Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

Reminder to USA folks: If your vintage computer keeps time and has time zone rules, it's going to tell the wrong time (an hour slow) for the next three weeks: today through April 3.

One of the things I don't miss about magazine type-in programs is that, if they published a bug in their code, you usually had to wait 2 or 3 issues for them to publish a fix.

Today, that means finding & reading the 5 issues following a program before you start typing it in.

Good morning and merry Imbolc. Already the nights are shorter and the days longer. Though the world is cold and may get colder, may your home be blessed as your beacon of hope and refuge of warmth.

I know enough #Commodore #GEOS programming now that I can throw together a quick test program from scratch in less than an hour, with only stupid spelling mistakes.

TIL geoAssembler can't take a data file arg via GetFile, which means throwing together a quick test program is still 15-30 minutes of clicking & waiting, even with an (emulated) REU.

I'm sorely tempted to make my first serious program a dangerously ambitious IDE. Maybe like geoCOPE, but with CBM SEQ source files.

W👒​

I've been suffering from Microsoft Store error 0x80D02017 on Windows 10 2004 for months, preventing me from upgrading any metro apps, and it followed me to 20H2. I tried every single straw-grasping solution but one with no success at all.

The only one I haven't tried? The closest thing Windows 10 has to a nuke-and-pave: System Reset with the DFE option.

World class software engineering, folks!

Cryptocurrencies in general & NFTs in particular have all the signatures of a scam, but I struggled to put my finger on how. This 2 1/2 hour video articulates it, & it book-ends it with the '08 mortgage bubble: https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g

Fruit-free because the last Apples I obsessed over were the Mac SE/30, Mac Classic, IIgs, and IIplus.

Even though I fix PCs for a living, my perspective is rather uniquely that of a (fruit-free) Unix user who constantly wonders how Windows is considered an OS ready for desktop use.

The problem Microsoft has to clean up is that users of its most successful products were taught by an endless stream of ads (and obvious lack of user education) to click everything, without caring that very few of them were taught the social skills necessary to spot and question the weaselly behavior inherent in advertising.

The locked down nanny of a Web browser that Edge is, seems to be a brutally excessive way to do that, though.

It took three times of allowing the Firefox installer, all via hidden options, before Microsoft actually allowed the installer to run.

This ain't no fly-by-night, Microsoft!

Firefox? Mozilla? Not commonly downloaded? Is 1998 calling?

Microsoft, I know you're trying to shake your reputation as malware-friendly, but doing this when downloading a popular Web browser is over the Edge.

It seems the hardware was fine, but a brand new ethernet-free lappy fresh-installed with a manufacturer-supported OS according to the manufacturer support phone desk's instructions didn't have a compatible driver. Does anyone even think about driver availability?

Insert the generic dongle, pick a wifi network, lock up for lunch. Come back, eject dongle, and presto! The on-board wifi does what it should've done if the manufacturer thought for five seconds about the driver.

Y'know, @hp@twitter, in an age when everything needs to access a network to get anything done, integrating a network device that doesn't have driver support built in to a supported OS is not smart.

I shouldn't have to buy a generic wifi dongle to download & install a wifi driver.