Assuming you want to keep working ~40 hours a week, I feel like the best idea are four 8.5 hour days and Friday as a half day. This gives you half a day to "decompress" and still have a two day weekend ahead of you. This is the working time model most common in my country.
In the late 90's I worked at a company that had 36 hours a week. If you came in regular times, you'd get Friday afternoon off. I used to come in a bit early and leave a bit late on Monday to Thursday and then take the entire Friday off.
Almost like you need a CLI as the OS that simply launches the visual UI program for specific tasks.
A pretty desktop background and a prompt would go a long way.
I'm now picturing something like ChatGPT (or a specifically trained model) integrated into the shell, so a user can simply type / vocalise what they are trying to do, without knowing specific app details, rather than having to navigate a bloated UI.
The modern-day equivalent is yes, regular user, just do <Windows>, then write "calc", press <Return>, and you'll be ready to use the calculator. That R really killed it...
To be fair, you have to remember that the calculator is called "calc.exe" to use this method. However, when parent said "you really wouldn’t want the II of that era back" I understood "you" as "HN reader", not as "regular user".
Also, there is also a "discoverable" way to launch programs keyboard-only: <Windows>, P, A, C (Programs - Accessories - Calculator).
I just really dislike the Windows 10 start menu search. It slows down on random occasions just often enough to be too annoying for me to use, at least on my machine.
I dislike it because the autocompletions are hilariously brain-dead most of the time. Like, it usually autocompletes folder names correctly, but I can't really rely on that feature because some of them are never offered as candidates. E.g. "Work" is not only not offered as candidate (even though I have a folder named "Work"), but mysteriously autocompleted to "Word".
It's also a solution to a self-inflicted problem. Super-crowded Start menus were a problem, but not a very widespread one among people who aren't nerds. The Windows 11 Start menu is crowded but largely because it's littered with Microsoft's own apps. If I were to take out Xbox, Alarms & Clocks and all the other crap I no longer bother to uninstall because it's gonna come back on the next update anyway, I could probably use it quite comfortably.
No, it's not. For tech people, yes. For regular folks, most don't even know you can write after pressing the Windows key. Moreso, not everyone even knows the Windows key opens the menu. Folks don't use shortcuts like we do.
Let's rephrase @endgame's comment as "Windows XP and Office XP were the first versions of their respective series where product activation was mandatory on all retail editions." Point still stands I guess.
Same in Polish. But, in the higher education context, "professor" is the highest job title there is (it's even given by the country's president during an official ceremony, although there's also "university professor" title, which doesn't involve the president), requiring usually at least 15-year academic career.
>Isaac Asimov once mentioned an "interesting theory" that Romans avoided using IV because it was the initial letters of IVPITER, the Latin spelling of Jupiter, and might have seemed impious. He did not say whose theory it was.
This bit of speculation goes back at least to David Eugene Smith (1925), "History of Mathematics", volume II, page 59:
"There is a possibility that the Romans avoided IV, the initials of IVPITER, just as the Hebrews avoided יה in writing 15, as the Babylonians avoided their natural form for 19, and as similar instances of reverence for or fear of deity occur in other languages."
EU regulations now forbid SMS-based authentication. I tried explaining to the bank clerk several times how I am not using the Google Play Store but it was only when I held my Nokia "dumb phone" in their face that they gave me a hardware token generator (for free actually!).
For context, I use a Nokia 8110 and a LineageOS device.
This is a case where I want to mention Austria as a positive example: The vaccination certificate app is open source on Github, so you can compile it yourself and not need to use the Play Store.
>Over the years many countries experimented with 3-unit coins or banknotes. For instance, in the 90s, Ukraine had a 3 karbovanets banknote and Uzbekistan had a 3 som banknote
I think "experimented" is the wrong word here when Uzbekistan and Ukraine paid with 3 kopeck coins and 3 ruble banknotes for decades before that.