My thoughts on disclosure

A reply to this post. It's taken me a week or so to think it through, so I've had some pauses in writing it.

> The government has conducted studies

Would like to see abstract of some of these studies, though I'm aware, that several similar ones have been written both by experts and non-experts alike.

Below is my disagreement with those predictions of doom and gloom. It's not a disagreement with you.

> 2: did Jesus also die on dozens (hundreds or thousands) of other planets to save their souls as well?

This would be profound.

> The leap in technology would put certain industries out of business almost immediately.

Disagree with the study results, due to people leaning to use legacy technologies for far longer than estimated.

Petrochemicals would still be in demand, but the money power off that fuel supply would certainly decrease, as would the power (virtual and otherwise) of all the authoritarian countries that produce gas and petrol. Not overnight, certainly.

Arab countries are actively looking to diversify their economies. Whereas Russia, being a grabby civilization that is is, has managed invade parts of Ukraine in a war started in 2014, and made very hot on 24 February 2022.

We have free-energy technologies already (wind, solar, sometimes hydroelectricity), but several nations are unwilling (or unable) to invest in those. Others do and have, but the buildup of infrastructure is insufficient to match the scale of incumbent dirty production.

> the leap in technology

There is no guarantee, that disclosure would bring any leap in technology: the United States, which by some is often complained to be supposedly be in possession of extraterrestrial kit, will never reveal anything to anyone else, so as to prevent authoritarian countries and dictatorships exploiting that tech for their nefarious ends.

Many humans on Earth would choose to avoid using demonstrably alien "non-Earth" tech entirely.

After the initial possible shock/euphoria, there would be entire communities, perhaps even several countries, who would still push to develop native Earth kit despite the presence of alien tech — not just because of the "not-invented-here" idea, but because we as a species and a civilization want to demonstrate our own ability and capabilities in doing great things.

Several decades after a possible speculative disclosure, there would be countries and communities like the Amish now, living only under a certain standard of development, using only Earth-based technologies, and avoiding alien tech as much as possible. I wouldn't blame them.

There would be an entire "alien tech divide", like now the digital divide and other such divisions:

* Some countries would become incredibly advanced, would progress at a break-neck speed, but would also be burdened with the responsibility of defending Earth.
* Other countries and nations would continue to only to use and develop Earth-based technologies, and would be fine just as well. People from the more advanced countries would come to visit those "we use only Earth tech"-countries, and would enjoy the environment as museum pieces.
* Of course, even now, there are countries and nations that are almost literally stuck in the past: Afghanistan, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, and Russia.

Their common denominator is total or near-total isolation: The Afghan society has been forced again to live in the medieval past, North Korea still relives the Korean War and is societally stuck in the year of 1953, Iran is somewhere in 1979, and Cuba remains famous for its old American cars.

Russia is the most technologically-advanced of that bunch, but is likely to stagnate due to it pouring money into its hot war of aggression against Ukraine and its people, and the resulting sanctions that it (Russia) has incurred. (Avoidance of this topic is not easy for me, as I'm very moved by both the unnecessary suffering of Ukrainians, and the bravery of the Ukrainian people in defending their land.)

It's true, that Cuba, North Korea, and Iran each have some developments and advancements, but they're not enough to offset the steep levels of underdevelopment, of which Russia also has plenty.

> Millions of jobs would be lost, the stock market would crash, leading to unrest etc.

As with the emergence of any new technology, new jobs meant to run and maintain these new technologies will crop up, as always.

Millions of jobs have been lost during COVID-19 and previous and other crises, stock markets have crashed and rebounded before, unrest always happens somewhere even without disclosure.

Therefore I do not submit to this non-pretty picture of events as doom and gloom, as described in the report.

It is true, that such reports of possible outcomes ought to be written and studied, so as to prepare contingencies for world leaders, and what decisions they should make to prepare their countries in particular, and humanity in general.

In many ways, doom-and-gloom prognostications appeal to the mass psychosis effect of populations, while not paying enough attention to the fact, that each individual has more immediate individual concerns: work, family, children, food, etc.

