Wednesday, February 26

Geek

Daily News Stuff 26 February 2020

Rabid Cabbages Edition

Tech News

  • The Smithsonian has released an archive of 2.8 million photos into the public domain.

    Specifically a CC0 license.  They're planning to digitise their entire collection of 155 million items.


  • Microsoft can go fuck themselves.  (Bleeping Computer)

    No, I am not going to depend on an online service to log into my own computer.

    I think I ran into this recently when reinstalling my spare laptop, which got stuck in a boot loop after a failed upgrade to Windows 10 1909.  I hadn't configured WiFi at that point so it wasn't possible for me to use an online account, and the installer allowed me to set up a local account.  Apparently that is now the only way to do so at install time.


  • Really want a Nintendo PlayStation?  Got $300,000 plus burning a hole in your pocket?  It could be yours.  (Tech Report)

    It's the real deal and in working order.  (Heritage Auctions)

    And probably the only one in the world, since it's a prototype for a joint venture that never went ahead.


Disclaimer: Or you could just use a Raspberry Pi.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:43 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 192 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Re: Windows.  There was a couple of forum threads at [H]ardOCP's forums late last year about this.  It appears that 1903 is when they added this misfeature, but backed off with 1909.  If you're not online when you start setup, it'll let you create a local account.  IIRC, the difference between 1903 and 1909 was that in 1909 they loosened it up so that if you forgot to not connect to the internet, but are persistent you can still do the local account.  Also IIRC, if you connected but then don't want to do an online account, you can reboot and try again after disconnecting, and you'll get the local account option.
Supposedly the 2004 ISOs are available so I might try again and see what the current state is.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 27 2020 02:06 AM (Iwkd4)

2 OK--as I said, supposedly the 2004 ISOs are available, but when I tried to use the Microsoft USB installer creation tool I wound up with a 1909 installer.  At any rate I ran through it, making sure to connect to my wifi, and while it nagged me a couple of times (including the use of dark patterns like a button that says Microsoft Account, but plain text that says Limited Experience) it still let me create a local account even though I was online.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 27 2020 04:29 AM (Iwkd4)

3 After reading the comments on that bleeping computer article, it appears the "online account only" thing may be Home only.  I installed without using a key and I just checked and I got 10 Pro.  I can try it again the other way but I'd have to download the iso again.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 27 2020 04:34 AM (Iwkd4)

4 Ah, right.  I was installing Home.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, February 27 2020 07:56 AM (PiXy!)

5 I don't know what the deal is.  The media creation tool just says "windows 10" and didn't give me an option to pick which version.  It also didn't ask for a key or whether I wanted Home or Pro.  I happened to create the USB disk from my work PC, which has Pro, so maybe that's why.  I can try re-creating the disk from my home PC, which has Home.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 27 2020 12:01 PM (Iwkd4)

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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