Monotasking in word processing

Written as comment reply to an interesting blog post.

In Windows, the once built-in Windows WordPad would qualify as a no-frills program, but it itself doesn't prevent notifications in Windows. WordPad was available until Windows 11 v. 23H2 (incl.). Windows 11 24H2 will remove WordPad upon install.

Then Microsoft once released Word for DOS 5.5 for free as part of its Y2K effort, but it's probably legal only on owning a Word for DOS license, which for version 5.5/6.0 cost $450 around the time of their release (1990, 1993, I can't tell which year).

Unfortunately, Word for DOS only supports FAT16, requiring wait times for modern Windows to convert filenames from FAT32. Neither does it support long filenames.

File format conversion is also tricky, but the RTF format is universal. The next-best proprietary option is/was Microsoft Works, which was a more affordable no-frills suite of business software that could do most things, but not to the extent of Microsoft Office. Microsoft Works was also available for DOS.

Windows 7 is the last consumer version of Windows to support classic themes and their customisation. But it's out of date.

Curiously, the default interface of Windows 8, which was developed with tablet computers in mind, is more aligned towards monotasking.

The next-best option is LibreOffice. It has full-screen editing with Shift+Ctrl+J.

Until version 24.8 (incl.), LibreOffice retains the possibility to theme the internal document view via

Tools > Options > Application Colors.

There, a user can edit the current theme, such as colours of all elements, including background colour and text, and save it as new with a custom name. This does no affect the toolbar and other UI background colours.

This release of LibreOffice has also attained good dark mode support:

In Tools > Options > View > pick Appearance mode as Dark.

In upscaled displays (150% in HD monitors), the best icon themes are marked "SVG + dark". That way, the lines in icons will look smoother.

From LibreOffice 25.2 on, application colors for document/file view can no longer be user-customised.

Unfortunately, this change was done in the name of 'unifying' the user interface around theming, and an extension system was recommended as a replacement.

Previous major LibreOffice releases have support for system dark mode, background themes (images) for the toolbar (including custom themes from Firefox Personas between LO 4.0–6.2, so long as the Firefox Personas website was up), and customisation of the document view.

Nokia 125. A review.

On December 24, I went to celebrate Christmas in Tartu.

On the very hurried way to the train, I dropped my regular dual-SIM Nokia 130 button phone into a puddle, and I think its microphone broke, but I hadn't discovered this until the second day of my stay in Tartu, when I finally needed to make a phone call.

It was holiday time, and all the mobile phone shops in Tartu were closed.

I met a friend in the city, who took me to Prisma, which is the local Finnish big-box store — the only one consistently open through holidays — and bought a Nokia 125 (dual-SIM, mini-SIM) for €25.

There were better Nokia models available, including even Nokia 130 (ariund €69, IIRC), but those units were more expensive, locked behind a counter, and I didn't bother calling a store employee to unlock it.

(The other reason was, that it was the end of a month, and I'd already splurged on gifts, so I didn't yet feel ready to spend extra for a brand-new phone.)

I specifically also wanted a dual-SIM phone that would accept mini-SIM cards

HMD's phone packaging is unambiguous as to whether a phone is dual-DIM or not — dual-SIM devices have two bar codes and two sets of unlock codes.

Whether an HMD-made phone supports mini-SIM, micro-SIM, or nano-SIM cards, is ambiguous, and my friend and I had to check the GSM Arena website about each prospective model for verification.

(Because some of the models were locked behind a counter, we didn't have access to the side of each different Nokia/HMD box with that information.)

Compared to the small and compact Nokia 130, Nokia 125 is big and has big buttons — a senior's phone.

Compared to Nokia 130, Nokia 125 also doesn't have Bluetooth, no microSD card reader, and no MP3 player.

The better features in Nokia 125 are headset-independent FM radio, which might explain the size, and a more powerful torchlight.

Nokia 125 (and 130) both support USB charging using the micro-USB (micro-B) connector. This comes handy when charging on the move with a dedicated USB cable in public transport.

The box for Nokia 125 contains only the phone and the charger with an inseparable cable. No headset was included.

Otherwise, the phone is really basic — it only has English and Nordic languages for the user interface, only one background image, only two ringtones (no way to add more), and not the most responsive user interface.

Unlike Nokia 130, Nokia 125 also doesn't support the Cyrillic alphabet. Considering the languages involved for the UI, the model was probably meant for people in the Nordic/Western regions who only interact via SMS with people using the Latin alphabet.

But Estonia has a large Russian-speaking population (ca 25%), and I sometimes use my featurephones for work, too, occasionally interacting with Russian-speaking coworkers.

Receiving SMSes as blank squares is not a good thing, if I must forward that SMS to my smartphone just to read its contents.

Considering the paucity of ringtones, background images, and user interface languages — not even Estonian was included, in Estonia (!) — then it seems, that HMD, the maker of Nokia 125, was probably in a hurry to release the model. But this is only speculation.

Hopefully, HMD will update its packaging, so that some of the important phone features — single/dual-SIM, type of SIM card, microSD card support, presence of Bluetooth (if any), 2G/3G/4G network support — would be visible on all sides of the box, to better inform customers.

CSV-teksti asetamine Androidi installitud tabelarvutusprogrammis

See oli redditi-lõngas äppide välja lülitamisest Androidis (Android 14 ja varasemate näitel).

Disable-võimalus tuleb ainult sisse-ehitatud äppidele, ning ka mitte kõigile.

Osad äpid, kui nende uuendused on maha installitud, muutuvad süsteemiäppideks, seega tuleb äpilistis näidata ära ka süsteemiäpid.

Kahjuks pole siis ka äpilistis (lausa Android 14-s) kirjas, et kumb äpp on eraldi installitud ja kumb on süsteemiäpp.

Seda muret on võimalik leevendada:

Ostsin endale hiljuti uue nutitelefoni ja siis tuli vajadus automaatselt genereerida nimekirja äppidest ja nende versioonidest, mis telefonis on.

Abiks tuli AppList, mis on saadaval F-Droid äpipoest või samanimeliselt veebisaidilt. AppList genereerib nimekirja automaatselt, kuid tuleb kolme-nupu menüüst valida "System apps", et saaks täielikuma ülevaate.

Siis eksportida nimekiri, mis sisaldab ka infot selle kohta, kas äpp on süsteemiäpp.

Installisin eelnevalt Markor äpi, kuhu AppListi andmed sain eksportida CSV kujul.

See on üks väheseid tekstitoimetamise äppe, mille ma olin uuele telefonile installinud, mis võttis eksporditud nimekirja vastu (õieti, mis oli eksporditava teksti sihtrakenduste nimekirjas).

Mis puutub failihaldusse, siis Markorit esialgu väga lihtne kasutada ei ole.

Markoris saab CSV-andmed kõik valida ja kopeerida puhvrisse. Siis asetada mõnda tabelarvutusäppi, nagu Google Sheets, kuigi mul oli lihtsam see asetada AndrOpen Office'isse.

AndrOpen Office on omanduslik port ja haruarendus Apache OpenOffice'ist (varasem OpenOffice.org, millele eelnes StarOffice). Eelis on selles, et mobiili jaoks mõeldud liidese asemel on sellel pigem desktopi-programmiga sarnane liides, mis on tuttav.

AndrOpen Office'is on reklaamid, aga need ei ole mul nähtavad, sest mul on installitud ja enam-vähem okeilt seadistatud DNS66, mis süsteemiüleselt blokeerib äpireklaamid (v.a. YouTube'is ja mõnes suuremas äpis).

AndrOpen Office Calc-is tuleb kõigepealt valida kogu tööleht ja Format > Cells. Seal tuleb valida "text" (valikuid tuleb kerida), siis ok.