Disclosure is not necessarily something that would cause social unrest, thought it has non-zero potential, simply because it brings the unknown to the fore.

Instead, very earthly things can bring out large amounts of people, especially, if day-to-day living is disrupted on a large scale.

In some countries, people come to protest simply because a state wants to raise the pension age in order to have a more balanced budget.

How a nation will present itself to itself in a crisis plays a major role in forming its future.

The masses might make their move, or they might not, depending on how confident a population is.

Much depends on the cohesiveness of the society and the social compact within:

1. One nation can be confident, that things will be all right, and its people will cooperate and be closer together, despite all the hardships (see: Ukraine in 2004, 2013/2014, and 2022−present). Most democracies have processes ready to handle crises, and in these, the social compact of a people is usually strong.

2. The body of a people in some other nation might not be particularly confident, perhaps out of fear due to systemic repression. Such dissembling of a people leads to remoteness wrt one's leader's, inaction, abdication of responsibility ("we're not interested in politics"), and/or mistakes, and that in turn leads to a failed state and an eventual unenviable state of being at the mercy of proto-feudal leaders and/or warlords. Venezuela is there already, and Russia is slowly creeping there.

Disclosure would be likely to lead to first contact sooner, and that would certainly have the potential for the [Colombian exchange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombian_exchange), and the scenario of the plight of American First Nations due to the extreme inequality between First Nations' and colonialist levels of offensive/defensive technology. There might just as well be extraterrestrials with the "white saviour" syndrome.

A more localised danger would be the further emergence of religious or quasi-religious cults based on the existence of aliens, in addition to those that we have already. What if some off-worlders begin to exploit that?

A danger to culture would be some form of religious adherence to any ideology that some extraterrestrials themselves adhere to, with a view, as if one's own, human, culture were supposedly inferior.

This cultural in inferiority complex towards the best of human culture is based on a false assumption, that aliens' way of life is supposedly superior to ours, — based solely on their technological advancement.

We don't know what hardships were endured, what crimes and sacrifices were made by some of the non-Earth cultures to achieve faster-than-light travel and other improvements in technology.

There is never any guarantee, that their level of advancement and their practical methods of reaching that would be an advantage to us. After contact, we can learn from their history, and maybe avoid some of the mistakes they did.

If (a big 'if') a great number of extraterrestrial/extrasolar societies, per stories, do not use money, then that doesn't mean as if the use of market economies here on Earth would be supposedly wrong. It's just a way to manage resource distribution and moderate it in the even of limited supply.

Well-regulated market economies are a natural evolution of bare capitalism, just like Lutheranism is an evolution away from Catholicism, which had become corrupt by Martin Luther's time.

Either they have resolved energy and production bottlenecks, and have formed sustainable means of living in abundance, or they also have their haves and have-nots despite these solutions and high technology: A traveling crew or away team from a non-moneyed society might be very well-off and privileged, but an industrial worker or miner of valuable resources of that same species and society might still not be.

To somehow have the sufficient time to prepare for the eventual first contact, our human civilization cannot stop development.

Neither should we wait for the arrival of the proverbial "white ship" — an Estonian term representing the imagined ultimate "savior" vessel that was supposed to bring people to better shores, but never arrived.

In the real-life Estonian "white ship" story, the swindler who initially proposed and advertised that idea, got his money, and then scrammed, leaving the people who'd 'invested' their money to that idea of traveling away to better shores, waiting somewhere on the coast of no man's land for a ship to come, until most everyone finally realised, that the ship never arrived. Even then, some of the group had remained believers in that idea, trying to rationalize, that maybe the ship had sunk.

For many humans, believing in and waiting for disclosure has become almost like a religious experience; it's like waiting for the second coming of Jesus and expecting total salvation. Many 'believers' ardently imagine, that then all the world's material and even spiritual problems would supposedly be resolved. They will not be.

My own take would be finding a balance between increased awareness and preparedness (that, if clandestinely), and pushing the date of official disclosure farther away from the current moment. Too early disclosure would likely damage society and contaminate our culture even further. Too late preparedness would leave us more vulnerable to all that is out there.

A little bit about fonts

Posted as a comment reply here, too, as AC.

