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[McTraveller]

Dammit windows 10!  How can you screw up something so basic?

I had a USB headset plugged in for work.  Then after work I unplugged them and plugged in some regular wired headphones.  Now if I don't have the wired headphones plugged in, I get "audio renderer error".  The solution is to "reboot and update your drivers."

WTF!?  Why do people pay money for this crap? And why isn't there anything better?

[Reelya]

Maybe it's because it makes the names more memorable and less technical, so it's more conducive to brand-making. It's easier to talk about the latest Broadwell rather than "gen 5.6 build 192329.3192329."

I've noticed the math, engineering, science types tend towards ridiculously generic names (Extremely Large Telescope? Really?) so I have a feeling the sand-benders and polygon-pushers didn't come up with this one, but rather it was a product of the marketing department.

Nah, Intel uses a zillion codenames for different things, very few of which ever made it into the marketing. Do things like Sandy Bridge even appear on the packaging when you get one of those CPUs? The actual marketing is "Core i7 Gen 3" or the like.

This is used internally so they can refer shorthand to stuff without having to specify it with the long codenames.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_codenames

for example this is just the ones from 2004, which is a year I picked at random because I was reading through the list and got bored in 2004:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Alief    Motherboard    Intel SE7520AF2 server motherboard. SSI EEB form factor, dual-CPU, Socket 604, E7520 chipset (Lindenhurst).    Alief, near Houston, Texas, USA.    2004
Alviso    Chipset    Intel 910GML, 915GMS, 915GM, 915GME, 910GMLE, and 915PM Express mobile chipsets, for use with the Celeron M and Pentium M (Banias, Dothan) processors.    Alviso, a small neighborhood in San Jose, California, the closest San Jose neighborhood to Intel's Santa Clara headquarters.    2004
Augsburg    Motherboard    Intel D915GAG motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA 775), 915G chipset (Grantsdale).    Reference unknown.    2004
Avalon    Motherboard    Intel D915GAV motherboard. ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915G chipset (Grantsdale).    Reference unknown.    2004
Azalia    Technology    Intel High Definition Audio (HD audio) specification. Successor to AC'97.    Reference unknown.    2004
Battle Lake    Motherboard    Intel D915PBL motherboard. ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915P chipset (Grantsdale).    Reference unknown.    2004
Blackford    Chipset    Intel 5000P, 5000V, and 5000Z chipsets, for use in two-socket servers with the 65 nm Core-based Xeon 5000, 5100, and 5300 series (Dempsey, Woodcrest, and Clovertown) CPUs and the 45 nm Penryn-based Xeon 5200 and 5400 series (Wolfdale and Harpertown) CPUs.    Reference unknown; see Blackford (disambiguation) for possibilities.    2004
Black Canyon    Motherboard    Intel D925XBC desktop motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 925X (Alderwood) chipset.    Reference unknown.    2004
Black Canyon-2    Motherboard    Intel D925XEBC2 desktop motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 925XE (Alderwood-XE) chipset.    Reference unknown.    2004
Brandon    Motherboard    Intel SE7520BD2 two-socket server motherboard. SSI EEB form factor, Socket 604, E7520 chipset (Lindenhurst).    Reference unknown.    2004
Bryson    Motherboard    Intel SE7501BR2 two-socket server motherboard. SSI EEB form factor, Socket 604, E7501 (Plumas) chipset.    Reference unknown.    2004
Calistoga    Chipset    Intel Mobile 945 Express-series chipset.    Calistoga, a city in Napa County, California.    2004
Carbonado    Platform    PDA reference platform combining the PXA270 XScale processor (Bulverde) with the 2700G graphics accelerator (Marathon).    Possibly Carbonado, Washington    2004
Caswell    Wi-Fi    Wi-Fi component integrated into the ICH6W I/O controller hub.    Possibly named after Caswell County, North Carolina.    2004
Cherry Creek    Motherboard    Intel D915PCY motherboard. ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915P chipset (Grantsdale).    Reference unknown.    2004