Edasi asetada puhvrisse kopeeritud tekst Edit > Paste Special käsuga, kus CSV-teksti eraldajana tuleb märkida koma, välistada tühikud ja tabeldusmärk (tab), ning siis tee linnuke "format quoted field as text" juurde ja siis lülita välja "detect special numbers". Vajuta OK.

Tulemus:

Getting to see the analog clock in Windows 10/11

The analogue clock is supposedly no more in Windows 11, and probably also in Windows 10: Only the clock app icon has an analogue face, but that's kinda it for this app.

Downloading an app from Microsoft Store is one option. Installing Linux over Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to run something like xclock is yet another option, but would take plenty of storage and a lot of additional RAM memory.

And what if Microsoft Store cannot be accessed for whatever reason, and Linux-over-WSL cannot be installed? Parts of Linux are not always easy for beginners either. Or what if one doesn't want to download an app, in pursuit of a built-in solution native to Windows?

So, there is a thing called the Date and Time Control Panel applet, which does have an analog clock. It has no dark theme, unfortunately.

Over the years, this applet has been reworked a few times, but it has always shown an analog clock since Windows 95. Windows 3.1 and earlier had a dedicated clock program. Between Windows 95 and Windows XP, the applet could usually be accessed by double-clicking the clock in the taskbar.

Windows Vista introduced a very nice analog clock widget, which I think carried over to Windows 7. I don't know if this widget was ever present in Windows 8/8.1.

The applet's filename is timedate.cpl, and it's located in the System32 folder, the typical address being

C:\Windows\System32\timedate.cpl

Getting to access it, or creating a shortcut to it depends on whether one has the necessary access privileges. On most computers at the private/consumer end, this is possible. In business and enterprise settings, a Windows system may be variously restricted per policies set or deployed by the company IT department, usually through group policy.

Open Control Panel, open Date and Time, and the analog clock is there.

For quick access, right-click on the Date and Time item, and click on Create shortcut. This will create a shortcut to the applet on the Windows desktop. The shortcut can then be renamed to whatever you like: "Analog clock", "Date and Time", or something else.

The desktop shortcut can then be copied to the Start menu, but cannot be moved there via drag-and-drop, and cannot be moved or pinned to the taskbar either.

The desktop shortcut can be copied to several locations.

To find out what those are, it's useful to investigate the locations of some of the Start menu shortcuts. Right-click on several to find out which of their context menus offer the Open file location command. This applies to shortcuts of non-UWP apps. Clicking on this command will open the folder where the shortcut is located at.

One of the more common locations is

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

— but copying a shortcut there may require User Account Control (UAC) confirmation.

Copying the shortcut to the Programs folder in the local user profile is more useful, as it has fewer restrictions, and is visible in the All apps section of the logged-on user's Start menu:

C:\Users\yourUsername\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

Changes made in either folder will reflect in the All apps section of the Start menu. From there, one can right-click on the shortcut to pin it to Start from the context menu.

Installing the Ted word processor in modern Linux

So one day, I'd installed Debian 11 in Windows 11 using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). This one is a separate ordeal, and today I discovered, that the install even included LibreOffice, which I didn't think I needed to download and install, as I have the same package on Windows already.

Installing a small word processor program ontop of an installation of Debian running atop WSL in Windows 11 is perhaps a form of overkill in terms of memory and storage requirements, since WordPad itself is still present, and Windows-native small-footprint open source word processors exist, too; one of them being the fabled AbiWord. But Linux in Windows is very much another story.

WSL did make it possible for me to investigate how to install Ted in modern Debian, as a proof of concept. — without having to use a LiveCD/LiveUSB variant of Linux, and without the opportunity to use either. One of the reasons was, that the hardware is a modern notebook computer able to run Windows 11; this laptop does not have an internal optical drive, and I don't have any form of external storage that I could use to run a LiveUSB variant of Linux.

Contents

• About Ted
• Pick your architecture
• Required dependencies for Ted
• Finding out what dependencies to install for old or obscure packages in Debian
• Configuring user interface font sizes
• Screenshot of Ted

About Ted

Ted is a simple Linux-based word processor for RTF documents, and its history goes back to November 1998 or even earlier; version 2.0 of the program was released on 9 November 1998.

Ted is more advanced than any plain text editor, such as Notepad or Nano, very roughly equivalent to — and often more advanced than WordPad, and more basic than AbiWord.

Compared to WordPad, Ted includes more formatting capabilities, spell-checking functionality, and can export files into HTML, EML (HTML mail message), EPUB, PostScript, and PDF formats. It can only open plain text files and RTF files. Ted 2.23 introduced a basic autosave function to help recover files in the event the app suddenly exits.

AbiWord, OTOH, is more advanced, and comparable to the word processing component of Microsoft Works. AbiWord can open, save, and export a greater amount of document formats; it has a proper toolbar, page zoom, and plugin support, spelling and grammar checking, the highlighting of misspelled words; document annotations, revisions, and versioning, and collaboration functionality. The last AbiWord release for Windows is v. 2.9.4 (from 25 November 2012), and remains available for download.

Ted is one of the most fitting Unix/Linux word processing programs for really old computers: its storage requirements are small, and its memory footprint low. I remember in 2005, I could launch it relatively quickly in a 120 MHz computer with Debian 3.0 and just 32 MB of RAM.

The installed size of Ted is 9.76 Mb, while the installed size of AbiWord is roughly 25 Mb. Ted is one of the smallest word processing programs for Linux. In terms of size, it would be competing with Pathetic Writer of Siag Office.

There can be instances, when Ted might crash, such as when quickly browsing through different fonts in the fonts dialog, so take care to save your work regularly.

The latest version of Ted is 2.23, dated 4 February 2013, and its installers are available at the Ted homepage.

Pick your architecture

Given the 64-bit nature of Windows 11, Debian over WSL is also 64-bit. The architecture in use is usually called amd64, even if the CPU in a consumer-grade computer was made by Intel or VIA. 64-bit Ted is available as ted-2.23-amd64.deb.

IA-64, aka Itanium, is Intel's own in-house 64-bit architecture, which is incompatible with AMD64. IA-64 should not be confused with Intel 64 or EM64T, as these two are the names of Intel's implementation of the AMD64 architecture. IA-64 has been discontinued. Its chips have always had niche uses, and they're not found in most PCs.

Installers of Ted for other architectures and operating systems, its language packs, and spelling dictionaries are available at the official Ted FTP directory here.

Required dependencies for Ted

The main problem is, that Ted has several old dependencies that are not available in any modern version of Debian, as Ted has not been maintained since 2013. The .deb packages must each be downloaded and installed separately.

Installation goes with dpkg in the command line. For the sake of simplicity, make sure the current folder is the same where the downloaded .deb packages are located.

$ sudo dpkg -i packagename.deb

Install packages in roughly this order:

Package	Download link	Download page	Notes / From
multiarch-support	multiarch-support_2.28-10+deb10u2_amd64.deb	Package page / AMD64 package download page	Install this package before anything else. Debian 10 Update 2 (Buster)
libjpeg8	libjpeg8_8d-1+deb7u1_amd64.deb	Debian archive	Debian 7 Update 1 (Wheezy)
libpng12	libpng12-0_1.2.49-1+deb7u2_amd64.deb	Debian archive	Debian 7 Update 2 (Wheezy)
libtiff4	libtiff4_3.9.4-5+squeeze10_amd64.deb	Debian archive	Debian 6 Squeeze

Then install ted-2.23-amd64.deb.

