But are you shivering with aantici…

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.

Let me just add that tomatoes aren’t the only indicator of how much you’re going to enjoy watching a film, resp. of how “good” or “bad” a film is. badmovies.org for example uses skulls and slime drops, and while the two websites may have very different rating criteria, both are legit and can be valuable sources of entertainment.

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According to FlightStats and FlightRadar24, the original plane was a Boeing 777-206 from 2003, which has been replaced by a 777-300 from 2023.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.

Not the greatest solution, but… living in a place where it’s mostly been raining for the last 7-8 weeks makes it easy to cool down.
I’d love to write something about A/C and going for a swim/dive instead, like last year. Maybe in July?

Logically, I know it’s true that demeaning and comparing other people’s experiences is wrong, but I encounter it so much it’s hard to really believe it.

I can relate to some degree, though in my case it was my parents. The good news is that it doesn’t take much practice until you start noticing the difference.

There’s not a lot of advice I can give you, because above all you need to figure out yourself what you want (and how you want to get there). Just keep reminding yourself every now and then that the most important person in your life is you, and anybody trying to tell you otherwise is unlikely to have your best interests in mind.

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.

Beeple works well for me!

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 feel so guilty because I’m honestly spiraling but everyone keeps telling me I’m not. I can’t, because it makes them look worse.

I don’t even know where to begin.

Going through difficult times is not a weapon in a dick-measuring contest to determine who’s owed the most pity. Downplaying somebody else’s problems in order to make one’s own problems seem more important is not something a friend* does, period.
But then again, those people may just be unable to imagine you holding yourself together so well if you really had all those problems you describe. That’s still no excuse though, a real friend should listen to you and believe you.

I think what (some of) your ‘friends’ are doing is reminiscent of crab mentality. That’s the mechanism that makes sure you’re being gifted a never-ending supply of chocolate and junk food as soon as people notice you’ve successfully lost weight, or alcoholics insisting that their dry friend has just one small beer with them for old times’ sake.
One of the foundations of crab mentality is the assumption that life is a zero-sum game and/or desired resources are scarce, i.e. if you get more sympathy/attention then somebody else will get less.

I’m not saying you should do this - that would require some hefty assumptions about you and your life - but one of the best things I’ve ever done is ranking all my friends and family by the degree to which they’ve made my life better or dragged me down over the years, balanced scorecard-style. It sounds heartless but with some people was a real eye-opener for me.

Either way, surround yourself with people that give something back. If that means losing some ‘friends’, then so be it. A handful of real friends will get you much further than hordes of false ones.

( * I’m including family members here, though they can generally get away with much more BS than a friend just because they’re family.)

I live in Switzerland, where downloading copyrighted material for personal use is legal, so your situation may differ. If I don’t find what I’m looking for in a DRM-free store, on eMule and on the high seas, I just download it from YouTube. The quality is not the best but usually sufficient. Try the NewPipe app on Android (if applicable) or https://de.savefrom.net/ - be aware that the latter should only be visited with a good ad blocker and antivirus.

Take your time, mate. You’re the most important person in your life!

And no need to thank me - I do think you are a gifted writer (however much or little that may be worth coming from an anonymous person who speaks English as their third language) and just wanted you to know that your sharing your stories is much appreciated even though I don’t have much to add to them. But I totally wanna cuddle with a raver girl now.

Unfashionably late to the party (which seems to be my only secret superpower), but if there’s any way to support you, by any means, do let me know. I always enjoy reading what you write and I would love to give something back.

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.