New car. Used of course.

Our car needs to be repaired. This time it’s the crank shaft sensor which has to be changed, and Mitchie decided that it’s not cost-effective to keep hanging on to that vehicle any longer; it’s now well over 19 years old and needs to be repaired more frequently lately, so she wants a new one.

No, not this one which Zuleikha saw and loved in our car dealers’ shop lately:

Toyota Yaris 4th generation in “mangan bronze”

That’s almost the same they had given us last time, and about which I’ve written here already. Super car, but we wouldn’t like to spend 20k€+ on a new car right now.

So we decided to look for its last predecessor, which is the second facelift of the third generation of the Toyota Yaris line, and we’ve found a really nice one in a trim that Toyota calls the “Style Selection”. Here’s a photo taken from the dealer who had it on offer:

Toyota Yaris Hybrid Style Selection, from 2017

This one also has a 1.5l fuel engine, but a four cylinder instead of the three cylinders in the newer version. Plus, like all full hybrids, an electrical engine and a CVT – a continuous variable transmission, meaning: no gears. No clutch, no starter, alternator, no drive shaft as well. It has a combined power output of 100hp, three more than we have now, but the top speed is limited to 165km/h (more than enough in this day and age IMO). This “Style Selection” comes with two colours as you can see, and with 16 inch wheels, a bit bigger than what we have now.

The used car market is pretty empty at the moment, and it’s understandable why: people are thinking about getting full electrical cars, but most of us who live in urban areas don’t yet have the possibility to charge these at home, or on the working place. So no electrical, no plugin hybrid, but a full hybrid like this makes the most sense at the moment, and because everyone thinks that this time will pass as well, people are buying more used than new at the moment. Understandable in my opinion.

Bob from Ireland thinks the same, namely “that it makes a lot of sense” to get a car like these:

Quick review of the Toyota Yaris Hybrid 2017

He’s driving the exact same car in red & black, and with the wheel at the other side of course, but beside of that, the same.

And here’s another (bit longer and) nice presentation from a German car dealer where Josephine also talks about the differences between her own and that slightly higher specced “Style Selection” model (in German of course):

Toyota Yaris (Modelljahr 2017) – Fahrzeugvorstellung + Probefahrt | Review/Sitzprobe

I’ve driven “ours” (which is paid, but we don’t have it registered yet), and we’re very happy with what it is and what it does. I assume that we’ll get it in a few days, then I’ll report more, and have our old one repaired, maybe somewhere locally (and a bit cheaper than at an official Toyota repair shop?). Then we’ll have to see to whom this one will go…

Oh, and this “new” car doesn’t only take less fuel than our old one (I managed to get it to 4.8l/100km on our short test drive, the old one takes a bit more than 6 litres), it also takes “E10” which can be produced a bit more environment-friendly, and which costs 6 cents less per litre than the 95 octane “Super” we need now…

As always, thanks for reading, viewing, and watching. Also thanks to Bob and to Josephine, as well as to the people at our car dealers’. Be well and stay safe everyone.

We’ve been busy. And now we’re kaputt…

After having two weeks of holidays, starting last Monday we’ve got new windows built into our flat – the whole flat, so all the furniture, computers etc. which was in the way had to be moved, all things which had any value had to be covered, and so on and so forth. A first time for me to actually live in/on a construction zone…

Anyway, we’re almost done. And now we’re kaputt, even our small visitor from the neighbourhood is as you can see:

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Having new windows built in is sooo exhausting, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021
7e5_9083966-sooo-kaputt
Sooo kaputt, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021

As you can see, I can take photos and also type again, and my computer has internet again (no WiFi on this machine). The rest will follow…

As always, thanks for reading.

My computer housekeeping is kind of ready

Since yesterday morning I installed the new Debian 11 with codename “Bullseye” which is now officially released. And that’s my main operating system since over 16 years, I remember that I started to use that while still living in Bremen where Zuleikha was born over 16 years ago. And if you keep something that long it has to be good, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I have everything up and running nicely by now, and even Ardour runs on both Debian (with Jack) and also on Arch (with Pipewire). The next thing I did was to take the same background image – a photo of the moon I took in 2011 using my Olympus E-520 DSLR (I didn’t have a mirrorless camera yet) – for all of my devices (2) and operating systems (4). Looks like this:

consistent_look_on_four_operating_systems
consistent_look_on_four_operating_systems

Since my Conky is using a light font, a darker background like this helped. But this is cosmetics, meaning I’m done with the most important stuff already. Cool, now I can turn my attention to some other things again.

As always, thanks for reading.

