Notepad keeps getting more features, and Microsoft’s latest move to add lightweight formatting options is divisive, shall we say.

The newest text scam making the rounds is a message that (poorly) impersonates your state DMV with a threat to rescind your license unless you pay outstanding fees. NPR reports that departments of motor vehicles in New York, Florida, and California have alerted residents to the scam, but it has been spotted in other places too (including Utah, where I live). How the DMV text scam worksThis scam purports to be from the DMV or transportation department in your state and warns of unpaid fees for traffic violations or tolls. The message directs recipients to a link to pay these supposed penalties or risk losing their license (or "driving privileges") or face legal action. It also references a state statute that may actually be legitimate (albeit unrelated to the warning), but that doesn't mean the text itself is. The DMV scam currently circulating is similar to the unpaid tolls scam and the unpaid parking fee scam, both of which are examples of smishing, or SMS phishing. This type of attack relies on text messages to try to convince targets to click malicious links and disclose personal or financial information or download malware to their device in the process. Scammers engaging in smishing often attempt to impersonate legitimate institutions, such as banks and government agencies. According to data from Robokiller, Americans received 19.2 billion spam texts, of which smishing is an example, in April 2025. That's an average of 63 messages per person. Text scam red flags to watch for The DMV scam may seem obvious, but bad actors hope that some recipients will be swayed by an official-looking text that threatens real-life consequences and act without investigating further. That's why you should be wary of any message, text or otherwise, that demands urgent action or invokes an emotional response. Once you read more carefully, you'll notice additional red flags. The sender may be an email address or non-local (even international) phone number— official texts from government agencies typically come from five-digit numbers. The name of the department may be incorrect, such as the Florida State Department of Motor Vehicles (fake) instead of Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (real). The URL to pay the supposed fine is not an official state website (https://utah[dot]gov-etcwirs[dot]cc, for example), and it may not be clickable, so it skirts your device's security features. And, of course, there may be minor spelling and grammar errors and odd formatting.

For years, Notepad has existed as a bare-bones text editor. No longer. Microsoft keeps adding to it, including a new update that includes capabilities that you might have expected in another Windows application, WordPad. Microsoft said Friday that it is adding “lightweight formatting” in Notepad, including markdown input and file support, but also bold and italic fonts and even hyperlinks. They’re all accessible via a new toolbar that includes these new formatting options. Microsoft didn’t indicate that it is testing the new Notepad or offering these features in preview, so presumably these updates will arrive on your Windows PC soon. Two things seem to be going on here. In late 2023, Microsoft killed off WordPad, the rich text editor that served as a poor man’s alternative to Microsoft Word. (There’s a way to bring WordPad back, but you’d need access to an older version of Windows where WordPad still existed.) Traditionally, Notepad has been the Windows answer to a light text editor that coders can use or write in, although more sophisticated alternatives like vim exist. It seems that Microsoft is adding more features to try and help those users, while moving towards a WordPad replacement. Microsoft, meanwhile, is bringing the Edit app to Windows as well. Edit is an open-source app that was basically designed as a command-line interface, or CLI, and Microsoft specifically references how obtuse vim was to use when it announced it. Either way, by beefing up Notepad –heck, even with Copilot! — and adding the Edit option as well, Windows is offering a number of lightweight CLI and text-editing interfaces without bloating the operating system even further.