• Arial at 10pt/13.5px is the best reading font so far -- this at 150% scale with a 1920x1080 display resolution. It is the most optimal font to absorb long texts on screen, but is relatively tiny on paper, where I'd enjoy Times New Roman. Apple Garamond and the 80% condensed Garamond would be luxury.

• Chicago (found in early/classic Apple Macs) has great readability and the necessary compact size on early Mac display resolutions that are now smallish. To this day, it remains stylish and sufficiently futuristic, but not in the gaudy style of futurism that was envisioned with Westminster and Data 70, which were prominent in the 1970s and 1980s sci-fi flicks.

• Verdana at 9pt is the best for even smaller-sized text without losing legibility.

My favourite tall sans-serif font is Abadi MT Condensed Light. It's similar to News Gothic, but is taller and thinner.

Of open-source fonts:

In terms of readability, Helvetica is one of the best sans-serif fonts on Linux. Linux Libertine G is good, and Linux Libertine Display G takes the cake, but with 1.15 pt line height, bugs and all.

The persistence of good USB and audio port designs, and some history of the 3.5 mm headphone jack

Also posted this on slashdot as AC.

MicroUSB was introduced January 2007, endorsed by the Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) for data and power in 2007, and was endorsed for charging by the ITU in 2009.

Some of the earlier phones with MicroUSB were released in 2007: Motorola Q 9h in February, Motorola RAZR V8 and Nokia 8600 Luna in May 2007 (I searched GSMArena). One of the earlier Androids to support MicroUSB is HTC Desire, released in February 2010.

The MicroUSB standard is 15 years old (as of 2022), and is still going strong even in some of the most recent smartphone models, such as Nokia C21 Plus, and in the most basic featurephones, such as in Nokia 105. Nokia 2780 Flip (the 2022 model), which is sort of like a smart featurephone, even comes with a USB-C port.

Since the MicroUSB standard has lasted for fifteen years already, and won't drop off anytime soon, then it's safe to say, that USB Type C, finalized in 2014, will last at least fifteen years or even longer -- up to 2030 and beyond.

The 3.5 mm headphone jack (also known as 1/8" jack) persists due to its ubiquity, for providing a low barrier for entry (no patents), and for preventing planned obsolescence.

According to Wikipedia, the 3.5 mm headphone jack is said to have been designed in the 1950s with the development of transistor radios, but there is no reliable information about exactly when.

The first transistor radio is Regency TR-1. Released in 1954, it was the first commercially-sold portable radio, the first fully transistor-based radio, probably the first to use the 3.5 mm headphone socket in a commercial product meant for consumer use, and the first to introduce a portable headphone (just one) for private listening. The earpiece was based on the design of hearing aids from that time. Any literature about Regency TR-1 mentions the headphone jack like a footnote, as if anyone who wrote about it, was not aware of its significance.

The 3.5 mm jack has been further popularised with the introduction of Sony EFM-117J, a portable radio released in 1964, which is one of several devices that made the mini plug and socket well before Sony Walkman was a thing.

The good and bad releases of Windows

Across the history of the development of Windows, each major iteration of this operating system family has that bad/good cycle.

Windows 95 was a massive step-up in usability, but required a lot more from hardware than Windows 3.1x did. But: better memory protection, which gave it a huge advantage over the classic MacOS, which didn't have it yet.

Windows 98 and 98SE added a bit more reliability. Introduction of Windows Update: anyone who regularly cared to install updates, was reasonably safe.

W98 ended up being the most versatile of the 9x line in terms of hardware support, as it supported both VxD and WDM driver types, and had built-in USB support (not perfect, but still).

Windows Me had multimedia additions, but lacked VxD driver support (ostensibly to make it more stable), and wasn't particularly popular.

Windows 2000 was actually really great, but was often overlooked by regular PC users, and maybe appeared more technical.

Windows XP consolidated the back-end of Windows 2000 and the ease-of-use of the 9x line, such as very visibly separating regular users from administrators.

Better security with a built-in firewall, though many back-end security improvements came with XP Service Pack 2.