Hardware: upgraded, and software: added

So I received my Terabyte drive yesterday, and by now I have Windows 10, Debian, and also Arch Linux running on it, so here’s a screenshot from its Gnome 40 desktop:

Gnome 40 on Arch Linux

This is cool because Arch is a rolling release distribution which always has the latest and greatest packages (like that Gnome 40 desktop above, this won’t be in the upcoming Debian yet). And so I can experiment with pipewire which is a new low level video / audio / multimedia framework with the goal to replace all of Alsa, Pulseaudio, GStreamer, and Jack at the same time. See its entry in the Arch Wiki on how to try it, and also read this blog about it.

So by now I’m thinking about what to reconfigure on my main Debian installation. Do I really need 3 different DAWs (which I paid for, but my favourite is still the open source one)? Do I still want headphone correction even for the price of a relatively high system load? Things like these…

And in two days from now the new Debian will be released, I’m looking forward to installing that one as well – I’ve tried the Release Candidate 3, but with my “productive” system I’m still a bit conservative – while I can play around in Arch, on which I’m currently writing this blog post.

Anyway, cool to have some options. And like always, thanks for reading.

Cinebench of my old machine vs newer CPUs

Just out of curiosity I ran Cinebench R23 in Windows to see what my aging computer with a 4th gen Intel Core i5 Processor might do against newer machines. And it was interesting indeed, I came up with something like this:

Cinebench R23 Multi Core Scores

Intel Core i5-4460: 2500
Apple Silicon M1: 7510
AMD Ryzen 5 5600G: 11021
Intel Core i5-11600K: 11281

Cinebench R23 Single Core Scores

Intel Core i5-4460: 800
Apple Silicon M1: 1499
AMD Ryzen 5 5600G: 1501
Intel Core i5-11600K: 1559

As you can see, a single core application would run almost double as fast on all newer CPUs compared to mine, while multi core applications/programs (like video rendering or music in a DAW) would run three times as fast on Apple, and about four times as fast on a new AMD or Intel chips – and these are middle class ones just like mine.

Wouldn’t have thought that my old machine is still that good, and even comparable. I have checked graphics perfomance in Basemark GPU, but I don’t know anything about Vulkan, and with medium quality in DirectX 12 my machine only made some 10 fps in their official test, so perhaps no chance at all against an AMD or newer Intel chip. But ok, I don’t play, so…

… thanks for reading as always.

Windows 11 and hardware

Disclaimer: I’m not an expert in Windows, or anything Microsoft, Apple, and other proprietary stuff. Years ago I decided that one cannot support what (s)he cannot understand her-/himself, so I decided to ditch all operating system “black boxes” and invest my limited time into more open stuff.

Microsoft has announced Windows 11 as you might have heard/read. And although their presentation had some glitches (no wonder I thought – more or less the whole world is watching if one of these 800 pound gorillas is speaking), it was an enjoyable one, and their newly announced operating system looks really nice, and has some awesome new features, like for instance support for Android apps.

But, if you scroll down their site to the Minimum system requirements section, you’ll see this:

The processor section will tell you that you’ll need a recent one which was to be expected (at the moment only one of our machines would qualify, and that is Mitchie’s Lenovo Thinkpad L380 Yoga 13″ 2-in-1 notebook/tablet). But notice that TPM line?

That’s what the world is searching for since, if you look up Google trends for a term like ‘Windows 11’, and select worldwide results:

Many questions about TPM and secure boot

I searched as well, tho with another search engine than Google’s, and here’s how you can check if your machine supports TPM:

How to Check if Your PC Has TPM for Windows 11? How to Enable It? [MiniTool News]

I know that my Core i5-4xxx wouldn’t qualify, but I do have secure boot (switched off to dual boot Win10 and Linux), so I checked. So if I type in ‘tpm.msc’ as suggested in the article above, the answer is ‘nope’:

Even after only giving in ‘tpm’ I could see it in the settings already, like this:

This ‘Learn more’ link leads you on a web page explaining it:

And – more general – the system settings about security, and then device security also say it:

Again, with a ‘Learn more’ explanation link, which leads to:

This is all good and well, and there are some clever people who found ‘workarounds’ (or ‘hacks’) already on how you can still install Windows 11 even if your system isn’t officially supported, or if you have hardware security and secure boot switched off, like me. But remember: this is a hack, and there are some valid reasons why vendors like Microsoft, Apple, and the likes try to ‘protect’ you. The internet isn’t that nice place anymore that it was after it was invented – lots of people “only want your best”, and that means that it’s full of ads, scammers, and whatnot – we all know that.

So? Trust Microsoft, Apple, or any of the other big guys? Well ditching perfectly fine working hardware isn’t that clever, at least it doesn’t make much sense in regards of your own footprint whch you’ll leave for the rest of the world to deal with – so just dumping your old stuff and getting a shiny new machine from a ‘certified’ vendor only helps their business models, not you or the planet as a whole.

