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Just to point out that all the long-term smokers I ever knew died of lung cancer – not a pleasant way to die.

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Fred

I am disappointed Brian’s article was not included in the free newsletter as a public service. I tweeted a short quote with link (people then decide if they want to pay to read it).

Correction – Windows Hello Fingerprint was/is grayed out. Windows Hello PIN works fine.

Yes it’s listed in Device Manager and says it’s working ok.
I’ve done many Windows updates since April 2022 when I couldn’t set Windows Hello Fingerprint in the sign-in options – grayed out. At the time I tried searching ASUS for updates, reinstalling the last driver from 2017, restoring Windows an image backup, searching forums – finally gave up.

Tthe only recent change was a Win update as mentioned. I’m tempted to revert to a backup before that as a last resort.  (About a year ago a Windows schedule for Universal Orchestrator caused havoc  on some PCs until it was updated. I hope this isn’t a repeat.)

I meant to say it doesn’t support hybrid sleep!

Sleep works normally.. and has for a long time. My laptop doesn’t even support s3 sleep. The hibernation started happening when it shouldn’t. Maybe it shutting down in the night… Starting up from either looks the same. Finding a scheduled program that could do this is like finding a needle in a haystack.

I have used Android BatteryBot Pro for 2 years on a 6-year old Oneplus One (battery not replaceable). Several features make it a great app. You can set quiet alarms for ‘rising above 80%’ (bird chirp) and ‘falling below %60’ (low tone). I added alarms every 5% for missed alarms. The alarm for 90% is a hundred birds! Added bonus: a small circle widget with a large % number which can be seen at a glance, and tap it for setting, history etc. There are settings for details in the notification area and % in the status bar. (in image 8° is from Weawow app)

[geek]

In Ontario (Canada) the problem began with chopping Ontario Public Health budgets after election of a ‘new’ government. When the pandemic struck, Premier Ford decided to be in charge of everything. But instead of funding Public Health to do it’s historical job of organized vaccination clinics, he inexplicably created an entirely new organization led by a retired military officer. The result is a slow train wreck.  Then, instead of buying a working online reservation system, they created their own without proper testing – it failed on the first day for many people outside Toronto. When they tried the phone number published everywhere, they were on hold for 2-5 hours – only to be told that number was for Toronto residents. I haven’t yet heard how that fiasco happened!

A bit more on-topic, using the Ontario Public Health site, I couldn’t find some information until I happened to hover over some ‘words’ at the top! Not blue, not underlined, not buttons or anything else that shouts “Menu”.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by geek.

What do you mean by “I have locked these systems down”? I assume Win7 no longer has updates from Microsoft, so how do you keep the bad stuff out?

I’m one of the older people. As a former programmer and web designer, I get annoyed by websites with gray text on white background, or white text on gray background, or font so small I can hardly read it. If it’s a large company, I give them my polite feedback, as they ought to know better. But today I wanted to thank you for your article and didn’t see the button because it was gray on white. Oops!

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Charlie, OscarCP

I found the perfect solution to my inkjet printer frequent use of expensive cartridges.  I talked to a salesman at the local Best Buy that i don’t print much and don’t need colour.  He suggested a black & white laser printer (Samsung ML-2165W was on sale for $70cad).  I turn the printer off after a print operation even though it will sleep to save power.  Cartridges last a year or two and cost less than the old printer. Best of all, a wireless printer works for all our devices.

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Steve

Microfix wrote:

dunno, Python script which isn’t playing well?
You might want to visit the authors site.
https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes/

I emailed them using the one listed on their site but no reply.

When I tried to run Fawkes-0.3.exe, I got a popup “Failed to execute script app_qt”  (Win10 Home v1909) What am I missing?

geekdom wrote:

I would like to permanently disable or remove such options as Cortana, XBox, Edge, and other nonessential Microsoft bling. There seems to be no way of permanent removal without invasive gymnastics that could affect system integrity.

I’ve turned off what I am able to turn off and ignored the rest.

There’s a program called 10AppsManager that promises to remove any app – I have not tried it so suggest you check it out before downloading it.