The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for February, 2025

MacBook Red Screen Issue, or why I turned off True Tone and Night Shift

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/28

The winter after I bought my first ARM based (or Apple Silicon powered) MacBook I noticed that often about half an hour after sunset, within 10 seconds all the screens (the built-in and external ones) would get a red teint on them.

[Wayback/Archive] MacBook Red Screen Issue – SimplyMac was the very first search result, and mentioned this:

Adjusting Night Shift and True Tone

Night Shift and True Tone features can affect the color temperature of your display. Night Shift reduces blue light in the evenings, which can make the screen appear warmer. True Tone adjusts the display’s color temperature to match the ambient lighting. If these settings are misconfigured, they could contribute to the red screen issue. Check your Night Shift and True Tone settings in the Displays section of System Preferences to ensure they’re set correctly or turned off.

I had to turn off both Night Shift and True Tone to get rid of this artefact, though for some people that didn’t solve the issue: [Wayback/Archive] Screen has red tint at night (True Tone and Night Shift are Off) – Apple Community.

I fully agree with [Wayback/Archive] Am I the only one who prefers True Tone?* : macbookpro

The only thing I like about true tone is how great it looks when I turn it off.

I was soooo disappointed with how crap the display was on my M1 Max that I thought about selling it as soon as I got it. Decided to play around with display settings and found True Tone. Turned it off and felt immediate relief. That’s how bad I think True Tone is. Absolutely flabbergasted that Mac’s come out the box with it enabled.

My 2015 MBP screen looks better to me than a M series screen with True Tone on.

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Posted in Apple, Apple Silicon, ARM Mac, Mac, MacBook, MacBook-Pro, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Ester Naomi Perquin on Twitter: “… Wat is het Syndroom van Moeje eigenlijk en wat moet je ermee?”

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/28

Mooie draad: over “Wat is het Syndroom van Moeje eigenlijk en wat moet je ermee?”

Begin-tweet: [Wayback/Archive] Ester Naomi Perquin on Twitter: “Op speciaal verzoek van iemand met weinig geld en veel zorgen (die momenteel op dagelijke basis met #hetsyndroomvanmoeje te maken krijgt) vandaag nog even een kort draadje daarover. Wat is het Syndroom van Moeje eigenlijk en wat moet je ermee? 1/10”

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Posted in Awareness, Inclusion / inclusive society, LifeHacker, Power User | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Some links on USB 2.0 and 3.0 galvanic isolators

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/27

Will likely need some of these in the future (be remember: USB 2.0 in Bulgaria and 3.0 in Germany price difference is about 10-fold) as galvanic isolation can reduce risks of gear blowing out a lot, for example when working with SDR (software-defined radio – often USB devices) and roof antennas:

Via

  1. [WaybackSave/Archive] Mehdi on X: “What is a (USB) galvanic isolator, and when do you need one? It protects your expensive USB gadgets and also your host computer/laptop from noise, ground loop and power surges. An isolator basically sits between your computer and the target device, allowing full USB data …”
  2. [WaybackSave/Archive] Mehdi on X: “@oktayegi If you mean whether SDRs also can work via this isolator, then yes. Almost every device should work. Here’s a SDRPlay: …”
  3. [WaybackSave/Archive] Ondra OK1CDJ/OL0M🇨🇿/SV0SYH/J42T🇬🇷 on X: “@MehdiHacks Check this…”
  4. [WaybackSave/Archive] ⚡bacteriophage⚡ on X: “@ok1cdj @MehdiHacks nah, based on ADUM4160 so only 12Mbps data rate. ADUM4165 with 480 Mbps is preferable”
  5. [WaybackSave/Archive] Archimago’s Musings: MEASUREMENTS: Intona 7055-C USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Isolator. And Darko & Lavorgna hear no difference with the Silent Angel ethernet switch. [Importance of open discussions.]

Pictures below the signature.

--jeroen

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Posted in Development, Hardware, Hardware Development, Hardware Interfacing, Power User, USB, USB, USB-C | Leave a Comment »

On accessibility (thanks Bianca Prins!) and archivability.

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/27

A long while ago, I participated in a Twitter thread that started with a translation of some important accessibility posts by Bianca Prins, then extended it to the concept to archivability:

[WayBack] Thread by @jpluimers: “I am going to first translate this, then extend this to archivability…. @jpluimers […]” #UXdesign #accessibility.

