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180711288
comment
byDru Nemeton
31, 2026 @06:42PM
(#65961734)
Attached to: Apple Switches to Build-to-Order Systems on Its Web Site
This is almost like what they used to have, except now (for some bizarre reason) the "included" option isn't automatically selected as you're guided through the purchase options.
You literally have to click on the "included" option (button border turns blue) before the next section will "unlock". Holy Hell!!! It doesn't even show you what's "included" if you just scroll down the page! The word "included" doesn't appear in the next section until you've clicked it (or selected another, pricer option) in the prior section.
I guess they didn't want to risk the chance of missing an "up sell" opportunity in which to gouge their clients. (Or, even worse, someone somewhere published a report that Tim Apple read stating that online orders are more satisfying for the buyer if you force them to click a whole bunch of buttons. . .)
Sigh . . . the enshittification continues.
180703862
comment
byDru Nemeton
0, 2026 @05:33PM
(#65959990)
Attached to: Comcast Keeps Losing Customers Despite Price Guarantee, Unlimited Data
My last straw with them was (yet another) service outage during WFH hours. I was on the phone with them once I determined it wasn't my kit...
Fast forward 2 hours later, oh soooooo many mandatory router restarts, and the service rep. telling me that they have to send out a service tech. to determine what's wrong with my kit. She assured me that there would be no charge for this unless it's something wrong inside the apartment, in which case I would be charged for the tech.
While she was "checking with her supervisor" (yet again) I thought to bring up Down Detector on my phone and fucking look at that: A HUGE service outage in my area, reported 2 hour ago, and even the local news had enough time to determined that there was an underground transformer fire that took out a large section of the city, including the Xfinity node in my neighborhood.
Hoo Boy! Once she got back on the call we had a very chill conversation, and I asked her to look up online this (now widely-reported) transformer fire and let me know if THAT could be the cause of this outage she's insisting that only a service call from a tech. can fix. The rest of the call went exactly as you'd think...
As soon as Sonic.net was available, and installed, I packed up the Xfinity gear, walked into the local Xfinity store to cancel my service, and returned my gear. That very smart man behind the desk didn't say more than 10 words to me total before we were done. 28 years of Comcast/Xfinity loyalty flushed down the toilet chasing a few extra bucks for a forced error service call.
180583670
submission
Submitted
by
joshuark
y January 15, 2026 @01:59AM
joshuark writes: The philosopher-king is dead in Texas. Texas A&M has a new policy of: “a new system policy restricting classroom discussions of race and gender” starting this semester. The public research university has lately been caught in the crossfire between state and stupid. The policy, engineered and approved by the Texas A&M University Regents last November, requires that the school’s president sign off on every syllabus with an eye to scrubbing “problematic” content. Plato and his Theory of Forms, and The Republic are not truthful enough, and so problematic.
Gender ideology is defined as “a concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex.” Race ideology entails “attempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity” or anything that “promotes activism on issues related to race or ethnicity rather than academic instruction.”
The forward-thinking regents used AI analysis software to audit syllabi for unapproved content. Thanks to this rude mech, 200 courses have been cancelled, stripped of core curricular credit value, or forced into revision. A philosophy professor, Martin Peterson, was told to “either remove ‘modules on race and gender ideology'” from his course, or be reassigned to teach a different class entirely.
Meanwhile, A&M students are set to be deprived of so much recent world. Including but not limited to “literature with major plot lines that concern gay, lesbian or transgender identities,” feminist and queer film, or race and ethnicity as a subjectfullstop.
As you go about your reading today, pour one out for the Aggies. And watch the Star Trek Original Series episode "Plato's Step-Children"...about absolute power corrupting absolutely.
180549137
comment
byDru Nemeton
08, 2026 @01:07PM
(#65910795)
Attached to: Google and Character.AI Agree To Settle Lawsuits Over Teen Suicides
I'm not sure you can classify it as "abuse" if both parties agree to the terms and conditions. Last I knew there were no laws that state one party must accept an offer from the other party.
If the plaintiffs wanted to ensure that "justice" was served then they have the right to not accept the settlement offer, yeah?
