Something I've long appreciated is a little Perl script to compute statistics on piped in numbers, I find it great for getting quick summaries from report CSVs.

    #!/usr/bin/perl
    # http://stackoverflow.com/a/9790056
    use List::Util qw(max min sum);
    @a=();
    while(<>){
        $sqsum+=$_*$_;
        push(@a,$_)
    };
    $n=@a;
    $s=sum(@a);
    $a=$s/@a;
    $m=max(@a);
    $mm=min(@a);
    $std=sqrt($sqsum/$n-($s/$n)*($s/$n));
    $mid=int @a/2;
    @srtd=sort @a;
    if(@a%2){
        $med=$srtd[$mid];
    }else{
        $med=($srtd[$mid-1]+$srtd[$mid])/2;
    };
    print "records:$n\nsum:$s\navg:$a\nstd:$std\nmed:$med\max:$m\nmin:$mm";

I've been using it for what must be over ten years and I cannot recommend it enough, especially given how poor searching for anything on Windows is now.

I, for one, am thrilled for a bar code to "take you on an experience that the brand wants you to have"

You future mileage may vary. And the potential for abuse is quite real. For one, the fact that they could instantly bind serial numbers to idividuals upon purchase is scary. Corporations could limit the right to resale and impose warranty limitations, for starter.

Just pay cash. If you're serious about avoiding having your purchases tracked and analyzed, you're already doing that anyway.

I built a system for distributing and collecting homework assignments, and the assignments themselves were distributed with automated tests. Students would have instant feedback on their homework with clear tests and point assignments. Great idea, right? A high level required course of 40+ students could be scheduled, collected, and graded all in under an hour.

Not to mention the nightmare of early GitHub for Education used in the first semester (all forks mutually visible, what were they thinking!?), a genuinely shocking percentage of the class tried to cheat their way around it, thinking that I wasn't looking. Cheating felt like it had significantly increased the moment they thought we weren't looking. I expected some cheating, sure, but it really felt like it went higher and stayed higher than before.

The course has moved to others (who I have nothing but respect for), but I hear it is "notorious" for cheating. I was so proud of this system, and the distribution/collection systems are still used by a department, but the experience has really left me with a bad taste in my mouth wrt anything related to automated grading.

I had almost this exact same experience when teaching an algorithms course. I had to stop giving automated feedback when I had a student turn my own code back into me and then lie to my face when confronted about it. It only took 3 weeks. The worst part was how bad I felt for taking something useful away from the students who weren't abusing it.

He records while sitting on a yoga ball, I never really noticed before someone pointed it out.

I did a playthrough of the Ocarina of Time randomizer with friends and it was a lot of fun. I can't imagine the amount of work it took to get online multiplayer working as well as it did.

I'm curious what keeps "first party" analytics/ads just phoning home and doing the third-party transaction server-side.

Apple's banhammer, should the public ever catch you in the act. (I guess.)

And their ban hammer is not terribly sophisticated either. They find one ad that is the same, or similar to, an ad being served someplace else and WHAM!

Unless you've got money to burn, don't try to be nickel slick with Apple. Learned that the hard way.

I'm so mad I missed the window where you were supposedly able to merge email accounts. If I want to merge existing separate accounts now I have to terminate the old account, wait like a 9 months/a year(??) for it to expire and be purged, and then add it as an alias, assuming MS doesn't hold the expired account name >:C

By simply being in the same room the machine is in, you have agreed to the EULA and you can take it up with MS in forced arbitration.

EULA eh?

Show me:

     1. Where it was signed (show me the document)
     2. The wording of the agreed EULA
     3. Who agreed to it
     4. If theyre even able to make it.

Because I know at my workplace, a computer was provided to me. Windows 10. I never clicked on a EULA. Ive also made VMs on AWS of Windows server 2016 for testing - again, no EULA. No clickthru.

Until the courts say otherwise and an enforcement body hands out penalties, none of that is necessary. You used the software, therefore you've implicitly agreed to the EULA.

It may not be fair. It may not we right but that is the world we live in today.

IANAL; While you're working, your employer has agreed on behalf of you (with your consent - the employment). You are not an end user when using enterprise licenses. I might be mistaken though, Microsoft licensing and laws are both complex topics.

> By simply being in the same room the machine is in, you have agreed to the EULA and you can take it up with MS in forced arbitration.

What about in the EU where an EULA is unenforceable and forced arbitration doesn't exist?

I have a 6S from the original batch with the bad batteries. I never had it replaced because it worked fine (a coworker's most certainly did not), and it made a good excuse for a free replacement later down the line.

Now that it's finally acting up, I'm in waitlist hell because of the advent of the battery replacement program. I've been on the wait list for our local repair shop for about a month now, it's pretty crazy. They said they've had hundreds of people sign up.

I would hope that it gets done sooner than later. Had a 6S with a serial from a bad batch and sent it to Apple for repair/replacement. They refused to fix it citing "3rd party modifications" with no further explanation or evidence. It wasn't until I escalated the issue up 3 levels and provided photos of the phone in stellar condition at the time of shipping did they finally back down. The experience bothered me so much that I switched to Android. Your post made me realize that perhaps engineers are so overwhelmed with 6S repairs that they are just declining them.

I don't know your situation but usually this has to do with parts replaced by a 3rd party. Usually a cracked screen done by a non-official technician.

They do scan ids of parts inside a device before repairing it.