whyoh

Those are made from used HP cartridges, so they have a shorter life span.

No, those are just repackaged OEM cartridges. And usually they've already been used, which is why they're cheaper.

HP cartridges including the printheads will take a lot of complexity away from the open design.

Yes, but it also means it won't be cheaper or more reliable than a regular printer. The print head is what fails most often and you'll still have to buy a new one.

basically everything has usb C on the device end

Yes, but we're talking about the ports on the Steam Machine, so the host end is what matters. And gaming peripherals are likely even more skewed towards USB A, because Macs are not the main target for that.

That might be the case for you. But if I search for USB mouse or keyboard on Amazon they're mostly USB A on the host end. And desktop PCs still have way more USB A than USB C ports. Macs are an exception.

You must be living in some (Apple?) bubble.

Most new gaming mice and keyboards sold in 2026 use USB A. Not to mention all the older ones that still work.

Why, is there a better alternative to the PHP-based forums? (I tried Discourse and it sucks.)

That probably had nothing to do with LibreOffice. Lots of people have had their MS accounts locked for no reason. I guess the automatic abuse detection system just sucks.

My advice is don't use a MS account if you can, at least not for anything critical. You don't need it for development, you can use 3rd party CAs for signatures.

The command (oobe\bypassnro) still works in 25H2. There was some talk that they're going to remove it, but so far it hasn't happened.

budget European airlines like Wizz that require an app to get a boarding pass.

They do not.

https://www.wizzair.com/en-gb/help-centre/check-in-and-board...

https://help.ryanair.com/hc/en-ie/articles/39758330098577-Wh...

Google and Apple's staff do look at people's photos, at least occasionally. The typical excuse is detecting rule violations.

It's not the same as doing this systematically (like Meta here), but these are shades of gray. A serious privacy law would prohibit both.

sending it to Meta AI would be a AVG (GDPR) violation in the Netherlands if no consent is given as you share it with a third party.

Wouldn't that make "photo cloud backups" without consent illegal as well?

People do that all the time, sending private photos to Google, Apple etc.

IMO the security pitchforking on OpenClaw is just so overdone.

Isn't the whole selling point of OpenClaw that you give it valuable (personal) data to work on, which would typically also be processed by 3rd party LLMs?

The security and privacy implications are massive. The only way to use it "safely" is by not giving it much of value.

This is the ISO I used, which, according to the MS website[1], is still the latest right now: Win11_25H2_English_x64.iso (SHA256: D141F6030FED50F75E2B03E1EB2E53646C4B21E5386047CB860AF5223F102A32)

I installed it offline in a VM, Home edition, US region. Shift+F10, oobe\bypassnro worked (with a warning/error at some step, but the local account was created fine). I read somewhere that it doesn't work if you connect to the internet during setup (which is always a bad idea IMO).

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11

Neither Home nor Pro really require a MS account. You can skip that during setup (for example with "bypassNRO"). This might change in the future, but as of 25H2 the workarounds still work.

I tried installing the latest 25H2 (stable iso) and nothing has changed so far. You can still use "bypassNRO" to set it up with a local account, offline. The planned changes will likely only affect the Home edition (Pro/Ent/Edu have more options). Even with Home edition there's a good chance you'll be able to make a local account with an answer file[1][2] or an unofficial tweak.

I think Windows will always be able to work without a MS account, because there are many critical (offline) deployments out there. But they'll probably make it difficult if you're using a "consumer" edition.

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactu...

[2] https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/

Not only in Europe. You can uninstall it in other regions too, very easily. This blog post is making some outright false claims.

disables their OS unless they turn on iCloud on their Mac -- then you can claim equivalence

What do you mean? Windows doesn't do that. Contrary to what the blog post claims, you can easily uninstall OneDrive (unlike iCloud).

And using Windows without an online account is possible, although the process is cumbersome enough to deter the average user.

That's not a fair take. The only things I noticed that were missing out of the box are the MS Store and some Dolby codecs. Both of those can be installed easily.

I estimate that 95% of people would be fine with Windows 10 21H2 LTSC. The 5% might miss some 3rd party software that requires version 22H2 to run (just because it's the latest, not for any technical reasons).

The screen is blurry 99% of the time. The only reliable way to get it sharp is to boot the PC with the screen attached.

That sounds like a (graphics driver) bug. It's not something I ever experienced on Windows 10, even when occasionally connecting an additional display set to 150% scaling. I believe you, though, bugs do happen.

not sure about your mac point. I sometimes use a mac and it works at 200% on two separate 4k screens.

I think his point is that on macOS you pretty much have to use 200%, whereas on Windows it can be any value (though multiples of 25% are recommended).

The cheapest base M4 Mac Mini has 16 Gigs of RAM and plays AAA games written for Mac today.

The frame rates are quite low on the base M4. Cyberpunk 2077 test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gID9S2hwJpU

I think you need an M4 Pro or a Max for a good gaming experience with AAA games.

it doesn't make any noise

You can hear the fan at full load, especially on the M4 Pro. I really wish Apple went with a larger case and fan for that chip, which would allow quieter cooling.

Also, many units are affected by idle (power supply) buzzing: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255853533?sortBy=rank

The Mac Mini is quieter than a typical PC, but it's not literally silent like, say, a smartphone.

Yep, thanks for clarifying.

So it's not such a good deal after all and it also means that a lot of regular people won't get those updates (because they either don't know how or can't be bothered to make an account).

The news here is that users in the EEA are not required to sign in with a Microsoft account to get the free updates.

It keeps active network connections ...

You can disable that behavior. See: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/146593-enable-disable-ne...

So that the laptop can keep phoning home and download updates etc whilst closed.

On Windows, network connectivity in S0 standby is optional: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/146593-enable-disable-ne...

Which means it's impossible to turn off the CPU during suspend. it's always on.

Hibernation is still an option, if you don't mind a slower resume.

It's crazy how unreliable CPUs have become in the last 5 years or so, both AMD and Intel. And it seems they're all running at their limit from the factory, whereas 10-20 years ago they usually had ample headroom for overclocking.

dropping support for CPUs that are only a few years old

Isn't it only 2017 CPUs and older? So that's at least ~9 years of free updates (free updates stop at the end of 2026 with the extension), which is frankly better than most other OSs.

If you include paid ESU updates it's at least ~11 years and if you include LTSC it's even way longer than that.

There are many things we can complain about when it comes to Windows, but I wouldn't say long term support is one of them. It's generally better than macOS or Linux distros, not to mention smartphones.

had to download random executables from websites

I don't remember being forced to use a randomizer for downloading executables...

Actually, people are more likely to install random apps from an app store, because the OS promotes that behavior.

Are there similar examples from Europe or the West? I know there are restrictions for promoting Nazism in some countries, but the UK seems to be an outlier when it comes to censoring offensive content in general.