Google is genuinely bad now. I switched to Ecosia which is just Bing with a simpler front end and they use their profits to plant trees. I don’t think Ecosia is particularly special though. Duck Duck Go, Bing whatever, they’re all better than Google.

Whenever I set up a new computer then search for something, I’m always surprised at first seeing the awful layout and quality of the search results before I realize that I haven’t changed the default search from Google. It’s awful now. Seriously, how are people using it?

My new favorite way to search is perplexity.ai. It’s an AI search tool that summarizes the loads of crap out there so you don’t need to read through the junk that people write. It provides sources, unlike using ChatGPT, which is incredibly valuable. All AIs make shit up, so having links to double check it is a must. Unlike Bing Chat, or whatever Microsoft calls it this week, you can ask follow up questions to home in on what you want.

I just bought a new laptop for a family member. It wasn’t very expensive, but hardware now is generally amazing. It has Windows 11. My 12 year old laptop running Windows 7 is faster for most tasks, despite far inferior hardware. Plus search actually works in 7, it’s better organized, it doesn’t come with a ton of junk you need to disable or remove (good god the default start menu on 10 is a mess), and it doesn’t look like they designed the UI over the weekend. I kept waiting for the typical MS move of fixing the dumb crap they added, but with 11 it’s clear that they’re doubling down.

In a post about small light duty trucks, and a comment about small light duty trucks, you’re pointing out that compact sedans are not popular. Would you like to point out some other true but off topic things? Most sedans are two wheel drive. SUVs are the most popular body style.

Do you consider a Honda Fit a light duty truck?

It’s got a picture showing it using 1.1 GB of memory, which for Windows 11 and 10 is really good, but it’s also a testament to how absurdly bloated Windows is that even a stripped down version can’t get under 1 GB.

So does it disable telemetry, remove Edge, remove all the crap from the start menu, and stop presenting Web results in start menu search?

I think the only way to get surround sound is in the desktop program. I don’t know if that’s a limitation of browsers or if the Netflix guys are just assholes.

Yeah, maybe they should encrypt it a third time. You never know.

The only thing I value in Windows 10 or 11 over 7 is better multi monitor support, and even that is not a giant issue. It’s faster, uses less resources, is better organized, and looks nicer, especially nicer than 10 that looks like a lazy highschool kid spent all of a day on it.

My workplace requires VPN for Web sites that are authenticated, require 2FA and are encrypted. It’s infuriatingly stupid. I feel like someone higher up got sold a useless contract by a good VPN salesperson.

“Interestingly, this effect cannot be explained by differences in participants’ experience with generative AI models, as that variable is insignificant in the mode”

When predictors are correlated, which is most likely the case here, this analysis cannot separately estimate their effects. The software will end up splitting the total effect size between the two predictors. Without describing collineariry between predictors, it’s not possible here to judge whether experience with AI is truly unimportant or the analysis is merely incapable of spotting the effect.

As for eroding confidence in reviews, this will make it worse, but I already put next to no stock in user reviews anymore. You don’t need AI to make a good human-like review that lies about a product, and there are plenty of those around.

Hardware keeps getting exponentially faster and software keeps getting exponentially slower. The only people seeming to benefit from better hardware is lazy developers.

What is going on at Microsoft? Did anyone ask for this? How about they make search work again and not use 4 Gb just turn turn on the computer?

Computer monitors seem like one of the few options at this point.

And you’re claiming that people can’t expect to use it for free, because they need to pay those costs, which is nonsense. If they have enough to pay a CEO $300k in cash each year in addition to stock options, they are making plenty to cover their operating costs. Thus there’s no reason users, who are already brining value to the platform, should pay more in addition to the value they bring. Asking for people to contribute for free and then pay to access what they’ve built is a crazy business strategy that’s bound to fail.

It’s not free. Moderators spend their time keeping things sensible and users spend their time creating content, by posting, commenting and voting. Millions of people contribute tiny amounts, giving the community great value. They’re the reason the site has any value at all. In comparison, the operating costs, and whatever work the company execs perform, are small compared to the not-at-all free work people in aggregate put into the community.

There are small annoying differences. The way it handles downloads is irritating. The settings menus are not well organized. There’s a big stupid Bing button unless you remove it. It randomly fails to honor the option to open PDFs in an external program. It’s nothing big, but if you’re forced to use it for work, it’s constantly annoying.

I wondered what this could possibly look like and found some examples here: https://www.baeldung.com/linux/view-media-no-graphical-env.

I was expecting ASCII art. It’s low resolution video though. Seems like a small use case, but pretty nifty.

It’s not much: https://file.io/PYHlCpv2LgdE.

The Nowar thing is from a GitHub repository and there’s probably a newer version. I pick parts from it to run rather than running the entire thing.

I have a folder with notes about what needs to be done. It’s not even 20 things. Can you share your list so I know what I’m missing?