Tag: windows

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Time for the Sepender edition of our regularly scheduled Pook-Emu Bee Links.

Subway Stories

1 | These salvaged relics in a Brooklyn subway station are the ghostly remains of old New York buildings (Ephemeral New York. Sep. 28, 2026.)
I wouldn’t call this being restored to their former glory, but it’s something.

2 | MTA axes G train shutdowns planned for December after outcry from small businesses (Kirstyn Brendlen for Brooklyn Paper. Sep. 28, 2026.)
Fun fact for non-New Yorkers: The G train is the only non-shuttle line that runs directly between Brooklyn and Queens without going through Manhattan in between. It is also an oft-troubled line in the repair space.

Tech Replacements

3 | Fedora Discussion Raises The Idea Of Replacing LibreOffice With Collabora Office (Michael Larabel for Phoronix. Sep. 24, 2026.)
That is a stupid idea. Fedora should not do that. LibreOffice is a good default office suite (if one wants to ship a default office suite).

4 | US sanctions force The Netherlands off Microsoft and toward alternative NixOS-based software ecosystem — trial programs running now, first release expected at end of 2027 (Oliver Hansen for Tom’s Hardware. Sep. 28, 2026.)
U.S. sanctions of the ICC did not “force” the government of the Netherlands to do anything, as the first paragraph of the article itself notes. But since I use Linux instead of Windows myself, it will be interesting to see to what extent governments can make the switch work.

Military Conflicts

5 | Iran publishes propaganda letter urging US voters to punish Trump in midterm elections (Ronny Reyes for the New York Post. Sep. 29, 2026.)
I could state the obvious that I am not taking voting advice from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. But let us go with a less obvious angle. 26 pages? Does the IRGC really expect me to read 26 pages? Moreover, are they aware that 1 USD is now worth more than 2.5 million Iranian Rial? If for no other reason than preserving tokens I would recommend they keep future communications to me to a strict 500 word limit. Thank you.

6 | Captured Hamas Spy Chief Helps Israel Take Out Three Senior Terror Commanders (Vijeta Uniyal for Legal Insurrection. Sep. 29, 2026.)
Hamas is finally showing the kind of cooperation that can lead to peace in the Middle East. Inspiring.

7 | Ukraine’s former defense minister launches ‘Manhattan Project’ for killer robots (Katie Livingstone for Defense News. Sep. 30, 2026.)
The problem with Giant Death Robots is that by the time you reach the end of the tech tree, you probably already made it to Alpha Centauri or won a domination victory, no? I don’t see how he is addressing that. Shallow. (Link for readers who never played Civilization.)

Video Games

8 | Danganronpa 2×2 hands-on impressions: Witnessing the exact moment Slayhem Mode takes the familiar killing game off the rails (Dorde P for Automation West. Sep. 30, 2026.)
I was mildly curious how they were going to re-do the Danganronpa 2 scenario. This sounds plausible. I may talk myself into this one but TBD. (They had better not kill Chiaki off early, however.)

9 | After Years Of Hard Work, One Of The Most Ambitious Super Mario Kart SNES Hacks Of All Time Finally Has A Release Date (Jack Yarwood for Time Extension. Sep. 30, 2026.)
Interesting. I’m curious what the new courses are.

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I have an assignment I need to finish today. But I will not let that stop me from capping off the work-week with one more edition of Pook-Emu Bee links. Pook-Emu Bee will be off tomorrow for Newsletter Day.

Photograph of a green leafy tree in front of a brick building seen through a chicken wire window.
The scene behind my second monitor as I draft this post.

1. How Mamdani Should Reform New York City’s Elections (John Ketcham and Jack Santucci for City Journal. June 10, 2026.)

Never go full “think tank.” Take a walk. Think about what you are writing.

2. Bluesky is getting Reddit-inspired communities built for topic-focused discussions (Mauricio B. Holguin for AlternativeTo. June 11, 2026.)

Reddit is bad enough without people thinking about how to make worse versions of Reddit.

