Given the choice, I’d definitely choose a cable for anything I know will require high internet usage. Wireless is just too slow, even on a 5G connection.

I still remember I once broke my Windows installation (young me had tried dual-booting the Windows 10 beta and my Windows 7 installation). I had to get system restored discs from the manufacturer. It wasn’t particularly tricky to fix, but it took a long time to download those Windows updates after it finished. I noticed an immediate change once I remembered I had an old 30 ft. ethernet cable lying around and plugged it in. (This was maybe 8-10 years ago.)

My favorite 404 page has to be the one on Adult Swim’s website. It has a short story on it that (I believe) they still occasionally switch. The current one:

LIVING WITH THE ECHO

The echo – as I call it – can be felt at any time, and is often so profound, I look into the eyes of whoever’s around, expecting them to share in its wonder. At best I’m met with polite, confused smiles. Undaunted I ride out this secret frequency until it ebbs, leaving me with an aching nostalgia for mere seconds ago.

So what is this sensation? Let’s start here: I’m eleven pedaling my dirtbike through the soon-to-be-developed wooded area near my house. The path is slick with mud and fallen leaves. I race both against the clock (dinner is soon) and a shallow stream that runs parallel, about six-feet below to my right.

This is before digital. My playlist is clouds, trees, and water. I am attuned to nature – with the exception of a fallen, gnarled branch that demolishes my front rim and sends me screaming headfirst over the side.

IMPACT. Everything goes gray.

Colors resume as I reorient on a bed of grit and stone, shallow water coursing over my sweater and jeans. Nothing feels broken and I’m not alarmed. I remain still, oddly at peace. The stream feels otherworldly, beyond water, a place of belonging. I gaze at the dense blue sky, framed by a canopy of thrashing branches. Rainwater gushes by my ears, roaring like applause. Inexplicably this dirty, wet place offers a sort of warmth and protection. I’m a clumsy kid who found a womb in the woods.

It’s later I learn that I fractured the base of my skull and lost a lot of blood. That I remained in the stream for two hours, which contracted (in my mind) to five ecstatic minutes. The doctors say I was in shock with a mild brain injury. Months of physical rehab and cognitive tests got me back on my bike, though I wouldn’t experience the world as I briefly had, alone and bleeding to death – until the echo, which began a year ago.

The echo comes on like a vibration of pure bliss, and I suddenly remember how free and alive I felt in the stream. Colors dance. Sound takes on added dimension. Imagine a seizure that heightens your senses and drops the veil of the ordinary world to reveal iridescence and pure harmony everywhere. It. Is. Beautiful.

Then it goes away and you feel haunted by a fantastic party that ended too early.

Friends worry when the echo causes me to adopt the look of a grinning madman, my eyes alive. Sometimes I drool, but what’s a funny face when you’ve entered the divine?

I don’t want anyone to worry so I joke that my brain just experienced a sort of 404/error. My code is messed up ha ha. I’m ok. I’m ok. I’m ok.

I’m not ok. Because I live for that interruption.

I only exist in 404/error. I am no one any other time.

I don’t dream anymore. Sleep is now a pitch-black advertisement for death. Guess my brain has plenty to do, staging short plays of the impossible, during waking hours.

We do a lot of commemorative stamps instead.

I can’t remember the last time I got a DLL error on my Windows laptop, honestly. I don’t think that’s ever happened on my current computer.

Did you make sure you have several GBs of free memory on the device while patching? At least until recently, ReVanced Manager would throw an error if it ran out of memory, and it actually needed (if I recall correctly) around 8 GB of free memory in order to finish the patching process or it’d throw one of several errors, depending on where in the process it ran out of memory.

Supposedly they’ve fixed this issue with the latest update to ReVanced Manager, which included a new patching process, but I haven’t had a chance to test it.

Edit: Also, did you use the default patch selections? While there are other patches available to select and deselect, using anything other than the default selections can sometimes make things a little unstable. I once ran into an issue with patching, and the solution was just… reset the patch selection to just use the default patches. And it suddenly worked.

Did you make sure to turn on the “GmsCore Support” patch? (I think it used to be called “MicroG Support”.) You have to enable that patch on unrooted devices in order for the app to work.

What is this, Person of Interest?

Excuse me while I go bleach my eye holes.

An exit poll is conducted after a voter exits the voting booth. It’s conducted by a private organization (usually either a news organization or someone working in collaboration with a news organization) and polls people to find out how they voted. The exit poll is voluntary.

Organizations can then categorize that info based on age, gender, race, area where they voted, and other details. News organizations can then use that info (along with a bunch of other data, including polls conducted leading up to the day of the election) to extrapolate who will win an election in a given area. Typically, despite being somewhat limited in their scope (not everyone at every polling location nationwide is polled), the exit polls are usually reflective of the actual election polls.

Campaign organizers for the next election can also use the data to help figure out their strategies for the next election. For a general example (I came up with it off the top of my head), “We failed to gain the aged 60+ black male vote in this state. We need to study how to appeal to them better in the next election.”

Fun Fact: The actual official votes actually take days to count. So these and other types of election polls really help news organizations predict the results even just a few hours after the election polls close, and they’re rarely wrong. Sometimes, they’re even able to call an election the minute the polls in that area close*. These news organizations often each crunch their own numbers, too, so they don’t necessarily all rely on each other’s data.

*I should note that each state has its own rules about how and when they release election results. Often, to avoid influencing voters who haven’t voted yet, they won’t release results (including results from early voting) until polls in the entire state have closed. This is usually the case with news organizations announcing their predictions, too. That’s why some news organizations are able to immediately predict some races as soon as the polls close.

I’ll field this one.

Why would a man whose shirt says “Genius at Work” spend all of his time watching a children’s cartoon show?

It… only updates once a month, though. The second Tuesday of every month.

Any other updates are from the manufacturer/ software developer and not from Microsoft.

For me, it’s not that Windows updates my drivers during a big update. It’s simply that Windows broke the driver while installing a big update.

I’ve had it happen where my Wi-Fi driver broke so it could only connect to an unprotected network. So I’d simply setup my phone as a hotspot and download the Wi-Fi driver from the manufacturer’s website and reinstall it. That’d immediately fix the issue. Though, actually, that issue hasn’t occured in years. The last time it happened, I think, was in the early years of Windows 10.

My understanding (unless they’ve changed it) was that a restart is a restart because software (either the OS or 3rd party software or both) may need the computer restarted to finish installing or updating stuff.

I’d heard that a shutdown wasn’t actually a shutdown, though.

and I got one at least once a month.

According to this post, that’s the monthly update Microsoft releases.

/j

They must’ve done it in the hyperbolic time chamber.

No, viruses don’t mean the scientific definition of life. IIRC, the primary reason why is because, in order to make copies of itself, it must hijack a living cell’s reproductive system to do so. It can’t simply divide to make more of itself.

On most cell phones, holding the “1” button will automatically dial your voicemail.

Wait, you mean that guy who stood in front of the Waymo car?

/j

Most stores around me thankfully don’t even use the weight station. I don’t even think Walmart does anymore since they “upgraded” their checkouts recently. (The self checkouts have completely taken over and have a sort of open floor concept going on.)

That’s an option at some stores in the US. I believe Walmart has that option for Walmart+ members, and I know Sam’s Club has the option available in their app for all members.