While there’s more than one way to format Unity C# code, agreeing on a consistent code style for your project enables your team to develop a clean, readable, and scalable codebase. In this blog, we provide some guidelines and examples you can use to develop and maintain your own code style guide.Please note that these are only recommendations based on those provided by Microsoft. This is your chance to get inspired and decide what works best for your team.Ideally, a Unity project should feel like it’s been developed by a single author, no matter how many developers actually work on it. A style guide can help unify your approach for creating a more cohesive codebase.It’s a good idea to follow industry standards wherever possible and browse through existing style guides as a starting point for creating your own. In partnership with internal and external Unity experts, we released a new e-book, Create a C# style guide: Write cleaner code that scales for inspiration, based on Microsoft’s comprehensive C# style.The Google C# style guide is another great resource for defining guidelines around naming, formatting, and commenting conventions. Again, there is no right or wrong method, but we chose to follow Microsoft standards for our own guide.Our e-book, along with an example C# file, are available for free. Both resources focus on the most common coding conventions you’ll encounter while developing in Unity. These are all, essentially, a subset of the Microsoft Framework Design guidelines, which include an extensive number of best practices beyond what we cover in this post.We recommend customizing the guidelines provided in our style guide to suit your team’s preferences. These preferences should be prioritized over our suggestions and the Microsoft Framework Design guidelines if they’re in conflict.The development of a style guide requires an upfront investment but will pay dividends later. For example, managing a single set of standards can reduce the time developers spend on ramping up if they move onto another project.Of course, consistency is key. If you follow these suggestions and need to modify your style guide in the future, a few find-and-replace operations can quickly migrate your codebase.Concentrate on creating a pragmatic style guide that fits your needs by covering the majority of day-to-day use cases. Don’t overengineer it by attempting to account for every single edge case from the start. The guide will evolve organically over time as your team iterates on it from project to project.Most style guides include basic formatting rules. Meanwhile, specific naming conventions, policy on use of namespaces, and strategies for classes are somewhat abstract areas that can be refined over time.Let’s look at some common formatting and naming conventions you might consider for your style guide.The two common indentation styles in C# are the Allman style, which places the opening curly braces on a new line (also known as the BSD style from BSD Unix), and the K&R style, or “one true brace style,” which keeps the opening brace on the same line as the previous header.In an effort to improve readability, we picked the Allman style for our guide, based on the Microsoft Framework Design guidelines: Whatever style you choose, ensure that every programmer on your team follows it.A guide should also indicate whether braces from nested multiline statements should be included. While removing braces in the following example won’t throw an error, it can be confusing to read. That’s why our guide recommends applying braces for clarity, even if they are optional.Something as simple as horizontal spacing can enhance your code’s appearance onscreen. While your personal formatting preferences can vary, here are a few recommendations from our style guide to improve overall readability:Add spaces to decrease code density:The extra whitespace can give a sense of visual separation between parts of a lineUse a single space after a comma, between function arguments.Don’t add a space after the parenthesis and function arguments.Don’t use spaces between a function name and parenthesis.Avoid spaces inside brackets.Use a single space before flow control conditions: Add a space between the flow comparison operator and the parentheses.Use a single space before and after comparison operators.Variables typically represent a state, so try to attribute clear and descriptive nouns to their names. You can then prefix booleans with a verbfor variables that must indicate a true or false value. Often they are the answer to a question such as, is the player running? Is the game over? Prefix them with a verb to clarify their meaning. This is often paired with a description or condition, e.g., isPlayerDead, isWalking, hasDamageMultiplier, etc.Since methods perform actions, a good rule of thumb is to start their names with a verb and add context as needed, e.g., GetDirection, FindTarget, and so on, based on the return type. If the method has a bool return type, it can also be framed as a question.Much like boolean variables themselves, prefix methods with a verb if they return a true-false condition. This phrases them in the form of a question, e.g., IsGameOver, HasStartedTurn.Several conventions exist for naming events and event handles. In our style guide, we name the event with a verb phrase,similar to a method. Choose a name that communicates the state change accurately.Use the present or past participle to indicate events “before” or “after.” For instance, specify OpeningDoor for an event before opening a door and DoorOpened for an event afterward.We also recommend that you don’t abbreviate names. While