After installation has completed, the shortcut to Ted should be visible in:

Start Menu > All Apps > Debian > "Ted rtf text processor (Debian)", with a dedicated icon. The shortcut can then be pinned to Start or the taskbar.

Subsequent to that, a spelling dictionary can be installed. Their .deb filenames use this naming format: ted_en_GB-2.23.all.deb. Make sure Ted is closed when installing dictionaries.

Finding out what dependencies to install for old or obscure packages in Debian.

I had actually used dpkg to try to install Ted first, not knowing what the dependencies were, and dpkg had promptly informed me what the required packages were. The installation was not finalised because of the missing packages.

apt-get install required_packagename did not help, as the package list for Debian 11 did not contain the names of those old packages.

The Debian installation also includes the Synaptic package manager front-end. I couldn't activate it through the start menu, but could launch it from the Debian command line:

$ synaptic &

This starts Synaptic without administrative privileges. That's just enough to find out information.

In Synaptic:

1. click on "Status" in the bottom left section > then click on Installed in the top left page.
2. The list to the right shows the list of all installed packages.
3. Click into the list to focus into it.
4. Type ted to search for the package.
5. If the install failed or did not finalise, the package is marked with red.
6. Right-click Ted, select Properties
7. In the Properties window, click on the Dependencies tab.
8. The Dependencies tab is self-explanatory, and lists all the packages required for a program, component, or package to work.
9. Packages listed in italics are missing from the system. This should inform users as to which packages to look for on the web.

Configuring user interface font sizes

Graphical apps installed with Debian over WSL by default have small font sizes, as they don't recognise Windows scaling settings. On my computer, very nearly all display elements are scaled to 150% in Windows, which Debian are unaware of.

Fortunately, there are two configuration programs that can fix that.

One is xfce4-appearance-settings. In Application Finder, it's listed under Settings > Appearance, but fails to launch from there. It does launch from the command line:

$ xfce4-appearance-settings &

There, it's easy to change the look and feel of most graphical programs; the most important would be the font size.

But Ted is an older program, so it requires the installation of gtk-chtheme, which is a front-end to change GTK+ 2.0 themes.

gtk-chtheme can be installed that way from the command line:

$ apt-get-install gtk-chtheme

or by launching Synaptic as sudo from the command line:

$ sudo synaptic
On invoking a command with sudo, you may be prompted to enter a password.

In Synaptic:

1. Click the Search button, enter gtk-chtheme in the Find dialog, click Search or press Enter.
2. gtk-chtheme should be listed in the results >
3. Right-click on the gtk-chtheme package, select "Mark for Installation."
4. Click Apply in the toolbar > review information in the Summary window. It contains details about what packages would be installed. > Click Apply.
5. Once you get the 'Changes applied' window, it should be safe to close it, and quit Synaptic.

Subsequent to the installation, a "Gtk-ChTheme (Debian)" item will appear in the Debian folder in the All apps section of the Windows Start menu, and it can be launched from there. Its user interface is similar to xfce4-appearance-settings. Changing the font size to 14 pixels or greater should improve the legibility of menus and most other user interface items in Ted. Themes can be changed, too, from light to dark.

Ukraine is Europe. Not post-Soviet.

This time, this post won't be about technology. As I'd posted this with my social media username, I decided to repost it here, and not in another blog.

Ukraine is no longer post-Soviet, and it has ceased being that one or two generations ago.

Herein, I'll try to refer to Ukraine in terms of political geography, and not its geographical location. Geographically, Ukraine has always been a part of Europe in general, and Eastern Europe in particular.

For a time, Ukraine was post-Soviet, as were many other countries that gained or regained independence from the very collapsed USSR.

Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, and others have always been Eastern Europe, both geographically and politically. But these were part of the Eastern Bloc, and not incorporated into the Soviet Union, whereas Ukraine and the Baltics were.

When all these countries joined the EU and NATO, Ukraine stayed outside, and so, it was not necessarily a part of the integrated Eastern Europe: there was the Eastern Europe within the European Union, and the wider, unintegrated Eastern Europe, some of which Russia erroneously regarded as within its "sphere of influence".

Can't say exactly what the correct cut-off date would be to declare the end of the post-Soviet period in Ukraine, because Ukraine's transition period has been longer than that of the Baltics, and Ukraine has had longer-term problems with regular and political corruption. (Massive political corruption ended in 2014.)

There's a group of formative events, each of which signal a step away from "post-Soviet". These are the Orange Revolution in 2003, then Euromaidan in 2013, which carried over into the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, when the very corrupt pro-Russian president Yanukovych fled to Russia.

Ukraine's slow progression could be attributed to its size; lack of a long-term non-communist independence period before the USSR, the legacy of its Soviet era and the politicians from thence; corruption; and being land-locked in the northern and western directions, sequestered away from Western Europe.

There were other factors, too:

• Ambivalence towards Russia, in the sense of a perception in Ukrainians of them supposedly being able "to deal with both sides amicably" (resp. the West and Russia), and going for neutrality, perhaps in a vain attempt at playing a Switzerland or an Austria (both rich countries, and as declaratively neutral as they can get). For a long time, Ukraine had been wobbling like that between the two;
• pro-Russian sentiment in the east of Ukraine, which was reflected in election results, with the (long-former) Party of the Regions seeing very favourable outcomes, which, during its run, had a view of tilting the political scales not exactly towards Europe, though not decidedly away in the fashion of Belarus. That was before 2013. And
• perhaps either the paucity of Ukrainian-origin culture compared to the massive cultural output from Russia, or the prevalence of Russian-language and Russian-origin culture in Ukraine, especially in its primarily Russian-speaking east. — This is something that Ukrainian comedian Valentyn Mikhienko touched on in a February, 2023 intreview to Serhiy Lyhovyda at the YouTube channel Розмова (in Ukrainian).

Некоторые последние версии свободного ПО для Windows 98/Me

Изначально постил как комментарий под этим видео, но несколько дней позже, обнаружил, что коммент или не постился, или был устранён:
• самой системой комментарий — если по желанию автора канала комментарии с линками не постятся, а целое имя пакета "OpenOffice.org" автоматически выставился как линк, и я сам не был достаточно осторожным, чтоб заменять обычную точку на какую-то альтернативную орфографическую точку;
• или автором видео — я немного покритиковал конструктивно: "Вообще вместо того, чтоб ставить Microsoft Office, лучше было бы ставить OpenOffice.org."
Ну не судьба, потому, что другой один мой комментарий под тем же видео как раз выжил. Видео из жанра "Выживание под Windows ME в 201x. году".

Итак, переходим к теме поста.

• RetroZilla 2.2 — браузер на базе SeaMonkey. Есть изначальная версия от rn10950, и более новые варианты от Roytam1. Есть поддержка протокола TLS 1.2, но в изначальной версии от rn10950 это надо включить на странице about:config. В версии от Roytam1 TLS 1.2 включена по умолчению. Рекомендую расширение NoScript 1.10 для блокировки скриптов.

• GIMP 2.2.17 — графический пакет. Надобна отдельная инсталляция теки GTK 2.6.
• Чат-программа Pidgin IM 2.6.6 тоже работает с отдельным GTK 2.6.
• Старые версии GTK для Windows доступны в проектах gtk-win и Pidgin IM на сайте Sourceforge; рекомендую GTK 2.6.10 для обеих.
• Gnumeric 1.4.3-rc4 — табличный процессор
• AbiWord 2.5.2 — текстовый процессор

• OpenOffice.org 2.4.3

• Для OpenOffice надобен Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0 Update 22 или предыдущая J2SE 1.4.

• VLC 0.8.6g. Есть и VLC 0.8.6i, но по своему опыту только 0.8.6g была последней работающей версией. Ила даже 0.8.6d.

