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The longer a Windows machine is up and running being years into its lifetime the more frequent inconsistencies can occur. For such a reason modern deployments try to work with an image-based approach - pets vs cattle. If one has to stick on a legacy machine with the pet that is continuously updated the following might help resolve Windows Update issues: If Windows update repeatedly fails to update (e.g. hangs after Downloading 100% or gets stuck in the installation procedure) one can try to install that update "by hand": https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=<KB#> , e.g. https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=kb4589210 If that does not resolve the issue, one quick first step is to use the System File Checker tool: sfc /scannnow It might be necessary to wait a couple of minutes after system bootup, because in the beginning Windows might report a conflict with another process. That usually resolves itself af

What format is the right one in JSON? "Or best? Is there any sort of standard on this?" "DateTimes in JSON are hard. The problem comes from the JSON spec itself: there is no literal syntax for dates in JSON. The spec has objects, arrays, strings, integers, and floats, but it defines no standard for what a date looks like." A common date/time-format used is ISO 8601. It is also used widely in libraries such as JavaScript's toJSON-method and Json.NET . In principle this turns the DateTime string into: <YYYY-MM-DD>T<HH:MM>[:SS.SSS][[+|-]HH:MM[:SS]|Z] Example: { "lastPlayedDateTime": "2021-12-28T23:30:00+01:00" } What's the Z? Z depicts the shorthand notation for UTC times, e.g. "2009-02-15T00:00Z" . Sources: Serializing Dates in JSON StackOverflow What is the "right" JSON date format? Wikipedia on ISO 8601 toJSON-method JSON spec

"The quick answer is to use the Microsoft “Connect” app that is already installed on Windows 10 devices along with the Project option that shows up in the Windows Notification Center (Win + P)." Sources: How to Use an Additional Computer as a Secondary Display

While there is a lot of buzz on data analysis and understanding data there for applied use of artifical intelligence and machine learning it is less known in the public on what Artifical Intelligence can do regarding generating original content and altering existing content. So called Generative Adversarial Networks can generate or change pictures and can even alter videos. E.g. The website www.ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com gives and interesting and somewhat worrisome examples of that technolgy. The speed at which this technology evolves is as astounding as the results it can give already. The technology can not only be used to generate static content like the pictures of faces, but can also modify videos. There is an example where the same scene filmed by day is recreated to appear at night: Another example illustrates how a video of a horse is transferred to a video of a zebra. As Ian Goodfellow points out the GAN did not only change the brown horse to be white with bla

Location: FFmpeg can either be installed individually or as part of other applications. E.g. if installed together with Audacity usually the entire contents of the downloaded ZIP file are extracted to a folder anywhere on the computer, then the Libraries Preferences are configured to locate the file "avformat-55.dll". One location could be C:\Program Files (x86)\FFmpeg for Audacity . Basic Conversion: FFmpeg can be overwhelming with its options. If you only want to encode a larger video to MP4 and do not care much about smaller compression artifacts go for: ffmpeg -i "input.avi" "output.mp4" Basic Trim (Cut) from/to: e.g. from the begin of the file to 45 1/2 seconds. ffmpeg -i "input.mp4" -ss 00:00:00 -to 00:00:45.5 -c:v copy -c:a copy "output.mp4" For some stream-to-MP4-rips the audio bitstream filter 'aac_adtstoasc' might be needed as follows: ffmpeg -i "input.mp4" -ss 00:00:00 -to 00:00:45.5 -c:v c

"While most consumers are likely using Chrome, Firefox, or Edge, a number of businesses still rely on Internet Explorer for older web apps that haven’t been modernized." "“Internet Explorer is a compatibility solution,” [..], rather than a browser that businesses should be using day to day for all web browsing activity. “We’re not supporting new web standards for it" Sources: Microsoft really doesn’t want you to use Internet Explorer anymore, The Verge The perils of using Internet Explorer as your default browser, Chris Jackson, Microsoft