Posted by jpluimers on 2021/12/10
It has been a while after my last post about me having cancer. No, I am not giving up. But I am having the regular fear of the upcoming checks: did the metastases return, or do I have the luck to outlive some 30% of my peer group.
The last metastases surgery has been slightly more than a year ago. A year from now, that percentage hopefully will be 50% and slowly increase over time until about 90% in some 9 years from now.
At year’s end, I will know for sure.
Below are some links on, mostly Dutch but with English abstract, articles about the mental side of having cancer, or having survived it for now.
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Posted in About, Cancer, LifeHacker, Personal, Power User, Rectum cancer | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/25
This worked on the built-in Windows PowerShell to get the recommendation status:
$volume = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Volume -Filter "DriveLetter = 'C:'"
$analysis = $volume.DefragAnalysis()
$analysis.DefragAnalysis
$analysis.DefragRecommended
Without elevation token, $analysis.DefragAnalysis will be empty and $analysis.DefragRecommended will return False, but elevated it will return the analysis data and $analysis.DefragRecommended will return False or True depending on the analysis result.,
And this gets the most recent defragmentation action from the event-log:
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Posted in CommandLine, Development, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development | Tagged: possible | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/25
[Wayback/Archive] Airco’s massaal gebruikt voor verwarming, TNO waarschuwt voor gevolgen stroomnet
Via [Archive/Archive] Post by @ruudholswilder.bsky.social — Bluesky
Ruud Holswilder
@ruudholswilder.bsky.social
In feite is een moderne airco een lucht-lucht warmtepomp met een COP van 3,5 tot 5.
1 kWh elektriciteit wordt omgezet in 3,5 tot 5 kWh warmte.
Geen aandacht hiervoor in het artikel van NOS.
--jeroen
Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/25
Often I need to generate passwords or uuids (on some systems called guids). I usually try to do that in a relatively platform agnostic way as I use MacOS, Windows and Linux in various mixes for many reasons (for instance that I have had developed quite hefty RSI in the early 1990s of the and the best keyboard/pointing-device combination for is the MacBook built in keyboard/touchpad combination so basically MacBooks are my window to all other operating systems).
Generating randomly with a good random number generator them makes sense as for most usage, it is important that both passwords and uuids are hard to guess which means having an entropy that is as high as possible.
A cool thing about OpenSSL is that:
- most of not all systems have it installed (it was no coincidence I published Installing OpenSSL on Windows a few days ago)
- it has a very good pseudo-random number generator and as of [Wayback/Archive] OpenSSL version 1.1.1 first released in 2018 has solved the problem around [Wayback/Archive] Random fork-safety – OpenSSLWiki, see [Wayback/Archive] Our Review of the OpenSSL 1.1.1 Random Number Generation Update – OSTIF.org.
- it supports various useful output formats
hex (hexadecimal) and base64 (next to the default of octet – or by today’s naming convention byte – output)
The easiest to generate are passwords. Yes I know that password managers can do this too, but there are some systems I cannot use them on or sync between them (don’t you love the corporate world) so my aim is to use a random password generator in a platform agnostic way which usage is easy to remember. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, base64, bash, bash, Batch-Files, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Encoding, Event, HEX encoding, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, MacBook, OpenSSL, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/24
LLM eat a lot of energy and are their hallucination are bad: [Wayback/Archive] LLM-generated passwords ‘fundamentally weak,’ experts say • The Register
Your AI-generated password isn’t random, it just looks that way
…
AI security company Irregular looked at Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, and found all three GenAI tools put forward seemingly strong passwords that were, in fact, easily guessable.
…
Basically they are almost as good as the 2007 XKCD “four” number generator, the 2013 XKCD “I’m So Random” or the 2001 Dilbert “nine” number generator further below (don’t read the latter if you dislike Scott Adams)
Is it a coincidence or are these two using two small squared numbers?
Anyway: avoid LLM whenever possible, as most often they do more bad than good.
And for passwords, better use the blog post that was already scheduled for tomorrow: Generating random strings for passwords and uuids/guids on both Windows and Linux using base64 and hex encoding, plus: “Hive Systems: Are Your Passwords in the Green?”
Via [Wayback/Archive] Eloy.: “LLMs are centrist randomness: not useful for anything that requires truth but neither for password generation” – HSNL Social
Below this post, there are some great responses as well.
