So, then this got me wondering; the Brother printer has been working ok, but it developed a really annoying habit: it's duplex (prints on both sides of the paper), but even when printing a single page, it would print, then pull back the paper, and print nothing on the other side. So every page would take twice as long.

I 'removed' the Brother printer, downloaded the driver-only file from Brother, and did another manual install. Lo and behold, it now prints one page as one page. The test print also started printing the heading and the printer logo in black, instead of a shade of gray that I think must correspond to the blue that comes out on the Phaser's test page.

So, print a test page, and if the "Printer Model" is "Microsoft IPP Class Driver", instead of something with the manufacturer's name in it, there's Microsoft fuckery at work that is probably giving you a less than satisfactory experience.

So, I wanted to print a stupid little gift tag, that had to be a specific size to fit, and I wanted it in a nice font and in color, so I opened Word 365 and created a text box with the exact dimensions and filled in the text, and set the font and the color, and printed to my Xerox Phaser color laser printer.

A blank piece of paper came out.
So I searched for "text boxes don't print", and checked some settings that are in a differently named place than the Internet says, because of course, Microsoft moved and renamed things.

And the page still came out blank.

So I sent it to my old B&W Brother laser printer, and it came out fine, just in B&W.

Somewhere along the line, I had used the Add a Printer button in Win 11, and it had installed an annoying Xerox print utility and a driver, I guess, because it doesn't tell you what it's actually doing, and that used to work. But I did install some Windows Updates since the last time I printed to the Phaser, and there's an option called Windows Ready Print, which apparently lets Windows query your printer and install whatever the fuck it wants to. Which I switched off.

I 'removed' the printer, and downloaded a Global Printer Driver from Xerox, and chose the Add Printer/Manual Install method, and clicked the "Have Disk" button which has been around since, I dunno, WinNT?, and pointed it at the .INF I downloaded, named the printer, reopened Word, and now I have a cute little paper gift tag with purple printing.

Only took two hours.

My other half has just run a bath, so the heat pump has kicked in and started re-filling the hot water tank. The car is charging at the same time, and most of it is being covered by the sun. We’re pulling only 700w from the grid.

Renewables are amazing.

Anyone else on hachyderm.io unable to post photos at the moment, or is the fediverse just out to get me personally?

So, somehow I managed to create a #HomeAssistant dashboard control that, rather than close some windows shades by triggering an automation I created, actually enabled or disabled the automation itself.

I ended up cutting and pasting the generated YAML code from a similar control that works correctly.

Hey, would someone at the #NBA Championship game of the #Knicks vs the #Spurs please post the obscenities the crowd is yelling? #ABC keeps killing the audio.

we have a Forgejo instance at the Dutch government now and it's great!

A lot of the UI is actually smoother and faster than GitHub, there's no annoying upselling, no forced AI ('are you sure you don't want this reviewed by an agent?'), and the fact that we run rather than rent it seems optimal strategically.

Thanks @Gina and co for making it possible 👏

@fluidlogic @ifixcoinops at least if that would happen again today, the led lights would be much easier to power from a bike...

But Oof, what a story. Ingenious too

This is absolutely beautiful and very well done.

> Nothing you own is finished. Everything exists in a state of permanent incompletion, permanently needing.

https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing

RE: https://tech.lgbt/@solonovamax/116049115040950367

If I'm reading the disclosure correctly, the issue is:

- Windows Notepad is more than just a plain text editor now.
- In particular, it has a markdown preview feature, including clickable links.
- But, it doesn't have full web browser security processes for what to do if you click on a link with a protocol that triggers a local application. It gets treated as if the user was directly running that application.

So, don't open strange files & then click links. (And update Windows regularly.)

Logistics.
Package originating in Minnesota arrives at UPS in Fargo, ND, to then be transferred to UPS in... Minnesota.

Moshidon for Android

@Alice https://beige.party/@Alice/115647980819371778

My dad who is 81 recently got into trouble cause the app where he pays his bills decided that his phone is too old.

He has a fully functional phone that’s a couple of years old but he now needs to throw it away because of software.

I think this is bullshit.

"But I’ll say this: the AI bubble isn’t predominantly giving off Pets.com or Global Crossing vibes anymore. It’s giving Enron vibes. When the dust settles, we’ll probably see a whole lot of books written about the fancy math games that convinced investors that two companies passing $100 billion back and forth were creating $200 billion in value instead of having a net financial impact of $0."
https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/its-giving-enron?r=eeyg&triedRedirect=true

Google now hits me with a captcha every time I search using &udm=14 on the LibreWolf browser.