Windows Vista was the bad one, and was pre-installed on a lot of computers that were too underpowered for it; think 5400 RPM hard drive, 1 GB RAM, out of which 3/4th was taken by the OS alone after launch. In real life, it required at least 4 GB RAM and maybe even an SSD. Even 2 GB of RAM would have been okay.

Vista only had better security with User Account Control and a built-in anti-virus app. It introduced desktop widgets in lieu of Active Desktop.

Windows 7: When it was good, then it was really good. I believe it would run well on 4 GB RAM.

Windows 8.x? The back-end was certainly improved, but the UI was terrible: the removed Start menu in favour of the start screen, and outsized UWP apps. Probably the last Windows OS to work ok with 4 GB RAM.

Windows 10...
❌ The worst was the forced non-consensual upgrade. Shrink-wrap licence agreements do not count for this. It would have been much easier to permit voluntary-only downloads for those that wanted it through the support life of Windows 7 and 8.

☑️ Okay, at least the operating system offered like ten years of support in addition to the time spent with Windows 7 or 8. Hopefully, there would be more years of support to come, since a large number of computers have been shut out by Windows 11.

Windows 10 requires at least 8 GB RAM and an SSD drive to run well. It can run on 4 GB RAM, but barely. Also, the last to support a traditional BIOS.

The UI is decent.
✔️ The biggest upside is, allows people to find apps with just a few keystrokes instead of having to search through the menus: press Win key, type the first letters of a program you need. This requires indexing, and an SSD drive. An SSD drive is worth the speed improvements.

✔️ Live Tiles are nice. I also get to play Angry Birds (obtained via Windows Store). Easy notification area quick access buttons for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.
⨉ Downside: deprecation of useful Control Panel items in favour of Settings. Control Panel items are no longer sorted up-to-down in columns, which is awful. (This has continued in Windows 11, too.)

For some things, the Settings window is actually great, including the part, that many textual items can be easily copied and then later pasted elsewhere.

For very specialized sites tested only for WebKit/Blink, I've chosen to use the built-in Microsoft Edge instead of Chrome.

Windows 11 is the odd one out, again. Yes, it's got better security, and I get to have the full ten years of updates support in addition to the time I used Windows 10 on a new machine.

⨉ But: the taskbar UI has been borked (no expandable app windows), Live Tiles were removed in favour of Widgets, and those do not work at all.
✔️ Upside: Volume and brightness controls in the same notification pop-out; more Dark Mode support (esp. in File Manager).

⨉ Angry Birds 2 still continues crashing, apparently on trying to download in-game ads. I've upgraded to Windows 11 only because of Angry Birds 2 often crashing in Windows 10, but to no avail.

---

The terrible part about Microsoft specifying low minimum requirements for its operating systems, is, that many computer makers have sold and continue to sell cheap kit with just these minimum requirements, such as 4 GB RAM for both Windows 10 and 11.

I still see new notebooks on sale with just 4 GB of RAM memory. I've seen others with only 4 GB RAM, and no other way to upgrade, than to use a USB drive that meets the requirements for ReadyBoost functionality.

And this is not new: Windows 95 had very low minimum system requirements: a 386 DX CPU and 4 MB RAM, depending on features selected.

On a computer with a 486 DX CPU and 8 MB RAM, this was just enough to run the operating system, the Microsoft Exchange e-mail client, and Netscape 3.0. (Netscape 4.x would require a PC with a least 16 MB RAM.)

Windows 98 somehow ran on a PC with 16 MB RAM.

Windows XP required a 233 MHz CPU and 64 MB RAM. Yes, it worked, but very slowly. I've seen this happen in a local library.

The minimum amount of RAM that Microsoft specifies for Windows 11 is four gigabytes, which is too little: since the commit size of Windows 11 Pro is 4.8 GB after launch, 8 GB should be counted as the absolute minimum in order to leave some breathing space for other apps that people will install and use.

Users desperate for new must-have functionality would certainly live with the slow performance, aware, that certain new functionality is perhaps a must-have. But Microsoft specifying far too low amounts of RAM as minimum for its operating systems that clearly require more in real life, is something that is bound to leave many current and future Windows users very disappointed, if they upgrade (or are forced to upgrade), or if they buy underpowered computers.