3. Celtic elite grave discovered in the Taunus mountains (livius for The History Blog. June 9, 2026.)

An elite Celtic grave has been discovered near Bad Camberg in the Taunus mountain range of western Germany. The grave goods are exceptional and include gold, chariot remains and an imported Etruscan bronze jug. It dates to the 5th century B.C. and is the first Celtic princely grave discovered in the Taunus mountains.

The Etruscans force their way into the story.

4. RetroPad is a ‘full-feature-parity version of Notepad from XP’ in just 2,749 bytes — x86 assembly coded apps comes from Windows legend Dave W Plummer (Mark Tyson for Tom’s Hardware. June 7, 2026.)

I used to use Notepad sometimes in my Wndows days (which ended on Windows 10 in 2020). Should I try running this with WINE?

5. Long Island bishop using Knicks’ NBA Finals run to convince long-suffering fans there is a God (Alex Mitchell for the New York Post. June 7, 2026.)

I haven’t watched any NBA games since the 2019 Finals (despite my NBA writing here and on NLJ), but from what I’m hearing through the grapevine he may be making a compelling case here.

6. Brave Software releases Origin for a paid, bloat-free browsing experience (Lawrence Abrams for Bleeping Computer. June 4, 2026.)

I use it for work on my workstation and as my primary browser on my mini PC for my TV. It is good. Of course, I am using free Brave Origin because I run Linux btw.

7. Persona 30th Anniversary Nendoroid Featuring Persona 3, 4, And 5 Protagonists Opens For Pre-Order (Orpheus Joshua for Noisy Pixel. June 5, 2026.)

They’re missing two. If your first thought is the female protagonist from P3P, that is one of the two. But I am more offended by the absence of a different female protagonist… one who was the box cover character for one of the Persona releases.

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After two missed days due to having many work assignments, I return with a new edition of my Pook-Emu Bee links. Of course, there are no Pook-Emu Bee links tomorrow because of the newsletter and Sunday is hit and miss, so I encourage you to thoroughly enjoy today’s links.

1. Microsoft BitLocker-protected drives can now be opened with just some files on a USB stick — YellowKey zero-day exploit demonstrates an apparent backdoor (Bruno Ferreira for Tom’s Hardware. May 13, 2026.)

I had never heard of Bitlocker until one day in 2022 when someone I know was locked out of his Windows PC due to BitLocker. He managed to get back in but I dare say this security vulnerability could have been very useful. (HT Ambient Irony.)

2. Just stop using these (Hazn. May 13, 2026.)

I largely agree. If only everyone would just stop using those.

3. I want to comment on your blog post (Forking Mad. June 13, 2025.)

I respect the take but the spam on the one NLJ page I have with comments, the Guestbook, is already apocalyptic. But this did give me a fun idea. Stay-tuned.

4. New agents.txt file found on DreamHost (Kelson at K-Squared Ramblings. May 13, 2026.)

VPS providers should probably refrain from “retroactively” adding agents.txt or other files to live websites. At a minimum, I would suggest a warning and explanation.

5. WataMote anime studio Silver Link sees financial losses for third consecutive year, despite revenue growth (Carlos “Zoto” Zotomayor for Automation West. May 14, 2026.)

WataMote aired in 2013 and was not particularly good (I would classify it as “OK”). Thus, my first thought when I read the article was “well yes, if your best example of the studio’s work is a mediocre meme anime that aired 13 years ago.” But Silver Link handled all three seasons of Non Non Biyori, all of which were good (especially season two, which aired in 2015) and the third of which was my fourth-ranked TV anime of 2021. With that being said, Silver Link’s output is a bit bleak. Tearmoon Empire (2023) and Kokoro Connect (2012) were decent. I remember liking the first half of Tanaka-kun Is Always Listless back in 2016. Maybe I should finish that.

6. Android 17, Gemini Intelligence, and Googlebook: My first impressions (Rodrigo Ghedin at Manual do Usuário. May 13, 2026.)

I’m starting to see why Android is taking some dark turns.

