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The folks at adafruit probably do know, but it does make sense if you expand the words: "Control, Alter, and Delete"

That's more charitable. Alt is still short for Alternate though, not Alter.

I thought "Alt" in the title is meant in the sense of "stop", as in "halt", but on second thoughts maybe that only works in French (where h is always silent)?

It's clearly meant to be part of the Ctrl-Alt-Del key sequence that interrupts Windows computers to bring up the task manager.

But doesn't Ctrl+Alt+Del bring up the screen to switch users or sign out? "Task Manager" is one item in the list of options you get, but it's not the main one or anything, in fact it's the last:

https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/hzx6btMYEqZJfSAL3WVxXuW3-jw=/1...


The author may just be showing their age a bit. That's what Ctrl+Alt+Del does on modern versions of Windows, but from Windows 95 to Windows XP (inclusive) it directly launched the Task Manager.

Ctrl+Alt+Del on an IBM PC or a compatible clone reboots the machine no questions asked. There's a dedicated reset button in case that fails.

Doing anything other than a reboot started with protected mode MS-Windows 3.1 IIRC (then marketed as "386 enhanced mode").


Yeah; in Windows 3.1, Ctrl+Alt+Del took you to a blue screen that allowed you to kill an unresponsive task (but didn't display a list of tasks; the Task List was launched with Ctrl+Esc), or told you there was no such task to kill if there wasn't.

Before Windows 3.1 it just rebooted the machine as you described.

Launching Task Manager was the 95 to XP behaviour, but NT behaved differently -- even Windows NT 4.0 (developed alongside Windows 95) took you to the security screen with Ctrl+Alt+Del (something that would later be ported to Vista), where launching Task Manager was one of its options. These OSes weren't used residentially though, until Windows 2000 attempted to merge their lineages and Windows XP finally cemented the deal.


Would have made more sense to say Ctrl+Shift+Esc since that just directly brings up the task manager. All in all I would say it is a slightly weird title, but I assume enough people get what they want to say with it.

I mean, technically it’s short for alter on the way to being short for alternate

That's bullshit (IMO) and the post author (Phillip Torrone - I believe that's one of the owners of Adafruit) is obviously ignorant in this regard.

That said, what he's actually talking about in the post makes a lot of sense. That is the important part.


It turns out those shopping car wheel locks use the same kind of low-frequency RF that can leak from your phone speaker. Someone made an app that allows you to lock or unlock certain shopping carts.

FWIW; Every Lenovo I've used in recent history had a setting in the BIOS to remap Fn/Ctrl.

On my assigned machine, I have it swapped so Ctrl is in the lower left spot because otherwise I'd lose my mind trying to figure it out between all the machines I swap through. (Emacs users will have to use something else to put Ctrl where they want ....)


I giggle every time I stumble upon a Windows 3.1 file-selector dialog still in Windows 11.

Ebay works like this too. But because sniping is still permitted, I like to bid 'uncommon' amounts, like $3.17, so if someone else tried to bid a max of $3.00 even at the last moment, the bid for the few cents more wins.

  commit ecfd9009-5bae4398b13645e14ec4ce25 (HEAD -> deal-with-snipers)
  Author: sunrunner
  Date:   Thu Jan 22 13:57:34 2026 +0000

      Update BidBot default bid cents amount to be 18 (was 16), to deal with pesky sniping strategies discovered on HN.

We ended up here because certain people realised that there is oppertunity in exploiting the window of time between "I trust that you are selling this in good faith" and "This is a scam and I will drag your name, and any of your associates in mud". The internet enabled people to just 'make up names', and keep exploiting this.

So rather than investing time and effort into investigating, we just built faceless tools to punish anything that looks even remotely suspicious, and ignore any appeals, and if a few (or a lot) of folks just trying to make an honest living get caught up, then oh well.

Even if you try selling direct, your payment processor takes on this role, with varying degrees of trigger-sensitivity.


