WinGet, choco, scoop, &c, they all have strengths and weaknesses, which is why I had to write this: https://github.com/brianary/scripts/blob/main/Update-Everything.ps1

It’s also why I use Linux at home.

Especially EVs, or especially Teslas?

When did brute force switch from being an antipattern to the preferred pattern?

There’s a whole book about this: # Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich.

Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly “unskilled,” that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/nickel-and-dimed-20th-anniversary-edition-on-not-getting-by-in-america-barbara-ehrenreich/9836607?ean=9781250808318

Windows 10 keeps turning that stupid news feed back on on my taskbar, too.

I work in finance, and the only time I use office is when my coworkers infrequently send me something locked in an Office document. Plenty of non-technical coworkers are addicted to it, but there’s no need, because it’s awful.

The Office programs are an ancient, bloated mess with an impossibly convoluted UI that to one uses more than a small share of.

The styles in Word and PowerPoint are never consistent: the bullets in lists never really match, fonts change randomly without reason, &c. These are intelligent people who have used this garbage for actual decades, and the WYSIWYG lie just results in a sloppy mess.

Even Microsoft wants everyone to stop using the desktop versions, and rent it from the cloud, which can be done from any OS.

For years, there was progress in moving governments away from implicitly endorsing Microsoft, and toward the simpler (but often still overcomplicated) OpenOffice/LibreOffice formats, and Microsoft engaged in some pretty shady behavior to stop it.

Markdown is better for documents, or maybe HTML, or LaTeX via LyX or something. Databases and legitimate file formats are better for data, with scripts for formulas. There are many simple alternatives around, but the addiction is so automatic and insidious, I can’t tell you how often over twenty years I’ve gotten screenshots pasted into an empty Word document rather than just sending the image.

Zero is freezing

10 is not

20 is pleasing

30 is hot

40 frying

50 dying

Adtech has been controlling the Overton Window too long. That’s what fueled the rise of (actual) fake news, as originally observed coming from Estonia, radicalizing dumb Americans.

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/774-the-ad-money-fuelling-fake-news/

He took a series of very shallow breaths, and then said as quickly and as quietly as he could, ‘Door, if you can hear me, say so very, very quietly.’

Very, very quietly, the door murmured, ‘I can hear you.’

‘Good. Now, in a moment, I’m going to ask you to open. When you open do not want you to say that you enjoyed it, OK?’

‘ΟΚ.’

‘And I don’t want you to say to me that I have made a simple door very happy, or that it is your pleasure to open for me and your satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done, OK?’

‘ΟΚ.’

'And do not want you to ask me to have a nice day, understand?"

‘I understand.’

‘OK,’ said Zaphod, tensing himself, ‘open now.’

The door slid open quietly. Zaphod slipped quietly through. The door closed quietly behind him.

‘Is that the way you like it, Mr Beeblebrox?’ said the door out loud.

— Life, the Universe, and Everything

That and .NET’s CLR, i think.

Windows increasingly allows either slash for paths.

Press WinKey+Ctrl+D, then WinKey+Ctrl+(←or→). Windows already has multiple desktops.

That all sounds good to me. Good clarification.

I was with you right up until the unique passwords. I do use a different randomly generated password for each site.

I guess I feel somewhat safer as relatively anonymous target of spearphishing as I have been for 20 years without incident, instead of as part of a much more valuable collective target, even though that data is probably better protected.

Historically, I’ve seen more “proper” password managers with breaches than browser storage.

I guess you’re completely right if you just assume your own conclusion.

So do feature testing, not user-agent sniffing! For Pete’s sake, it’s 2024! That’s been the best practice for decades!