(Линки пока не ставлю.)

My thoughts on disclosure

A reply to this post. It's taken me a week or so to think it through, so I've had some pauses in writing it.

> The government has conducted studies

Would like to see abstract of some of these studies, though I'm aware, that several similar ones have been written both by experts and non-experts alike.

Below is my disagreement with those predictions of doom and gloom. It's not a disagreement with you.

> 2: did Jesus also die on dozens (hundreds or thousands) of other planets to save their souls as well?

This would be profound.

> The leap in technology would put certain industries out of business almost immediately.

Disagree with the study results, due to people leaning to use legacy technologies for far longer than estimated.

Petrochemicals would still be in demand, but the money power off that fuel supply would certainly decrease, as would the power (virtual and otherwise) of all the authoritarian countries that produce gas and petrol. Not overnight, certainly.

Arab countries are actively looking to diversify their economies. Whereas Russia, being a grabby civilization that is is, has managed invade parts of Ukraine in a war started in 2014, and made very hot on 24 February 2022.

We have free-energy technologies already (wind, solar, sometimes hydroelectricity), but several nations are unwilling (or unable) to invest in those. Others do and have, but the buildup of infrastructure is insufficient to match the scale of incumbent dirty production.

> the leap in technology

There is no guarantee, that disclosure would bring any leap in technology: the United States, which by some is often complained to be supposedly be in possession of extraterrestrial kit, will never reveal anything to anyone else, so as to prevent authoritarian countries and dictatorships exploiting that tech for their nefarious ends.

Many humans on Earth would choose to avoid using demonstrably alien "non-Earth" tech entirely.

After the initial possible shock/euphoria, there would be entire communities, perhaps even several countries, who would still push to develop native Earth kit despite the presence of alien tech — not just because of the "not-invented-here" idea, but because we as a species and a civilization want to demonstrate our own ability and capabilities in doing great things.

Several decades after a possible speculative disclosure, there would be countries and communities like the Amish now, living only under a certain standard of development, using only Earth-based technologies, and avoiding alien tech as much as possible. I wouldn't blame them.

There would be an entire "alien tech divide", like now the digital divide and other such divisions:

* Some countries would become incredibly advanced, would progress at a break-neck speed, but would also be burdened with the responsibility of defending Earth.
* Other countries and nations would continue to only to use and develop Earth-based technologies, and would be fine just as well. People from the more advanced countries would come to visit those "we use only Earth tech"-countries, and would enjoy the environment as museum pieces.
* Of course, even now, there are countries and nations that are almost literally stuck in the past: Afghanistan, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, and Russia.

Their common denominator is total or near-total isolation: The Afghan society has been forced again to live in the medieval past, North Korea still relives the Korean War and is societally stuck in the year of 1953, Iran is somewhere in 1979, and Cuba remains famous for its old American cars.

Russia is the most technologically-advanced of that bunch, but is likely to stagnate due to it pouring money into its hot war of aggression against Ukraine and its people, and the resulting sanctions that it (Russia) has incurred. (Avoidance of this topic is not easy for me, as I'm very moved by both the unnecessary suffering of Ukrainians, and the bravery of the Ukrainian people in defending their land.)

It's true, that Cuba, North Korea, and Iran each have some developments and advancements, but they're not enough to offset the steep levels of underdevelopment, of which Russia also has plenty.

> Millions of jobs would be lost, the stock market would crash, leading to unrest etc.

As with the emergence of any new technology, new jobs meant to run and maintain these new technologies will crop up, as always.

Millions of jobs have been lost during COVID-19 and previous and other crises, stock markets have crashed and rebounded before, unrest always happens somewhere even without disclosure.

Therefore I do not submit to this non-pretty picture of events as doom and gloom, as described in the report.

It is true, that such reports of possible outcomes ought to be written and studied, so as to prepare contingencies for world leaders, and what decisions they should make to prepare their countries in particular, and humanity in general.

In many ways, doom-and-gloom prognostications appeal to the mass psychosis effect of populations, while not paying enough attention to the fact, that each individual has more immediate individual concerns: work, family, children, food, etc.

Disclosure is not necessarily something that would cause social unrest, thought it has non-zero potential, simply because it brings the unknown to the fore.

Instead, very earthly things can bring out large amounts of people, especially, if day-to-day living is disrupted on a large scale.

In some countries, people come to protest simply because a state wants to raise the pension age in order to have a more balanced budget.

How a nation will present itself to itself in a crisis plays a major role in forming its future.

The masses might make their move, or they might not, depending on how confident a population is.

Much depends on the cohesiveness of the society and the social compact within:

1. One nation can be confident, that things will be all right, and its people will cooperate and be closer together, despite all the hardships (see: Ukraine in 2004, 2013/2014, and 2022−present). Most democracies have processes ready to handle crises, and in these, the social compact of a people is usually strong.

2. The body of a people in some other nation might not be particularly confident, perhaps out of fear due to systemic repression. Such dissembling of a people leads to remoteness wrt one's leader's, inaction, abdication of responsibility ("we're not interested in politics"), and/or mistakes, and that in turn leads to a failed state and an eventual unenviable state of being at the mercy of proto-feudal leaders and/or warlords. Venezuela is there already, and Russia is slowly creeping there.

Disclosure would be likely to lead to first contact sooner, and that would certainly have the potential for the [Colombian exchange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombian_exchange), and the scenario of the plight of American First Nations due to the extreme inequality between First Nations' and colonialist levels of offensive/defensive technology. There might just as well be extraterrestrials with the "white saviour" syndrome.

A more localised danger would be the further emergence of religious or quasi-religious cults based on the existence of aliens, in addition to those that we have already. What if some off-worlders begin to exploit that?

A danger to culture would be some form of religious adherence to any ideology that some extraterrestrials themselves adhere to, with a view, as if one's own, human, culture were supposedly inferior.

This cultural in inferiority complex towards the best of human culture is based on a false assumption, that aliens' way of life is supposedly superior to ours, — based solely on their technological advancement.

We don't know what hardships were endured, what crimes and sacrifices were made by some of the non-Earth cultures to achieve faster-than-light travel and other improvements in technology.

There is never any guarantee, that their level of advancement and their practical methods of reaching that would be an advantage to us. After contact, we can learn from their history, and maybe avoid some of the mistakes they did.

If (a big 'if') a great number of extraterrestrial/extrasolar societies, per stories, do not use money, then that doesn't mean as if the use of market economies here on Earth would be supposedly wrong. It's just a way to manage resource distribution and moderate it in the even of limited supply.

Well-regulated market economies are a natural evolution of bare capitalism, just like Lutheranism is an evolution away from Catholicism, which had become corrupt by Martin Luther's time.

Either they have resolved energy and production bottlenecks, and have formed sustainable means of living in abundance, or they also have their haves and have-nots despite these solutions and high technology: A traveling crew or away team from a non-moneyed society might be very well-off and privileged, but an industrial worker or miner of valuable resources of that same species and society might still not be.

To somehow have the sufficient time to prepare for the eventual first contact, our human civilization cannot stop development.

Neither should we wait for the arrival of the proverbial "white ship" — an Estonian term representing the imagined ultimate "savior" vessel that was supposed to bring people to better shores, but never arrived.

In the real-life Estonian "white ship" story, the swindler who initially proposed and advertised that idea, got his money, and then scrammed, leaving the people who'd 'invested' their money to that idea of traveling away to better shores, waiting somewhere on the coast of no man's land for a ship to come, until most everyone finally realised, that the ship never arrived. Even then, some of the group had remained believers in that idea, trying to rationalize, that maybe the ship had sunk.

