Archive for the ‘Power User’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/20
Boy was I surprised how bad a human brain functions when getting more stressful:
Figure 6
STATE DEPENDENT FUNCTIONING
| “STATE” |
CALM |
ALERT |
ALARM |
FEAR |
TERROR |
DOMINANT
BRAIN AREAS |
Cortex
(DMN) |
Cortex
(Limbic) |
Limbic
(Diencephalon) |
Diencephalon
(Brainstem) |
Brainstem |
ADAPTIVE “Option”
Arousal |
Reflect
(create) |
Flock
(hypervigilance) |
Freeze
(resistance) |
Flight
(defiance) |
Fight |
ADAPTIVE “Option”
Dissociation |
Reflect
(daydream) |
Avoid |
Comply |
Dissociate
(paralysis/catatonia) |
Faint
(collapse) |
| COGNITION |
Abstract
(creative) |
Concrete
(routine) |
Emotional |
Reactive |
Reflexive |
| FUNCTIONAL IQ |
120-100 |
110-90 |
100-80 |
90-70 |
80-60 |
I got the table from a Tweet by Andrea Walraven-Thissen (see below).
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Posted in About, Awareness, Conference Topics, Conferences, Event, Health, LifeHacker, Personal, Power User | Tagged: 2 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/17
Having had to use Mimikatz a few times in the past, I was not aware of the history.
So I was glad to find this elaborate article [Wayback/Archive] Mimikatz and password dumps | Ivan’s IT learning blog and the video (embedded after the signature). [Wayback/Archive] How to fix mimikatz null password in Windows 10 | WORKING 2019!!! – YouTube
Besides the history, it also explains why sometimes you only get hashes and other times you do get plain text passwords.
Recommended reading.
--jeroen
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Posted in Power User, Red team, Security, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/15
I wonder, 40 years later, what happened after the USSR dismantled: especially with the developments over the last 10 years and the culmination in the last 2, are these bands – banned in January 1985 – still banned in Russia? [Wayback/Archive] They were banned in the USSR – The Scotsman
The above article was published in 2014, and a full translated list in the 2015 article [Wayback/Archive] The Soviet Union Creates a List of 38 Dangerous Rock Bands: Kiss, Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, Village People & More (1985) | Open Culture.
A picture of the original list in Russian was published in the 2017 article [Wayback/Archive] A list of 38 “dangerous” Western bands banned in the USSR
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Posted in LifeHacker, Music, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/15
I have a lot of old Power Point slide decks that I want to reuse in current presentations. By now however, I learned prepare all my presentation stuff in either Markdown or reStructuredText: far easier to publish and put under version control.
After searching, I could only find one tool that is still maintained doing a decent job doing a PowerPoint to Markdown conversion: [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – ssine/pptx2md: a pptx to markdown converter. The tools which works great, in big part of PowerPoint content being highly structured with styles like title, subtitle and various heading levels and content types.
The thing it does not document is the prerequisites, which are these:
- a
venv (which, despite having used Python quite often, but not proficient in it, still makes me nervous: one forgotten step and you pip everything in your global environment).This links helps me every time [Wayback/Archive] Install packages in a virtual environment using pip and venv – Python Packaging User Guide. From it, I created this little table:
Steps for setting up and using a Python virtual environment
| Step |
*n*x/MacOS |
Windows |
Comment |
| 1. |
python3 -m venv .venv |
py -m venv .venv |
Only needed once |
| 2. |
source .venv/bin/activate |
.venv\Scripts\activate |
Switch to virtual environment |
| 3. |
which python |
where python |
Check if python is used from the virtual environment (should result in
.venv/bin/python on *n*x/MacOS or
.venv\Scripts\python on Windows) |
| 4. |
which pip |
where pip |
Check if pip is used from the virtual environment (should result in
.venv/bin/pip on *n*x/MacOS or
.venv\Scripts\pip on Windows) |
| 5. |
./.venv/bin/pptx2md</precode
|
.venv\bin\pptx2md |
Force a module which didn’t add itself to the path when installed via pip |
| 6. |
deactivate |
deactivate |
Leave the virtual environment |
- missed during
pip install pptx2md (in order I discovered them):
Future enhancements
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Posted in Development, Lightweight markup language, MarkDown, Office, Power Point, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development, venv | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/13
[Wayback/Archive] Thread by @0gtweet on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App
A very friendly reminder, especially for non-corporate PCs protected with BitLocker: if you are not sure if you have your Recovery Password handy, you can display it any moment with “manage-bde -protectors -get c:”
Store the password in your password manager and make its backup!
Note: manage-bde.exe -protectors -get c: needs admin rights!
--jeroen
Posted in Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2022 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/11
Weekend, so catching up on CES 2025 news.
If you are at CES, be sure to go visit the VideoLAN booth in Eureka Park to witness what I think is likely the most important CES 2025 AI news:
[Wayback/Archive] VideoLAN on X: “VLC automatic subtitles generation and translation based on local and open source AI models running on your machine working offline, and supporting numerous languages! Demo can be found on our #CES2025 booth in Eureka Park.”
In my opinion, though a remarkable statistic, their 6-billion downloads gimmick is just a teaser for the way more important news what this AI LLM is:
- free / open-source
- off-line
- subtitles plus translations
- 100 languages
Whisper already ran circles around the YouTube automatic subtitle generator, and their automatic translations are far below par (see video below), so having new contender is great!
VideoLAN tremendously raises the bar for all commercial vendors, and at the same time makes:
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Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Development, LLM, Media, Software Development, Video | Tagged: CES2025 | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 