7. The Dark Side of Unitree Robot Dogs (Maya Posch for Hackaday. May 12, 2026.)

When digging further into the robot, he found an easy to exploit arbitrary command execution flaw via the Wi-Fi password entry field, a year-old CVE-2025-2894 exploit, as well as highly suspicious traffic to Chinese servers whenever the robot’s software figured that it was not being watched.

I could have guessed the second part without the benefit of the completed research.

8. reMarkable’s Paper Pure is a $399 E Ink writing tablet that replaces the reMarkable 2 (Brad Linder for Liliputing. May 6, 2026.)

No backlight is an interesting design choice. Very nostalgic to me as someone who grew up using a Worm Light with my Game Boy Color.

9. Pedal parking: DOT plans 500 new bike hubs for NYC streets; online feedback encouraged (Barbara Russo-Lennon for amNY. May 4, 2026.)

I will spoil the feedback process for anyone who questions unlimited accommodations for bikes (including effective exemption from traffic laws) in New York City. Heads, bikes win. Tails, you lose.

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We have a second consecutive warm day in New York City. We also have a third consecutive day of Pook-Emu Bee links.

1. Seven Myths About the Iran War (Michael Doran for Tablet Magazine. April 13, 2026.)

Good start. Hard to choose just seven.

2. Someone Bought 30 WordPress Plugins and Planted a Backdoor in All of Them. (Austin Ginder for Anchor. April 9, 2026.)

WordPress should send notifications to webmasters whenever an installed plugin from the standard WordPress repository changes hands.

3. Sam Altman’s house targeted in second attack; two suspects arrested (John Owen Lamb for The San Francisco Standard. April 12, 2026.)

Scary stuff and good thing both attacks failed (these sorts of types are often not too competent). Let us hope the perpetrators are dealt with appropriately and quickly to minimize the number of other deranged individuals who may take inspiration.

4. Reflecting on Microsoft Windows Vista in 2026 (Maya Posch for Hackaday. April 9, 2026.)

Say what one will but my Vista experience was fine. I’d take it over whatever is going on with Windows 11 these days.

5. Failing the Fix (2026) (U.S. PIRG Education Fund. April 7, 2026.)

I won’t spoil everything but I will note that having recently operated on a 2006-07 Macbook, I can confirm that Apple’s failing grade is nothing new.

6. You Should Be Using Reddit on Your RSS Reader (David Nield for Lifehacker. April 10, 2026.)

That is an interesting suggestion but I counter with “use an RSS reader and don’t use Reddit at all.”

7. Amazon is ending support for Kindle devices from 2012 and earlier (Brad Linder for Liliputing. April 7, 2026.)

But not all is lost for people with ancient Kindles: “You can still ‘transfer personal documents’ to an unsupported Kindle using a USB cable, although you may need to use a third-party tool like Calibre to convert some eBooks into a format that your Kindle recognizes.” Calibre does handle conversions to MOBI.

8. MLB pitcher Merrill Kelly says California tax rate swayed decision to reject Padres’ free agency offer (Chantz Martin for Fox News. February 28, 2026.)

Today reminds him why he made that call in free agency.

9. A medical journal says the case reports it has published for 25 years are, in fact, fiction (Retraction Watch. March 3, 2026.)

But other than that, the reports were accurate.

(HT to Pixy Misa for links 2 and 3.)

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Quoted Latest Windows 11 update is broken, refuses to install — Microsoft pulls latest update over missing files error by Hassam Nasir (Tom's Hardware)
Microsoft pushed the KB5079391 non-security update on March 26, 2026, featuring 'production-quality' improvements, which means it's part of the efforts to make the OS more stable/reliable. It's ironic then that the update refuses to install, throwing up the 0x80073712 error code in a loop.

The phrase “the year of the Linux desktop” has become something of a meme. As a 2025 Hackaday headline went, The Year of the Linux Desktop is Always Next Year. Note that I write this with all due affection for Linux, which I have been running exclusively on my computers since August 2020. In good fun, I call my occasional issues on Linux year of the Linux desktop moments. So is 2026 the long-awaited year of the Linux desktop? I fear not. I read in Tom’s Hardware that Microsoft pushed a Windows 11 update on March 26, 2026, which came with a minor flaw: It did not install. Non-installing updates? Out with the year of the Linux desktop. This, my friends, is the year of the Windows desktop.