Cibolo    LAN controller    Intel 82597X Ethernet controller. Single-port, 10 Gbit/s, PCI-X, 90 nm.    Cibolo, Texas, USA.    2004
Clackamas    CPU architecture    Later codename for the Intel 64 project, originally codenamed Yamhill.    Clackamas River, a river in Oregon.    2004
Comanche Creek    Motherboard    Intel D915PCM motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA 775), 915P chipset (Grantsdale).    Reference unknown.    2004
Conroe    CPU    First implementation of the Core microarchitecture, sold as Core 2 Duo, Xeon, Pentium Dual-Core, and Celeron. Most Conroes are dual-core, although some single-core versions were also produced. Successor to both Yonah, of Pentium M lineage, and to Cedar Mill, the final generation of the NetBurst microarchitecture. 65 nm.    Conroe, Texas    2004
Copper River    Chipset    Intel E7221 chipset, for workstations and entry-level servers using Pentium 4 processors. Similar to Grantsdale.    The Copper River or Ahtna River is a river in south-central Alaska in the United States    2004
Cranford    CPU    An MP version of Nocona. Part of the 90 nm Prescott family.    Reference unknown; see Cranford (disambiguation) for possibilities.    2004
Creede    Motherboard    Intel D865PCD motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, Socket 478, 865P chipset (Springdale-P).    Reference unknown.    2004
Culver City    Motherboard    Intel D925XCV desktop motherboard. ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 925X chipset (Alderwood).    Culver City, California, USA.    2004
Culver City 2    Motherboard    Intel D925XECV2 desktop motherboard. ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 925XE chipset (Alderwood).    Culver City, California, USA.    2004
Dermot    Motherboard    Intel D915PDT motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915P chipset (Grantsdale).    Reference unknown.    2004
Dimona    CPU    Itanium 9300 processor (Tukwila) with only two cores.    Dimona is an Israeli city in the Negev desert.    2004
Downey    Motherboard    Intel D910GLDW desktop motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, LGA 775, 910GL chipset (Grantsdale-GL).    Reference unknown.    2004
Eatonville    Motherboard    Intel D915GEV motherboard. ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915G chipset (Grantsdale-G).    Reference unknown.    2004
Fanwood    CPU    Itanium 2, the fourth-generation Itanium (but still called Itanium 2). 130 nm. Successor to Madison.    Possibly Fanwood, a borough in the US state of New Jersey.    2004
Forest Lake    I/O bridge    Intel 80314 I/O companion chip.    Reference unknown.    2004
Free Town    Motherboard    Intel D845GVFN motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, Socket 478, 845GV chipset (Brookdale-GV).    Reference unknown; see Freetown (disambiguation) for possibilities.    2004
Gaston    WLAN core    Intel wireless technology, part of the Napa platform.    Gaston is a city in Washington County, Oregon, USA.    2004
Glen Ridge    Motherboard    Intel D915PGN motherboard. ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915P chipset (Grantsdale).    Reference unknown.    2004
Glenwood    Chipset    Intel 975X Express chipset.    Reference unknown; see Glenwood (disambiguation) for possibilities.    2004
Grantsdale    Chipset    Intel 910GL, 915G, 915GL, 915GV, 915P, and 915PL chipsets. Used with Pentium 4 (Northwood) and Pentium D (Smithfield) CPUs. Successor to Springdale.    Reference unknown; may be named after Grantsdale, Montana.    2004
Greencreek    Chipset    Intel 5000X chipset. Used with the Xeon 5000, 5100, 5200, 5300, and 5400 series CPUs (Dempsey, Woodcrest, Wolfdale, Clovertown, and Harpertown).    Greencreek is the name of a town in Idaho County, Idaho, USA. See List of places in Idaho/G.    2004
Hammonton    Motherboard    Intel D915GHA motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915G chipset (Grantsdale-G).    Reference unknown.    2004
Hazleton    Motherboard    Intel D865GVHZ motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, Socket 478, 865GV chipset (Springdale-GV).    Reference unknown.    2004