Instead, you could get hardware security by 3rd party vendors like this one, and then only use open source to secure, and to encrypt, and you’re good to go for a long time. At least that’s the method that our official bureaus like the BSI are using. So if your BIOS or rather UEFI is secured or even open source, and you’re using tools like Microsoft’s Bitlocker or Linux’s LUKS together with 2FA or MFA (callback or even hardware keys), you should be good and safe, even without Windows 11 or the latest and greatest of anyone.

That said, W11 is coming, soon, maybe even this year for the “Christmas business” already. And W10 will still be supported for a while, but its days will be numbered, like the ones for W7 were. Even with Linux you should probably take notice, and get the latest updates and kernels offered by your distribution, and no one else does make that easier for you than Linux does.

So, for me? Well I’ll lose not only my job in a few days, but with it also part of “my” hardware like that nice Lenovo Thinkpad P50 (with an Intel Core i7-6xxx only, but with 32GB of RAM, so that would have made a nice mobile recording studio with Ardour). Do I need a replacement for that? Probably not, although I *have* used it to record a concert of Zuleikha’s. My own desktop machine has an Intel Core i5-4xxx like Zuleikha’s Dell notebook (of course that one has the mobile version), and these run Ardour or RawTherapee or even Windows 10 just fine. Windows 11? I don’t know, I’ve been a member of MSDN via my (former) employer, but I’m not in the list of those who want the latest and greatest updates, so I can’t say yet if any of those hacks would work for me/us – Windows simply isn’t that important *for me*, that story could be totally different for my brother or others who earn their living based upon Windows, Office, and the likes.

But imagine this: if Windows 11 will really require new hardware, then what to do with your old one, like my perfectly working desktop, or Zuleikha’s Dell Inspiron 15″ notebook? Can’t sell these to anyone who would want Windows 11 (the majority of people I guess), except if they would probably do the same as we did: just use something else (not to say ‘better’ here to avoid any political/religious fanboy wars). Could it be that Microsoft just did all of us open source guys a big favour? More than half of the world is using a Linux derivate on their phones (called ‘Android’), Google’s ‘Chromeboxes’ are thriving which are also based on Linux, heck even the Mars lander or the ISS run it, like do ‘Live’ distributions on a 10$/€ USB key. So if a company like Microsoft ‘obsoletes’ so many machines which are still in good working states, it could be entirely *their* loss much more so than *ours*. Let’s see how the 800 pound guys will deal with that – or with even more people staying on W10 than on W7…

Just my thoughts of today… and like always, thanks for reading.

P.S.: I used to be a (very small) ‘system builder’, and all of our desktop hardware was assembled by myself. So if I had to buy anything right now, I’d go with something like the ‘Optimal PC’ recommended by Heise’s c’t magazine of last year (hardware list), take one of those new AMD 7nm chips with built-in graphics like their Ryzen 5 and 7 ‘G’, or even use a small barebone to get something better than a Mac Mini IMHO. Just food for thoughts as they say… and according to this video, as fast or better than Apple’s new 5nm M1 chip, at least in Cinebench:

AMD Ryzen 5 5600G – At $259 It makes a lot more sense than you think

Again, thanks for reading.

Auf Deutsch: Corona und Freiheitsrechte

Direktor des Bonifatiushauses Fulda Gunter Geiger im Gespräch mit Dr. Patrick Liesching, Leitender Oberstaatsanwalt der Staatsanwaltschaft Fulda:

Online-Akademie Bonifatiushaus: Corona und Freiheitsrechte

Das Video ist am 8 May 2020 hochgeladen worden, also bitte nicht wundern wenn manche Aussage nicht ganz aktuell klingt.

Wie immer: vielen Dank für’s Lesen und für’s Zuschauen.

A “selfie” with my “webcam” at 720p

Toying around with my camera and OBS again because in less than a month from now, I won’t be an employee of IBM anymore, and so I’ll have to give back my current notebook, iPhone, and all what belongs to them. And on my own desktop machine I don’t have a webcam. But I have a very nice photo camera which is my Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mk2, and my latest lens is the 17mm/1.8 Micro Zuiko which has that awesome manual focus “clutch”, very useful especially for videos… so here you go, tried this one in 720p:

2021-07-25-085320
Selfie with my “Webcam” in 720p, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021

OBS is currently set up to use Full HD (1920×1080), but that isn’t enough to show my whole desktop which would be 1920×1200, so I’ll have to experiment and to decide how to use that camera. A video stream of 720p would certainly be enough for video calls, since normally you’ll have more than one other person on the screen at the same time anyway.

But yes, let’s see how that goes – would like to use it with my fellow moderators from Wikiloops for a test, so I’m excited to see them again as well 🙂

Anyway, thanks for reading and viewing as always.