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180716926
comment
bySteveWoz
2026 @04:11PM
(#65962954)
Attached to: When 20-Year-Old Bill Gates Fought the World's First Software Pirates
I, Steve Wozniak, did not participate in the theft of the BASIC. It was funny to me to see others enjoying doing this. I had never used BASIC myself, at that time, only the more-scientific languages like Fortran, Algol, and PL-1, and several assembly languages. I sniffed the air and sensed that you needed BASIC to sell computers into homes, because of the book 101 Games in BASIC. I loved games and saw games as the key. It was the [MS] BASIC that inspired me to write a BASIC interpreter for my 6502 processor, in order to have a more useful computer.
180702906
comment
byjd
:11PM
(#65959746)
Attached to: One-Third of US Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years, GDC Study Reveals
Gondor lit the beacons before it was under siege, because to do so after is far, far too late.
For the IT industry to start speculating AFTER it has lost a third of its workforce is to start debating whether to light the beacons only after a third of the city is taken.
This is a crisis that has been expected for a very long time. Long enough for you to have experience in fighting the bean counters. Sorry, but this is a mess of your own making. In more ways than one.
1. AI is good at a few basic tasks, but it is not good at being innovative or fresh. Nor is it ever going to be capable of being so, because you can't have the future in the training set. So regurgitating a few simple themes repeatedly was never going to be in the interests of humans, only in the interests of accountants (most of whom seem to have used the daleks and cybermen as a training manual on conduct) and short-term profits. Accountants don't care if a company goes belly-up, they work many accounts, so short-term profits (even if it causes medium-term collapse) are all that matter.
2. AI cannot write decent code. How could it - it was trained on Stack Overflow and abandoned github projects. But this only matters if the humans bother themselves to write reliable code. You can replace one bug-ridden pile of carp with another without users caring too much.
3. AI cannot write tightly-optimised code. But, then, I doubt most humans ever bothered to learn that skill, when they could simply instruct the user to install more RAM and a beefier CPU.
180701824
comment
byConceptJunkie
30, 2026 @01:34PM
(#65959506)
Attached to: Microsoft Admits Windows 11 Has a Trust Problem, Promises To Focus on Fixes in 2026
There is no job in the world that involves the word "swarm" that can be managed competently and intelligently unless it's being done by literal insects.
180701782
comment
byConceptJunkie
30, 2026 @01:28PM
(#65959486)
Attached to: Microsoft Admits Windows 11 Has a Trust Problem, Promises To Focus on Fixes in 2026
... and all that stuff could be probably fixed with a few registry changes.
180701772
comment
byConceptJunkie
30, 2026 @01:26PM
(#65959480)
Attached to: Microsoft Admits Windows 11 Has a Trust Problem, Promises To Focus on Fixes in 2026
Like George Carlin said, it's big club and we ain't in it.
180701764
comment
byConceptJunkie
30, 2026 @01:24PM
(#65959476)
Attached to: Microsoft Admits Windows 11 Has a Trust Problem, Promises To Focus on Fixes in 2026
That reminds me of when Microsoft acquired Skype and it almost immediately got much worse. Teams is another low-effort product that they presumably acquired from another company because Microsoft doesn't make software any more, they just buy products and then make them worse. I just sat through another meeting yesterday where we struggled to get audio working for about a half-hour. Even when you do get it working right, one day it will simply decide to change all your audio devices, leaving you scrambling to get sound working, because of course you only find out when you need to use it for a meeting.
Even the text chat is unreasonably buggy.
180701746
comment
byConceptJunkie
30, 2026 @01:20PM
(#65959470)
Attached to: Microsoft Admits Windows 11 Has a Trust Problem, Promises To Focus on Fixes in 2026
This started 20 years ago when they tried making all their UI work like web pages, something nobody asked for or liked.
Eventually, like you said, everything became an instance of Chrome. Even their popular programmer editor, VS Code (worst name ever) is basically a web browser underneath, and I _like_ VS Code. I used Multi-edit for about 30 years, only abandoning it for SublimeText in 2019, and then to VS Code in 2020 because that was all I was allowed to use at work. But, VS Code, despite being pretty bloated, is a pretty powerful and customizable tool that becomes a full-blown IDE without much effort. In fact, it can replace Visual Studio for a lot of development work. So Microsoft can still do something well, even if they don't do it in the best way.
But Windows itself is suffering from enshittification at an increasing rate, as nothing Microsoft changes is ever for the sake of the user, but for their own sake. Just look at the hopelessly misnamed "Modern" UI they came out with for Windows 8, where they looked with unfettered avarice at Apple's 30% of cut of every app sold and decided to completely tank their usability and saddle users with a barely functional app store with awful, subpar apps to try to force us all into an Apple-style walled garden just to get that slice of every sale. How'd that work for, Microsoft? Is there a person on the planet that didn't see this failure coming a light-year away?
And don't get me started on "Flat UI", the long decomposed goat spew remains of the Modern UI which still inflicts Windows, making it much worse visually and much more confusing because they punted on all the HCI expertise they developed in the 80s along with companies like IBM and handed all their UI/UX work to a bunch of art-school dropouts who never saw an Apple UI element they wouldn't copy badly.
And since Windows 11, I've started experiencing total system lockups, something that didn't happen to me with Windows 10, or if it did, it was so rare I don't remember. Microsoft stopped caring a long time ago, and now they are actively contemptuous of Windows users, as if they are resentful that they have to keep Windows going, because they clearly don't like working on it any more.
And now they are shoving AI into every crevice possible, although pretty much every company is doing that, so they aren't alone. I can't wait until the AI bubble pops, and the functionality gets distilled down to only those places where it truly provides value, instead just being the 20s version of Clippy.
180701676
comment
byConceptJunkie
30, 2026 @01:07PM
(#65959438)
Attached to: Microsoft Admits Windows 11 Has a Trust Problem, Promises To Focus on Fixes in 2026
Aside from some bug fixes, almost nothing Microsoft has done to Windows in the last 10 years has been for the users' benefit, but for their own benefit.
Every knowledgeable and tech-savvy Windows user just wants Windows 7 back.
180700944
comment
byjd
:04AM
(#65959078)
Attached to: Former Google Engineer Found Guilty of Stealing AI Secrets For Chinese Firms
Until now, I had never realised that, with something as sophisticated as the human brain, it was possible to achieve an IQ that was not only on the imaginary number line but also a negative value.
180700932
comment
byjd
:02AM
(#65959070)
Attached to: Former Google Engineer Found Guilty of Stealing AI Secrets For Chinese Firms
It is depressing how this is actually the single-most informative post anyone could possibly write on the subject.
180697346
comment
byjd
:50AM
(#65958466)
Attached to: Radiologists Catch More Aggressive Breast Cancers By Using AI To Help Read Mammograms, Study Finds
Using them for linear separation of states in order to classify results is precisely how they should be used.
180688638
comment
byConceptJunkie
ry 29, 2026 @12:57PM
(#65957062)
Attached to: Windows 11 Has Reached 1 Billion Users Faster Than Windows 10
When I bought a new laptop that came with Vista, I _paid_ for an XP license so I could go back to that.
I upgraded to Windows 11 around the end-of-life deadline. Things were mostly the same (I've been using OpenShell for a long, long time), although my machine (and my new Windows 11 work machine) have been locking up on me occasionally, something I don't recall happening with Windows 10, or if it did, it was much rarer.
180688618
comment
byConceptJunkie
ry 29, 2026 @12:54PM
(#65957052)
Attached to: Windows 11 Has Reached 1 Billion Users Faster Than Windows 10
Putting a stake in the ground for the end-of-life for a version of your OS is reasonable thing to do. What's not reasonable is when the successive version is worse, and no one wants it. Windows biggest competitor has always been the previous version of Windows. After 40 years, Microsoft should have realized why.
Some new versions of Windows were improvements over all, but the last one for which that was true was Windows 7 (and before that was XP), and it's probably the last one that will ever feel like an overall improvement. Some things are definitely better in Windows 11, but they are very few.
180688564
comment
byConceptJunkie
ry 29, 2026 @12:48PM
(#65957044)
Attached to: Windows 11 Has Reached 1 Billion Users Faster Than Windows 10
How fast did Windows 10 hit the one billion mark after Windows 7 went off support? That's the real comparison.
180679870
comment
byjd
@02:35PM
(#65954972)
Attached to: Tim Berners-Lee Wants Us To Take Back the Internet
More like base i. It is wholly imaginary.
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