Hondo    CPU    Itanium 2 mx2. Combines two Madison dies in a single package.    Possibly Hondo, the county seat of Medina County, Texas, USA.    2004
Iron Falls    Motherboard    Intel D915GRF motherboard. ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915G chipset (Grantsdale-G).    Reference unknown.    2004
Irwindale    CPU    Xeon processor based on the 64-bit, 90 nm Prescott. Much like Nocona but with 2MB cache instead of 1MB, and capable of reducing its clock speed when idle.    Irwindale, a city in Los Angeles County, California.    2004
Luxemburg    Motherboard    Intel D915GUX motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915G chipset (Grantsdale-G).    Reference unknown.    2004
Marathon    GPU    Intel 2700G graphics accelerator. Companion to the PXA270 series (Bulverde) XScale processors.    Marathon, Greece, for which the long-distance race is named.    2004
Marblehead    Motherboard    Intel D915GMH motherboard. Micro-BTX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915G chipset (Grantsdale-G).    Likely Marblehead, Massachusetts.    2004
Maywood    Motherboard    Intel D845PEMY motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, Socket 478, 845PE chipset (Brookdale-PE).    Reference unknown.    2004
Millington    CPU    Low-voltage version of the Itanium 2 9000 (Montecito) CPU.    Reference unknown; see Millington (disambiguation) for possibilities.    2004
Nehalem    CPU architecture    Successor to the Conroe (Core) microarchitecture. Abbreviated NHM.    The Nehalem River in Oregon, or possibly the town of Nehalem in Tillamook County, Oregon.    2004
Pellston    Technology    Memory error correction technology that first appeared in the Itanium 2 9000 CPU (Montecito).    Reference unknown.    2004
Pleiades    Motherboard    Intel D915GPD motherboard. Micro-BTX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915G chipset (Grantsdale-G).    Pleiades star cluster.    2004
Potomac    CPU    An MP version of Nocona, essentially Cranford with 4MB cache instead of 2MB. Part of the 90 nm Prescott family.    the Potomac River, which flows through West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC, USA.    2004
Sharkey    Motherboard    Intel D915PSY motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915P chipset (Grantsdale).    Reference unknown.    2004
Shelton    CPU    Celeron M aimed at low-cost and embedded applications. Essentially a Banias-based Celeron M with the L2 cache removed.    Shelton, a city in Mason County, Washington, USA.    2004
Silvervale    Technology    Processor virtualization technology that first appeared in the Itanium 2 9000 CPU (Montecito).    Reference unknown.    2004
Smithfield    CPU    Pentium D 800 series and the Pentium Extreme Edition 840. Dual-core. Part of the 90 nm Prescott family.    Reference unknown; see Smithfield (disambiguation) for possibilities.    2004
Sonoma    Platform    Second-generation Centrino, a mobile platform that combines the Pentium M (Dothan) CPU with the 915 (Alviso) chipset. Successor to Carmel.    Reference unknown; see Sonoma (disambiguation) for possibilities.    2004
South Lake    Motherboard    Intel D915GSN motherboard. BTX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915G chipset (Grantsdale-G). OEM board for Gateway.    Reference unknown.    2004
Stebbins 2    LAN adapter    Intel PRO/1000 GT desktop Ethernet adapter. Single-port, copper, 1 Gbit/s, PCI. Based on the 82541PI controller chip (Tabor 3).    Reference unknown.    2004
Tabor    LAN controller    Intel 82541ER Ethernet controller. Single-port, 1 Gbit/s, PCI, 130 nm.    Reference unknown.    2004
Tabor 3    LAN controller    Intel 82541PI Ethernet controller. Single-port, 1 Gbit/s, PCI, 130 nm.    Reference unknown.    2004
West Branch    Motherboard    Intel D915GVWB motherboard. Micro-ATX form factor, Socket T (LGA775), 915GV chipset (Grantsdale-GV).    Reference unknown.    2004
Whitefield    CPU    Quad-core Xeon processor, the intended successor to Tulsa. Cancelled and replaced by Tigerton.    Whitefield, a suburb of Bangalore, India.    2004
Yonah    CPU    Core Solo, Core Duo, Celeron M 200 and 400 series, and the dual-core Pentium Mobile T2000 series. 65 nm. Successor to Dothan.    Reference unknown; see Yonah (disambiguation) for possibilities.    2004