180276061
comment
byDru Nemeton
er 03, 2025 @01:03PM
(#65832981)
Attached to: Japanese Devs Face Font Licensing Dilemma as Annual Costs Increase From $380 To $20K
The site fonts.google.com show over 1,900 fonts each for JA and ZH. Take your pick as they're all free for commercial use, with the only main caveat is that if used for the UI you give credit.
180267185
comment
byDru Nemeton
02, 2025 @01:41PM
(#65830599)
Attached to: Apple AI Chief Retiring After Siri Failure
Consider this:
My husband and I took a 12 day, 4 state, 21st anniversary road trip in July. I knew we'd be hitting lots of places without cell signals, so I downloaded the entire 16 GB trip, in regional segments, to offline Apple Maps, and loaded up my iPhone with over 25GB of music in Apple Music.
Using CarPlay it turns out there's no way to access any of those things via Siri without an active internet connection! Every time I'd ask Siri to "Take us to [location]," it would come back, "You have to be online to do that." WHAT? "Siri play [name of download artist]," just to again hear, "I can't connect to Apple Music," HUH? Not even, "Siri, access [name of downloaded artist] from my downloaded music on my iPhone," would work!
Yet every fucking time I could pull over, grab my phone, and look up the location / find the artist! I have never in my entire life experienced first hand such an epic failure of technology at its most basic level. I could understand if I didn't have the data and didn't have an internet connection. But holy fucking hell Apple I took every single precaution in advance to ensure that we'd have what we needed, when we needed it, and you failed at having Siri do even the most fundamental task. (The "nerd rage" I had was apocalyptic! Hubs is still teasing me about it.)
A.I. can't fix something that's so horribly broken. They need to rip it out entirely and start over.
180194859
comment
byDru Nemeton
24, 2025 @01:16PM
(#65815509)
Attached to: Apple iOS 27 to Be No-Frills 'Snow Leopard' Update, Other Than New AI
Thanks for the name (I’d not heard before). This update is a fucking hot mess and from Apple a shocking fucking hot mess . Liquid Glass does add a few cool UI bits, but nothing that needed an entire UI overhaul.
If you’re going to overhaul the UI you had damn well better test it, and then test it again, and it’s so painfully obvious that they did not .
Within an hour of installing iPadOS 26.1 on my iPad Pro 13 I went to check Notifications by swiping down from the top of the screen (standard UI gesture, done it thousands of times).
However this time:
●I somehow managed to both activate the new hide-away Menu Bar, and
●Grab the top of the ‘window’ of the (fullscreen) app I was in, and
●Drag it into the screen while iPadOS automatically resized the window.
Within a second’s time my entire UI had changed in a way I didn’t want, didn’t do, and didn’t understand. (We’re now in, “30-minute call with my older relative tying to explain what happened,” territory)
That’s bad. That’s really, really bad UI/UX design. However
I then tried:
(一)Clicking the new green dot in the window’s title bar to maximize the app back to fullscreen. NOPE!
(二)Dragging my new floating window back up to the top of the screen to get it back to fullscreen. NOPE!
(三)Gently pulling down at the top to make the hide-away Menu Bar visible and using the “View” menu’s “Maximize” option to get it back to fullscreen. FUCKING ARE YOU KIDDING NOPE!!!
(We’re now way past, “90 minutes on the phone with my older relative, pulling my hair out, trying to quite their crying, while we both do our best to figure out what the fuck is going on,” territory.)
I just installed macOS 26.1 on my Macintosh Studio and it too is hot mess, but a little hot mess. Mostly (so far) it’s just UI elements that don’t mesh well, aren’t aligned, and seem to take up way too much space for what they do.
I’ve used these products since they were released and I’ve never seen an OS update as bad as this one. They really should focus on making AppleOS 26 work, and look good, before they give any thoughts to AppleOS 27.
179955230
comment
byDru Nemeton
03, 2025 @04:39PM
(#65770936)
Attached to: Apple To White-Label Google's Gemini Model for Next-Generation Siri, Report Says
According to Google A.I. this Gemini integration will hit the public in March or April 2026. Not confirmed, just a maybe...