For many humans, believing in and waiting for disclosure has become almost like a religious experience; it's like waiting for the second coming of Jesus and expecting total salvation. Many 'believers' ardently imagine, that then all the world's material and even spiritual problems would supposedly be resolved. They will not be.

My own take would be finding a balance between increased awareness and preparedness (that, if clandestinely), and pushing the date of official disclosure farther away from the current moment. Too early disclosure would likely damage society and contaminate our culture even further. Too late preparedness would leave us more vulnerable to all that is out there.

A little bit about fonts

Posted as a comment reply here, too, as AC.

• Arial at 10pt/13.5px is the best reading font so far -- this at 150% scale with a 1920x1080 display resolution. It is the most optimal font to absorb long texts on screen, but is relatively tiny on paper, where I'd enjoy Times New Roman. Apple Garamond and the 80% condensed Garamond would be luxury.

• Chicago (found in early/classic Apple Macs) has great readability and the necessary compact size on early Mac display resolutions that are now smallish. To this day, it remains stylish and sufficiently futuristic, but not in the gaudy style of futurism that was envisioned with Westminster and Data 70, which were prominent in the 1970s and 1980s sci-fi flicks.

• Verdana at 9pt is the best for even smaller-sized text without losing legibility.

My favourite tall sans-serif font is Abadi MT Condensed Light. It's similar to News Gothic, but is taller and thinner.

Of open-source fonts:

In terms of readability, Helvetica is one of the best sans-serif fonts on Linux. Linux Libertine G is good, and Linux Libertine Display G takes the cake, but with 1.15 pt line height, bugs and all.

The persistence of good USB and audio port designs, and some history of the 3.5 mm headphone jack

Also posted this on slashdot as AC.

MicroUSB was introduced January 2007, endorsed by the Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) for data and power in 2007, and was endorsed for charging by the ITU in 2009.

Some of the earlier phones with MicroUSB were released in 2007: Motorola Q 9h in February, Motorola RAZR V8 and Nokia 8600 Luna in May 2007 (I searched GSMArena). One of the earlier Androids to support MicroUSB is HTC Desire, released in February 2010.

The MicroUSB standard is 15 years old (as of 2022), and is still going strong even in some of the most recent smartphone models, such as Nokia C21 Plus, and in the most basic featurephones, such as in Nokia 105. Nokia 2780 Flip (the 2022 model), which is sort of like a smart featurephone, even comes with a USB-C port.

Since the MicroUSB standard has lasted for fifteen years already, and won't drop off anytime soon, then it's safe to say, that USB Type C, finalized in 2014, will last at least fifteen years or even longer -- up to 2030 and beyond.

The 3.5 mm headphone jack (also known as 1/8" jack) persists due to its ubiquity, for providing a low barrier for entry (no patents), and for preventing planned obsolescence.

According to Wikipedia, the 3.5 mm headphone jack is said to have been designed in the 1950s with the development of transistor radios, but there is no reliable information about exactly when.

The first transistor radio is Regency TR-1. Released in 1954, it was the first commercially-sold portable radio, the first fully transistor-based radio, probably the first to use the 3.5 mm headphone socket in a commercial product meant for consumer use, and the first to introduce a portable headphone (just one) for private listening. The earpiece was based on the design of hearing aids from that time. Any literature about Regency TR-1 mentions the headphone jack like a footnote, as if anyone who wrote about it, was not aware of its significance.

The 3.5 mm jack has been further popularised with the introduction of Sony EFM-117J, a portable radio released in 1964, which is one of several devices that made the mini plug and socket well before Sony Walkman was a thing.

The good and bad releases of Windows

Across the history of the development of Windows, each major iteration of this operating system family has that bad/good cycle.

Windows 95 was a massive step-up in usability, but required a lot more from hardware than Windows 3.1x did. But: better memory protection, which gave it a huge advantage over the classic MacOS, which didn't have it yet.

Windows 98 and 98SE added a bit more reliability. Introduction of Windows Update: anyone who regularly cared to install updates, was reasonably safe.

W98 ended up being the most versatile of the 9x line in terms of hardware support, as it supported both VxD and WDM driver types, and had built-in USB support (not perfect, but still).

Windows Me had multimedia additions, but lacked VxD driver support (ostensibly to make it more stable), and wasn't particularly popular.

Windows 2000 was actually really great, but was often overlooked by regular PC users, and maybe appeared more technical.

Windows XP consolidated the back-end of Windows 2000 and the ease-of-use of the 9x line, such as very visibly separating regular users from administrators.

Better security with a built-in firewall, though many back-end security improvements came with XP Service Pack 2.

Windows Vista was the bad one, and was pre-installed on a lot of computers that were too underpowered for it; think 5400 RPM hard drive, 1 GB RAM, out of which 3/4th was taken by the OS alone after launch. In real life, it required at least 4 GB RAM and maybe even an SSD. Even 2 GB of RAM would have been okay.

Vista only had better security with User Account Control and a built-in anti-virus app. It introduced desktop widgets in lieu of Active Desktop.

Windows 7: When it was good, then it was really good. I believe it would run well on 4 GB RAM.

Windows 8.x? The back-end was certainly improved, but the UI was terrible: the removed Start menu in favour of the start screen, and outsized UWP apps. Probably the last Windows OS to work ok with 4 GB RAM.

Windows 10...
❌ The worst was the forced non-consensual upgrade. Shrink-wrap licence agreements do not count for this. It would have been much easier to permit voluntary-only downloads for those that wanted it through the support life of Windows 7 and 8.

☑️ Okay, at least the operating system offered like ten years of support in addition to the time spent with Windows 7 or 8. Hopefully, there would be more years of support to come, since a large number of computers have been shut out by Windows 11.

Windows 10 requires at least 8 GB RAM and an SSD drive to run well. It can run on 4 GB RAM, but barely. Also, the last to support a traditional BIOS.

The UI is decent.
✔️ The biggest upside is, allows people to find apps with just a few keystrokes instead of having to search through the menus: press Win key, type the first letters of a program you need. This requires indexing, and an SSD drive. An SSD drive is worth the speed improvements.

✔️ Live Tiles are nice. I also get to play Angry Birds (obtained via Windows Store). Easy notification area quick access buttons for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.
⨉ Downside: deprecation of useful Control Panel items in favour of Settings. Control Panel items are no longer sorted up-to-down in columns, which is awful. (This has continued in Windows 11, too.)

For some things, the Settings window is actually great, including the part, that many textual items can be easily copied and then later pasted elsewhere.

For very specialized sites tested only for WebKit/Blink, I've chosen to use the built-in Microsoft Edge instead of Chrome.

Windows 11 is the odd one out, again. Yes, it's got better security, and I get to have the full ten years of updates support in addition to the time I used Windows 10 on a new machine.

⨉ But: the taskbar UI has been borked (no expandable app windows), Live Tiles were removed in favour of Widgets, and those do not work at all.
✔️ Upside: Volume and brightness controls in the same notification pop-out; more Dark Mode support (esp. in File Manager).

⨉ Angry Birds 2 still continues crashing, apparently on trying to download in-game ads. I've upgraded to Windows 11 only because of Angry Birds 2 often crashing in Windows 10, but to no avail.

---

The terrible part about Microsoft specifying low minimum requirements for its operating systems, is, that many computer makers have sold and continue to sell cheap kit with just these minimum requirements, such as 4 GB RAM for both Windows 10 and 11.

I still see new notebooks on sale with just 4 GB of RAM memory. I've seen others with only 4 GB RAM, and no other way to upgrade, than to use a USB drive that meets the requirements for ReadyBoost functionality.

