GPT is selectively useful. It’s also, as of the last few weeks dumb as a bag of bricks. Dumber than usual. 4 and 4o are messed up. 4 mini is an idiot. Not sure how they broke them, but it started roughly around the time of the assassination attempt. Not sure if it was a national security request or a mere coincidence, but just the same.

I’m even seeing 4o make comically dumb and stubborn programming mistakes lately, like:

GPT: “I totally escaped that character”

Me: “no, it’s the same as your previous response.”

GPT: “Oh, sorry, here is the corrected code.” replies with same code again.

I canceled my sub.

Thank you for the clarification. WHQL is such a pain to set up, I’m sure the AV vendors whined, “but, security! Do we have to test everything every time? That would slow an urgent 0day release!”

Not even that. Kernel drivers are supposed to be Microsoft WHQL certified through a thorough testing process (that would have caught it in 3 minutes) before Microsoft will cryptographically sign them.

…but apparently Microsoft allows AV vendors to skip WHQL certification testing.

Honestly, it wouldn’t have been a bad place to be if they hadn’t destroyed it from the inside. Windows on ARM is super stable. You can still build your own computer, or at least buy one with user-swappable parts. Linux has become much easier and wasn’t too bad to use even a decade ago, but it was nice being able to have a non-Apple computer running programs and getting work done that was just there to do the business. I’m speaking as one that attempted to use the kool-aid for a few years after Apple stopped using user-swappable batteries, memory, disk, their hardware upcharges are pure asshole insanity. I’m fully capable of using Linux, compiling my kernel, modifying driver source to work around problems, but, I don’t want to when I’m just trying to pay my bills. Streaming media services come and go with Linux support, hardware support is often lacking until the work is done to make the hardware work correctly. Windows, for all it’s … windowsness … worked. Until the last 8 months when they decided to put a molotov cocktail under the hood and see what happens.

Apple is headed this way too, now that they don’t have SJ to errantly blow up the current tech to try something new and random (although, had he survived his cancer, he’d have just gone Musky with age like a lot of that generation has, mmmm leaded gas!) Apple will hold on just a bit longer because iOS gave them one new platform reboot (ish) to live off of, while Microsoft is still kicking around technical debt until the end of time.

Oh, edit though, I’ve been migrating my machines to Linux one by one now. Not going to bother sticking around to see that Windows train wreck continue.

To point out that: even on the operating system/platform where the YouTube app comes from, it is pointless. Works fine in a browser.

There’s no reason to even use the YouTube app. One of the first things I uninstall on Android.

Having to do the meta-workaround of running another computer to make your computer usable is just…don’t get me wrong, I love running infrastructure, but that seems like it should be unnecessary just to use a computer.

Hahaha! I’ve been dabbling in live USB thumbdrive copies of various flavors of Linux to see which one I want to go to for a while. Did a few years back and thought, “you know, my time is worth something to me, maybe I’ll give Windows a go, 10 seems pretty stable.”

Booted up Debian Cinnamon, couldn’t get two-finger right click to work on the Synaptics config out of box, it had a few arbitrary prefs for whatever the devs decided people would probably use. Tried Debian Gnome. It had trackpad settings that were more in line with what I expected… Not giving up, but it did make me pause, because I know one can reconfigure the trackpad driver under the hood, but did I really want to jump down the rabbit hole of bespoke shellscripts again just so my audio driver correctly wakes from sleep (if it can even successfully sleep)?

Other funny to figure out, the computer has iGPU and dGPU, both were active and the battery life was maybe 2 hours. Another thing to figure out with bespoke configurations.

So it’s like, Windows and Linux (and lesser, MacOS) pain is definitely there, it is just kinda what kind of pain do you want to subscribe to? Linux pain will probably only occur during initial setup and maybe every few years when a major OS release comes out. MacOS pain is even more rare, unless a major OS release comes out with something you don’t like and you have to find where in the OS frameworks the feature is to disable it, if they have hooks in which to do. Windows pain is…every Tuesday.

“Oh here’s a new lock screen weather widget”

“Oh cool, I can get on board with that!”

Next week:

“Oh, here’s a new stocks and news widget to go along with the weather.”

“Hold on there buddy, I didn’t sign up for the first and you’ve pushed two more? Time to shut those two off. Oh, it’s all or nothing, thanks! Nothing it is.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll reinstall Dev Home next week and flag it a system app so you can’t uninstall it, and then we’ll force Copilot to be present, and then we’re going to screw with the start menu, and then we’re going to delete WordPad, and reinstall all those Office/cloud 365 shim apps and and and.” That was like, last month.

Granted it was a few months ago, but I seem to recall a command prompt keystroke and a command line command that allowed skipping online install during setup.

So you’ve obviously never had to use defaults write com.apple.stupidpreference.fix bool true

Apple has a lot less nonsense than Microsoft, but the amount of nonsense is greater than zero. What’s really annoying (on their mobile platform specifically) is when certain problems occur on iOS that would have been completely solvable on MacOS with a command line tool, but you have to erase the phone because Apple doesn’t give you access to the OS.

MacOS is already deprecating the Keychain access tool, which will obfuscate more of the OS security from the user and make it more iOS-like in trying to fix failures.

Apple is enshittifying in absence of Jobs, they’re just behind Microsoft by one or two decades.

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Funny you mention, I just recently got some ESD shoe harnesses to try out and see if they’ll drain it enough to reduce the shock. May have to go full ESD lab with grounded work pads and everything at some point hahaha.

It depends on the proximity of metal to skin mostly. If you use giant cans with huge ear pads, you’re fine. If you use in-ear reference headphones, the metal mesh over the speaker is close enough to the earhole to jump the gap. It also depends if the headphones are plugged into a device on your person versus say, a desktop DAC. And if you use a chair with wheels that roll across plastic, etc. etc. A lot of variables. I still enjoy using wired for audio quality, I just have to make sure I don’t plan on moving and/or discharging my bodily static periodically on a grounded surface.

ESD is such an hilarious annoying thing, I once touched a cell phone and the entire display oozed to black starting from the point I touched and then oozed back to picture. Another time, I ESD’d a wall thermostat so hard that it reset back to factory defaults. I may actually be a Van De Graaff generator.

Edit: Just remembered a third, touched a light switch screw one day and static snapped me with enough juice that 200 nearby LED lights blinked on for a split second, and then back off.

It was such a fun and fanciful place.

You only use HTTPS everywhere until you don’t. It’s kinda like a security blanket to use a VPN in those situations. Someone could be running a MITM proxy and you’re dumb enough/in a rush/etc. and click accept on the expired cert. Or some new 0day vulnerability allows badness to happen without your knowledge. Even without being able to see your traffic, a bad actor could still see your DNS requests and narrow down what services you use for further targeting, especially if you frequent a place.

I live in a low humidity climate, there is no pain quite as obnoxious as wired headphones static shocking you right across your brain.

Interesting, looks like their phone support is a bit limited, but something to keep an eye on.

Wish there was another platform for graphene. Can’t stand the lackluster modem reception on the pixels. But yes!

I’ve driven through worse in a 1980s manual pickup with bald tires. It wasn’t pretty driving, but the truck didn’t get stuck either.

Edit: Not that I’m trying to show bravado or anything. Whole state was closed down in a state of emergency and my retail boss said I had to come in, and in 'mericuh you can’t lose your job! Kudos all go to the bald tire truck. Nobody should ever try this.

Other browsers, however, have to use the non-accelerated version of the WebKit engine, however. So third-party browsers will always have worse performance than Safari proper. Only Safari has access to the high-performance version of the rendering engine. I think that’s what the question was.