Garacesh

For 2.5" drives I just whack them with a ball-peen hammer a lot. Once it starts rattling, the platters have shattered and we're done. For 3.5" drives I disassemble it, take out the metal platters, then stick them in a vice and batter/deform them beyond usability with the aforementioned ball-peen hammer.

Huh. So apparently Duracell also do laptop batteries. Whodathunkit? Lenovo 42T4763 Battery - Alternative Products (Noted: The DuracellDirect site is actually registered by PSAParts, not Duracell, but their own site only shows battery which is a tenner more)

See also: "We wanted to make everyone move to our new software, but they weren't having any of it." Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Teachers are incredibly unwelcoming of software changes, and nobody wants to be spending money on new kit (Edit: Is free) changing things when there's a perfectly working solution already in place.

I loathe to purchase non-genuine parts - especially batteries, but we really need a laptop battery for a Lenovo Thinpad B580 and I can't seem to find genuine ones for reasonable costs. Has anyone bought any third-party batteries and not ended up on fire? Amazon is bringing up Ninjabatt, BLESYS, Smarthhw, Uniamy, Dtk, GRS and Battpit on the first page alone and I've never heard of any of them.

Potential solution: powercfg [color="#EE82EE"]/SETACVALUEINDEX[/color] [color="#DAA520"]381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e[/color] [color="#008000"]2a737441-1930-4402-8d77-b2bebba308a3[/color] [color="#B22222"]48e6b7a6-50f5-4782-a5d4-53bb8f07e226[/color] [color="#0000FF"]0[/color] This disables the USB Selective Suspend setting on the Balanced power policy whilst the machine is connected to the mains. Going to push this out and see if it makes a difference. Edit: To clarify: 'potential' refers to me not being 100% sure that the setting in question is what's causing the USB timeouts. The command itself works.

Hmm. Hadn't thought of that. Effected USB devices are still powered (and in the case of printers, definitely not in some kind of sleep mode). Computers are set to Windows' default 'Balanced' power setting. So unless there's something in there that's doing it.. Edit: Ooooh.. Apparently 'USB Selective Suspend' is a thing in Windows 7.. I'll bet it exists in 10! (Though we're using the same GPO's as we did on 7 and we didn't have this issue before the summer..)

There seems to be an issue with USB devices that I can only describe as some kind of timeout. It's effecting printers and interactive whiteboards where after a while, despite nobody messing with anything, they'll just stop working. Printers will show as 'Offline' even though they're still USB-attached and the pen/touch and speakers for the IWB will cease to work. The fix is as simple as unplugging/replugging the USB cable, but it's becoming quite a bother. I know it's not a driver issue as A) you don't need to change the USB port and B) it works instantly. Things like networked printers aren't being effected. Seems to just be USB devices. Anyone had this?

Ooh never even heard of desoldering braid but I think I'm going to have to pick some up! Looks useful for when I invariably screw up a joint.. (Not going to ask for a roll of it since I only have one little project to work on coughlightsabercough.. I'll just buy a dinky one off Amazon or something)

Same here. Mostly a throwback to UT'99 where female models had smaller hitboxes, and it's just stuck. Plus third-person games, if I'm gonna be looking at some booty for who-knows-how-many hours, it might as well be female booty (I kid, but not really, but kinda really. Ish.) And even then it's still a tactical decision as whilst the female character models still have the same hitbox, the model itself is often smaller (less-broad shoulders is a huge bonus in third-person games)

Well duh. Finland isn't real.

I tried the open beta.. Wasn't really impressed. AFAIC, the way you differentiate 'better' players in an FPS is by their knowledge of arena layout, game mechanics (such as movement, aiming) and positioning. Adding in an MMO grind-for-gear mechanic just really put me off it.

Damnit, I always forget that section exists! That's not a discussion we've had yet. I've briefly mentioned about not putting students' details up and they say it's only for teaching resources, but as for actually auditing it, not sure about that one just yet. Which is part of the reason why I'm asking for suggestions because maybe there's a platform already built for something like this and I just don't know about it. I'm concerning myself with the technical side of it right now, platform that works. If we find something that'll work, then we'll do the GDPR/DPA talk. However I'm pretty certain that even if it turns out we can't legally do something like this because we can't audit it, they'll just do it anyway It's one of those "If possible, I'd rather be involved where I can to make sure it's done right, otherwise they'll only go and do it wrong anyway." situations

Not sure where to post this one, so feel free to move it as appropriate mods if you think it would be better suited elsewhere. (Not like I could stop you anyway ) Our PE staff and PE staff from other schools basically want to have some flavour of link between them. Through sitting down and chatting with our PE staff, basically they want a way to discuss stuff, and a place they can share lesson plans/teaching resources/etc, preferably with some way to A) View a file/folder tree (so people don't have to keep asking for/fetching specific file links) and some way to have multiple conversations going at once with individual notification options. So basically, it sounds like they want a combo of Slack and Google Drive. The file hosting could be done through 365/G Suite, except ours are locked down so things can't be shared outside the organisation, so that's a no-go. Facebook cropped up as an idea but I have no idea if it has file hosting, plus I think the staff would be safer to not tie this to their personal online identities, just as a precaution really. Does anyone have any other ideas? Doesn't need to be a combo solution, I think they could probably made do with Slack as the conversational element, it's just the only-open-to-verified-members file hosting that verified members can trawl through at their own leisure, and that anyone can upload to.

Bought a Steam Link last big sale for something like 11 quid. Haven't actually used it yet. I don't actually know how to use it either, but I'll be damned if I read the manufacturers instructions opinion. I'll figure it out when the time comes

I have no pan kill, but I did get 2 crossbow kills one time. That was fun

Kindergarten on Steam Hilariously dark, but actually not bad of a puzzler.

They'll try again with Tizen, mark my words.

Just found out this year! I am a happy bunny.

Where's the 'Eh, it's alright' option? It's not bad, but it's not my first choice.

All phone manufacturers ruin their phones with their bloat, be that software, O/S tweaks or UI overhauls. When I bought my S7 Edge, I did my typical day-one-warranty-void of flashing new firmware on. It's basically standard procedure for me at this point. That being said, if you don't want to muck about with rooting and flashing, you can always download a new launcher through Google Play. I personally would recommend Nova Launcher.

Predictions by people in the know are that after Etherium starts to get floppy in another few months, ZCash will be the next 'big one'.

Been on a PS2 nostalgia trip. Ploughed through .hack//G.U. Vol1 in about 26 hours, schlepping my way through Vol2 now.

A fig roll isn't a biscuit! Neither is a jaffa cake! What on earth is wrong with people?!

My momma always said regeneration was like a box o' chocolates..

Kerby* Kids these days!