FWIW, you can still press Shift-F10 to open a command prompt, then run oobe\bypassnro. The computer will reboot / restart the setup process and this time there’ll be a small link “I don’t have internet” that’ll allow you to set up a local account.
Just make very sure not to connect it to the internet (cable or Wi-Fi) before this point.

There have been rumours of newer versions of Windows 11 not allowing the bypass anymore, but I haven’t personally seen any evidence of this so far.

Still a shit show though - trickery like this shouldn’t be necessary.

Garmin Explore has a bit of a learning curve but offers a variety of very good maps and (once you’ve discovered where the web developers have hidden them) tons of nifty features. One of them is waypoints: you stick a flag somewhere and can give it a name, icon and colour. That sounds like the thing you’re looking for.
The downside is that it’s made for outdoor stuff so you get street names and some POIs, but no turn-by-turn navigation.

I use the website (https://explore.garmin.com/) to plan my tours and import/manage GPX files, and the Android app and an inReach 2 Mini satellite messenger while underway. The three sync seamlessly.

Since I have a paid subscription (required for satellite access) I can’t tell you what (if anything) you get for free, but it should be relatively easy to find out if you think it might be what you’re looking for.

For car navigation I used TomTom Go - it costs something but the quality of POIs and navigation is far superior to Google Maps in my experience. You can also add your own locations but have to do it on the phone by hand.
In my new car I use Google Maps because it came with the car and there’s no real alternative at the moment. I do miss my TomTom app.

According to FlightStats and FlightRadar24, the original plane was a Boeing 777-206 from 2003, which has been replaced by a 777-300 from 2023. It’s en route now over the Atlantic.

So an issue caused by Boeing’s recent series of quality problems seems unlikely, unless there was a dodgy spare part involved.

This is actually a super smart move, from an evil genius point of view. The plaintiffs now have an interest in the company growing instead of shutting down.

Though I really hope some judge somewhere stops that deal.

What color is your function?

It’s a rant opinion piece about the caveats of mixing async and sync functions, and divides code into ‘red’ (async) and ‘blue’ (sync) functions to explain the various problems associated with it.

I really wish there were any even remotely credible way to disagree with that statement.

I offer you a third option: at least one Lidl in Croatia uses blinking tags for stuff they really want you to look at.

Sometime soon we’re gonna have to invent a spam filter for real life. Hey, maybe that’s the use case that the Vision guys at Apple have been looking for?

i wasn’t… until i read your suggestion!

Glad to be of service. 😁

If the cellar as your first project looks that cool, I can’t wait to see the rest of the house. This is going to bring you decades of joy for sure.

Awesome work, and a fantastic idea in the first place.

Were you planning to bury a life-size skeleton wearing a construction worker’s outfit nearby?

Either way, do post updates please!

I do too, in a way - I find it helps to think about what help I need,

The interesting (to me) thing is that as soon as I’ve read this, my mind said “duck programming”.
(For the blissfully uninitiated, duck programming is when a software developer explains a problem to a rubber duck. The solution will often present itself during the explanation after having been hiding in plain sight for hours up to this point.)

Do.you think atheistic prayers work in a similar way?

The human mind sure is a fascinating thing.

I’m an atheist, but only mention it when asked. I don’t know what much to tell you about it - as far as religions go, it doesn’t get much simpler than “there’s nothing”.
As for why, I’m very fond of the scientific method and it’s the only thing that makes sense to me.

Seriously, health departments around the world should have offered a fourth Covid certificate during the pandemy - tested, vaccinated, recovered and “will irrevocably forego any right to treatment in a hospital in case of infection”. That way all the tinfoil hats couldn’t have spread their ‘dictatorship’ bullshit nearly as easily, because hey, all you have to do in order to be able to go to the pub is to absolve society of the risk of you catching an absolutely harmless and possibly even imaginary cold.
Let a few thousand of those fuckers die and at the same time keep the hospital beds free for those who need them through no fault of their own. Watch the survivors crap their pants and mumble something about science maybe not being so bad after all.

The problem is that some people consider stupidity to be a virtue. That’s their right (sadly), but they shouldn’t be able to make society suffer the consequences.

Thanks to a few centuries of upper nobility, we already know that marrying your cousin for several generations is not always a good idea. It’ll be interesting to see what happens after a few iterations of AIs being trained on data mostly produced by other AIs (or variations of themselves). I suppose it largely depends on how well the training data can be curated.

