The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Poor contrast, you say?

From me, Silver text signifies: I don't expect anything to be done about this but I'll raise it anyway.

BR

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

- likewise posts with a proliferation of symbolic elements.

That said, without attaching some sort of 'smiley' to a phrase/sentence intended to be light-heartedly humorous it is likely to be taken seriously, or even worse cause an avalanche of faux-outrage.

Idle thought - is 'Taylor Swift' the entertainer's real name or a literary reference to Jonathan.

I tend to agree that if I find the content of a message to be visually unappealing, I am unlikely to read it.

As for Taylor Alison Swift? That's her real name.

[BetterRed]

Windows: still can't pin shortcuts to settings URIs to the taskbar.

Here's a list of them ==>> https://4sysops.com/archives/list-of...in-windows-10/

BR

[cc_in_oh]

Another mixed result with Copilot -

what is a good chicken curry recipe that does not use coconut milk or yogurt?

It gave me 4 helpful links but I would think there should be a lot more. Way better than a conventional search that ignores my conditions though.

And

what is a good chicken curry recipe that does not use coconut milk or yogurt? No youtubes

correctly filtered those out. Potentially a big help in finding recipes without sugar or salt e.g.

[Comfy.n]

Quick Launch bar makes everything accessible at one click, including any settings shortcuts. On my Win11 VM, all I had to do to re-enable it was running Explorer Patcher. At work, I had my computer updated to Win11 today, and I doubt the IT department will allow EP installation.

[Comfy.n]

At least I'm not alone in this regard:

https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/24077

https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/com...e_the_classic/

[Renate]

I usually use "hot keys" for all my usual programs.
The problem is, hot keys are offered consecutively to all top-level windows to see who handles it.
If there is a top-level window that is slow to react it will eventually timeout.
This can add seconds of delay to your hot key reaction.

With my new W11, this is pretty bad.
I'll get around to writing a program to determine which window is causing problems.
It's clear that it's some background thing.
Hot keys react immediately after a new boot, but after a minute there is delay.

[ownedbycats]

Also, rogue hotkeys.

Hotkey Explorer used to be a godsend for this; a little utility that activated every keyboard combo and then intercepted the results in order to determine where the hotkeys were being used. Unfortunately, on 10 and above, the interception part failed hard, resulting in pretty much chaos as it opens a zillion windows and activates narrator and all sorts of things (my screen somehow flipping upside-down was the cherry on top).

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Also, rogue hotkeys.

Hotkey Explorer used to be a godsend for this; a little utility that activated every keyboard combo and then intercepted the results in order to determine where the hotkeys were being used. Unfortunately, on 10 and above, the interception part failed hard, resulting in pretty much chaos as it opens a zillion windows and activates narrator and all sorts of things (my screen somehow flipping upside-down was the cherry on top).

I remember you mentioning this episode a few times and I had something like that happen the other day within Treesize, where I had 43 files selected, mostly videos. Then I somehow pressed Enter instead of Alt + Enter, to see the properties (size) of the selected files, ouch. Took me more than 10 minutes to get out of this mess, but at least the screen kept running in proper orientation, lol.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

The reasons I decided to post in Times New Roman: (1) I like the look of a serif typeface over a san serif typeface and specifically Times New Roman, (2) Times New Roman is a somewhat neutral typeface without bad connotations (I'm looking at you Comic Sans and Papyrus), and (3) it is more readable that the default typeface.

Please stop with changing the font for no good reason.

[ownedbycats]

Modem is acting up. It's still... kinda working, though. Wifi is completely out. Ethernet sort of works but slow and keeps rebooting itself.

Going to take it back to the ISP and swap it out tomorrow.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Modem is acting up. It's still... kinda working, though. Wifi is completely out. Ethernet sort of works but slow and keeps rebooting itself.

Going to take it back to the ISP and swap it out tomorrow.

The modem went completely kaput and let out its magic smoke (not even powering on) not long after I posted this. Got out to the ISP's store and swapped out new modem and is working good now.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

The modem went completely kaput and let out its magic smoke (not even powering on) not long after I posted this. Got out to the ISP's store and swapped out new modem and is working good now.

I once had a meowing modem. Yes, literally. The modem started to make meowing sounds one day. At first I thought one of my cats did it and always looked for the culprit; then I discovered it was the modem. I've never heard a household appliance or an electronic device making such a sound before or since. It was eerie. I thought that clearly I had too many cats (three, actually, at the time) and could expect my fridge or washing machine meowing next.

My ISP swapped the meowing modem out after I reported it.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Also, rogue hotkeys.

… resulting in pretty much chaos as it opens a zillion windows and activates narrator and all sorts of things (my screen somehow flipping upside-down was the cherry on top).

Something similar happened to me yesterday when annotating a full-screen screen capture, inadvertently pressed the "Make this my wallpaper" hotkey… (who knew there was such a thing in IV)

WTF!

… and then I pressed IV's "Tile the wallpaper" hotkey.

Aaaargh

Needless to say I binned those hotkeys toot-sweet.

Desktop software should default to a bare minimum of hotkeys - let the user decide which features should have a hotkey, and what key sequence they want for each.

BR

[neil_swann80]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I once had a meowing modem. Yes, literally. The modem started to make meowing sounds one day. At first I thought one of my cats did it and always looked for the culprit; then I discovered it was the modem. I've never heard a household appliance or an electronic device making such a sound before or since. It was eerie. I thought that clearly I had too many cats (three, actually, at the time) and could expect my fridge or washing machine meowing next.

My ISP swapped the meowing modem out after I reported it.

It sounds like the internet became self aware and decided to try and communicate with felines over humanity.