And this is not new: Windows 95 had very low minimum system requirements: a 386 DX CPU and 4 MB RAM, depending on features selected.

On a computer with a 486 DX CPU and 8 MB RAM, this was just enough to run the operating system, the Microsoft Exchange e-mail client, and Netscape 3.0. (Netscape 4.x would require a PC with a least 16 MB RAM.)

Windows 98 somehow ran on a PC with 16 MB RAM.

Windows XP required a 233 MHz CPU and 64 MB RAM. Yes, it worked, but very slowly. I've seen this happen in a local library.

The minimum amount of RAM that Microsoft specifies for Windows 11 is four gigabytes, which is too little: since the commit size of Windows 11 Pro is 4.8 GB after launch, 8 GB should be counted as the absolute minimum in order to leave some breathing space for other apps that people will install and use.

Users desperate for new must-have functionality would certainly live with the slow performance, aware, that certain new functionality is perhaps a must-have. But Microsoft specifying far too low amounts of RAM as minimum for its operating systems that clearly require more in real life, is something that is bound to leave many current and future Windows users very disappointed, if they upgrade (or are forced to upgrade), or if they buy underpowered computers.

Finding drivers for obscure devices on Windows 10. A short walkthrough.

This post goes back to "Obscure ways to get and old hp printer driver for Windows XP".

Long story short, aka the quick-and-dirty version:

If a computer or notebook with Windows 10 has an 'unknown device' with this ID:

ACPI\CPL0002\2&DABA3FF&2

Then the Windows Update Catalog does offer a driver for it.

But the following conditions must be met:

• Windows Update is unable to find drivers for this device;
• the maker of your PC does not have drivers available for your model of notebook pertaining to this device. If the maker of your computer does actually provides a driver for this device on the particular make and model of your computer, use that driver and no other;
• you might not be able to tell the make and model of your laptop, because the labels at the bottom of the computer have faded, and so, it's hard to find the correct driver from the PC maker's official website.
• the non-availability of the driver can coincide with one or both following possiblities:
  • Your notebook is no longer supported by the manufacturer; and/or
  • the maker of your PC is not a big-name outfit that is able to reliably provide drivers on its own for this device.
    (I've decided against naming individual PC makers, as some people would specify a search prepending the particular PC makers' names with negative operators, so excluding their name[s] to get a more precise result.)

If one ore more of these conditions are met, go to the Windows Update Catalog, and search using the CPL0002 device ID. (search link here)

In this case, the device ID was the only useful piece of information, and so, searching by device ID is more likely to yield results matching the hardware installed. Searching using the name or make/model of this device may yield incompatible results.

The result is "Compal Embedded System Control" version 1.0.0.4 as 'Other hardware' (listed like that as of 2021).

I picked the latest version, dated 26.11.2015, and clicked on the Download button.

The download is a .cab file that must be extracted with an extractor program of your choice into a separate folder. I used 7-Zip to do that.

Before installing:
• have Device Manager open, to see if there are any changes during install.
• create screenshots of all listed System devices in Device Manager. This ought to help in comparing changes.
• create a system restore point. You will need this, if and when things go wrong.

The extracted contents of the .cab package include four files, among them ENFC.inf. Right-click on that, and click Install.

The Device Manager should display a change, and the identified device should be listed. Other newly-recognised devices may also be listed. Worked for me.

After that, power management in a specific old notebook I have, improved, and the fan began blowing out less hot air. At least it seemed to me like that.

Do keep in mind, that I also did a large number of optimisations in the system to switch off most unnecessary background tasks, which certainly helped to reduce the size of the system commit, and the strain on system RAM and the hard drive.

I also reduced the maximum state of the CPU from 100% to 90% in advanced power management options. It's one of those nice things to have in Windows 10.

As a coda, I cannot recommend this process for upgrading the drivers of all devices inside, or connected to a computer. Because if things work normally, one should not update the drivers like this at all. Usually, and on most computers, Windows Update is good enough anyway at finding the right driver for you. In this very particular case and device, I see Windows Update as having missed it.

Obscure ways to get an old hp printer driver for Windows XP

So, some people are stuck on Windows xp, as may be some computers. But files do need printing. This set of instructions is good for other hardware connected to a computer with Windows xp, but with that operating system no longer supported by the hardware manufacturer.

The combo printer, scanner and copier is hp LaserJet Pro MFP M28w.

Officially, hp no longer supports Windows xp, so they no longer offer drivers for it. Microsoft also seems to have shut off Windows Update support for Windows xp. Otherwise, it would have been possible to use Windows Update to automatically download and install the necessary drivers.

32-bit drivers meant for Windows 7 might not work. In my case, the installation failed because of a file certificate error.

On attempting to launch one of the files extracted from the downloaded printer driver installer for Windows 7, the said file required Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0. To be safe, download and install that component first, as did I.

When using Internet search, I discovered, that there are slightly older versions of basic hp drivers for that model of device, but download locations offering that driver version were not particularly trustworthy.

But knowledge of older basic drivers for Windows xp got me the bright idea to check out the Windows Update Catalog.

First, on connecting the printer combo via USB showed me the display name of the printer's model:

HPHP LaserJet MFP M28-M31

("HPHP" is not a mistake; this is how it was actually displayed.)

This proved useful when searching the catalog:

As with any other obscure driver, go to catalog.update.microsoft.com, and search for

m28-m31 xp

in the case of this printer combo. "m28-m31" is the device model range, as displayed in the Found New Hardware wizard. "xp" should be self-explanatory, but searching without it will yield over a hundred results, which would be cumbersome to look through in search for a driver meant for only one major version of Windows.

A helpful demonstration link for this search is here.

The search yielded 14 results with the same file size, so this meant, that the printer combo is made up of several discreet integrated devices, with a driver for each, but in one and the same package.

To be safe, pick the package that does not mention "Windows XP 64-bit" in the table row.

On clicking "Download", I downloaded a 32.8 MB .cab file with a long file name made up of hexadecimal symbols.

Using 7-Zip, I extracted the CAB file into a new folder, and browsed to that folder in Windows Explorer.

Keep in mind, that I usually have set Windows Explorer to show system files, including .inf files.

The extracted folder contains several .inf files, and these and other .inf files in the extracted bunch of files are driver installation files.

Other subfolders were the following:

• amd64
• drivers
• i386
• XPV

Right-click on all the .inf files, and click Install for each of them.

The .inf files should have correct information built-in as to bitness, so, that 32-bit drivers are installed in a 32-bit system.

The XPV folder also contains .inf files, and these pertain to the printing function. Right-click on those, too, and click 'Install' for their context menus.

Restart Windows.

On restart and login, most drivers for the affected hardware should install correctly, but getting the printer to be recognised may require more work, if the printer happens to be not listed in the Printers and Faxes Control Panel folder.

My memory is iffy here, but the basic gist is this:

In that same Printers and Faxes folder, click on "Add a printer" in the left-side Printer Tasks Explorer sidebar, or select File > Add a printer from the menu bar.

This launches the Add Printer wizard. There, click Next.

Select the 'Local printer attached to this computer' radio button. The checkbox to automatically detect the Plug and Play printer is optional (this function might not work).

Click Next to select a printer port.

The "Use the following port:" radio button must be checked. From the drop-down menu, pick the port that displays as "USB00x (Virtual printer port for USB)" (x is a number). Click Next.

After that, installation should commence, and one would then be provided with printer options.

The printer test page printed correctly, and I was happy.

Caveat: If there are two or more listed virtual printer ports for USB, repeat Add Printer routine, and click next. If the printer is already listed and shown as 'not connected' (faded out), right-click on the item, click on Properties.

