The US, maybe. But wiki suggests ETIAS (the EU one) was proposed in 2016 whereas the UK ETA idea was created around 2023, so ETIAS can't be a reaction to ETA - perhaps the other way round?

I'm not sure if, without Brexit, the UK would have ended up with ETIAS anyway - it's a "mostly Schengen but not exactly" thing so it would have depended on what agreement they came to.

You're right, I misremembered the order in which I learned about these things as the order in which they were announced.

(lol, I sound like an LLM apologizing for getting something wrong but I promise I'm human :) )

https://www.gov.uk/evisa/set-up-ukvi-account suggests that there's other options if you can't use the app.

(article author here): The big green "Start Now" button on https://www.gov.uk/eta/apply takes me to the same double push-for-the-app flow in the article (on desktop firefox). But otherwise true, should probably have searched for "UK ETA", but coming from the announcement, that is very clear you need the app, searching for "UK ETA App" felt natural.

There is a link that says “I cannot use the app” and at the bottom of the page there is “Apply online instead” which takes you here, and you just press next:

https://apply-for-an-eta.homeoffice.gov.uk/apply/electronic-...

Sure but if you click on the "online one" you still have to skip two pages offering you to use the app instead. The same pages you see in the article.

Once upon a time, you could strip formatting from the clipboard in notepad with ^V ^A ^C, for example if you were trying to paste from edge into word. There's still a market for a non-rich text editor, without autosave, cloud, account login or AI.

Apparently pasting unformatted text in browsers can be done with Ctrl+Shift+V. Pasting it in Office is Ctrl+Alt+V. Always the odd one out. Taken from here: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220906-00/?p=10...

It doesn't work everywhere though as there are still apps that don't offer a plain text paste, and as you have noted the shortcut can be different in different applications.

I've been using this AutoHotKey script long enough that Ctrl+Shift+V has become a muscle memory for "paste without formatting". In case it's useful to anyone else, put this in a file (clipboard.ahk) and run it at startup:

  ^+v::
  Clipboard:=Clipboard
  Send ^v

That way, it works globally, it's not dependent on any particular application implementing it.

If you don't care about losing line breaks, I've used my browser's URL bar for this for years.

Cmd-L Cmd-V Cmd-A Cmd-C

(swap for Cmd for Ctrl on non-Mac)

Unless it changed recently, the faster way is to just press ctrl+shift+V for "paste special" in Word, which should open up the paste dialog with "Unformated Text" preselected (IIRC), so immediately pressing Enter should close the dialog and paste the stripped text.

Careful when doing it in Teams. ctrl+shift+V is "paste without formatting", ctrl+shift+C is "call everyone".

Hey everyone! Check me out! I don't preserve formatting!

(I heard this in Homer Simpson’s voice.)

I sincerely hope that whoever decided that a) this action needs a shortcut and b) to overload the most common hotkey spends the rest of eternity toiling away at features nobody wants, slowly ruining their company, and never, ever gets that sick promotion they're desperately chasing. I hope their wife leaves them and takes the dog.

Notepad in Windows 11 (while not autosave) will preserve unsaved documents.

But would you be worried that the some other guy at the play park is also recording your children?

Digital autonomy aside, I like the concept of something like "Microsoft apps, but without copilot".

> Microsoft Store could have changed this situation

Don't you need to create a Microsoft account to use it? That makes sense for a store where you buy apps with money, but not for a package manager for free software like Notepad++.

P.S. I'm waiting for the day you need a registered Ubuntu account to use their snap store :(

Many of the software that people install on Windows are quite expensive. So if any package manager were worth calling a "store", one for Windows definitely would be.

It doesn't make sense to have one package manager for paid software and another for free software, so both types of software would be available in the same "store", with the unfortunate consequence that you need to log in with a Microsoft account in order to get free software.

But if I only used free software, I wouldn't even be using Windows.

The non-developer / non-power-user is likely already using their Microsoft account to log into the OS.

Here's another trick someone should build in: email using emoji in the subject line is probably advertising. Sometimes from lists you like being subscribed on, but if the subject uses U+2757 (big red exclamation mark) then it's more likely "SALE ENDS TOMORROW" and less "Your order shipped!"

EDIT: HN apparently filters out that code point. Good on you.

Unfortunately, eBay uses emoji in the subject lines for a bunch of their transactional email, e.g. "<U+1F4E6>ORDER DELIVERED".

> Unfortunately, eBay uses emoji in the subject lines for a bunch of their transactional email, e.g. "<U+1F4E6>ORDER DELIVERED".

Don't really use G-mail (I personally use proton) so I am not sure but can't special exceptions be made for E-bay if that's the case?

GMail doesn't currently have any feature to do that kind of filtering.

Which is why they go to spam so often.

Eh, LS_COLORS is sometimes useful once the meanings are in your subconscious.

There's an ever more basic rule: don't just make your text white (ANSI 37m) because you assume the terminal will have a dark background. Even white-on-black (37;40m), while usually readable, can stand out the wrong way if you assume that everyone is using dark mode.

IMO if your terminal theme does not provide high contrast for "white" text on the default or "black" backgrounds, that's for you to fix. If you want a light terminal then change the color scheme to map "black" to a bright color and "white" to a dark color while making sure that other colors have good contrast to your "black". Don't just change the default foreground and background color and expect every single color using program to fix your mess.