TL;DR

  1. make sure what you create is accessible
  2. ensure your (online) content is archivable
  3. help archiving content

Let’s go

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Posted in ArchiveTeamWarrior, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Internet, InternetArchive, Power User, Software Development, Usability, User Experience (ux), WayBack machine | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

OpenAI Researchers Find That Even the Best AI Is “Unable To Solve the Majority” of Coding Problems

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/26

[Wayback/Archive] OpenAI Researchers Find That Even the Best AI Is “Unable To Solve the Majority” of Coding Problems

Either Erik Meijer begs to differ, or this is sarcasm: [WaybackSave/Archive] Erik Meijer on X: “I don’t think many developers realized their white collar job could be implemented by a few hundred lines of JavaScript … plus a couple of billion floating point numbers. And we are only just beginning.”

[Wayback/Archive] gist.githubusercontent.com/1rgs/e4e13ac9aba301bcec28d761992ec4e8/raw/7c7cd5b91c6d355e72c7a34b6662006018588780/claudecode.js

Claude Code is a Beta product per Anthropic's Commercial Terms of Service.

It is part of [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – anthropics/claude-code: Claude Code is an agentic coding tool that lives in your terminal, understands your codebase, and helps you code faster by executing routine tasks, explaining complex code, and handling git workflows – all through natural language commands. for which you need to be aware of

Data collection, usage, and retention

When you use Claude Code, we collect feedback, which includes usage data (such as code acceptance or rejections), associated conversation data, and user feedback submitted via the /bug command.

Via: [WaybackSave/Archive] Marcel Weiher 🇪🇺 on X: ““OpenAI Researchers Find That Even the Best AI Is “Unable To Solve the Majority” of Coding Problems” “

--jeroen

Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Development, Generative AI, LLM, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Some interesting tweets by @isotopp and others on home power measurement and what to do to optimise energy usage at home

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/26

For my link archive (browse back and forth in the tweets: lots of useful tips):

[Wayback/Archive] Kris on Twitter: “@mausdompteur @HildebrandtRalf … Tasmota Support P1-mqtt in Python, für den oa Zuidwijk Slimme Lezer Diese Lösung setze ich ein.”

A few of his power usage pictures:

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Posted in Development, Hardware, IoT Internet of Things, LifeHacker, Network-and-equipment, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Going Native – Malicious Native Applications

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/25

On the reading list wondering which tool chains can deliver NtAPI based development: [Wayback/Archive] Going Native – Malicious Native Applications

Via [Wayback/Archive] Thread by @MrPc69257431 on Thread Reader App with first tweet at

https://x.com/MrPc69257431/status/1864855379651498292

Note that being able to call NtAPI from your code base does not mean NtAPI based development: Pure NtAPI means you need a linker that can target a different output. See the quote from the above article (emphasis mine):

So, to get started with an empty native executable, all we have to do is include the “phnt.h” file, and set up the NtProcessStartup function. Then it’s important to tell the linker that we want to link against ntdll, and that we’ll be making a native application by passing in the “Native” text to the Subsystem linker option

It means that for instance Delphi is kind of out of the question for this, see these links on why:

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Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Development, Event, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

GitHub – Sanakan8472/copy-dialog-lunar-lander: Play lunar lander in you windows file copy dialog

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/25

[Wayback/Archive] Sanakan8472/copy-dialog-lunar-lander: Play lunar lander in you windows file copy dialog

Hard

Via:

--jeroen

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Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Power User, Software Development, Uncategorized, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

3 Ways to Convert Kindle to PDF for Free

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/24

After last weeks post Download your Kindle books soon, because Amazon will block them after February 25, 2025. Since I could not get a physical Kindle on time, I decided to do the conversion on Windows as:

  • the conversion without a physical  Kindle required Kindle 1.17 for MacOS or Windows
  • finding the Kindle 1.17 for Windows was way easier because Chocolatey pointed me right to the executable¹ when installing 1.17
  • ² finding the Kindie 1.17 for MacOS was hard because it had been deprecated by Homebrew and finding back the 1.17 version was too hard.

[Wayback/Archive] How to Remove DRM From Kindle Books [DRM-free books 2025 ] has steps not just for a physical Kindle, but also when running Kindle 1.17 on MacOS or Windows.

Windows was easiest to find through [Wayback/Archive] Chocolatey Software | Kindle for PC 1.17 which mentions how to try to install version 1.17. That leads to the below mentioned error which mentions the download location and full filename.

The downloads/installers you need are at:

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Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Toeristenbelasting per gemeente 2025, plus overzicht belastingen Bollenstreek

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/24

[Wayback/Archive] Toeristenbelasting per gemeente 2025

via [Wayback/Archive] Toeristenbelasting in Zuid-Holland stijgt: in deze gemeenten betaal je meer dan vorig jaar

Gerelateerd

Allemaal via [Wayback/Archive] Overzicht tarieven | Belastingen Bollenstreek

Toeristenbelasting

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Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »