connected or just serial port. Petitboot is not the answer - it's way worse when you have to custom rebuild system firmware to add drivers (possibly removing other drivers to make space) because you want to netboot from a network card from different vendor, or just because the hardware is still good but the NIC is younger. Much easier to just grab driver from OpRom or worst case drop it in standardised firmware-accessible partition.
Did I mention how much easier handling booting with UEFI is compared to unholy mess of most other systems? Yes, even GRUB on x86, which by default doesn't write standard compliant boot code so if you dual boot and use certain software packages you end up with nonbootable system. Or how many Linux installers and guides make partitions that only boot because of bug-compatibility in many BIOSes. Not to mention messing with bootsectors Vs "if you drop a compatible filesystem with a file named this way* it will be used for booting".
If I want to play around with booting a late 1960s design where you need to patch binaries if you change something in hardware, I can boot a PDP-10 emulator instead. I push for using UEFI properly because I have work to do and goals to achieve other than tinkering with booting, no matter how much I like tinkering in general
> Did I mention how much easier handling booting with UEFI is compared to unholy mess of most other systems?
Yeah. Like linux entries getting ignored, no eay to debug what went wrong (if an EFI executable fails, you're on your own). A shell which is undocumented. With BIOS i didn't spent hours trying to boot a linux kernel.
Unless you encountered a BIOS that actually followed the spec instead of blindly loaded a sector and hoped for the best, and learnt that your typical linux install programs made malformed MBR that does not mark the drive as bootable so BIOS actually should skip it when booting.
Or when grub suddenly stops working on a dual boot system, and after you fix it another part on the non linux system fails, and if you fix that grub fails (and fails in all cases hard enough you need to boot from something else). After some time you either ended up dropping either grub or $some_important_software - poor you if the latter is something you make money to sustain yourself. All because, surprise, you're not supposed to write bootloader code into cylinder 0 outside of first sector, and various signature systems used in licensing use the no-mans-land of cylinder 0 to scribble signatures.
BIOS offered even less debug tools than (U)EFI, so dunno what you're talking about. UEFI shell is documented, if not as well as it could be, and even has built-in help. That you can, worst case, boot it (or any other tools) from simple fat32 formatted pendrive that can be created with a file manager instead of rawdogging the hard disk is just a bonus.
The cases with Linux entries being ignored were plain bugs by specific manufacturers, bugs that also hit windows (because the vendors in question worried that them not checking properly would backfire, and instead of checking the firmware properly hardcoded few tested bootvar names).
And the ignored entries could be resolved by using standard fallback bootloader paths, or renaming linux entries to same as ones that work.
> That you can, worst case, boot it (or any other tools) from simple fat32 formatted pendrive that can be created with a file manager instead of rawdogging the hard disk is just a bonus.
There was a wonderful, brief period of time where most systems were UEFI out of the box, and the largest file on a Windows ISO was under 4 GiB.
You could literally drag+drop the contents of the ISO to a FAT32 thumb drive and install Windows with it. You didn't have to erase it first. You didn't need a special app or the command line to pull it off. It just worked.
The WIM files are too big now. At least Rufus is a pretty good utility.
This is a big thing in the UK, too. The official narrative here is modern slavery with undocumented migrants. It's the same with sex work, with which is harder to separate between conservative propaganda and reality.
I expect the main difference between the US and UK versions are that the latter are typically set up in disused urban plots with pop-up tents and temporary chain-link fences rather than having any investment.
Either way, if you're getting 3-5 people washing your car for a tenner, the people you're handing you money to are probably receiving minimal pennies on the dollar.
In my specific region of the US, you're more likely to see something between a small 'automated' facility where your car is pulled along a sort of 'assembly line'[0][1] or a somewhat larger 'DIY' car wash where you might have to do your own start stopping or are practically given a squeegee cleaner, some colo(u)red water that may or may not have cleaner, a mounted pedistal shop vac of some sort, and a race against the clock based on how many quarters you put in.
Or, sometimes a combination of the two.