Dammit windows 10!  How can you screw up something so basic?

I had a USB headset plugged in for work.  Then after work I unplugged them and plugged in some regular wired headphones.  Now if I don't have the wired headphones plugged in, I get "audio renderer error".  The solution is to "reboot and update your drivers."

WTF!?  Why do people pay money for this crap? And why isn't there anything better?

Firstly, most people don't have to pay for it. I got my Windows 10 totally for free.

Second, your problem is almost certainly that there's a problem with the drivers for the USB headphones. And unless those are actually made by Microsoft themselves, then that's third-party software. There's almost nothing that the OS manufacturer can do to prevent stuff like that happening. The OS is just a platform, not magic sauce that makes everything work.

[McTraveller]

Someone paid for it.

Also, pretty sure it's windows.  If not its code directly, the culture of software development it encourage(s/d).  Here's the sequence of events that caused the issue:

PC speakers working.
Plug in USB headset: works fine.
Unplug USB headset - back to PC speakers, just fine.
Plug in 1/8" headphones - works fine.
Repeat:
Unplug 1/8" headphones - audio renderer error.
Plug in USB headset - works fine.
Unplug USB headset - audio renderer error.
Plug in 1/8" headphones - works fine.

[Reelya]

It's still a problem with that driver for the USB headphones. Just because it's not immediate doesn't mean it isn't. It's making some system change and not changing it back properly.

If something is still running and not letting go properly, it's probably something in services.msc or in processes. See if the USB headphones installed something running in the background then try terminating that. What's most likely happening is that the hardware installed something that watches for when the USB headset is either plugged in or removed, but the dolts just set it to watch for whether headphones in general are plugged in or removed, and so when your regular headphones get yanked out, probably, then it's sending the inappropriate commands. It's likely that killing the process or service after removing the USB thing would prevent that. Is this headset a Chinese brand by any chance?

Also, pretty sure it's windows.  If not its code directly, the culture of software development it encourage(s/d).  Here's the sequence of events that caused the issue:

You're just describing the culture of software development in general, not something specific to Microsoft. The only reason Apple avoids a lot of that is by whitelisting approved developers and hardware only, and you lose the ability to customize your system then. If you make a system and don't want third-party software to fuck it up, you need to heavily limit what's allowed to be done. That generally means not letting just anyone produce hardware for it. After all, you're plugging what is to Windows unknown third-party hardware into its system that comes with its own software. The thing about a USB headphone system is that it by design must hijack the normal sound system and relay audio somewhere where it really wasn't intended to go.

https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html

[bloop_bleep]

You do realize that the price of your "free Windows 10" was included in the price of the computer you buy?

[Reelya]

No it wasn't. I did the free upgrade from a copy of Windows 7 I "found", and I built my own PC from a parts store. So I've got a legit registered copy of Windows 10 running on my main PC, but I never actually gave Microsoft a dime.

Other than laptops I've never bought a store-built PC, nor have I ever purchased or owned any legit Windows install disks. So I understand that the copy of Windows I run on my main PC isn't "free" but it ain't me who paid for the thing. My guess is that Microsoft doesn't put any DRM on their disks because they want Windows to be ubiquitous even if it gets pirated, also backed up by their willingness to upgrade pirated Win 7 to legit Win 10 entirely for free. They got big on desktops basically by giving the operating system more or less for free to OEM manufacturers. Like, you can't really get a laptop without the OS any cheaper than one with Windows on it and the same specs, can you now? Their main source of revenue is actually the corporate sector, it's never been consumer desktops, and this actually explains the widespread Bill Gates = Evil Bogeyman thing that was big in the mainstream media. Microsoft was/is bleeding the corporates of money and they know he had them by the balls, so Gates was fair game for the corporate media to take jabs at. The reason they hated him is that the same class of people who run the media, white collar office/corporate was his target market in which he had a near-monopoly.

