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You'll need a HtmlAgilityPack reference if you don't have it already.
(I started using it sometime after 2014)
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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ok thanks I'll have a look - solve the CCC !!! I don't want to have to think of another one 
Edit
I had to add that reference to get it to compile - one thing I did which may or may not be causing this is I removed a VS build event which mentioned a timestamp.
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
modified 19-May-21 6:18am.
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pkfox wrote: solve the CCC !!! I don't want to have to think of another one
I may try - but since I don't use Twatter I'm not hopeful.
Best I can come up with involves a lonesome heavyweight!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: Using IP based Geolocation - and why it's pretty much useless.[^]
Hence the scam that is "big data". They collect so much information about you, yet make fundamental mistakes that bring into question all of its validity. Of course those who sell this data to advertisers don't want them to realize that.
The classic example...you buy something from Amazon, then suddenly you start seeing all sorts of ads for that thing. Well, it's already too late to start your marketing campaign, the item's already been bought.
I don't exactly consider myself to be the type who goes out of his way to evade tracking. However I'd really curious to see the profile companies like Google and Microsoft have managed to build based on what they've collected from me. Because none of the ads I still see are any more valuable to me than a random ad in a newspaper, which has no idea who the reader is.
Let them all waste their money.
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dandy72 wrote: They collect so much information about you, yet make fundamental mistakes
Are you really so sure they don't have better location information than that - possibly from the ISP, but even if not, they have other information about your local, home address, telephone, underwear size, &etc. that is probably correct and they recorrelate.
My (I hope) best data scrambler is that each place I do business with has a different email address and also different age, gender, etc., unless the correct information is essential (like a bank). I'm actually somewhat difficult to find on the internet.
Could be a coincidence . . . or maybe no one, not even the advertisers, care.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: Are you really so sure they don't have better location information than that - possibly from the ISP
Google seems to firmly believe I live in a city that's 375km away from where I actually am. That city's part of my ISP's business address. Google maps opens up defaulting around that area. If that's the best they can do, I'm not impressed.
If Google has further details about me through my ISP, such as my phone number or home address (which my ISP does have), it's because my ISP had no choice but to provide it to them through a court order. As far as I know that hasn't happened.
The biggest offender has got to be browsers that automatically sign into a profile when launched. I've never signed in or filled in any details. I don't let it "sync across devices". Even though the browser runs compiled code using my credentials, the best it might be able to get from my system is my local Windows account name, which is rather meaningless.
What does leave me shaking my head is people showing me what their Android phones know about them. Android is known to send everything back to the mothership and can't run without a user profile that has everything linked to it. When the company that stands to gain the most from showing you ads is also making the hardware and software that constantly collects all sorts of telemetry data (which incidentally MS didn't invent), it's game over. For that same reason I wouldn't own a Chromebook either nor would I take one if one was given to me. In that respect, Windows is still pretty dumb, and that's how I prefer it to be.
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: I'm actually somewhat difficult to find on the internet
I have to dig pretty deep to find anything about myself on the internet, and that's with me knowing exactly what to look for. There's Usenet posts from 25+ years ago associated with my name, but otherwise, Googling for my real name only brings up a handful of people who happen to share my first and last names. As far as I can tell, there's some literature professor in a university who has published some obscure books, and some self-employed construction worker who uses his name as part of his business...these two alone are those who come up the most often and all occupy the first few pages from all search engines.
Heck almost a decade ago I had former classmates organize a highschool reunion and I only heard about it years later, because apparently if you're not on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, you might as well not exist. Clearly these are great places to avoid too.
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dandy72 wrote: apparently if you're not on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, you might as well not exist.
That statement leads me to hypothesize that from the point of view of the data-mongers, if you're not on those they might not care if you exist, either.
Since CP is my only social network, I'm probably pretty safe for some to come. Unless, of course, there's a market for people who are not in the market.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Pretty much. You just become too hard to track accurately for them to care. Or rather, for that group of people, they don't care how accurate the data is. That group of people is constantly getting smaller and smaller.
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As OG said, it's based upon your ISP.
That being said, I happen to have the same ISP as my employer. They (the VM's) are in Brooklyn, NY, and I'm on Long Island and my work-box is sitting in Freeport, NY (elsewhere on long island).
Depending upon whether I go to a web page from my home, VM, or box, I'm in the correct local.
On the other hand, you can use a site like this: https://whatismyipaddress.com/[^] and see what a neutral player determines (purely from the IP).
Interestingly, they now place my Freeport System in New Hyde Park, NY . So, overall, there's a combo of where they (your IP/ISP) are and possibly an encoding of some type to refine the local . . . or so it seems.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Not heard of this before: How to create your first app with the free Windows 10 Power Automate - TechRepublic[^] but it looks kinda interesting. Either that or it spells a lot of extra (hopefully chargeable) support work come our way when the users hear about it ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: Either that or it spells a lot of extra (hopefully chargeable) support work come our way when the users hear about it ...
Yeah - as soon as users try to do something that deviates from the simplest scenarios. Then you're back to writing a real app.
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"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Power Automate is part of their low code/no code platform. I have looked at it but have not done much with it yet.
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Does anyone actually like powershell? I avoid it like the plague. It's confusing, and I say that as someone that mucks about with bash on the regular - not exactly a paragon of syntactic rationality itself.
Why can't people make an elephanting simple to use shell? If it needs to be able to do everything, make it "AI" assisted, like one of those old "expert systems" if you have to. Let it learn.
And speaking of "AI", why the heck does my camera still name photos like IMG_2021_5_18.jpg or whatever when it knows it's a cat?
Real programmers use butterflies
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A plague, yes.
The only time I had to dabble with PowerShell (ptui) it was because a colleague had sent me a small script to run to demonstrate something. I quickly took the ideas and wrote a proper C# program to do it better/quicker/etc. In that way, it may be that the PowerShell (ptui) script was just enough to pass along the necessary information I needed.
Lately, I've begun to wonder whether or not PowerShell (ptui) and Python (ptui ptui) serve the same role. Both seem to be glue languages with little they can do natively, but the user is expected to import functionality written in proper programming languages.
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much like VB of old (and perhaps where VB should have stayed)
Real programmers use butterflies
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It is simple compared to bash. See bash if: naked, parentheses, double parentheses, brackets, double brackets. Exporting variables, and using those in parent shells. bash is a tad more logical than cmd.exe is, but no match for powershell. Just try to use your date handling routines NOT in your locale.
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How come I had no trouble learning Bash then? and PS? No. I cannot remember the syntax at all.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Maybe because the basic syntax is quite similar (except the parentheses magic), and many command has bash-alias? So it was powershell looking as bash? 
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If the syntax was similar I'd have had no problem learning Powershell. Bash and Powershell syntax are quite different.
Real programmers use butterflies
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As a REPL, I dislike its verbosity but for writing scripts it's fantastic compared to bash, so much simpler.
Spacing around `=` is irrelevant instead of throwing weird errors.
The if statement behaves like a programming language and does not have weird stuff like [[ ]] that changes something..
I never understood bash as a language.
That being said, I miss quite some stuff from coreutils on windows.. and I just realized that Git installs them and just added `C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin` to the path, so I don't actually miss them anymore
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I feel the exact opposite of you. I cannot remember PS syntax. It confounds me. Bash is no trouble.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: And speaking of "AI", why the heck does my camera still name photos like IMG_2021_5_18.jpg or whatever when it knows it's a cat?
To be honest, if your camera knows it's a cat, then it's confused already, and probably need AIchiatric help ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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you know what I meant! 
Real programmers use butterflies
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