I am in IT, and personally speaking, with my own machines, I have never had these power settings not be obeyed.

And the only time when I have seen these settings “not be obeyed” in other systems is because either,

1. Someone or some other non-Microsoft software had dicked with power settings through the registry/GPO, or
2. I’ve been able to trace things down to hardware malfunctions or hardware discrepancies.

I have seen that type. The keyboard is usually inset a mm or three along with that indent extending to the edges, allowing airflow to continue even when the lid is closed.

And why couldn’t they have done that to the student loans system?

Like JFC, they could have instantly made themselves immune from trial-by-jury anywhere in America by doing that one tiny thing.

How do so many tech people not know about the power settings that can let the laptop run 100% even with the lid closed and on battery power?

Like, how stupid are they? Has AI really atrophied their tech skills that much?

Now if only Apple will let Firefox run its own rendering engine instead of Safari’s.

Like, that’s the only thing I don’t get. Other apps which are not web browsers, fine. Use Safari. But an actual web browser? FFS, let them use their own engine.

TL;DR: people don’t like being packed in like sardines. Give them space to have kids.

Credit card imprinters.

In western Canada the electronic ones used to be called sliders (from when the magnetic strip was still widely used, before chip & pin), and these were called strikers (from how the card was pressed or physically struck onto the paper).

Hand taser? Like, one of those easily-concealed ones?

A hand buzzer works, too, but it needs a certain amount of moisture on the skin to work, and foot dampness varies a lot more than hand dampness due to keratin and callouses.

Or a vertically-sliding blade of some kind. A lot more theatrical, that one.

Your example can be wholly explained by inadequate knowledge of visual design (UI/UX, to be specific), especially from a consumption/access position. That’s a technical outcome which is a result of ignorance or failures, not a sales outcome from an explicit strategy of obfuscation.

To put it another way, people making too-small signs for their yard sale that drivers just cannot see at speed, is not the same as companies going “call for pricing”. That would be the same as signs saying, “call us for the yard sale address”. The former is wholly unintentional and borne out of ignorance, the latter is completely intentional anything but accidental.

Thankfully that’s one of the first things I uninstall with every Windows computer I set up.

Downside is that this update might force a reinstall. Shit.

OpenOffice wanders into the chat

Some, like ImageGlass, provide workarounds. Like, they provide a separate install but it also comes bundled with the Opera browser (which itself has become two shakes away from raw spyware as of late), so you do have to be careful to deselect that option.

The 2017 full version of SketchUp is similarly free, FYI. You just have to dig for it on the website.

I can’t believe that marketing people are this fucking stupid.

Like, full-on knuckle-dragging morons.

They intentionally drive away more paying customers than they could ever “channelize” with this method.

Because most people realize that prices are only ever hidden for malicious, anti-consumer purposes.

No-one.

Absolutely no-one.

If I get widowed tomorrow, imma gonna stay single for the rest of my days.

Not only am I edging into that age where I am becoming increasingly cranky and unwilling to change for someone else (I have changed enough for my wife of 30 years), but I have also been keeping a light finger on what’s happening out there between the sexes, and holy shite that’s become one hell of a mess that I want absolutely nothing to do with.

I mean, the door isn’t going to be barred and locked. But it is going to be firmly closed and with a cinder block in the way. If someone wants through, they are going to have to demonstrate real effort in their pursuit of me.

But then again, I would be shocked AF if any woman thought pursuit of any kind wasn’t beneath them. So I guess my peace and quiet would be quite safe. Thank the lord.

Even at my sickest, I was always able to make something to eat, even if it was simple like cracking open some of my own canned spaghetti sauce and boiling some noodles.

Being sick has always been a wholly inadequate argument for not making something healthy to eat.

Now, an evening where a sit-down supper would be impossible - Halloween being our only consistent pizza night - that is a different story. But those happen only a few days a year.

No, I have always phoned ahead to order, but I have always picked up the order personally.

The savings having done so have always been more than the fuel spent to retrieve the order.

The only things I have delivered to me are packages and envelopes through the mail.

Granted, I am GenX, but I can’t recall a single time in the last half a decade where I’ve had anything like food delivered. Or used the services of any kind of gig company.

And I simply can’t think of any benefit of doing so. It’s horrendously expensive, and simply not worth the expense.

I’ve looked at some tentative projections, and it’s downright apocalyptic.

At our current “business as usual” path, we should be expecting wholesale collapse of countries by 2035 or shortly thereafter, with +4℃ temps causing agriculture destruction that leads to a 60-80% drop in human populations by 2050.

And when people are desperate to live another day, they will absolutely tear apart any infrastructure they can get their hands on in order to survive. We’re talking about reverting to the Iron Age or even the Stone Age.

And when almost 100% of all resources required for building or even maintaining high tech civ are no longer accessible without high tech civ… there is no coming back from this collapse.