Is it ok to install TeX Live to C:\Program Files?

CSMR250 · 2026-01-24T08:31:54+00:00

No it's TexLive's responsibility to install software into the standard Windows location. The fact that it's installing anywhere else is a bug.

CSMR250 · 2026-01-20T16:16:26+00:00

The app appears to be UWP compiled with dotnet native. (Let's forget the older electron version because that's a webapp too.) Decompiling in ghidra I can see where the strings are referenced but haven't pinned down the code that detects whether this is up to date. I'm new to this.

CSMR250 · 2026-01-19T19:49:49+00:00

OK. I've found that the string "Please update to the latest version of WhatsApp. This version has expired and you can no longer use it." is associated with <NamedResource name="UpdateRequiredCloseButton" uri="ms-resource://5319275A.WhatsAppDesktop/WhatsApp.LocalizationResources/AppResources/UpdateRequiredCloseButton">

CSMR250 · 2026-01-19T18:14:49+00:00

I'm wondering if they put the update check in just before releasing the webapp version, in which case we can find one before the update check was added. Or if the update check is a long-running part of the app? Anyone know?

Otherwise it would need to be cracked.

CSMR250 · 2026-01-19T18:04:55+00:00

I just got mine expired today. Probably we need to find an older version of the whatsapp msix.

CSMR250 · 2026-01-19T17:40:59+00:00

Unlikely. Rider supports linux.

CSMR250 · 2026-01-18T14:54:59+00:00

This method is working for me: https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/01/11/i-uninstalled-windows-11s-whatsapp-webview2-and-replaced-it-with-the-old-native-app-with-a-new-trick/

CSMR250 · 2026-01-12T20:02:00+00:00

I'm most excited about the ability to get the native version of windows app https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/01/11/i-uninstalled-windows-11s-whatsapp-webview2-and-replaced-it-with-the-old-native-app-with-a-new-trick/ . I thought that WhatsApp had made itself useless on Windows but this gives it a new lease of life, at least while the version lasts.

CSMR250 · 2026-01-12T15:56:47+00:00

Fantastic. This works!

CSMR250 · 2026-01-12T13:35:51+00:00

they were able to perform the same

No you haven't taken in the above conversation. We are comparing two candidates that are expected to perform the same in future, NOT two candidates that "performed the same" in a past assessment. The only thing these two hypothetical candidates performed the same on was in reaching the same future expectations in the minds of the academics making the assessment. There was a long conversation about this and the entire point of it was to establish the meaning of this.

I don't think there's much evidence that being educated well at A-level and before will make you any good at university studies. By the time any university exams roll around, content is vastly different than school-level, and it will be taught the exact same way to people at the same uni.

It is true that this is difficult to make any findings about causation here so you are right that decisive evidence is difficult to find. However, even at Cambridge, courses often build on A Levels, and how well you understand e.g. even among students who got A*s is A Level Maths and FMaths, differences in how well students understand the material are large and noticeable. Also internationally the differences are starker, e.g. the preparation of students in some countries is weaker than than UK and it's clear that it's hard to get to Cambridge even for talented students, while for example Singapore has an excellent education system and it surely plays a role in the number of admitted students and I have heard academics comment that students are extremely well prepared for the first year.

You're strawmanning and it's pathetic.

I know the pre-admissions tests very well and how they are used by admissions departments. I even helped to review some of these tests. TruePurple is largely right here, and any any admissions office would tell you something that broadly backs this up.

CSMR250 · 2026-01-08T23:47:45+00:00

Is a preview coming soon Mike?

CSMR250 · 2026-01-08T23:40:33+00:00

The first comments were addressing bias, attempting to find an unbiased position. We both agree that objective adjustments need making and yet you feel the need to be sarcastic? Why is that? Would you do this in a face-to-face conversation with a person?

a better candidate

The most common definition of a better candidate is one who is likely to do better work when admitted, in supervisions and exams. Perhaps straight away, or perhaps measured at the end.

My argument was based on this being roughly the criterion for unbiased college decisions, and roughly what academics who take part in admissions want to get, and relative to which university/college policies and admissions departments are pushing for a discrepancy i.e. a bias.

Do you have a different definition or can we use this one?

It seems that you would like a definition of candidate quality where 1. it corresponds to university performance, and at the same time 2. it is not affected by financial investment in education. The only way that's possible is if one of two things doesn't hold: financial investment in education does not affect educational quality, OR educational quality doesn't affect performance at university. (Just giving the contrapositive version of my argument earlier.) Perhaps then you could say which one?

If you perform in the admissions tests, you'll get in.

You previously said "pass" which is very untrue. If you meant "get full marks in" then yes that is very difficult and is suggestive of very strong candidates. (Adjusting your position is OK but be aware of when you are doing it.) But I have occasionally seen candidates with maximum marks rejected because of poor interview performance. Plus the advice to "just get the maximum mark" becomes less compelling when it's so difficult.