> Even if you try selling direct, your payment processor takes on this role, with varying degrees of trigger-sensitivity.

I agree but I hate payment processors sometimes as well and they feel very rent seeking in nature (akin to amazon) to me as well, I definitely wonder if stablecoins with good on/offramps or proper VISA support might actually help the end citizen but I am a bit worried because Stablecoin's on crypto and most crypto's really scummy so I also don't want to give things like this way too much attention.

Time will tell perhaps


It's not that simple, and it touches on a bunch of things that are at a nexus right now, that may end the anonymous internet.

(a) an identity provider needs to verify who is using the browser. If that can be strongly tied, then the identify provider could simply provide the "adult: yes" flag, on a need to know basis, but:

(b) the site consuming that header needs to trust that it came from a reliable source. So that flag needs to be signed/verified somehow, and the consuming site needs to trust that the identity provider doesn't lie. But also, the site consuming the header, by law, needs to do everything in can to ensure that it's not a child, so, it will need to ensure that the content is served ONLY to the web browser, and it trusts the web browser. Which means ....

(c) The browser will confirm to the site that it's real, it's trusted, it is not operated by some kind of relay/bot and won't send the content to anything other than the operator authenticated to the browser. So it's going to start signing it's requests with a secret key, but that key will need to be on the user's machine, which will need to be trusted, so ....

(d) the signing will have to happen in the secure element, and the key will have to be stored on the machine that the operator cannot access. So some kind of TPM/Measured computing will have to be in place so all parties can trust that nothing was tampered with, or relayed to something else that was not authenticated.

All these things exist today. So the simple law mandating "A site has to ensure that sensitive content is never served to a minor using the strongest technical means available" means anonymous access, untrusted computers on the network will no longer be allowed to work.


So don't pass a law that says that? This is letting the perfect get in the way of the barely adequate.


That's an easy one. They're people, and still have rights. That's non-negotiable.


If you're in a country illegally, yes you do have rights but the right to stay is not one of them.


Here is the thing

You are all sold this lie that "illegal immigrants take your jobs" or "bring drugs into the country", and you immediately adopt this as truth and don't even bother to fact check this because of your inherent racism.

In reality the vast amounts immigrants that are coming into US are putting 10 times back more into the economy than they are taking because they are all coming here to work. And they work at jobs that Americans don't want because they pay less. Not that there was even an unemployment crisis to begin with, so Americans had plenty of jobs.

The problem with immigration was the asylum process, where there were not enough staff to process all the requests and determine real ones from fake ones. This is why there was a border bill brought up in 2023-2024, authored by a Republican, that had bipartisan support. Trump killed that bill, saying on record that it would help his election chances. So in the end, more people would have been deported if the border bill would have passed than there are now, and there would have been way more filtering on who gets to stay and who doesnt.

All of this is true, none of this is debatable. No, your favorite right wing commentator opposing arguments are all bullshit.

And this is precisely why conservatives deserve no sympathy. Inherent racism is probably due to the shit job your parents did at raising you, which is at least excusable, but the stupidity of voting for someone who gives you the worse outcome compared to what you want, and then claiming its a better outcome, is not.


Some teas steep at less than boiling temperature. And I imagine the tea itself may have more risk of microbes depending on how it is stored, and that the temperature drops way below boiling almost immediately upon pouring out.

I wonder if any studies have been done on this....


Due process for EVERY person in the legal territory regardless of who or what they are. Otherwise it's way to easy to say, "they're the other, and have no rights", and they are already using this line.


Which is absolutely unconstitutional. The constitution says the 4th amendment protects all people, not just citizens. It's been upheld many times by the supreme court. This administration is knowingly and willingly trampling the constitution. The midterm elections can't come soon enough. And in the meantime we all need to get in the streets. Anyone can manipulate social media. But you can't manipulate the narrative when there is an overwhelming number of brave people in the streets clearly and peacefully protesting.


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