Indeed he was, and this is good timing what with Towel Day coming up in a couple of weeks. I was just pondering the other day when the first electric monk would finally show up. Being four-legged, I suppose it doesn't even need a horse. What do you suppose it'll start believing in first?

Regarding ancient search engines, both webcrawler.com and lycos.com still exist and are functional. These both slightly predate Ask Jeeves. Interestingly, webcrawler.com still works with the Lynx browser.

Agree 100%. As a recent retiree from a 45-year software engineering career, I too have a huge collection of libraries that I've written and vetted over the years in a variety of languages, which, combined with experience, allow me to gain significant reuse on projects, without having to resort to untested code statistically generated by an LLM. I suspect nearly all graybeards who have been in the industry for decades feel the same way. Don't get me wrong; LLM's can be very educational, sometimes producing algorithmic approaches that you may not have considered, and as such can be a useful tool. You are essentially reviewing someone else's code (because that's where it initiated from), which is always educational. I think it's wise to pick and choose what bits of generated code that you find useful and intend to utilize, and carefully and fully vet the code, spending time understanding and refining it as appropriate, casting a particularly critical eye on its security aspects. It then becomes your code, and should include full test suites and documentation (gasp!), as should any code prior to committing it.

That's why automatic updates are the first thing I turn off whenever I get a new iPhone. Some people use health- or medical-related iPhone apps, and these are not always kept up to date for the latest iOS update that Apple would dearly love to forcibly push to all iPhones that are capable of running it. Once I've determined that my favorite apps have been updated and tested on the new iOS update, then I decide if/when I'll allow the update to occur. I'm sure pretty much all iPhone users have, at one time or another, noticed that one or more of their apps are no longer compatible with a new iOS release, but did Apple warn them of this prior to updating it anyway? No. So savvy users should seize control of the update process, assuming they care.

Well, duh, it'll be UTF-8, and all they have to do is look it up in Wikipedia. Er...wait...

This. It's faster for a trained checker to check out my grocery items than it is for me to do it myself; in fact, I'd guesstimate that the checkers are at least twice as fast as me if I have more than 6 items, what with my searching for barcodes, struggling with plastic grocery bags, etc. And woe be me if I have some produce; I don't have the code memorized for my favorite carrots or tomatoes, but the checkers sure do. Plus if I buy alcohol, I have to wait for an employee to come over, examine my gray hair, and decide if I'm old enough to be buying beer.

So, the way I see it, with self-check, I'm on the losing end of the proposition in at least 4 ways:
1. I have to do all the work, and undergo the frustration of dealing with produce lookups.
2. I spend at least twice as much time checking out as a skilled checker would, and that's time I'll never get back.
3. I'm helping to deprive someone of a paying job, simply to line the big grocery conglomerate's coffers.
4. My taxes go up, because that person who was deprived of a job may end up on welfare.

So I avoid self-check like the plague, and am content to instead stand in line and wait for a human.

Yes. In Windows, Ctrl-Alt-Del is used for a number of things, including simply unlocking your workstation if it is configured to require it. Try pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del with one hand if you have no Right-Ctrl key. Why one hand? That left hand might be busy doing something else...

Sure, the odds are that if you have ever taken out a loan of any kind (assuming you are in a country covered by the Big 3 Credit Reporting Agencies), your data has been scavenged in one or more breaches by now. So, most of us here have probably already done this, but if you haven't, freeze your credit reports. The primary reason why thieves want to steal your identity is so that they can take out loans on your behalf, and skip away with the cash, leaving you responsible for the loan payments, often without your knowledge. At that point, you are guilty until proven innocent, and it can literally take years to prove your innocence, assuming you are ever actually able to do so.
So again, if you haven't already, do the needful and freeze your credit reports. If a lender cannot pull your credit report, they are extremely unlikely to give you (or anyone posing as you) a loan, credit card, etc. And you can temporarily unfreeze your credit reports whenever you need to, and have them automatically re-freeze after a specified period of time.

This has been a public service announcement of the Vogon High Council.

Regarding Pathfinder 1's cargo lift vs. a helicopter:
Pathfinder 1: 4 tons
Sikorsky CH-53K: 18 tons
Plus the CH-53K can make multiple supply runs to an emergency site in the time it would take the Pathfinder to make a single run. The CH-53K isn't electric, but in an emergency I can bet which aircraft would be more capable of responding effectively.

Two relatively easy solutions:

1. Use Edge to download Firefox, install it, and use Firefox to download Chrome.

2. If MS starts polling about downloading Firefox, just download it directly with curl, install it, and then use it to download Chrome, e.g.:
c:\windows\system32\curl.exe https://download-installer.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/firefox/releases/119.0/win64/en-US/Firefox%20Setup%20119.0.exe --output firefox_setup.exe
(Substitute whatever the current version of Firefox happens to be in the URL above)

This.
Wordpad is the only lightweight application that can handle Rich Text Format (.rtf) files natively in Windoze, avoiding the need to load up a bloated behemoth like MS Word (that realistically you have to pay for nowadays to run it locally), or downloading a 3rd-party app. Why RTF? Because it supports formatted text and images, which is often all that is required to create a generic informational document with ease. Other than RTF, the only other lightweight format I can think of is HTML, but then you have to deal with storing images and sometimes fonts along with the actual document. Plus then you need a decent lightweight wysiwyg HTML editor, so once again you're back to downloading a 3rd-party app. As several others have mentioned, the removal of Wordpad is simply a ploy for getting more people to subscribe to MS Office.

This. It's really difficult to find old or obscure movies available for streaming, particularly if you only subscribe to one or two streaming services. The Netflix DVD catalog is massive, and if you cannot find a rare movie there, you may even have a tough time finding a copy to actually purchase outright on Amazon or eBay or whatever. Redbox isn't much help in that area either, at least last time I had a look about a year ago. Most everything I saw on Redbox was fairly recent, or at least mainstream, and could be found on one or more streaming services. I too wonder what is to become of that massive collection of Netflix DVDs, but I sure hope it gets sold to someone like Redbox who wants to rent (not sell) the discs, so that it will continue to be available to those who are interested.

I personally do not mind paying Intuit $60/year or whatever for their Turbotax software, because it includes a LOT of valuable guidance, not to mention the ability to easily type in my tax info from my keyboard, rather than laboriously hand-writing the free paper forms from the IRS, and wondering what I missed along the way. What gripes me is that although Intuit allows me to file my federal taxes electronically for free, they charge me an extra fee to do the same thing with my state taxes! Does my state charge Intuit to file my taxes electronically?? I don't think so, it's just a way for them to make more money, instead of just folding it in to the original purchase price. I mean, who files US federal taxes, and yet somehow manages not to have to file state taxes as well (in at least one state)? I would think that scenario would only apply to people with relatively low incomes, in which case they probably would not have shelled out $60 for Turbotax to begin with.

+1 for Joplin. If you like to keep your notes synchronized between devices, but prefer not to trust a 3rd-party like Dropbox, OneDrive, etc., you can set up your own WebDAV or NextCloud server and safely sync your notes there. Joplin notes can optionally be created as to-do lists, and I find that manipulating my to-do's on my phone while I'm out shopping or whatever, and having them automatically synchronized across my devices is particularly convenient.
https://joplinapp.org/

Foxconn exec: "Chinese workers are too expensive. I hear that Elbonians will work for 10% of what we pay our existing workers, and they're paid in mud."
Chinese workers: "Does your Dad still have openings at the rice-paddy?"