The setups for the DIY shops are usually fairly cheap IMO (Just looking at what's going on at them and the BOM) and the main thing outside of market saturation is having a good ingress/egress setup (If one sucks to get in and out of, folks won't come back.)
That's not to say that there aren't hand car washes as well, however I only tend to see those where I grew up (not too far from here, mind you,) or when it is some sort of school/church/etc fundraiser.
The weird thing you can run into in some cases, even at the automated shops though, is either weird 'implied consent' about extras by folks on one end or another of the line, or in the case of any of them, 'memberships' that are priced to where you'd really be following that 'one wash a week' rule to get your money's worth.
[0] - Often with a warning that they are not responsible for damage to vehicles older than X years and/or with more than Y miles
[1] - These can be surprisingly small, to the point some gas stations have one on the side and a purchase gives a 5/10c discount per gallon. Which, to the general point of 'pennies on the dollar' they made money on long term.
I think this article is referencing the common trend of drive through automated washes which would make sense if large investors are in the picture. The big automated ones are pushy with their subscriptions which the article also talks about.
These big wash machines are typically staffed by only 2 or 3 people hence the complaints that they don't even create jobs.
That being said, I wish there were more automated washes near me. We find ourselves making excuses to drive by the one we pay a subscription for.
It's likely just that they haven't done the legwork to properly support it yet, or don't want to be a whitelabel service. Even the little gas station washes by me push subscriptions now. My agency has built out a few of these services in the past and they aren't cheap, even the off-the-shelf ones.
As an aside, the entire experience is awful. "Pay $25/month and get as many $8 washes as you want!" ...but I only get a car wash every 2 months and since you're tracking my license plate, you already know that.
I couldn't imagine ever paying a subscription to a car wash! I barely even pay for Spotify, how often do you go? And how often would you go if you weren't paying a subscription?
Reputable shops I more often see do something more like a 'Prepaid' discount where you get X washes (maybe in the next Y months) for Z dollars, and ideally it's something like you get one wash a month at a 10-20 percent discount.
The profit-gouging ones, either do a 'assume 3-4 washes a month to see real benefit' or assume you are washing once a week in their sub... or do all the other 'tricks' above schemes can allow.
It can make sense if you don't have a garage, and there's a lot of pollen and whatnot where you park. If I don't wash my car ~twice a week, it ends up looking pretty funky.
I was referring to the parent comment "The official narrative here is modern slavery with undocumented migrants". Some of the people working in these hand car washes may not have the legal right to work in the UK, which makes them ripe for exploitation.
s/they work hard/somebody decides to tip which may or may not reflect any effort the worker put in because some people just don’t tip and depending on tips is a shitty way to scrape by/
I volunteer at a refugee charity. In my experience people given the right to stay will take whatever work they can get, which is often crappy work at low wages due to lack of transferable skills and/or English (e.g. security guard).
It is. And this is the likely to be the solution to this issue. DP is a VESA standard, and its Dual Mode feature supports passive adaptors for, among other things, HDMI displays. I use one on my 20-series RTX card.
A cheap DP-HDMI dongle makes all this go away. As long as VESA doesn't behave the same way, anyway.
This looks neat. Wish I'd known about it when I started with the original Paperless a couple of years ago (then NG and now NGX). Might give it a try if I ever need to change.
I'm likewise surprised that Scholar, Alerts and Translate still exist. The expectation really is that if it's great at what it does, but isn't flagship, then it must be killed.
> I would bet that musicians as a whole make most of their money from live performances.
That's certainly been true for artists who are locked into restrictive contracts. Live performances have usually been the main ways for many to make money outside of their recording deals, experiment, and to sell merch.
I nearly started looking for it - thinking of the SIRDS images that were popular year ago - until I noticed the position markers. It's almost like we're trained in memes...
My initial suspicion was that this was about preparing the ground for closed computing regardless of the surrounding hardware.
That this hasn't happened suggests it's just my imagination gone wild, it's a missed opportunity for (say) Microsoft, or the folks behind it had good intentions. Occam's Razor, I guess?