On the history of ISBN and their representation in EAN codes: [Wayback/Archive] Why does every book come from the same country? – YouTube.
TL;DR: EAN unique country codes (now GS1 country codes) 978 and 979 are Bookland.
--jeroen
Archive for 2026
Why does every book come from the same country? – YouTube
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/02
Posted in History, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Changing default page view in Adobe Acrobat
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/02
Being so used to open PDF files using MacOS Preview – which remembers the last view settings and re-applies that when opening a new document, it took me a while to figure out that in both Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader (formerly Acrobat Reader) you have to set it in the preferences using Ctrl-K as explained in [Wayback/Archive] Changing default page view in Adobe Acrobat
When you open a PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader, the default page view may not be to your liking. For example, it may show a full page when you really need to see part of a page in full width.
…
To change these settings follow the steps below.
- Edit, Preferences (or Control-K).
- Choose Page Display in the Categories section.
- In the Default Layout and Zoom section (top of page), change the Page Layout and Zoom selections to your preference. “100%” and “Fit Page” are most commonly used in the Zoom selection.
- Click OK to save your settings.
Contrary to the above, the defaults for both my Acrobat Reader both the “Paye Layout” and “Zoom” settings were “Automatic”. I just changed the “Page Layout” to “Two-Up” and am much happier now (:
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#ColonCancerAwarenessMonth – Please use the back entrance for the lecture “Alarm in the colon” – Für den Vortrag „Alarm im Darm” bitte Hintereingang benutzen AOK – #Darmkrebsmonat #Darmkankermaand
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/01
Colonoscopy humor: [Wayback/Archive] G0BtrUFWkAA41LM.jpg:orig (550×385)
Für den Vortrag „Alarm im Darm” bitte Hintereingang benutzen
Via: [WaybackSave/Archive] Daemon Resurrected on X: “@ChristelHanauer …”
Queries:
- [Wayback/Archive] Für den Vortrag „Alarm im Darm” bitte Hintereingang benutzen at DuckDuckGo
- [Wayback/Archive] Wolfgang Steurer Barbara John „Alarm im Darm” at DuckDuckGo
Lecture example: [Wayback/Archive] Medizin vor Ort: Alarm im Darm | Klinikverbund Südwest
--jeroen
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Posted in About, Cancer, Health, LifeHacker, Personal, Power User, Rectum cancer | Leave a Comment »
The 20g and 50g mystery solder showdown – YouTube
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/27
- [Wayback/Archive] Testing AliExpress “mystery solder” – YouTube
- [Wayback/Archive] The 20g and 50g mystery solder showdown – YouTube
AliExpress aggressive acidic flux solder has remarkably heavy reels:
Total Reel Solder % Solder/Total 100 gram 67 gram 33 gram 33 % 51 gram 32 gram 19 gram 37 % 20 gram 10 gram 10 gram 50 %
--jeroen
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Posted in DIY, LifeHacker, Power User, Soldering | Leave a Comment »
Is there an RSS feed for my publication? – Substack, Inc
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/27
Reading SubStack via RSS skips the nag screens and other annoying steps.
If you sign in to your.substack.com/feed then you get redirected to your own RSS feed link.
Even easier if you want to read from a link:
- if you see a Subtack URL hosted at
domain.substack.com - then the accompanying RSS feed URL is
domain.substack.com/feed
Via [Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Baert on Twitter: “Tip voor mensen die substacks lezen: elke substack heeft een RSS-feed onder https:// whatever . substack . com / feed – Inladen in je RSS-lezer, en geen nag screens of gedoe, gewoon de content.”
Related:
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Posted in Power User, RSS, SocialMedia, Substack | Leave a Comment »
GitHub – dessant/web-archives: Browser extension for viewing archived and cached versions of web pages, available for Chrome, Edge and Safari (plus Firefox and Opera too)
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/26
The description of [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – dessant/web-archives: Browser extension for viewing archived and cached versions of web pages, available for Chrome, Edge and Safari is missing Firefox and Opera, but in the meantime the extension is available in these stores for:
As a great example of how to write a browser plugin for all these architectures, it shows how to write this in mostly JavaScript with Vue.js with a tiny bit of play HTML.
Web Archives is a plugin that lets you search either the URL from the current browser tab, or a URL you type, within various archival sites (all Wikipedia links):
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Posted in Archive Today controversy, archive.is / archive.today, Archiving, Chrome, Development, Edge, Firefox, Internet, InternetArchive, Opera, Power User, Safari, Software Development, WayBack machine, Web Browsers, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Some links on getting the most recent defragmentation time of a Windows volume
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 | 2 Comments »
Airco’s massaal gebruikt voor verwarming, TNO waarschuwt voor gevolgen stroomnet (airco’s hebben een COP hefboom van 3.5-5)
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.socialIn 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
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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?”
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) andbase64(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 »
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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 »
LLM-generated passwords ‘fundamentally weak,’ experts say • The Register
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 »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 