Part 2 There's a wealth of highly usable free software for the big proprietary desktop OSes. You can escape paying subscriptions and switch to free software without changing your OS.

In the first half of this short series, we looked at how to freshen up an aging Mac or Windows 10 PC, and ideally, how to wipe it and install a clean, bloat-free copy of its OS. That is all well and good, but this leaves the problem of what to put on that OS to get out of the trap of software you paid for but don't own. //

Compare OpenAlternative.co, which is snazzy and effects-heavy, with the decidedly low-tech Best FOSS Alternatives, which is very simple and austere. The latter has nothing to sell; it's just a plain, simple categorized list of FOSS tools. If you scroll to the end, it even has a short list of alternatives to itself. //

On a fresh new copy of Windows, the easiest way to get up and running is Ninite. https://ninite.com/

David 132Silver badge
Happy
"Worst prank ever"?

at least for a few moments, because the phone soon rang.

"It was the Australian office, laughing their heads off..."

Ah, what they should have done, instead of just hanging up the phone at local midnight, is babble something incoherent about "my god... the koalas... wallabies... they've got machetes... oh the humanity... oh nooooo, the 'roos have taken Clyde..."

And then hung up the phone. //

jakeSilver badge
My y2k horror story.
I sat in a lonely office in Redwood City for a couple hours before and after midnight, playing with Net Hack[0]. My phone didn't ring once. As expected.

The cold, hard reality is that I and several hundred thousand (a couple million? Dunno.) other computer people worked on "the Y2K problem" for well over 20 years, on and off. Come the morning of January 1st, 2000 damn near everything worked as intended ... thus causing brilliant minds to conclude that it was never a problem to begin with.

HOWever, in the 2 years leading up to 2000, I got paid an awful lot of money re-certifying stuff that I had already certified to be Y2K compliant some 10-20 years earlier. Same for the embedded guys & gals. By the time 2000 came around, most of the hard work was close to a decade in the past ... the re-certification was pure management bullshit, so they could be seen as doing something ... anything! ... useful during the beginning of the dot-bomb bubble bursting.

[0] Not playing the game, rather playing with the game. Specifically modifying the source to add some stuff for a friend. //

Anonymous John
FAIL
Y2.003K
The government dept I worked had a flawless Y2K. Until a software update three years later. A drop down year menu went

2004

2003

2002

2001

1900

Quite an achievement for seven year old software that used four digit years from the start.

Now let's meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Rob" who at the time of Y2K worked for Sun Microsystems in the UK.

As a global company, Sun had an early warning system for any Y2K problems: Its Australian office was 11 hours ahead of the UK office, so if any problems struck there, the company would get advance notice.

Which is why, as midnight neared Down Under, Rob's boss called Sun's Sydney office … then heard the phone line go terrifyingly silent as the clock ticked pas midnight. Rob said that "scared the hell out of my manager" – at least for a few moments, because the phone soon rang.

"It was the Australian office, laughing their heads off," Rob told On Call. ®

Yakisugi is a Japanese architectural technique for charring the surface of wood. It has become quite popular in bioarchitecture because the carbonized layer protects the wood from water, fire, insects, and fungi, thereby prolonging the lifespan of the wood. Yakisugi techniques were first codified in written form in the 17th and 18th centuries. But it seems Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci wrote about the protective benefits of charring wood surfaces more than 100 years earlier, according to a paper published in Zenodo, an open repository for EU funded research. //

Leonardo produced more than 13,000 pages in his notebooks (later gathered into codices), less than a third of which have survived. //

In 2003, Alessandro Vezzosi, director of Italy’s Museo Ideale, came across some recipes for mysterious mixtures while flipping through Leonardo’s notes. Vezzosi experimented with the recipes, resulting in a mixture that would harden into a material eerily akin to Bakelite, a synthetic plastic widely used in the early 1900s. So Leonardo may well have invented the first manmade plastic. //

The benefits of this method of wood preservation have since been well documented by science, although the effectiveness is dependent on a variety of factors, including wood species and environmental conditions. The fire’s heat seals the pores of the wood so it absorbs less water—a natural means of waterproofing. The charred surface serves as natural insulation for fire resistance. And stripping the bark removes nutrients that attract insects and fungi, a natural form of biological protection.

Big anniversaries are coming up in 2026: 200 years since the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, 250 since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 250 since Adam Smith published “The Wealth of Nations.”

But an anniversary this month deserves special attention, too — Dec. 16 marked 250 years since the birth of Jane Austen, one of the greatest novelists who’s ever lived.

She’s still read today, and millions of people who’ve never so much as peeked into the covers of “Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility” or “Emma” know Austen’s stories from their film and television adaptations. //

Like the Declaration of Independence and “The Wealth of Nations,” her works have stood the test of two centuries and more for a reason.

They are grounded in truths about human nature, and those truths are expressed in ways that enchant as well as instruct.

Netinstall is a tool for installing and reinstalling MikroTik devices running RouterOS. Always try using Netinstall if you suspect that your device is not working properly. The tool is available for Windows (with a graphical interface) and for Linux (as a command line tool). 

In short, the Netinstall procedure goes like this: Connect your PC directly to the boot port (Usually Ether1, the port labeled BOOT or as otherwise indicated in the product manual) of the device you will be reinstalling. Turn on the device while holding the reset button until it shows up in the Netinstall tool.

Careful. Netinstall re-formats the system's drive, all configuration and saved files will be lost. Netinstall does not erase the RouterOS license key, nor does it reset RouterBOOT related settings, for example, CPU frequency is not changed after reinstalling the device.

///

Traffic graphs will be deleted. Backup and restore if this history is desirable.

RouterBOOT reset button has three functions:

• Hold this button during boot time until the LED light starts flashing, and release the button to reset the RouterOS configuration (total 5 seconds)
• Keep holding for 5 more seconds, LED turns solid, release now to turn on CAPs mode (total 10 seconds)
• Or Keep holding the button for 5 more seconds until the LED turns off, then release it to make the RouterBOARD look for Netinstall servers

Andrew M. Bailey
National University of Singapore

I am a Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore. I read, write, and teach classes in the humanities and social sciences. I was a founding faculty member at Yale-NUS College, where I taught for the duration of its existence. I am also a Senior Fellow with the Bitcoin Policy Institute and consult often with journalists and lawmakers on topics related to bitcoin, cryptocurrency, money, and society. //

My research is mostly about money, people, and God. My work on money with B. Rettler and C. Warmke, culminating in a monograph, aims to understand and evaluate bitcoin in a way that integrates philosophy, politics, and economics. Early articles in philosophy defend the view that we are living human animals (as opposed to, say, brains or luminous spiritual beings). More recent metaphysical work, culminating in two monographs, concerns our value as people and links between human nature and conceptions of the divine.

If you have money, you probably think about it a fair bit. And if you don't have money, you might think about it even more. In this module, we will think about money a lot. One goal of the module is to reach a clearer understanding of questions concerning money and its place in a well-lived life. But it is not just the questions and proposed answers (considered as theoretical problems) that are important. I also hope to see students grapple with the topic in a personal way, and to adjust their own opinions and practices in light of the experiences and evidence we uncover in the module.

This module lies at the intersection of philosophy, politics, and economics. It will therefore require engagement with both theoretical and empirical concepts, analysis, and arguments. Reading assignments will draw from recent philosophical articles, some literature (short stories) and relevant work in the social sciences.

For owners of the HP Microserver N36L/N40L/N54L/Gen8/Gen10. Reported hardware that works, known fixes and common questions/answers. Please feel free to contribute to this wiki.

I can't explain to you what it feels like to come to a market and see such a variety of fruits, vegetables, meats, everything... Here you can buy whatever you need. People come here and buy what they'll need for the whole week. The truth is, I don't understand why my country, Cuba, goes through so much, when everywhere else in the world people have the right and can buy the basic necessities they need to live.

simplify your workout

A touch of history
Browse historical places and
search for old maps with timeline.

FreeSewing is open source software to generate bespoke sewing patterns, loved by home sewers and fashion entrepreneurs alike.

Industry sizing is a bunch of lies. Join the slow fashion revolution and enjoy clothes that fit you.

1. Pick Any Design
2. Add a set of measurements
3. Customize your pattern

The current 25H2 build of Windows 11 and future builds will include increasingly more AI features and components. This script aims to remove ALL of these features to improve user experience, privacy and security.

Most Hearts players place 100 points as the agreed-upon score ceiling for the game. Once hit by one of the players, the game ends, and the lowest-scoring player wins.

Setting Up
To set up the game, remove the three and four of clubs and the two and three of diamonds. This way, each player gets eight cards each.

One player must deal the cards face down and clockwise to each player.

Card Passing
After receiving their hand, the players must choose two cards to pass along. The passing rotation in 6-player Hearts goes like this:

In the first deal, all players pass two cards face down to the player on their left. They’ll then receive two cards from the person on their right.

By the second deal, the rotation reverses. Each player will pass two cards to their right and get the two cards from their left.

Third hand/deal pass the cards two players to the left, etc.

Ebooks Everywhere

Create ebooks for every platform: Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, and more. Each specialized file can guide readers to buy your next book in their favorite store.

Completed a series? Combine everything into a box set in just a few steps.

• Validated Files in EPUB 3 / EPUB 2
• Image Optimization + Compression
• ARCs for Beta Readers in EPUB + MOBI
• ACE-Approved Accessible Output

Vellum Ebooks $199.99
Create Unlimited Ebooks

Vellum is only available for Mac
https://www.macincloud.com/

Vellum is Mac-only software, but it is possible to use it by renting a Mac “in the cloud” that you can access via your PC.

This guide will walk you through using a service called MacinCloud. Currently, this service offers plans as low as $1 USD per hour. And once you are familiar with Vellum, creating your final files should take considerably less than an hour!

Pavane From "Suite pour piano" Op. 10
George Enescu

Students should aspire to be more than mere ‘prompt writers,’ but minds capable of thinking, reasoning, and perseverance. //

If the goal is simply to produce outcomes, one could argue that AI usage should not just be tolerated but encouraged. But education shouldn’t be about producing outcomes – whether it be a sparkling essay or a gripping short story – but shaping souls. The purpose of writing isn’t to instruct a prompt or even to produce a quality paper. The purpose is to become a strong thinker and someone who enriches the lives of everyone, no matter their profession.

Each and every step of the struggle it takes to write is essential. Yes, it can all be arduous and time-consuming. As a writer, I get how hard it is and how tempting it might be to take shortcuts. But doing so is cheating oneself out of growth and intellectual payoff. Outsourcing parts of the process to algorithms and machines is outsourcing the rewards of doing one’s own thinking. Organizing ideas, refining word choices, thinking about tone are all skills that many citizens in this nation lack, and it’s often apparent in our chaotic, senseless public discourse. These are not steps to be skipped over with a “tool,” but rather things people benefit from learning if they value reason. Strong writing is strong thinking.