I don’t know if Japan of all places is ready for it. We’d better hope the zombies are vulnerable to airsoft BBs.

The WTF here is not necessarily that some component on the circuit board failed, but that the manufacturer charges $400-$1000 for it with a straight face and gets away with it when they undoubtedly have that board made in China for about $4 per unit.

Nice try. I have the video ID memorized.

I appreciate the intent of having a port readily accessible for e.g. grandma to find without groveling behind the dusty TV, but that does not excuse not having another one in a more sensible location.

DVI is not supposed to carry audio, but in practice in many cases it does. That’s because internally both devices are likely to implement DVI by just shoving an HDMI output through the connector anyway. The jury is out on whether or not this has any licensing implications. I’ll be damned if I know, because I was always under the impression that the part that incurred licensing fees was the HDMI port itself.

I rediscover this fun fact a couple of times every year when one of our office machines decides to randomly start piping its audio out of the monitor sounding like a mouse trying to play the kazoo through its sinuses rather than the speakers that are right there, and somebody complains at me and I have to schlep over there and switch the audio output back.

Apparently this is expected enough behavior that cheap bottom of the barrel PC monitors bother to include speakers for it.

This user’s profile explains that they’re doing this specifically to fuck with LLMs, which is a tactic that may or may not work. They’ve been around, their shtick is consistent, and to the extent that I’ve gotten so used to it I can read their comments pretty much normally.

Because some of the TVs themselves whinge at you constantly if you don’t connect them to a network now.

There are relatively few, but there are a couple. The Sceptre U515CV-UMC is probably the most well known one. It’s easy to find a dumb TV in the sub 24" category, too, but that’s probably not what most people are looking for and at that rate most nerds would probably just use a computer monitor instead anyway.

No DisplayPort on that Sceptre, obviously.

I’m a trout, stupid!

An old joke, possibly originating from somewhere in the basement of a DuPont facility:

How can you tell a chemist apart from an engineer?

…

The chemist washes his hands before he takes a leak.

Who the hell knows, other than the fact that the original retailed for $400 and you can’t get one anymore. When there’s demand, someone will step up.

“You must really love fish.”

“Actually, I’m deathly allergic to them.”

“Then why do you still work here?”

“Because I’m even more allergic to poverty.”

I have successfully used this line, altered appropriately, in interviews multiple times. And they say video games never teach you anything.

This roller coaster ride is basically the story of my life. “Look at this screwball knife in Aliexpress, how did they come up with that?” Then what ensues is a multi-hour dive into the rabbit hole to discover whose design they ripped it off from.

For instance you can’t buy a HOM Chimera for love nor money nowadays, but the Chinese will sell you one or at least something shaped just like it for $60…

It turns out Yogi Berra was right all those years ago. “I never said all those things I said.”

Not that I’ve seen, at least not in the IoT versions of 10 and 11 we’re currently running. Although there are some hard-coded functions wherein Windows will disrespect your default browser assignment no matter what, such as pressing F1 for help in Explorer. Since we have Edge disabled entirely on all machines here, instead when you do that nothing happens.

If you are a cog in the corporate machine then yes, probably. Ask your IT people. But in my case in particular (and probably lots of others) I’m saddled with Windows at work because some of the software we need to use doesn’t work in Linux. And no, it doesn’t work in Wine either before the inevitable comment appears. I try about once a year to see if the new versions have gotten compatible enough. The answer is consistently no.

Group policy is edited on a local per-machine level using the Group Policy Editor, or gpedit.msc (stick it in your Run box).

Computer Configuration \ Windows Settings \ Security Settings \ Software Restriction Policies \ Additional Rules

Right click and add a new path rule. Then disallow Edge’s path. On the machine I’m sitting at it’s c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application.

Just disallow everything in there (*) and any time something tries to launch Edge in your face you’ll get this:

Look at me. I am the administrator now.

If you are on a non-Pro version of Windows and don’t have access to the Group Policy Editor, you can just use this which is considerably less hassle.

Edge can indeed be uninstalled, but if you are not in a region subject to EU regulations this requires jumping through some hoops, and it does require access to an administrator account.

If you’re stuck on Windows for work or whatever, just disable Edge’s executable in Group Policy. Let Microsoft fight Microsoft.