saving a few characters can feel like a productivity gain in the short term, what is obvious to you now might not be in a year’s time to another teammate. Your variable names should reveal their intent and be easy to pronounce. Single letter variables are fine for loops and math expressions, but otherwise, you should avoid abbreviations. Clarity is more important than any time saved from omitting a few vowels.At the same time, use one variable declaration per line; it’s less compact, but also less error prone and enhances readability. Avoid redundant names. If your class is called Player, you don’t need to create member variables called PlayerScore or PlayerTarget. Trim them down to Score or Target.In addition, avoid too many prefixes or special encoding.A practice highlighted in our guide is to prefix private member variables with an underscore (_) to differentiate them from local variables. Some style guides use prefixes for private member variables (m_), constants (k_), or static variables (s_), so the name reveals more about the variable.However, it’s good practice to prefix interface names with a capital “I” and follow this with an adjective that describes the functionality. You can even prefix the event raising method (in the subject) with “On”: The subject that invokes the event usually does so from a method prefixed with “On,” e.g., OnOpeningDoor or OnDoorOpened.Camel case and Pascal case are common standards in use, compared to Snake or Kebab case, or Hungarian notations. Our guide recommends Pascal case for public fields, enums, classes, and methods, and Camel case for private variables, as this is common practice in Unity.There are many additional rules to consider outside of what’s covered here. The example guide and our new e-book, Create a C# style guide: Write cleaner code that scales, provide many more tips for better organization.The concept of clean code aims to make development more scalable by conforming to a set of production standards. A style guide should remove most of the guesswork developers would otherwise have regarding the conventions they should follow. Ultimately, this guide should help your team establish a consensus around your codebase to grow your project into a commercial-scale production.Just how comprehensive your style guide should be depends on your situation. It’s up to your team to decide if they want their guide to set rules for more abstract, intangible concepts. This could include rules for using namespaces, breaking down classes, or implementing directives like the #region directive (or not). While #region can help you collapse and hide sections of code in C# files, making large files more manageable, it’s also an example of something that many developers consider to be code smells or anti-patterns. Therefore, you might want to avoid setting strict standards for these aspects of code styling. Not everything needs to be outlined in the guide – sometimes it’s enough to simply discuss and make decisions as a team.When we talked to the experts who helped create our guide, their main piece of advice was code readability above all else. Here are some pointers on how to achieve that:Use fewer arguments: Arguments can increase the complexity of your method. By reducing their number, you make methods easier to read and test.Avoid excessive overloading: You can generate an endless permutation of method overloads. Select the few that reflect how you’ll call the method, and then implement those. If you do overload a method, prevent confusion by making sure that each method signature has a distinct number of arguments.Avoid side effects: A method only needs to do what its name advertises. Avoid modifying anything outside of its scope. Pass in arguments by value instead of reference when possible. So when sending back results via the out or ref keyword, verify that’s the one thing you intend the method to accomplish. Though side effects are useful for certain tasks, they can lead to unintended consequences. Write a method without side effects to cut down on unexpected behavior.We hope that this blog helps you kick off the development of your own style guide. Learn more from our example C# file and brand new e-book where you can review our suggested rules and customize them to your team’s preferences.The specifics of individual rules are less important than having everyone agree to follow them consistently. When in doubt, rely on your team’s own evolving guide to settle any style disagreements. After all, this is a group effort.

Author When you google something what is displayed isn’t the result of a real time crawling. When a google bot visits a website all the pages making the site tree get downloaded to the search engine server. The search engine server checks the downloaded site main page HTML code. If links are found the bot will check if they link  to the main page server if they do those pages will get downloaded too. The code surrounding the links should be well formated to make them crawling friendly ( the bot needs to find it’s way to those links) Strict order is not required in the remaining sections of the site. Is this close? Calin said:The code surrounding the links should be well formated to make them crawling friendly ( the bot needs to find it’s way to those links) Strict order is not required in the remaining sections of the site. Is this close?Formatting makes no difference at all. The HTML standards at w3.org ( https://www.w3.org/standards/ ) define the shape of a link, and in fact everything in every (valid) html page at the world. The server has implementations that understand those standards, and can