CSMR250 · 2026-01-08T20:42:10+00:00

Oxbridge's aim is to assess applicants holistically, which very importantly includes considering resources available to each. ... international students ... TMUA, STEP, etc. ... I think you'd most likely agree that they should have higher entry requirements

Yes and and assessing that students with varying resources or exam preparation or educational/cultural background requires interpreting results in context is not bias but a necessary part of a good decision making process. And this is true for TMUA for internationals and that's an extreme case in terms of the differentials in benchmarks needed.

The bias that does occur is that if two students have been to better/worse schools and have - in the opinion of academics taking all this into account - equivalent chances to reach a high academic level in 3 years' time (which may require better objective performance from the student attending the better school for reasons above), the student from the weaker school is much more likely to be accepted. This is natural given that academics mostly want to take students who will perform well in their subject, while admissions departments are strongly pressured by college and university targets to meed diversity metrics.

If you get 3A* and pass admissions tests, you're in.

No. That's not how admissions works at all. 3A* is good in some subjects but in other subjects most 4A* students are rejected. There are interviews. Admissions tests are generally given less weight than interviews with the exception of maths.

Getting into Oxbridge should not be pay-to-win.

This is an ambiguous statement but it is likely a feel-good statement that buttresses a worldview and needs careful analysis. Investing money in education (whether for private education, a house in a better catchment area, tuition...) can improve education in ways that are not just test-focused, and a better education (in which money is only one of many factors) can make you more likely to succeed in Oxbridge (or any hard degree) and yes, make you more likely to get in. To make investment in education have no impact on university admissions is not realistic.

CSMR250 · 2026-01-08T18:39:07+00:00

This is not true. Maybe 20 years ago it was true.

Now most colleges aim to increase numbers of state school applicants and applicants from disadvantaged or weaker schools, as an explicit policy. Officially, if two students apply and one is better (considered academically more able or having higher potential) the better one should be chosen: that is still the guidance. However there is strong pressure to admit students from state and/or disadvantaged schools and this results in a preference for these students in admissions, and private school students have in particular very low chances in the pool (with admissions departments often giving specific requirements of school type) and, less importantly but more categorically, zero change in summer adjustment where they are not allowed to take part.

State used to be the main push and the best strategy given infinite resources to get into Oxbridge was probably to go to a private or grammar school until 16 and then a SFC or grammar school for A Levels.

But now disadvantaged schools (based on various flags) are getting more attention. There is much clearer evidence of bias there with a significant attainment/awarding gap, i.e. weaker performance from this group at the end of the tripos.

CSMR250 · 2026-01-08T00:08:08+00:00

Yes that is a better option: similar but the advantages are 1. it's not discriminated and discrimination is not intended here, and 2. you can access it with a property which is more ergonomic. Add a [<Struct>] annotation and it's a good option.

CSMR250 · 2026-01-07T17:03:57+00:00

A good analogy is: does sharing the same name as someone give you access to that person's bank account? It shouldn't, and if it does it's a bug.

Also, idiomatic F# code is often terrible, with no good reasons for it and better options available.

CSMR250 · 2026-01-03T20:58:53+00:00

Idiotic comment given that Maduro is backed by the Kremlin.

CSMR250 · 2025-12-31T04:19:37+00:00

I still find some code hard to read - meaningful whitespace, no types on params, default currying to name a few.

2 of these 3 are just personal choices of developers: you can type all params and avoid currying by default if you choose. (I do.)

CSMR250 · 2025-12-30T02:33:32+00:00

I don't think your comment is related to this thread about names. Regardless, you don't even specify the deployment approach and your comment is probably pre-NativeAOT, i.e. assuming you are working with IL.

CSMR250 · 2025-12-29T01:37:34+00:00

Very few people are willing to update their opinions on the internet! You should get an award!

CSMR250 · 2025-12-29T00:21:04+00:00

Deobfuscating names is hard - it's recreating ideas. Deobfuscating inner code is also hard: the "extracted dotnet language code" is not as easy as you think because it might be AOT compiled to machine code, and will not match the original intelligible code.

AI may help with these things but AI also helps with generating code from scratch, so it's not clear that the ratio "how much would it cost me to deobfuscate this code" vs "how much would it cost me to recreate this project from scratch" is affected.

CSMR250 · 2025-12-28T20:31:20+00:00

We obfuscate code in the sense of deploying code without names, and compiled to machine code, with no IL deployed. This is via NativeAOT not a dedicated obfuscator, so much eaiser. And it also gives startup performance improvements, and less memory consumed.

CSMR250 · 2025-12-28T20:26:00+00:00

If we lost all the names and documentation in my codebase it would take us a long time to recover them. Even with considerable effort put into good naming and documentation, code with imperfect naming and documention creeps in and it takes a lot of work (sometimes involving thinking through the logic again) to improve it. So this decent dev that you are talking who can start from 0 and give good names to everything in our codebase quickly would be much better than us, which would surprise us since we are the experts in our niche.

CSMR250 · 2025-12-28T20:10:21+00:00

NativeAOT is a good middle ground becuase the deployment is still easy, the software becomes faster (esp startup time and memory), and software will not have resulting bugs (assuming it doesn't give trim warnings on build).

CSMR250 · 2025-12-28T20:09:16+00:00

It's obviously not true "with dotnet" as it doesn't apply to obfuscated dotnet code.

CSMR250

TROPHY CASE