The folks at adafruit probably do know, but it does make sense if you expand the words: "Control, Alter, and Delete"

That's more charitable. Alt is still short for Alternate though, not Alter.

I thought "Alt" in the title is meant in the sense of "stop", as in "halt", but on second thoughts maybe that only works in French (where h is always silent)?

It's clearly meant to be part of the Ctrl-Alt-Del key sequence that interrupts Windows computers to bring up the task manager.

But doesn't Ctrl+Alt+Del bring up the screen to switch users or sign out? "Task Manager" is one item in the list of options you get, but it's not the main one or anything, in fact it's the last:

https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/hzx6btMYEqZJfSAL3WVxXuW3-jw=/1...

The author may just be showing their age a bit. That's what Ctrl+Alt+Del does on modern versions of Windows, but from Windows 95 to Windows XP (inclusive) it directly launched the Task Manager.

Would have made more sense to say Ctrl+Shift+Esc since that just directly brings up the task manager. All in all I would say it is a slightly weird title, but I assume enough people get what they want to say with it.

I mean, technically it’s short for alter on the way to being short for alternate

That's bullshit (IMO) and the post author (Phillip Torrone - I believe that's one of the owners of Adafruit) is obviously ignorant in this regard.

That said, what he's actually talking about in the post makes a lot of sense. That is the important part.

I was going to post a similar comment, and then decided against it. I realized I haven't used Windows as a daily driver in decades and thought maybe there was a new use for it that I was not familiar. Glad to see I wasn't the only one confused by it. Closest I could come was they were going to lock out the user, but that was Windows-L or something wasn't it?

Meta+L is the lock hotkey on all major operating systems!

???

Cmd+L is "go-to location bar" on Mac. Opt+L is ¬. Ctrl+L doesn't seem to do anything.

"Lock screen" is Cmd+Shift+Q.

Reminds me of people who think penultimate is just super-duper-ultimate.

Or “epicenter”.

All prefixes eventually become intensifiers?

"Irregardless"

The grammatically correct version is "Irredisregardless".

It has been used as an idiom to mean stopping or restarting something (the former in this case) for decades: https://wordspy.com/words/ctrl-alt-delete/

I think it's because most people associate Ctrl-Alt-Del with the process of terminating a process, so they use the key sequence itself to refer to the act of terminating something.

It means restart. It has never meant stop. Even the link you provide says:

> n. A metaphoric mechanism with which one can reset, restart, or rethink something.

That's what's confusing. The headline makes no sense because it's not about restarting.

Alter the control, and delete!

In modern Windows, the three-key salute is a way to lock your session securely. Maybe that's what they mean: locking it up?

It brings up the Task Manager, that lets you forcibly stop processes, and this is a way for the (NY State) Government to take control of your printer, the analogy isn't bad.

This is what Shift+Ctrl+Esc does.

I'm behind the times! That's what it used to be until Windows XP, the last Windows version I used on a daily basis was Windows 2000 up to 2005.

Open process manager to force an unresponsive program to close. This has been part of popular lexicon for decades. Eg from the song Death to Los Campesinos, "I'll be ctrl-alt-deleting your face with no reservations"

Maybe we should just install this keypad on our printers and be done with it:

https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/ctrl-alt-del...

Does it really matter what "they know"? It seems like the entire post is written by an LLM.

Hey, it's similar to Weird Al's song:

Play me online? Well, you know that I'll beat you

If I ever meet you I'll control-alt-delete you

Perhaps they were using Ctrl-Alt-Del to get to the Task Manager so that they can kill an unruly process?

This is more like installing anti-virus on your 3d printer.

I don’t want an antivirus on my (hypothetical because I don’t have one) 3D printer. I want it to dumbly print whatever it is I send to it.

I want all my tools to dumbly operate on whatever I'm working on. Imagine if lathes were required to try to guess whether you're reboring a rifle barrel and stopped themselves from running. Or if a bandsaw had to detect whether what you are cutting was gun shaped. Totally ridiculous. [EDIT: Looks like these examples were already brought up in the article, since they're obvious]

But you’re OK with a screwdriver that could be used to assemble a gun without even checking what it’s torquing? /s

It's the same as control open-apple reset.

I don't think there's a reading that suggests it's a good thing for 3D printers. The rest of the page confirms that.