Posts by Detective Emil

Apple taxes the fingerprint sensor

Your sparkling new Mac mini might sport a processor of unrivalled brilliance, but Apple forgot the fingerprint sensor.

It's on the extortionately-priced Magic Keyboard that you didn't buy at the same time. Some people love the sensor, but hate the keyboard, so resort to hacks [machine-translated from Japanese].

Quite

As the native English speaker in a university department, I was handed the not-in-the-job-description task of proof-reading the papers and theses of those for whom English was a second (or third …) language. Apart from bringing home the fact that, thanks to the predominance of Anglo-Saxon culture, … [t]his is the first time that we have a true Lingua Franca for all: bad English, I would point out "surprising" words, and ask my victims/clients whether their intention was to surprise their audience. Mostly it wasn't, in which case I'd suggest something more anodyne; but sometimes it was. And occasionally, when I thought that the audience needed to be made to sit up and pay attention, I'd suggest a surprising word in place of something more predictable.

I expect that the PhD. candidates in my former group are all writing about/with LLMs now.

Pot calling dark patterns black

If airline and other booking sites didn't make it such a pain to achieve the simple desired result, I'd be a lot less tempted to delegate the process to an AI agent.

Sky not (yet) falling

46 minutes saved per employee per week means 98 employees can now do the work of 100. No excuse for mass redundancies as yet.

More bribery needed

If Google can afford to slip Apple & Mozilla billions to direct traffic its way, surely it can do the same to induce low-end SOC suppliers to support the codec du jour. I'm sure Meta & Voda would chip in …

There's always a way

I speak as someone who built a transistor radio in a pencil box so I could listen to the pirates in class.

Please sir …

What's EDR?

(Just a tourist in this country.)

Bookmarked!

For a friend, you understand …

"perhaps a little simpler"

Tell that to the guy (always a guy, back then) with the break-out box (kids, ask your grandpa) who knows that, once he's distinguished DTE from DCE, he's got to set the jumpers at each end to make the baud rates agree.

Grrr!

Aaargh!

I trust that the sub-editor responsible for the headline has already collected theirs --->

No worries, then

"There are vast tape libraries at NSA and all the rest of those organizations running back years."

Tape? Not a threat: D.O.G.E. will junk them in double-quick time, and crow about it.

Simples!

If rare earths are needed to make weapons, all the US needs to do to get high-velocity delivery is to start a shooting war with China.

Goodness me

A Huawei story without a wince-inducing punny headline. You're slipping. Thank goodness.

Sigh…

I have failed to use Brave in the past, despite its attractions, because of its Basic Attention Token blockchainery. The availability of AI summaries confirms my decision.

Foist by its own petard

Blimey! I'm amazed nobody has yet mentioned the time when Apple, in its C-suite wisdom, plonked an unrequested U2 album into every iTunes account that existed in 2014. The digital equivalent of bleach wouldn't shift it, until they hastily provided a way to delete it.

Well, we have 2038 to look forward to

Just watch out for those embedded systems.

This is really weird

Google Photos has had this feature for five years or so; Apple Photos has had it for about as long — both long before the current AI hype started. Microsoft could and should have had it ages ago, without even needing "AI".

Report indeed makes a strong case for user education

Lack of familiarity with AI PCs leads to what the study describes as "misconceptions," […] 17 percent believe AI PCs are not secure or regulated.

Yup, they definitely need to work on making that number go up.

A correction and an observation

Adobe Photoshop can technically run on Arm through emulation

Adobe says that Photoshop & Lightroom are already native on ARM Windows, and more Creative whatever apps are coming sooner or later. And, yes, until then, use emulation.

And another thing: according to Reuters, Qualcomm has had an exclusivity deal for Windows on ARM for eight years. Strange we're only seeing somewhat good stuff from them just as the deal's ending.

/s

Hands well sat upon, wallet tightly shut

The light switches around here were installed over 20 years ago. They still work. (Which is more than I can say about too many (dumb) LED bulbs that claimed an 18,000 hour life. But that’s another story.)

This is getting tedious

I hope all parties lose.

Sitting on my hands

We've decided not to replace our medium-recent, medium-premium car just yet, not because we don't like EVs, but because anything we might buy is encrusted with stuff we don't need, don't want to have to stab at a screen to control, and don't want to pay for (and to keep paying for). And it's likely to be nosey. We can tell ourselves we're being virtuous by postponing the carbon cost of building a new car.

No firing without smokescreen

Those numbers Klarna just reported aren't great. This seems to me to be AI used as a smokescreen, with added Jam Tomorrow.

Thumbs up

Apart from anything else, it still opens and makes a good fist of displaying, my mid-1990s macOS Classic WordPerfect 3.5 files (on the very rare occasions thatI need to refer to them).

Nope

If you smash my window/s, I'm going to expect you to make me good, even if you do help in picking up the broken glass.

What Microsoft's arguments boil down to

Hey! Look over there!. [YouTube]

Blimey!

That means it's getting for 25 years since Legally Blonde came out. [Starring the Computer]

The First Law of Holes

May I politely suggest, Microsoft, that you stop digging?

FM? Bah, humbug! DAB? bah, humbug²

Still listening to R4 LW*. Just hoping its valves don't blow.

* at a range of ~700km.

So, let me get this straight …

According to Microsoft, Free Software was an existential threat to Civilization As We Know It, but Free Content is what Microsoft needs so that it can Deliver A Better Future.

Hold on

Surely this issue can be fixed by issuing free tinfoil helmets to the objectors (or those of them who already have one).

What was that again?

I suppose that it's only appropriate that Teevan replies in Newspeak when asked a question in English.