That's almost two full years after Apple initially introduced Apple Intelligence, a full 18 months after it was supposed to actually be usable by their customers. At this point I don't think it can "undo years of brand damage" no matter how great it's implementation. By the time it maybe, just maybe, is in the hands of consumers those consumers will be even more jaded on the "Promise of A.I.".
Good luck with that Apple!
179925784
comment
byDru Nemeton
1, 2025 @07:30PM
(#65765370)
Attached to: YouTube TV Loses ESPN, ABC and Other Disney Channels
I'm a YTTV subscriber and received an e-mail just the day before the cutoff that Google would not be renewing their contract. They did mention Disney's live TV offerings. They did not mention the almost 4 BILLION dollars Disney lost due to their trying to stifle Jimmy Kimmel.
I'm sure that Disney raising rates, bundling Hulu with D+ and raising rates, and now this attempt to get more money from Google for carrying their content...have nothing to do with the tremendous loss they suffered due to their own stupidity.
It just seems oddly timed, yeah?
179923556
comment
byDru Nemeton
1, 2025 @01:12PM
(#65764642)
Attached to: You Can't Refuse To Be Scanned by ICE's Facial Recognition App, DHS Document Says
German students have SIX MONTHS of history class covering just WW II. There is literally no stone left unturned when they're taught what happened and why it happened.
179857690
comment
byDru Nemeton
23, 2025 @11:25AM
(#65745654)
Attached to: Gboard's Latest Update Removes the Period and Comma Keys on Android
Thissoundslikeanawesomechangeforuserssinceusingthingslikecommaandor
periodstakesuptoomuchofmyvaluabletimeIreallyhopethaththeirnextstepisto
removespacesaltogethersincetherearesomanyoftheminEnglishtextItssomuch
quickertojusttypeouteverythinginonecontinueousstreamoftextlikeThaidoes
Dontyouthink
mygodstypingthatlastbitoftextwasexhaustingwithhavingtousetheshiftkeyandall
canwejustgetridofthatookthxbai
179815114
comment
byDru Nemeton
7, 2025 @11:12AM
(#65732072)
Attached to: Scientists Create New Form of Ice, Known As Ice XXI
How far away are we from creating Neutron Ice? I'm tired of my Friday night bourbon & rocks getting warm by Monday...
179481176
comment
byDru Nemeton
22, 2025 @07:36PM
(#65677096)
Attached to: TikTok Algorithm To Be Retrained On US User Data Under Trump Deal
You’re describing the overt functioning of the algo. I can attest, first hand, that some will force content upon you regardless of what you search for.
Take YouTube as a perfect example: I do not, have not, and never will look for religious content on their website nor using their app. No one in my household (i.e.: from our IP address) would do similar searches. Yet about half way through 2023 we both started to inexplicably get YouTube content shown to us of a religious nature. This was in our main wall of recommendations, we well as in Shorts.
The only possibility that makes sense is that YouTube had tuned their algo. to foist upon their users content that YouTube wants them to see, not content the user wants to see. It took about 2 weeks of “Not Interested” and “Don’t recommend this channel” before it stopped.
179350634
comment
byDru Nemeton
er 18, 2025 @12:28PM
(#65668762)
Attached to: $599 MacBook With iPhone Chip Expected To Enter Production This Year
I have my doubts as well. But then again Apple Inc. is pretty maxed out on revenue gains these days. Some quarters #1 in valuation, some not. Therefore I wouldn't put it past them to be eyeing just that market, and a "loss leader" device to get more people on board with Apple Services. IIRC their past earnings calls usually have Services making them far, FAR more money that hardware...
179262930
comment
byDru Nemeton
15, 2025 @11:58AM
(#65661088)
Attached to: What Happens After the Death of Social Media?
I enjoy watching videos about theoretical particle physics, space exploration and discussions/lectures on science. Holy crap the last six months has seen an explosion of A.I. Slop videos! Scripts that are ChatGPT-created, voiced by A.I., with imagery that is either A.I. created, or simply stolen from the internet.
For this subject of videos on YouTube I’d say that 1 in 5 are A.I. Slop these days. It’s pretty crazy.
Perhaps to its credit I just noticed last night that YouTube had added this to the description text on a few videos:
How this content was made
Altered or synthetic content
Sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated.
Now if we could just get a setting to completely ignore content with that warning...
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