Comics
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Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, C++, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Internet, InternetArchive, LLM, Pingback, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development, Stackoverflow, WayBack machine | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/24
I needed to document how to install sed on Windows (which I did a long time ago after writing Plastic SCM: show the current changeset abstract (without files) on the commandline) and recently for some more scripting work(which I will blog on that later this week).
At the time of writing it was [Wayback/Archive] Chocolatey Software | GNU sed 4.8, but this Chocolatey command will install or upgrade to the most recent available version:
choco upgrade --yes sed
Of course, like yesterday’s post Installing OpenSSL on Windows, you could use winget or scoop for this as well. Finding out the commands is left as an exercise to the reader (;
Query: [Wayback/Archive] chocolatey sed – Google Search
–jeroen
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Chocolatey, Development, Power User, Scoop, Scripting, sed, Software Development, Windows, Windows Development, winget | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/23
[Wayback/Archive] EASY way to FIX Plastic THREADS !! #screw #repair #plastic – YouTube
- Around the screw, wrap a thin metal wire that exactly matches the thread groove width of the screw creating a metal thread.
- Heat the screw with metal wire thread, then force it into the broken plastic thread.
- Wait for it to cool down.
- Unscrew the screw from the metal wire thread.
--jeroen
Posted in DIY, LifeHacker, Power User | Tagged: plastic, repair, screw | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/23
I pulled this post forward from the blog queue in light of the recent Archive Today controversy (which started because of the Gyrovague article mentioned below). Please note that in this controversy, the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive plays no role: it is purely about the Archive Today behaviour. Apart from this remark above the line I left this blog post in the original form I wrote it in, as I liked it a lot and quite a few published and queued blog posts still depend on it.
From a while back, but still a historic relevant article: [Wayback/Archive] archive.today: On the trail of the mysterious guerrilla archivist of the Internet – Gyrovague
Via [Wayback/Archive] difference between archive today and wayback machine – Google Search
Related:
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Posted in Archive Today controversy, archive.is / archive.today, Archiving, Bookmarklet, History, Internet, mementoweb, Power User, WayBack machine, Webcitation | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/20
Edit 20260221: the below WDR 2 link has been renamed into [Wayback/Archive] Artemis II – Launch with Launch T0: 2026-03-07 01:29:00 UTC (yup, that T0 is T-zero, not T-oh) which the Americans date as 206-03-06 as they use local EST time which is only valid at their east coast.
Artemis II testing and launch videos, including timeline, can be viewed from [Wayback/Archive] Artemis II – WDR 2.
Yesterday, as part of the launch vehicle system tests, the second wet dress rehearsal was performed.
Somewhere the next few weeks, a launch is anticipated.
Via: [Wayback/Archive] Post by @marijkelouise.bsky.social — Bluesky
--jeroen
Posted in LifeHacker, Physics, Power User, science | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/20
For my link archive, as these might be useful one day:
WireGuard on Gl.INet devices
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Posted in GL-AR300M, GL.iNet, GL.iNET GL-SFT1200, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/19
Missed Schedule 2020/02/19 at 6:00 pm
Yesterday evening, WordPress.com did it again: “missed schedule” – that bug still is not fixed, so I posted it manually today.
In the time when people create a lot of technical debt, the [Wayback/Archive] Manifesto for Agile Software Development turned 25 years. Happy birthmonth!
Birthmonty you say, not birthday? Yes, it took a few days for the Agile Manifesto to get written – you can read about it at [Wayback/Archive] History: The Agile Manifesto which starts with
On February 11-13, 2001, at The Lodge at Snowbird ski resort in the Wasatch mountains of Utah, seventeen people met to talk, ski, relax, and try to find common ground—and of course, to eat. What emerged was the Agile ‘Software Development’ Manifesto. Representatives from Extreme Programming, SCRUM, DSDM, Adaptive Software Development, Crystal, Feature-Driven Development, Pragmatic Programming, and others sympathetic to the need for an alternative to documentation driven, heavyweight software development processes convened
I got reminded to it [Wayback/Archive] Agile Manifesto co-author ‘smitten’ with vibe coding • The Register which shows that vibe coding only can work when all people involved know exactly what they are doing. More often than not they don’t, and just increase their technical debt which was something that working in an agile way tries to solve. So better re-read this 25 year piece of work before you start using LLM to generate code.
Related blog posts:
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Posted in Agile, Development, Extreme Programming (X), Missed Schedule, Power User, Software Development, WordPress | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 