[hector13]

I got super-duper sunburned after spending around 4 hours sitting around drinking in my driveway.

Like, ow.

[Iduno]

I got super-duper sunburned after spending around 4 hours sitting around drinking in my driveway.

Like, ow.

The sun lives outside. Why would you go there?

[Reelya]

The sorry state of literacy in professional newspaper articles is really grating sometimes. I came across "much fewer" just now in a major news outlet's site. It's "many fewer" or "much less", you can't mix and match those. (Fewer is only for discrete items and less is for stuff that's continuous, like water or beer. Fewer beers is acceptable, but only when beers is plural, "much fewer beer in my glass" is not acceptable).

And it's not exactly rocket science. An automated grammar check should picked stuff like that up easily. I mean, there is no shortage of people with degrees in journalism, and they have professional editors checking their work. It's not acceptable that stuff like this leaks through without any sort of filter.

[wierd]

While it adds specific meaning, "Significantly fewer" (such as, "Significantly fewer reported cases") or "significantly less" (such as "There was significantly less risk of contamination") would have performed admirably.

But I guess "Significant" is too large of a word to use in a news paper these days.

[hector13]

I got super-duper sunburned after spending around 4 hours sitting around drinking in my driveway.

Like, ow.

The sun lives outside. Why would you go there?

People were visiting because nobody cares of this pandemic.

[McTraveller]

It's still a problem with that driver for the USB headphones.

Incidentally I was able to disable then re-enable the driver for the built-in speakers (NOT the USB ones!) without rebooting and this resolved the problem.  I suppose maybe the USB driver did something that confused the built-in driver, but that's a really interesting interaction scenario.

I still think this is a windows driver model problem; it can be possible to start/stop/reset any driver without rebooting.


I think the deal with the pandemic is that people at this point would just rather deal with the illness than feel like they are on house arrest.  Even though it's by a different name, that's effectively what many places have imposed.  It's no wonder civil unrest is brewing.

[nenjin]

How to lose someone's business in 30 seconds:

"Hi, are you guys taking coffee orders?"
"Yeah, but we're only doing online."
"Ok what's the website?"
"Uhm, the link should be up on our instagram?"
*click*

Not visiting your instagram or signing up for another online account just for a goddamn cup of coffee. And when your answer to "what is your website" is "go look it up yourself" you can fuck right off.

[Iduno]

It's still a problem with that driver for the USB headphones.

Incidentally I was able to disable then re-enable the driver for the built-in speakers (NOT the USB ones!) without rebooting and this resolved the problem.  I suppose maybe the USB driver did something that confused the built-in driver, but that's a really interesting interaction scenario.

I still think this is a windows driver model problem; it can be possible to start/stop/reset any driver without rebooting.

I think the deal with the pandemic is that people at this point would just rather deal with the illness than feel like they are on house arrest.  Even though it's by a different name, that's effectively what many places have imposed.  It's no wonder civil unrest is brewing.

Yeah, the built-in equipment is disabled when you put something else in. You probably reminded it to check on the USB speaker, which re-enabled it.

And no surprise people are unhappy about the lockdown. Same thing happened in 1918, apparently. Including protests against having to wear masks. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Not visiting your instagram or signing up for another online account just for a goddamn cup of coffee. And when your answer to "what is your website" is "go look it up yourself" you can fuck right off.

Agreed. I've had to say "that's a good question, give me a minute" before. And it's not like people can't make their own coffee easily (assuming the have a coffee pot).

[nenjin]

And just for shits and giggles, a friend checked out their instagram.

It has one follower and no mention an ordering website.

For being in the tech generation, these people are pretty shit at tech.

Two weeks ago when I called the "parent company" this coffee shop partners with in the same building, they told me to visit their web page on facebook for the # to the coffee shop. It didn't have it either. I had to email them and they got me the phone # and I suggested they update their Facebook page with, ya know, the actual info that would allow them to do business.

Too bad. Their coffee is good. But they can't internet with two hands, a flashlight and a web team to save their lives.