(Note that reading about “Microsoft’s tenacity in imposing AI across its product stack” in the Tom’s Hardware report does not make me feel like I have been missing out since switching to Linux before Windows 11 dropped.)

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The daily Pook-Emu Bee links were off yesterday thanks to Newsletter Leaf Journal 272. But with no new newsletter coming until next Saturday, the Pook-Emu Bee returns. If you enjoy the (almost) daily links and commentary, you can also follow via feed.

1. Awesome Ghibli Howl’s Moving Castle figure is also a puzzle and an organizer (Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. March 22, 2026.)

I saw Howl’s Moving Castle back in high school after class one day when a friend brought it in and we used one of the school’s TVs. That was before I had seen much anime beyond the Adult Swim selection. Good movie. Cool puzzle here.

2. Hundreds of delivery drivers hanging outside East Village mosque overwhelming locals, forcing NYC businesses to close (Steve Galvin for the New York Post. March 21, 2026.)

There is a mosque in Cobble Hill (Brooklyn) that was being used as a gathering spot/staging area for the food delivery e-bikers. Thus, I am familiar with the phenomenon. Fortunately, I have not seen bathing or grooming areas here across the river.

3. Trump’s DHS Celebrates 10th Month of Zero Releases of Illegals at Border (John Binder for Breitbart. March 20, 2026.)

The “border crisis” during the prior administration was caused by reversable deliberate policy choices. Nevertheless:

Similarly, the Trump administration marked the 13th consecutive month where there have been fewer than 9,000 illegal border crossers captured at the border. This indicates a 95 percent decline in border apprehensions compared with Biden-era levels.

13 consectutive months under 9,000 apprehensions is wholly unprecedented since the stats have been compiled and better than your optimistic border hawk would have likely predicted.

4. The Bigme B6 Color E-Ink Tablet (Max Glenister. January 26, 2023.)

The only Android e-ink device I would be inclined to consider would be from PocketBook (I have two non-Android PocketBook readers). Nevertheless, interesting review for learning more about what is out there.

5. New cherry blossom party picnic essential: This super-handy folding cardboard table (Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. March 21, 2026.)

I found myself thinking of the cardboard box table your house comes with in Animal Crossing.

6. How important was it for Hamlin to dominate at season’s first 1.5-mile oval? (Neil Paine for NASCAR.com. March 19, 2026.)

On the predictive value of performances on 1.5 mile ovals.

7. Windows 11 updates will scale back unnecessary Copilot integrations, let you reposition the taskbar, and more (Brad Linder for Liliputing. March 20, 2026.)

I have not used Windows since 10. I did not know 11 prevents you from moving the task bar. As I look at my task bar at the top of my screen, I can conclude that this would have annoyed me had I stayed on Windows instead of switching to Linux.

8. Black Forest® Gummies Go Fully Organic (Vending Connection. March 20, 2026.)

The forest-themed gummies make for good branding consistency. Have they considered National Park Typeface?

9. The dead Internet is not a theory anymore. (Adrian Krebs. March 11, 2026.)

He has a good story about an AI “agent” apparently having requested a job interview on someone’s behalf. But let it be said that the Pook-Emu Bee is a living internet publication (confidently originalist, however).

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I missed publishing a set of Pook-Emu Bee links yesterday due to an assignment. But that does not mean I was not collecting links. If you enjoy the (almost) daily links and commentary, you can also follow via feed.

Links from around the web

1. Former Watchtower buildings in Brooklyn Heights eyed for new housing (Arun Venugopal for Gothamist. March 12, 2026.)

I would not describe the buildings as being “Brooklyn Heights,” but the one on the hill descending from Brooklyn Heights to DUMBO is more plausible than other Brooklyn Heights claims. Regardless of how the apartment plans go, I am thankful that they re-painted the old Watchtower buildings (see the former color in the second photo in this post).