thus extract any link from any (valid) html page.Besides valid html pages there are also many non-valid html pages (they sort-of look like html, but don't do everything that the standard says should be done). There are code libraries for such pages as well in an attempt to extract useful information from it anyway. One such implementation is BeautifulSoup for Python, although I never used it. No doubt there are others. Advertisement Author Ok I get it, it’s one thing what’s posible and something else what should be done. What “should” be done varies, and what sites implement may exist in many different ways.Most modern web pages aren't simple HTML. They only have enough HTML to wrap the script tags to trigger JavaScript which is linked and loaded from a different page. The script infrastructure connects to server, runs a bunch of background requests, picks up the article or news story or content from the back end database, transmits a bunch of fingerprinting information to uniquely identify your broswer, loads a bunch of ads, and overall modifies the DOM (Document Object Model) that is ultimately what's displayed. If you turn off all Javascript and try to load many sites like news sites, you'll either get a visibly blank page or nothing more than a header and footer. The actual body contains little more than a collection of div and anchor tags that the script modifies into a human-usable page.The reasons for doing it that way vary. Some are there because they're trying to turn the web page into a programmed application rather than flat content. Many are to get around the fact that caching proxies and corporate tools interfere with their metrics and the data needed for their advertising information. A few are used to detect bots, change how the website gets scraped by bots, or to mitigate automated attacks like DDOS attacks. Sites like Cloudflare wrap the entire web page up requiring scripts to run for any access at all. Although URLs are theoretically free from time constraints, many systems generate them through data-driven means and the internal links used by the scripting systems are only valid for a short time. It's a way many sites like Facebook or Reddit or YouTube or TikTok keep their walled garden in place. Direct links to specific items keep working but the feed is algorithmic, always displaying whatever it is they want to push out to users uniquely.  The main links can't be easily indexed, archived, or automated because they're constantly shifting around what the servers provide. Calin said:The code surrounding the links should be well formated to make them crawling friendlyNo, nice formatting is done only by web devs for themselves, so they can read their code.A bot will ignore formatting and also visual style (css).It's maybe worth noting that most html code is actually generated from other code, and not manually written.For example php code on the server generates html code from a link, where the link contains parameters controling what the php script should do. E.g. a link with page number may look like ‘www.blah.com?p=15’. The php script may then also access a data base to get desired text and images for page 15, and generate the final html code for the client browser to display.Contrary, Javascript is not run on the server, but on the client browser. It can thus make a realtime webgame for example, or decorative animations, implementing a media player, etc. It can modify the html code, e.g. changing a number so the animation is displayed. It can also communicate with the server to implement things like a webshop and payment system.Both php and JS are extremely flexible compared to C++. You can do anything, e.g. adding a new member variable to a class instance at runtime. Totally nuts and horrible. : ) 

Maybe it’s the state of the world, or just the state of my life, but it feels like everything in the world of digital content has gotten more fraught.Photo by Riccardo, PexelsIt’s a weekday morning and I’m sipping coffee, scanning my calendar for my meetings today, preparing my work, swimming in a slog of newsletters, flipping between tabs open to current events in our very anxious, uncertain world, and trying to start my day with a deep breath.​Yet I keep thinking: Why does this feel so hard?I know I don’t have to know it all right now. I’m taking another breath, remembering the words I wrote a couple years ago.It might be hard because things are tough right nowI’ll acknowledge the obvious: The world is a scary place.The pandemic alone brought mental health issues to an all-time high — nearly 41% of U.S. adults experienced “psychological distress” during the pandemic, and since then, it’s been a rolling collection of additional anxieties.There are political upheavals, cultural shifts, and other changes happening every day, every hour, that feel uncertain.Thousands are losing their jobs in America, particularly dedicated civil servants.Diversity, equity, and inclusion practices are being chopped and impacting the future of higher education, government enterprise, and beyond.The identities of millions are being challenged politically.And in between, those of us working in the digital space — websites, development, digital marketing, etc. — are trying to keep up on how to do our jobs and do them well. At least well enough to cut through the noise. At least well enough to help the person on the other side of the screen, whoever that may be and whatever they may need.As I’ve been combing through the news, I find myself getting depressed, anxious, angry. I don’t have a lot of influence individually of what I can change but I can join voices in my