ChatGPT says:

Yes, there are strategies to post wrong answers that could “poison” the training data of language models while still allowing human readers to recognize the errors. Here are a few approaches:

1. Subtle Semantic Errors: Provide answers that contain subtle but significant semantic errors. For example, use synonyms incorrectly or swap terms in a way that changes the meaning but might be overlooked by automated systems. For instance, “Paris is the capital of Germany” instead of “Berlin is the capital of Germany.”

2. Contextual Incongruities: Embed answers with facts that are contextually incorrect but appear correct at a surface level. For example, “The sun rises in the west and sets in the east.”

3. Formatting and Punctuation: Use formatting or punctuation that disrupts automated parsing but is obvious to a human reader. For example, “The capital of France is Par_is.” or “Water freezes at 0 degrees F@harenheit.”

4. Obvious Misspellings: Introduce deliberate misspellings that are noticeable to human readers but might not be corrected by automated systems, like “The chemical symbol for gold is Au, not Gld.”

5. Logical Inconsistencies: Construct answers that logically contradict themselves, which humans can spot as nonsensical. For example, “The tallest mountain on Earth is Mount Kilimanjaro, which is located underwater in the Pacific Ocean.”

6. Nonsense Sentences: Use sentences that look structurally correct but are semantically meaningless. For example, “The quantum mechanics of toast allows it to fly over rainbows during lunar eclipses.”

7. Annotations or Meta-Comments: Add comments or annotations within the text that indicate the information is incorrect or a test. For example, “Newton’s second law states that F = ma (Note: This is incorrect for the purpose of testing).”

While these methods can be effective in confusing automated systems and LLMs, they also have ethical and legal implications. Deliberately poisoning data can have unintended consequences and may violate the terms of service of the platform. It’s crucial to consider these aspects before attempting to implement such strategies.

That screenshot alone brings back so, so many memories.

Been with Winamp ever since my first 486DX all the way up to my first 4k screen when it became unusable due to size/scaling issues.

I’m really keeping my fingers crossed for this one to succeed.

Well, I can confirm from personal experience (me and family) that tourists wanting to enter the US aren’t treated that much differently from criminals.

But then you’ve created dozens (or hundreds) of opportunities a day for someone to get your passcode by shoulder-surfing, which you probably wouldn’t even notice in many situations. I’d argue that unless someone forcibly borrowing your face or fingers to unlock your phone is a strong possibility, entering a passcode each time is less secure than using biometrics.
Especially since the passcode also protects various security settings.

There are soo many to choose from…!
Off the top of my head, the phone shot scene from Danger 5 cracks me up every time. But ask me again tomorrow and I’ll tell you something completely different…

So far I’ve found most of what I’ve been looking for on www.exlibris.ch, though www.orellfuessli.ch seems quite nice as well. Normally it says in the details whether or not a particular book comes with DRM.

The DRM-free books are still digitally marked - Ex Libris will include your e-mail address in one of the first pages, and there are probably subtle differences in the text itself. I don’t mind that, though I blame the technology for the occasional annoying ‘typo’ in the book.

In case anybody stumbles across this thread and has a similar problem: I’ve successfully installed two fiber connections this week and they’re working very well so far. I’m very happy!

My hardware shopping list:

• Lightwin single-mode (OS2) simplex fiber with preattached LC plugs (link)
• Lightwin LC/APC female/female adapter
• Ubiquiti 10Gbit SFP+ modules (sold as a pair, product code UACC-OM-SM-10G-S-2)
• Two Zyxel XMG-105HP switches with five 2.5Gbit, PoE++ RJ45 ports and one 10Gbit SFP+ port

The Lightwin cables have relatively short plugs with small and narrow protector caps, which is very important in my case.

The 2.5Gbit switch is fine for me because everything else in the house is 1Gbit and I didn’t want to spend three times the amount for two 10Gbit switches just yet. Though the OS2 fiber should be able to handle anything we might throw at it in the foreseeable future.

Pulling the cables with the attached connectors through the narrow pipe was a bit tricky. I used a standard pull-in string and strong, inflexible adhesive tape to attach the fiber cables to it so that there would be a distance of 2-3cm between the string and the first plug, with a thick wad of tape inbetween, and the second plug following at a similar distance. Then I applied a generous amount of lube to the pipe and slowly pulled the cables through. They just so went around the corners, but once the plugs came out at the other end it was smooth sailing.

The internet fiber plugs directly into the OTO socket on one side, and connects to the modem via an LC f/f adapter on the other side. The LAN fiber has a switch at each end.