2. Is the Dude Dying? (Chris Dalla Riva. March 6, 2026.)

I came across this study on the prevalence of dude and dudette pop stars courtesy of Caroline Crampton’s weekly links. I am not familiar with most of the referenced pop stars or what a Harry Stiles is. This, my friends, is why I have only published one music interview.

3. Xbox mode turns any Windows PC into a game console with a full-screen experience (Brad Linder at Liliputing. March 11, 2026.)

Sounds promising for Windows people with big game collections. Of course, if you are a Windows person who does not play games (or is not interested in “Xbox” mode), it may just be more menu clutter.

4. Whoopsie! CNN Accidentally Sympathizes With Terrorists (Andrew Stiles for The Washington Free Beacon. March 10, 2026.)

The media obfuscation campaign about the ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in New York City has been something to watch in action.

5. LibreOffice learns to speak Markdown in version 26.2 (Liam Proven for The Register. March 9, 2026.)

I was excited about LibreOffice’s new markdown tricks when they were announced. It works well. Unfortunately does not handle my markdown footnotes yet. I would be interested in seeing if there is a way it could elegantly handle track changes on markdown files.

6. Google’s Genie 3 world models start to break down after around a minute (Lewis Packwood for Games Industry.biz. March 11, 2026.)

More than enough time to fulfill the essential purpose of creating social media hashtag-content.

Mash “random article” button on NLJ

7. 40 Days and 40 Nights of Rain – VN Review (Nicholas A. Ferrell at The New Leaf Journal. February 20, 2025.)

It is raining in my home Brooklyn, NYC. I hit random article on my website. The random article is my review of a visual novel in which it is always raining. Is the random article button truly random? Note the visual novel I reviewed is free to download and read, so visual novel fans out there many find my review to be of interest.

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I missed publishing a set of Pook-Emu Bee links yesterday. But that just means I have more links saved for today. If you enjoy the (almost) daily links and commentary, you can also follow via feed.

1. Qatar Wants to Bolster Security Partnership with US After Iran’s Strikes (Reuters [via gCaptain]. March 10, 2026.)

If so they should explain this to their local international TV outlet.

2. The joys of data centers: Debunking the backlash against the $7 trillion AI building boom (Christian Britschgi for Reason. April 2026 issue.)

The rest of us should be able to see the tremendous upsides of the country’s data center boom. Advances in artificial intelligence and robotics could liberate humanity from boring, backbreaking labor

The libertarians at Reason are smug now but I am not entirely convinced that AI cannot exude a smug sense of self-satisfaction while achieving nothing in the real world.

3. New All-Day Cafe LeTish Opening Soon in Williamsburg (Jennifer Rosini-Gentile for Greenpointers. March 9, 2026.)

I seldom eat or buy coffee “out” and have not been to Williamsburg in several months. Granting the foregoing, this place looks good.

4. Mamdani Condemns ‘White Supremacy’ Protest But Not Radical Islam After ISIS-Linked Bomb Attack (Jasmyn Jordan for Breitbart. March 9, 2026.)

All fair complaints. But imagine how insufferable he would have been had the two terrorists not explicitly spelled out their alleigance to ISIS. (Glass half-full take!)

5. Renovations on Carroll Gardens Library drag on (Mary Frost for Brooklyn Daily Eagle. March 9, 2026.)

I wrote about the library renovations back in 2024. My skeptecism about the timeline was well-founded.

6. Hobby Airport warns of 2-hour TSA wait due to government shutdown (Briahn Hawkins and Jillian Hartmann for Fox 26 Houston. March 8, 2026.)

I had a two hour wait at Houston Hobby last May. I used that time to wander around the airport Learning About William P. Hobby at Houston Hobby Airport and Failing to Try Airport Illy Coffee Vending Machine. Of course, my 2-hour wait was scheduled and everything was running on time. It sounds like things are going less swimmingly for travelers this March 2026.

