Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

Exploding carrots.

I microwaved a can of Healthy Choice chicken soup (because it has tolerably low sodium) according to its directions. One of the carrots exploded with enough force to push up the loosely covering lid and bounce out of the bowl. When it was ready, I saw the carrot piece, waited for it to cool enough to touch, and picked it up. The carrot exploded a second time in my fingers.

Random ISP help:

If you own pets, then you probably know to check whether they unplugged modems, routers, & network cables when your 'Net stops working.

But check if your devices have on/off switches or buttons as well. Especially a wifi on/off switch. Especially if you have cats.

I have the best customers, but sometimes their four-footed housemates break things subtly.

Also also, the two hardest problems in all of comp-sci are cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors. Oops.

Also, no, you're not imagining things. Microsoft made printer management much harder and more confusing in Windows 11 than it is in Windows 10.

Random Windows help:
If you're struggling to get your new Walmart printer to print from your new Walmart laptop, do two things. 1) Check that both ink cartridges are fully inserted and latched in. 2) Restart Windows 11, even if you think it doesn't need it. 3) Load enough paper to print all of the test print jobs you accidentally queued up.

The only truth in OpenAI's very name is the word "artificial," but even then, only if the name is an acronym.

The USA is buying 81 USSR combat aircraft for less than $20,000 each. https://www.india.com/video-gallery/why-us-is-buying-81-soviet-era-combat-aircraft-from-russias-ally-russia-ukraine-war-6893412/

This makes me unreasonably upset because 1) I'd need a loan of at least that much to buy the cheapest car, and 2) I can't imagine old Soviet planes being harder or more expensive to maintain than just-as-old American cars. I was somehow able to keep a Ford Tempo as a daily driver for years; I can't imagine a defanged MiG 27 being much harder for a discount Jetsons' future.

Also, since it's spam itself, the spam outfit behind it is overcharging, and the actual going rate per message for blasting spam is much, much lower.

That's why literally 10 million people could know spam when they see it, except just one who falls for its scam, and the spammer still comes out ahead.

(This isn't a rule on my instance. It's just good etiquette on any instance.)

Please add alt text to your images. It doesn't just help blind and low-vision people. It helps the fully sighted on crappy computers and crappy browsers and crappy connections to understand what you're showing us.

Please add alt text especially if you're sharing a text-only screen capture. The alt text description limit is a lot higher than the main post body text limit.

(...of out-of-copyright mathematical computation books.)

Current distraction: being a computer and doing all the downloading.