In the Properties window for that printer, click on the Ports tab. In the list, pick the USB port that works.

A few hours after that, I discovered the driver installation CD for that same printer/scanner/copier combo, but if memory serves, it did not contain drivers for Windows xp when I first wanted to install drivers on Windows XP for that printer several years ago.

The thought of trying Windows Update did not come to mind, because: Microsoft had stopped issuing updates for Windows xp, and there were serious performance issues with Windows Update in that computer, as Windows Update had at times stopped working properly, and was taking up huge CPU resources. Had I not had issues with Windows Update on that computer, I'd have probably tried Windows Update, as it still supported Windows XP at the time.

The modern wonders of smartphone tech

So I watched footy yesterday between Wales and Denmark (Denmark won :), and the football pitch showed ads for some large South-East Asian brands — in non-Latin characters.

So thanks to Firefox, Android 9.0 (which is the latest version of Android that I have right now), and Google Lens, I was able to do several things.

Unlike the default ETV* apps of the Estonian national broadcaster ERR that do not allow making screenshots (in modern Android, apparently), Firefox did permit screenshots when using the browser in Android to watch the official ETV livestream.

I could then make screenshots of the ads flicking on the edges of the green pitch, and use Google Lens in Google Photos to find out what some of the ads were.

So, one was for a SE Asian brand of air conditioners with a non-Latin slogan, and the other displayed a slogan for some kind of SE Asian blockchain technology/solution.

— Google Lens offered a button to Google Translate, and another to play that text back in the original language.

Wow, I say.

Optimizing Firefox for a weak PC

This blogpost was first written as a reply on reddit.
This post applies to Firefox Quantum — v.57, v.60esr, v.68esr, v.78esr, and newer)

Instead of Lubuntu, consider BunsenLabs, which is based on Debian. BunsenLabs will run in a computer with 1 gigabyte of RAM, probably with plenty of swapping, so you'll still need at least 2 Gb of RAM. BunsenLabs LiveCD's actual commit after boot is ~200 Mb, which is equivalent to Windows XP SP3.

BunsenLabs is one of the few distros that offers a live CD (yes, a CD image), but the LiveCD edition is meant only for 32-bit systems.

As for Firefox, then off the top of my head:

In Settings:

• Disable "Check spelling as you type"

Under Performance:

• uncheck Use recommended settings;
• Play with "user hardware acceleretion"
• Set the Content process limit to 1

Under Browsing:

• Disable smooth scrolling
• Disable "recommend extensions as you browse"
• Disable "recommend features as you browse"

Under Search:

• Disable search suggestions
• Uncheck the search engines that you do not use
• Under Privacy & Security > Permissions:
  In Settings for Autoplay (new window), set the default for all sites to block audio and video. Use Ctrl+I, and in the Page Info window under the Permissions tab list for a domain, to allow audio/video on YouTube, for example.

Uncheck all under Firefox Data Collection. In about:config, set:

• browser.sessionhistory.max_entries to 25 (from 50)
• browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to 0 (from -1)
• browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo to 5, 7, or 10 (from 25)
   
• browser.sessionstore.interval from 15000 *to* something greater
• extensions.update.interval from 86400 *to* something greater
• media.peerconnection.enabled to false
• media.peerconnection.video.enabled to false

Extensions:

• Install the NoScript extension, as it uses a whitelist (with some built-in entries). Set it to display full domains in settings. You'll have to permit certain domains from the NoScript pop-up menu to make a site work.
• Install uBlock Origin or Adblock Plus to block ads. While NoScript blocks most of the harmful cruft, one of the two adblockers won't let video ads pass through.

Which Gecko-based browser to choose for Android?

Published initially as a reddit post.

Much depends on what functionality you want.

There are three or four types of Gecko-based browsers, and one can have two or three, depending on desired functionality. In all cases, you'll have to switch off automatic app updates in order to prevent your device automatically moving to a version with less functionality.

If you want the latest and dark mode, there's Firefox or Fennec (the latter with a delay).

If you want automatic updates to most apps from the Google Play Store, and the latest Gecko-based browser, pick Firefox, and then Fennec or IceCat from the F-Droid app, where you can switch automatic updates off.

In this scenario, where you'd want to stick to a certain release, pick a version of Fennec F-Droid, and/or GNU IceCat. Fennec has more versions to choose from; IceCat has less versions, as it tends to stick to ESR branches.

If you want legacy/XUL add-ons, you might have to consider Firefox/Fennec 56.0 as the last version.

If you want the latest branch that still has about:config, pick version 68.x esr (extended support release). It has support for add-ons available at addons.mozilla.org that are no longer supported by the latest Firefox due to changes to the extension framework (yet again).

68.x esr also supports viewing local HTML files, as I haven't been able to do this with the latest Firefox.

Firefox 43.0 (really legacy) and older still support cookie prompting via extension, and has slightly better support certain other legacy extensions. But this is a really old version.

Коротко о поездах Эстонии

Я всегда думал, что Эстония закупала поезда Stadler Flirt за прóданные квоты CO₂, но оказалось, что это вообще не так. Бóльшую часть денег (аж 85% от 80 миллиона евро) для закупки только электричек выдал фонд Европейского Союза, а дизельные брала Elektriraudtee (видимо сама) на капитальную аренду за 96 млн. евро.

Тендер для закупки объявили в 2009. году, и выигрышем оказался Stadler Bussnang AG, с кем подписали договор в августе 2010. года.

Перед их запуском отреновировали железные дороги, и перроны, стоянки. В местах даже вокзалы.

Когда в январе 2014. года на железные дороги ввели новые поезда, оказалось, что приобрели слишком мало поездных составов: они ездили намного быстрее чем старые DR1^[ru] (DR1A, DR1B другие варианты оперируемыми фирмой Edelaraudtee). Популярность новых поездов повысилась за ночь, и настолько, что они часто сильно переполнены пассажирами.

А старые и до сих пор прочные DR1 зря вывели из эксплуатации, так как они были очень просторные и удобные. Мне бы понравилось, если старые остались бы ночными поездами, но увы.

I класс и был такой советский/восточный китч просторных DR1 с западным шиком — Wi-Fi, большие (для поезда/вагона) столы, розетки для портативных компютеров, кафе. Ну и закуски.

Вот, а у новых возможно зарядить смартфоны прям через USB порт в стене вагона (под столиком).

Источник: Delfi Forte, 20.02.2013: Stadleri FLIRT-rongid on kohal: Eesti esimene samm 21. sajandisse? (на эстонском, obv.)

The degrowth and stagnation of the United States and Russia, and the resilience of the European Union

In response to this tweet, collated from a collection of tweets written in response.

The referenced tweet claimed, that 'the EU [supposedly] loves degrowth'.

And my response thread:

Or living within one's means.

The degrowth paradigm is out of the window currently, as the EU has relaxed the restrictions on state aid, the famous "3% inflation-to-GDP" rule, and on individual member states taking loans (unwise), just to slow down a steep slowdown.^[1]

The United States saw peaks in the 1980s, then completely peaked in the 1990s, and much of it and its society is now going through a stagnation, in part because of off-shoring, but not only.

The USSR variously peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, until Chernobyl happened.^[2]

America has also peaked: it did in the 1960s (the space programme), was doing very well in the 1950s, and before that, it won WWII and had the capacity to underwrite the Marshall Plan to rebuild and protect Western Europe. That was huge.^[3]

Ironically, the technologies developed during WWII created new industries (computers and then space stuff, viz rockets). Having a well-regulated market economy allowed for the growth of economies of scale for these.^[4]

The off-shoring of manufacturing to a major non-democracy because of the cheap labor that it provided and subsidised, remains to this day one of the greatest sacrifices of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law.^[5]

Such off-shoring thus created a negative feedback loop of *unregulated* globalisation.

