Technology, law, life, and more.
Today’s Easter egg in a district court opinion on Westlaw:
SAS Inst., Inc. v. World Programming Ltd., 64 F. Supp. 3d 755, 763 (E.D.N.C. 2014).
This is why subciters are told to check the print edition, which has the “C plus plus” language properly typeset with plus signs:
For what it’s worth, the district court definitely typed C++. Lexis and Bloomberg didn’t make the mistake, either.
Based on https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1408834-removing-windows-10-apps-gpo, with the additional refinement of a filter that removes only Store apps and not system apps or frameworks, using PowerShell:
The -AllUsers flag requires an elevated PowerShell run on an administrator account. Omit the -AllUsers flag if running as a nonadministrator for the current user.
Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | where-object {$_.IsFramework -eq $false -And $_.name -notlike "*store*" -And $_.name -notlike "*calc*" -And $_.SignatureKind -eq "Store"} | select Name
On a 1711 newly installed VM, this resulted in this list:
Name ---- Microsoft.MicrosoftOfficeHub Microsoft.Microsoft3DViewer Microsoft.ZuneVideo Microsoft.WindowsMaps Microsoft.WindowsFeedbackHub Microsoft.BingWeather Microsoft.Messaging Microsoft.MicrosoftStickyNotes Microsoft.XboxIdentityProvider Microsoft.XboxSpeechToTextOverlay Microsoft.Print3D Microsoft.GetHelp Microsoft.WindowsSoundRecorder Microsoft.Getstarted Microsoft.WindowsCamera Microsoft.3DBuilder Microsoft.Xbox.TCUI Microsoft.People Microsoft.RemoteDesktop Microsoft.XboxGameOverlay Microsoft.Office.Sway Microsoft.Windows.Photos Microsoft.MSPaint Microsoft.SkypeApp Microsoft.XboxApp Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller Microsoft.WindowsAlarms Microsoft.OneConnect Microsoft.Wallet Microsoft.ZuneMusic Microsoft.Office.OneNote microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps Microsoft.MicrosoftSolitaireCollection
Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | where-object {$_.IsFramework -eq $false -And $_.name -notlike "*store*" -And $_.name -notlike "*calc*" -And $_.SignatureKind -eq "Store"} | Remove-AppxPackage
Certain apps that cannot be uninstalled might be listed in the output.
I’ve been backing up some of my larger files to Bluray lately, instead of trying to upload them over a 10 Mbps uplink.
In the past, I used GPG (on a .tar or compressed .tar.xz) or Veracrypt (on a file container) to encrypt at rest, before burning those files onto a standard UDF/ISO9660 optical disc. Now that I use a Linux desktop, I wanted something slightly more native — a method that
Based on some resources online, I settled on using LUKS.
Continue reading “Creating a LUKS-encrypted DVD/BD data disc”
It’s generally an honour to be appointed to serve as the head of a federal agency. After the revelation this morning that President-elect Trump will nominate a S&C partner to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, the whole law firm’s website appears to be down because of the increased interest:
Microsoft’s Facebook ad for new features in Excel highlights the Treemap visualization, but gets it totally wrong.
A treemap is supposed to visualize relative size in a hierarchy. But in the illustration here, the data don’t fit this type of visualization (it’s a time series of one flat variable—without hierarchy).
But it’s even worse than that. The relative sizes don’t make sense! Why would the 31 MPG box for January be so much larger than the 32 MPG box for May?
This seems like a great illustration of why math/statistical education should be required for everyone—even visual designers and marketers. Or at least, the people selling the product should understand what the software actually does.
While trying to file my Canadian taxes as a nonresident, using the “Income Tax and Benefit Return for Non-residents … of Canada” — since I live in the United States and am a tax resident of the United States — I ran into a really frustrating bug in the first 5 form fields.
The form doesn’t accept non-Canadian provinces/territories and postal codes!
It’s really foolish, because many of the people who would be filing this form are likely residing outside of Canada. That’s why this version of the T1 return has an added Country field in the address block.
This is the kind of situation when PDF forms should just step back and allow free-form, unvalidated input.
There’s a provision that allows aliens in the U.S.[1] to choose to be treated as a U.S. resident for tax purposes even if they would not otherwise qualify as a resident. Income tax rules themselves are already really confusing — and they are even more complicated for foreigners in the U.S. — so a typographic error could really confuse a taxpayer.
I think the IRS made a typographic error, but I’m not even sure how to get in touch with them to fix this.
Suppose you arrive in the U.S. for the very first time on October 1, 2015 to work for the foreseeable future on a TN-1 (NAFTA Professional) visa. Because the period from 2015-10-01 to 2015-12-31 is insufficient to meet the Substantial Presence Test,[2] you would otherwise be a nonresident alien for tax year 2015. This would mean your income in the United States might be subject to taxation in the U.S. as well as in your home country. What if you wanted to be treated as a resident alien starting on October 1, 2015 — despite not satisfying the Substantial Presence Test?
This is the First-Year Choice, and it’s documented in Publication 519 (“U.S. Tax Guide for Aliens”) by the IRS.
I got a little confused when I first read the rule, because it seemed to require an impossibility:
Let me excerpt that to show why it’s so self-contradictory: “If you do not meet either the [GCT] or the [SPT] for 2014 … but you meet the [SPT] for 2014.”
Huh? Clearly they meant 2016 there. Moreover, if you met the SPT for 2014, the current tax year — 2015 — wouldn’t be your first year in the U.S.
This is confirmed by the bulleted list on the following page:
If you are going to satisfy the Substantial Presence Test in the following tax year — 2016 — you can choose to pretend to be a U.S. resident from 2015-10-01 to 2015-12-31 as well, if you meet all of the requirements in the bulleted list above.
| 1 | ↑ | Foreigners, not extraterrestrials. |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | ↑ | The Substantial Presence Test (SPT) requires, in its simplest form, at least 183 days of physical presence within the United States in a three-year period. |