community, write letters to my representatives, and keep voting for the values that align with me and protect others.In your circle of influence, you can control your health, your mind, and how you show up for those around you. Focus on that and try to remember you’re Just Human.It might be hard because technology is changing how we do our jobsArtificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for a long time. In truth, we’ve used it in many forms over the years, from search engines to our phone voice assistants and more.But to my rattled brain, it feels like I woke up one morning and AI was everywhere and it was the only way forward to do our job, and gosh darnit if we don’t use it, we’re in trouble.One day I was just a content strategist, humming along, doing what I’ve done for 15 years. And then suddenly I need a robot to do it better. Yet some research tells us using AI makes us lonelier and makes work less enjoyable in some ways.Don’t get me wrong: AI has its place. I’ve found it incredibly useful for content editing, tightening, formatting content for HTML.But it’s new and I’m learning. So that’s OK, right?Apparently not. The speed at which AI is adopted and expected to be used is quite frankly, startling. Browse any job listing on LinkedIn and you’ll see AI and AI tools as part of the requirements for job.My advice: Learn what you want, at the pace that’s comfortable. You can’t learn it all today, or tomorrow. You can only learn a little bit at a time.Remember learning to read? Me neither. But I can assure you it wasn’t in a day or two. It took years. Just like learning to write in cursive took practice. And riding my bike took some falls.It took time and patience. We have the right to exercise that now, as grown-ups. So take your time. Say to yourself, “Let me try,” and dismiss the voice over your shoulder or in your head telling you to go faster.It might be hard because we’re taking this…too seriously?Hear me out: In a world that’s so deadly serious (no pun intended), it seems we’re bringing that heaviness into how we do our work.One thing you’ll never hear me call my work as a content strategist: Referring to it as a vocation. While I love the work I do, it’s not all I’m meant to be.I like to tell people: I work to make websites better. The end. I do that by:talking to real peopleunearthing challenges and opportunitiesemploying useful, approachable strategies to make user experience betterbuilding website navigation and architecture that connects pages and information in meaningful waysteaching accessibility, inclusionary content, and the value of making information easy to read and understand for all people​There’s more, of course, but you get the gist. And I’m one tiny fish in a sea of people who do this and do it well.But a quick scan of my inbox newsletters, LinkedIn posts, any other articles about user experience, and you’ll be bombarded with a five alarm fire of what we all need to be doing better, pushing harder, hustling, self-publishing, and learning All The Things.A quick tip: You don’t have to run a four-minute mile. Take your time. Time a breath. Walk, don’t run. Focus on what you do well, and identify things you want to learn now, and make time to practice them. Don’t drown in the overload.It might be hard because we’re being too hard on ourselvesDo something with me. Stop reading, stop thinking. Follow this instruction:Close your eyes.Take a deep breath in. Count to four. Hold for a count of three. Release for a count of four.In…1, 2, 3, 4…hold…Out…1, 2, 3, 4…We’re trying to keep up: At work, at home, everywhere in between. There are chores to be done, tasks to be completed, people to stay in touch with, events to attend, and somehow still need to squeeze in a restful night’s sleep.We’re going too fast and too hard.As I recognize this in myself, I’ve been exercising the right to say ‘no’ to things I can’t prioritize. I’ve been putting my phone down and in another room so I can pick up my embroidery or crochet hook and do something analog.I make time at the end of the night to put the dishes away, tidy the living room, clear my office desk.And I’ve been making time for the people and things that make time for me, who reach out and say “Let’s get together and have a laugh.”And for goodness sake, please find a way to laugh.That alone may be a tall order in a world of chaos right now. But as the great Kurt Vonnegut once said, “I’d rather laugh than cry. There’s less cleaning up to do afterward.”Slow down. When you have a moment of free time, don’t ask what you should be doing. Ask what you want to do.And at the end of the day, pat yourself on the back. “You made it another day,” you can say quietly to your rattled brain as you wind down for the evening. “Good job, you.”When did UX & content get so hard? was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are some questionable sources underpinning Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s controversial “Make America Healthy Again” commission report. Signs point to AI tomfoolery, and the use of ChatGPT specifically, which calls into question the veracity of the White House report meant to address reasons for the decline in US life expectancy.An investigation by NOTUS found dozens of errors in the MAHA report, including broken links, wrong issue numbers, and missing or incorrect authors. Some studies were misstated to back up the report’s conclusions, or more damningly, didn’t exist at all. At least seven of the cited sources were entirely fictitious, according to NOTUS.Another investigation by The Washington Post found that at least 37 of the 522 citations appeared