Finding drivers for obscure devices on Windows 10. A short walkthrough.

This post goes back to "Obscure ways to get and old hp printer driver for Windows XP".

Long story short, aka the quick-and-dirty version:

If a computer or notebook with Windows 10 has an 'unknown device' with this ID:

ACPI\CPL0002\2&DABA3FF&2

Then the Windows Update Catalog does offer a driver for it.

But the following conditions must be met:

• Windows Update is unable to find drivers for this device;
• the maker of your PC does not have drivers available for your model of notebook pertaining to this device. If the maker of your computer does actually provides a driver for this device on the particular make and model of your computer, use that driver and no other;
• you might not be able to tell the make and model of your laptop, because the labels at the bottom of the computer have faded, and so, it's hard to find the correct driver from the PC maker's official website.
• the non-availability of the driver can coincide with one or both following possiblities:
  • Your notebook is no longer supported by the manufacturer; and/or
  • the maker of your PC is not a big-name outfit that is able to reliably provide drivers on its own for this device.
    (I've decided against naming individual PC makers, as some people would specify a search prepending the particular PC makers' names with negative operators, so excluding their name[s] to get a more precise result.)

If one ore more of these conditions are met, go to the Windows Update Catalog, and search using the CPL0002 device ID. (search link here)

In this case, the device ID was the only useful piece of information, and so, searching by device ID is more likely to yield results matching the hardware installed. Searching using the name or make/model of this device may yield incompatible results.

The result is "Compal Embedded System Control" version 1.0.0.4 as 'Other hardware' (listed like that as of 2021).

I picked the latest version, dated 26.11.2015, and clicked on the Download button.

The download is a .cab file that must be extracted with an extractor program of your choice into a separate folder. I used 7-Zip to do that.

Before installing:
• have Device Manager open, to see if there are any changes during install.
• create screenshots of all listed System devices in Device Manager. This ought to help in comparing changes.
• create a system restore point. You will need this, if and when things go wrong.

The extracted contents of the .cab package include four files, among them ENFC.inf. Right-click on that, and click Install.

The Device Manager should display a change, and the identified device should be listed. Other newly-recognised devices may also be listed. Worked for me.

After that, power management in a specific old notebook I have, improved, and the fan began blowing out less hot air. At least it seemed to me like that.

Do keep in mind, that I also did a large number of optimisations in the system to switch off most unnecessary background tasks, which certainly helped to reduce the size of the system commit, and the strain on system RAM and the hard drive.

I also reduced the maximum state of the CPU from 100% to 90% in advanced power management options. It's one of those nice things to have in Windows 10.

As a coda, I cannot recommend this process for upgrading the drivers of all devices inside, or connected to a computer. Because if things work normally, one should not update the drivers like this at all. Usually, and on most computers, Windows Update is good enough anyway at finding the right driver for you. In this very particular case and device, I see Windows Update as having missed it.

Obscure ways to get an old hp printer driver for Windows XP

So, some people are stuck on Windows xp, as may be some computers. But files do need printing. This set of instructions is good for other hardware connected to a computer with Windows xp, but with that operating system no longer supported by the hardware manufacturer.

The combo printer, scanner and copier is hp LaserJet Pro MFP M28w.

Officially, hp no longer supports Windows xp, so they no longer offer drivers for it. Microsoft also seems to have shut off Windows Update support for Windows xp. Otherwise, it would have been possible to use Windows Update to automatically download and install the necessary drivers.

32-bit drivers meant for Windows 7 might not work. In my case, the installation failed because of a file certificate error.

On attempting to launch one of the files extracted from the downloaded printer driver installer for Windows 7, the said file required Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0. To be safe, download and install that component first, as did I.

When using Internet search, I discovered, that there are slightly older versions of basic hp drivers for that model of device, but download locations offering that driver version were not particularly trustworthy.

But knowledge of older basic drivers for Windows xp got me the bright idea to check out the Windows Update Catalog.