7. How Usable Is Windows 98 In 2026? (Maya Posch for Hackaday. March 8, 2026.)

I would put this one in the “mileage may vary” category. With that being said, let it be said that I did several high school assignments on my Windows 95 in 2004 and 2005 and brought them to school on floppy disks.

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From Windows Vista effectively dead as Windows Server 2008 support finally ends (Usama Jawad for Neowin. January 15, 2026):

Windows Server 2008 was supported via the Premium Assurance program until January 13, 2026. Although this support program no longer exists, volume licensing enterprise customers were grandfathered into the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, which finally expired a couple of days ago for this particular SKU.

What does the end of the last official support channel for Windows Server 2008 have to do with Windows Vista? I quote again from the article:

he SKU was built on the Windows Vista/Longhorn codebase, which is why it was internally called “Windows Server Codename “Longhorn”.

While Windows Server 2008 is not Vista, it was apparently built on the Vista codebase (although Neowin notes Windows Server 2008 R2 was built on Windows 7). Thus, in a sense, I suppose this is the true, official end of Windows Vista. While I never used Windows Server 2008 (or any flavor of Windows Server for that matter), I used a Windows Vista PC as my primary computer for a couple of years in the 2009-11 area, and I believe I first stumbled upon the Insani al|together visual novel translations on my Vista computer. While I know Vista was not popular, I can report that I do not recall having any problems with it or using it much differently than I had been using XP. Note that I did have the 64-bit version of Vista.

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From an October 14, 2025 report in Brussels Signal:

  • “A group of protesters gathered outside Microsoft’s EU office to complain about the company’s decision to end security updates for its older devices running the Windows 10 operating system.”
  • “[This] includes millions of older devices that cannot run its newer operating system, Windows 11.”
  • “Right to Repair Europe, which organised the protest, said Microsoft had now made users choose between a system that will become steadily more insecure, or buying a new laptop.”

I have been running Linux exclusively since August 2020. I switched to Linux when I built a new desktop computer to replace the previous desktop I had built back in 2011, so it was not a forced obsalescence case. However, I did once have a Windows XP netbook that I could not upgrade. It was my only laptop. Instead of purchasing a new laptop, I installed Ubuntu on it. All I really knew about Linux was that it was a free operating system that some tech people used. I am sure I chose Ubuntu because that was the only Linux thing I had heard of. It went fine. While I am not going to say that everyone can switch from Windows to Linux like I did, I would encourage even those people who need to “upgrade” to a Windows 11 laptop re-purpose their old laptops with a shiny new Linux distribution and give it a go. Some without specific work-related concerns may find that Linux works as well or better for them than Windows.

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Brad Linder of Liliputing published an article titled How to use laptop or tablet as a touchpad (and keyboard) for a Windows PC. He turned an Amazon Fire Max 11 tablet into a touchpad and keyboard using a proprietary app called Unified Remote (which also required setting up Google Play Store on the Fire tablet). I was surprised he did not mention my preferred solution. KDE Connect is free, open source, and can allow Android devices to function as touchpads and keyboards (I previously covered some of my favorite open source Android apps). I seldom use it for that purpose (my main KDE Connect use-case is sending and receiving SMS messages from my computer), but it works well. Moreover, people with Fire tablets can install KDE Connect without needing to mess around with Google Play Store.

I will note in a small aside that I have only used KDE Connect on Linux PCs. While I understand that it is available for Windows, I am not certain that it works exactly the same as on Linux.

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Replied to Introducing Sudo for Windows! by Jordi Adoumie (devblogs.microsoft.com)
Introducing Sudo for Windows
We’re excited to announce the release of Sudo for Windows in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26052! Sudo for Windows is a new way for users to run elevated commands directly from an unelevated console session. It is an ergonomic and familiar solution for users who want to elevate a command without having to first open a new elevated console.
  1. Puts on Apple Hat
  2. Turns on Apple Hat
  3. Opens article about Microsoft adding sudo to Windows
  4. “Looks like Microsoft is ripping off Apple again”
  5. Starts video of Steve Jobs introducing some Apple product in 2005

(For the record, I almost use Arch by the way.  Posted from my desktop PC running EndeavourOS.)