multiple times throughout the report. Notably, the URLs of several references included “oaicite,” a marker that OpenAI applies to responses provided by artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT, which strongly suggests its use to develop the reportGenerative AI tools have a tendency to spit out false or incorrect information, known as “hallucinations.” That would certainly explain the various errors throughout the report — chatbots have been found responsible for similar citation issues in legal filings submitted by AI experts and even the companies building the models. Nevertheless, RFK Jr has long advocated for the “AI Revolution,” and announced during a House Committee meeting in May that “we are already using these new technologies to manage health care data more efficiently and securely.”In a briefing on Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to concerns about the accuracy of the citations while evading any mention of AI tools. Leavitt described the errors as “formatting issues” and defended the health report for being “backed on good science that has never been recognized by the federal government.” The Washington Post notes that the MAHA report file was updated on Thursday to remove some of the oaicite markers and replace some of the non-existent sources with alternative citations. In a statement given to the publication, Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said “minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected, but the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children.”See More:

Job DescriptionWe are looking for a highly organized and detail-oriented Administrative Assistant Intern to join our remote team from Germany, Norway, or Sweden.This internship is perfect for students or recent graduates who want to gain practical experience in remote administrative support, internal coordination, and virtual office operations.You’ll work closely with our operations team to support daily tasks, maintain documentation, and assist with internal communications.ResponsibilitiesManage scheduling, emails, and internal calendarsOrganize and update digital files and databasesAssist with reporting and document formattingSupport team members with admin tasks as neededHandle basic research and data entryCommunicate clearly via email and chat toolsRequirementsCurrently studying or recently graduated (any field welcome)Strong attention to detail and time managementExcellent communication skills in EnglishBasic familiarity with tools like Google Docs, Sheets, or Microsoft OfficeSelf-motivated and reliable in a remote work environmentMust reside in Germany, Norway, or SwedenStable internet connectionWhat We Offer🌍 100% remote internship🕒 Flexible schedule (5–15 hours/week)📁 Hands-on experience in admin support🤝 Mentorship from experienced professionals🚀 Opportunity for paid roles after internship✅ How to ApplyClick Apply to access our official application form. Please fill in your name, email, WhatsApp number, and upload your CV.We will review your application and contact shortlisted candidates via email or WhatsApp within a few days.We look forward to learning more about you!

“Decoy Boy.” All images © Michael Ezzell, shared with permission In ‘The Junior Classic,’ Michael Ezzell Builds an Uncanny World from Vintage Books May 27, 2025 ArtIllustration Kate Mothes It’s not too often that a high school art project morphs into a through-line in an artist’s professional practice, but for illustrator and printmaker Michael Ezzell, that’s exactly how his ongoing series The Junior Classic was born. Tearing pages from vintage books, he experiments with a range of media, compositional elements, and narratives that then inspire further paintings and prints. “When I was starting out, I would just paint over the text of the page and create something brand new from some mundane book I had,” Ezzell tells Colossal. “Eventually, it evolved into using the page’s illustration or ornate chapter headings as a jumping-off point for what I would create on the page.” “Cloudmaker” Among many others, Ezzell especially graviates toward illustrations in the Alice in Wonderland series, originally drawn by Sir John Tenniel and reimagined during subsequent decades by more than half a dozen other artists like Mabel Lucie Attwell, Gwynedd M. Hudson, Maria L. Kirk, and even Salvador Dalí. “I’ve gotten my book-hunting more down to a science now,” the artist says. “I look for weird and obscure manuals or children’s books with lots of pictures or funky text formatting. Anything that could have strange connotations when taken out of context is what I’m drawn to.” He approaches each page’s inherent qualities—a printed phrase or a small drawing—like a prompt or a call-and-response, which taps into a refreshingly different kind of problem-solving than working on a large, blank canvas. Ezzell is particularly interested in world-building and immersive stories, and his motifs and characters take cues from tarot, Surrealism, playing cards, and early-20th-century fashion. The title of the series nods to a set of 10 books titled The Junior Classics, first published in 1912, which were intended for young readers as a counterpart to the Harvard Classics series. The Junior Classic consists of more than 400 pieces (and growing), and Ezzell is currently working on his own tarot deck, which in turn is inspiring more narrative possibilities. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram. “Two Rivers” “Now Here” “Three Phases of Mitsy Diller” “Mind Over Matter” “Love Makes the World Go Down” “The Escapist” “The Great Cassino” “The Duchess” Next article