First, on connecting the printer combo via USB showed me the display name of the printer's model:

HPHP LaserJet MFP M28-M31

("HPHP" is not a mistake; this is how it was actually displayed.)

This proved useful when searching the catalog:

As with any other obscure driver, go to catalog.update.microsoft.com, and search for

m28-m31 xp

in the case of this printer combo. "m28-m31" is the device model range, as displayed in the Found New Hardware wizard. "xp" should be self-explanatory, but searching without it will yield over a hundred results, which would be cumbersome to look through in search for a driver meant for only one major version of Windows.

A helpful demonstration link for this search is here.

The search yielded 14 results with the same file size, so this meant, that the printer combo is made up of several discreet integrated devices, with a driver for each, but in one and the same package.

To be safe, pick the package that does not mention "Windows XP 64-bit" in the table row.

On clicking "Download", I downloaded a 32.8 MB .cab file with a long file name made up of hexadecimal symbols.

Using 7-Zip, I extracted the CAB file into a new folder, and browsed to that folder in Windows Explorer.

Keep in mind, that I usually have set Windows Explorer to show system files, including .inf files.

The extracted folder contains several .inf files, and these and other .inf files in the extracted bunch of files are driver installation files.

Other subfolders were the following:

• amd64
• drivers
• i386
• XPV

Right-click on all the .inf files, and click Install for each of them.

The .inf files should have correct information built-in as to bitness, so, that 32-bit drivers are installed in a 32-bit system.

The XPV folder also contains .inf files, and these pertain to the printing function. Right-click on those, too, and click 'Install' for their context menus.

Restart Windows.

On restart and login, most drivers for the affected hardware should install correctly, but getting the printer to be recognised may require more work, if the printer happens to be not listed in the Printers and Faxes Control Panel folder.

My memory is iffy here, but the basic gist is this:

In that same Printers and Faxes folder, click on "Add a printer" in the left-side Printer Tasks Explorer sidebar, or select File > Add a printer from the menu bar.

This launches the Add Printer wizard. There, click Next.

Select the 'Local printer attached to this computer' radio button. The checkbox to automatically detect the Plug and Play printer is optional (this function might not work).

Click Next to select a printer port.

The "Use the following port:" radio button must be checked. From the drop-down menu, pick the port that displays as "USB00x (Virtual printer port for USB)" (x is a number). Click Next.

After that, installation should commence, and one would then be provided with printer options.

The printer test page printed correctly, and I was happy.

Caveat: If there are two or more listed virtual printer ports for USB, repeat Add Printer routine, and click next. If the printer is already listed and shown as 'not connected' (faded out), right-click on the item, click on Properties.

In the Properties window for that printer, click on the Ports tab. In the list, pick the USB port that works.

A few hours after that, I discovered the driver installation CD for that same printer/scanner/copier combo, but if memory serves, it did not contain drivers for Windows xp when I first wanted to install drivers on Windows XP for that printer several years ago.

The thought of trying Windows Update did not come to mind, because: Microsoft had stopped issuing updates for Windows xp, and there were serious performance issues with Windows Update in that computer, as Windows Update had at times stopped working properly, and was taking up huge CPU resources. Had I not had issues with Windows Update on that computer, I'd have probably tried Windows Update, as it still supported Windows XP at the time.

The modern wonders of smartphone tech

So I watched footy yesterday between Wales and Denmark (Denmark won :), and the football pitch showed ads for some large South-East Asian brands — in non-Latin characters.

So thanks to Firefox, Android 9.0 (which is the latest version of Android that I have right now), and Google Lens, I was able to do several things.

Unlike the default ETV* apps of the Estonian national broadcaster ERR that do not allow making screenshots (in modern Android, apparently), Firefox did permit screenshots when using the browser in Android to watch the official ETV livestream.

I could then make screenshots of the ads flicking on the edges of the green pitch, and use Google Lens in Google Photos to find out what some of the ads were.

So, one was for a SE Asian brand of air conditioners with a non-Latin slogan, and the other displayed a slogan for some kind of SE Asian blockchain technology/solution.

— Google Lens offered a button to Google Translate, and another to play that text back in the original language.

Wow, I say.