Pickle it. Sauerkraut makes a nice side-dish.

Whoa, let’s not get hasty.

Laugh it up, Geordi. Do you have any idea how hard it is to clean stuff like that out?!

Or you’d get lucky and some other program you installed happens to have the right dependencies. Just copy them to the application install dir or to C:\windows\win32\ and off you go.

Yeah, stuff like that continues to be the best use-case for windows virtualization. Sounds a lot like trying to upgrade the BIOS or Firmware on an older PC; often the installer is some binary that only runs on Windows of the same vintage.

Backwards-compatibility with older web browsers so engineers can build websites for them, is another. I’ve also heard of industrial automation (e.g. CNC machines) being married to Win2k or WinXP, so being able to run an old OS on new hardware is crucial.

Windows, can I run this 25 year old software I just installed?

Thank you for your service.

Oooh, rocking an HP? I too like to live dangerously.

But seriously, that’s good to know. Those are probably easier to come by out in the wild. It really looks like Thinkpads go from office deployments straight to refurb companies these days. I never see them at thrift stores, and I’m not brave enough to dumpster-dive at e-waste.

Sometimes, old machines are survivors. Beware of confirmation bias when trash/thrift-picking cheap systems though. IMO, Thinkpads can be tough as a coffin nail. Including work systems, I’m on number 8 at this point with no hardware failures in sight.

That said, I have a very lightweight Acer that’s about a decade old with the worst keyboard and trackpad ever manufactured. It also performs like a slug, even with Linux on it. Still, it refuses to break so I can get rid of it.

This essay is brought to you by Raid: Shadow Legends.

I will add that if you, dear reader, are interested but are unaware of your claustrophobia status, that’s okay. Just make sure to be open an honest about that when hooking up with other cavers and/or a local caving club. You’ll find that many are compassionate about this kind of thing; it’s not unheard of to do a newbie friendly cave with folks, just to see if you can handle it or not. Just don’t keep that all to yourself only to have a freakout during an (otherwise) normal trip.

As a former spelunker, this story has been used to scare newbies straight ever since it happened. I assume the same goes for cave rescue folks. Point being: don’t over-commit, plan ahead, exercise proper safety, and for crying out loud don’t ever pin your arms and hands in a crawl.

I mean, that happens with CloudWatch all the time. It’s the most plausible part about this.

There’s some complex mechanical interlocks involved in charging circuitry too. You can hear these beefy solenoids clunk on/off when plugging in a charging cable. A stuck solenoid could be implicated too, as some safety detection circuitry might check those to see if the car is currently in a charging configuration. That goes especially since moving parts are typically more likely to fail before anything else. Although, I’d be stunned if that wasn’t already considered.

As a Leaf owner, this terrifies me. Do you have any details about that charging station, like what brand it was?

And just shooting from the hip here: I’ve noticed that a lot of folks that upgrade cars to electric using parts from crashed vehicles, know their way around production EV guts pretty darn well. Engaging with a local shop that does that work might be worthwhile, seeing as how (I assume) the dealer is getting nowhere by following the book.

Are they not allowed in the bike lanes? Nevermind then. I’m happy to be wrong about that.

Probably not. If I had to guess, the service EULA probably requires you to stay in the bike lanes (that run everywhere in downtown) with this. That said, on my last visit, people drove Lime scooters everywhere anyway.

How many atmospheres

Professor Farnsworth: Well, it’s a space ship, so I’d say anywhere between zero and one.

I use a system prompt that forces it to ask a question if there are options or if it has to make assumptions

I’m kind of amazed that even works. I’ll have to try that. Then again, I’ve asked ChatGPT to “respond to all prompts like a Magic 8-ball” and it knocked it out of the park.

so I start a new chat frequently.

I do this as well, and totally forgot to mention it. Yes, I keep the context small and fresh so that prior conversations (and hallucinations) can’t poison new dialogues.

I also will do the same prompts on two models from different providers at the same time and cross reference the idiots to see if they are lying to me.

Oooh… straight to my toolbox with that one. Cheers.

That’s been my biggest problem with the current state of affairs. It’s now easier to research newer tech through an LLM than it is to play search-result-wack-a-mole, on the off chance that what you need is on a forum that’s not Discord. At least an AI can mostly make sense of vendor docs and extrapolate a bit from there. That said, I don’t like it.