Ah, the old “unauthorized tampering with school computer equipment which Could Cause Irreparable Damage,” but is actually just a tacit admission that whoever is in charge of the computer lab doesn’t have the first clue about what they’re doing.

I had several of those throughout my school career.

Hey, Deluxe Paint was pretty alright, too. Amiga or DOS version, your choice.

The loser or one of his friends probably tattled. Most schools have policies similar to this, ostensibly to “prevent it from being brought to school” but in reality because school administrators wish they could exert control over kids’ lives 100% of the time but can’t, and they’re salty about it.

• Got in trouble for painting, or rather inking, a still life assignment in art class in black and white.
• Was threatened with a zero and write up for “lack of effort” for handing in a typed book report at the end of the same class period in which it was assigned. Don’t get mad at me because you assigned a book I’d already read and refused to allow me to choose another.
• Threatened with expulsion after being called onto the carpet in the principal’s office for a Very Stern Talk with a policeman present and everything for having a doodle of a benzene ring on the cover of my chemistry class notebook, because this was apparently “bomb making plans.” A demonstration that the school issued textbook for this very same class was just chock-a-block full of not only this but illustrations of similar molecules was not received well by the administration (“backtalk”) but ultimately I escaped unscathed.
• Sent to detention for my first and only time for gainsaying my biology teacher during a tirade delivered to the class early in the semester on the topic of, “Microscopes are important because you can’t see no cells with just your eyes [sic],” and I responded by not raising my hand per se, but rather holding up a hard boiled egg from my lunchbox.
• Subsequently determined undetentionable during that selfsame detention due to the mandatory assignment therein, which was a photocopied form letter thing which was obviously designed to make you feel very very sorry and very very guilty about what you did with a writing prompt at the top demanding a minimum of three full paragraphs on the topic of, verbatim: “Explain why you are here.” No further instructions. I started with the big bang and worked forward from there, and I got to about page four of meticulous blackletter script on both sides of each sheet of paper before the teacher supervising the detention room finally noticed (probably due to the bold text) and whisked one off of my desk, briefly skimmed it, and then threw me out. I was not allowed to keep what I had written. For all I know it’s still pinned to the wall in the staff room, decades later.
• The reason for the blackletter script was because I wrote everything with a mildly customized vintage Sheaffer fountain pen specifically to annoy that same teacher. I imagine this also annoyed several others, although one or two were appreciative. For instance, my 11th grade math teacher bribed me with extra credit by having me hand letter titles on things for her that she’d photocopy and use as handouts, or whatever. Numerous attempts were made to bring the hammer down on me for this in some form or another, none of which were successful.

I have more. These are the most amusing ones.

Yes, I was an incorrigible little shit when I was in school, mostly because I won’t countenance bullies of any stripe. Being bullied by other kids is bad enough; If you’re a teacher, do better.

Nelson Rockefeller did it better:

?

In the Enterprise editions of Windows, you can already uninstall it. Maybe not via group policy, but you can just find it in the Apps > Installed Apps list and right click to uninstall it. On the various home user editions of Windows, this is probably not the case. (I have zero systems running those, so I can’t check.)

The Enterprise LTSC IoT version of Windows 10 doesn’t even come with Copilot, nor have any updates for it thus far installed it on any of the systems I administer, either. Apparently only 11 does.

What’s new here is apparently being able to trigger this via group policy, but for anyone in the here and now you can already disable Copilot via group policy as well, even on your local system, even on Windows 11.

And even in the cases when you think it might have games, it turns out they’re not on the cartridge.

That falls under the category of “expectations.” Run software contemporary to your machine and it’ll fly just as fast as it ever did. Go ahead, slap Windows 98 on that bad boy.

Words of wisdom from my father, an engineer:

“The computer isn’t any slower than the day you bought it. Only your expectations of it have changed.”

Fortunately (?) my PSU let the smoke out about three years after I bought the initial one for that build which had IIRC a pair of 7950GTs in it from my previous machine, in SLI. So I had the opportunity to throw a modern-ish Corsair 850w power supply in it which has all the modular plugs I need. That box has had a succession of random graphics cards in it ranging from that old pair of 7950GTs, then a GTX680, then finally my current GTX1080Ti. Honestly, the 1080 is still plenty enough for most games in 1080p (possibly serendipitously) as long as you don’t feel the pathological need for raytracing or frame generation.

You can sidestep the NVMe issue as long as you don’t care about 100% speed by slapping a PCIe to NVMe adapter board in one of your handy unused x16 slots now that you’re no longer using SLI (if that reminds you of anyone you know). I’m not certain booting off of that is viable and I haven’t bothered to try to figure it out, so the boot drive in that machine is a SATA SSD currently.

On the bright side, that board has ten SATA ports so turning into a drive farm is a trivial prospect if you’re into that kind of thing.

It says in the article.

The reason given is rising raw materials costs, i.e. metals, and the price increases they’re talking about are on the order of around 10% which is obviously a slap in the face along with everything else that’s going on in the hardware world, but by the same token pretty minimal compared to said selfsame everything else.

I think I paid $40 for my CPU cooler. So, if I ever need to buy a another one for some reason and now it’s $44, well, I guess I’ll live.

Hell, I have a Sandy Bridge based machine I built in 2012. It’s getting there, 14 years old now, and with its 1080ti in there it can still play most games just fine. It’s not my primary rig anymore but it’s still trucking the same as it ever was.

Mainstream PC performance really hit its plateau by, when, like 2018? I imagine somebody with a machine that’s only 8 years old will probably do just fine unless some critical and irreplaceable component in it explodes.

Your example sounds like Ikaruga if it were deliberately designed to be annoying.

…We probably shouldn’t give any mobile game developers any ideas.

Also the model number for this friggin’ thing.

Especially the gold chests that give you a fiver. However, my gripe is with the 3-4 second delay after it goes “bling” but before it presents you the button that allows you to dismiss the popup.

Make sure the edge of your bed isn’t resting on something it ought not to be and/or doesn’t have any crap stuck to the underside of it. My Qidi has two plastic tabs sticking up at the rear which are supposed to be end stops to assist you in lining up the magnetic plate back onto its base, but if you’re not careful you can wind up with the back edge of the base siting on top of them which has the net effect of making the build surface the equivalent of about a 1:64 scale skateboard quarter pipe. This has predictable results if you try to print anything on the back third of it or so.

Hey, our boat landed here 419 years ago. That’s totally different, see.

Yeah, Sarah Palin can see it from there and everything.

This reminds me in a roundabout way that I still need to order tires for the KLR. Spring needs to hurry up already.

Basically every console RPG ever. Certainly those which are not voice acted, and present characters “talking” at you by slowly ghost typing their lines out one character at a time into a text box and then awaiting your input at the end before proceeding to the next line, but inevitably with the dialog box refusing to even start listening for button presses until some seconds after I’ve read the text multiple times over, plus its partially completed form several times more.

I’m adding another dishonorable mention on this front which isn’t even a text box: That fucking treasure chest opening animation in Vampire Survivors. If you know, you know.