In and of itself, globalisation is a good thing, in that it variously facilitates the free movement of persons, labour, services, goods, and capital. But only when it's well-regulated.^[6]

'Regulation' here is balancing any such open market economy with counter-cyclical protections. — This means a comprehensive stability mechanism and proper social safety nets.

The European Union is the best such example of successful globalisation.

The United States is not.^[7]

Given the many policies that maintain the economic stability of the EU as a whole, and each EU member state, the European Union can in parts afford to 'degrow', as it were.

Whereas the United States, bereft of these mechanisms, and also paralysed by political bickering, cannot.^[8]

The diversity of the EU has inevitably lead to multi-track development and a variable-geometry Europe, whereby some EU economies develop faster, and some slower.

A multi-speed Europe is not really a bad thing, as this diversity contributes to the EU's resilience.^[9]

'degrowth' might happen to the EU as a whole (Brexit), and/or in some EU member states, but not because of any such planned policy, but merely due to the cyclical nature of the world economy, which does affect Europe, but to which the EU itself is reasonably resilient.^[10]

At large, the United States is capable of protecting itself and its friends and allies from foreign threats.

The EU has been able to complement this capability, but must now develop it further within the NATO framework.^[11]

In the States, care should be taken to further harden the U.S. economy and society from major shocks. The ACA is just 1 of the steps in that direction.

A Biden presidency would begin to mitigate existing inequities, and that in total should help in the recovery of the world economy.^[12]

The economy of the USSR serves as a cautionary tale of ineffectual leadership and bureaucracy ruling over a stagnant economy that is one big disaster away from a major perturbation. In 1986, that was Chernobyl. In 2005, it could have been Katrina, and it was for Bush and the GOP.^[13]

In 2020, it's the coronavirus and the ensuing economic fallout for Trump and the GOP.

Some of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's proposals do have an air to them, but they are meant to prevent a major disturbance in the Force, and then to improve the economy. Green shoots and all.^[14]

Russia faces similar problems: economic stagnation, extensive political corruption, and a leadership that's mostly preoccupied with what it sees as its enemies.

Putting the dispute over Crimea aside, then the West itself is uninterested in taking any territory of Russia proper.^[15]

And it is not NATO, or the EU, or Europe, or the West that Russia should really be concerned about. But that's very much a different story.^[16]

wrt the carbon tax:

A general tax on companies emitting carbon is unwise.

But something similar to a CO₂ quota exchange with a tax on each transaction would incentivize U..S states and companies to seek clean and cleaner solutions.^[17]

For individuals, a gradual raising of the tax on petrol at the pump would incentivise people to choose petrol-saving, hybrid, or all-electric vehicles.

Also, perks to owners of all-electric vehicles: a smaller value-added tax on purchase, no car tax, and free parking nationwide.^[18]

Conclusion

The United States has degrown in terms of its economy and society. It could ill-afford to do so, and cannot afford to degrow any further.

Owing to its total top-down model of government and state planning, the Soviet Union began to stagnate during the Brezhnev era, suffered a black swan event in Chernobyl and then the 1988 Armenian earthquake, and then collapsed totally.

Russia's problems are similar: it's run by a ruthless power vertical that oversees an undiversified economy that singularly depends on the export of oil and gas.

The society in European Union is not degrowing, while the EU can afford a degrowth both economic and even territorial (Brexit), if it, or each member state finds it more feasible in the short-to-mid-term.

Long-term, the less-effective EU member states would be wise to become more effective. Greece is has already decided on a path to progressive policies, while France has chosen stagnation.

An ode to Google Hangouts

This was posted first, and this one a bit later.

Google Hangouts still works in Android 2.3, albeit without audio and video. That is, when Google Play Services and the Hangouts app are as up-to-date as possible within Gingerbread, and when a user bypasses the upgrade notification with the hardware menu button long-press.

Hangouts also works on Android 4.1, and presumably, on 4.0, too. While I have tried data-based audio/video on Hangouts once or twice, then audio/video do not seem to work on any of these versions of Android. (This could be due to having older hardware that is no longer capable of modern IP-based audio/video calls.)

Unlike Skype, Hangouts is to me the only reliable native app that works across Android 2.3-4.1 and beyond. The web-based Hangouts interface is much faster than that of Skype for Web.

I give huge props to Google for supporting Hangouts on older Android versions this far, though I do not know for how long this kind of support will last, as there is a slowish migration currently going on towards Google Chat.

The current version of Google Chat is meant only for G Suite customers (so far), and it requires Android 5.0, leaving users of older Android versions in the lurch. Chat does not transfer messages and contacts over from Hangouts, and reviews for Chat are poor.

After Hangouts, the second-best service with long-term support for older devices and operating systems is WhatsApp, though I do not use it. WhatsApp supported Nokia's S40-based phones up until the end of 2018. WhatsApp support on Android 2.3.7 stopped on February 1, 2020.

Unfortunately, Skype doesn't work reliably in Android 4.1, so I cannot use it in any capacity. Its main web-based version is extremely slow in mobile browsers of old devices (think anything with 512 Mb RAM), and official Skype snap-ins are also quite slow.

Как быстро скачать современный браузер для "свежего" Windows xp

У, первый пост на русском :-)

Тут более-или-менее копия реплая

Итак, на этом видео видно, что у автора SuperGTOR не удалось сразу скачать Google Chrome с браузером Internet Explorer 6.0, версия которая уже очень устарела (скоро 20 лет будет), и ему надо было сначала скачать обновления для операционной системы, чтоб скачать Internet Explorer 8.0, а тем уже Chrome.

Вместо Chrome возможно так быстро (без обновлений) с браузером Internet Explorer 6.0 скачать Firefox, аж с официального FTP-сайта Мозиллы, так как тот сайт доступен и без https протокола, с простым протоколом http — http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/ — и скачать версию 52.9.0esr.

Тем же методом возможно скачать на старые версии Андройда APK-пакеты браузера Firefox для Android, из папки /pub/mobile/releases/ (пакеты под именем Fennec): Firefox 31.0 последний для Android 2.2, Firefox 47.0 для Android 2.3 (Android API 9), Firefox 55.0.2 для Android 4.0 (но Firefox 31.3.0esr, если архитектура процессора ARMv6). Расширение NoScript Anywhere, скачаемый с официалного сайта NoScript, очень поможет.

52.9.0 самая последняя версия Firefox для Windows XP, и та поддерживает криптографический протокол TLS 1.2. Существует и поддержка TLS версии 1.3, но та по умолчению не вклюычена. Чтоб влкючить (а надо), тогда на странице настроек about:config у настройки security.tls.version.max ставить цифру 4 (вместо 3).

Ещё надо (т.е. очень рекомендую) скачать расширение NoScript для защиты от скриптов, тракеров, рекламы, фонтов, и подобного хлама. Для классического Firefoxa подходит и классическая версия расширения NoScript 5.1.9. Чтоб инсталлировать эту версию, надо на странице настроек about:config менять настройку xpinstall.signatures.required на false (неверен / неверный), чтоб Firefox на заблокировал бы инсталляцию расширения из-за отсутсвия цифровой сигнатуры. Вот и всё.

А оттуда с Firefox-ом возможно скачать другие браузеры: New Moon или MyPal и/или что угодно.

Отдельно, в настройках Internet Explorer надо выключить SSL 2.0, SSL 3.0, и включить TLS 1.0. Иначе все сайты с протоколом https с браузера IE совсем недостижимы.