One time purchase meant something else twenty years ago. Now a 'lifetime' license tends to mean the lifetime of the current version number or even the lifetime of the product (look up '4kdownloader bait and switch'). At this stage, offers like that need to be very clear what they mean, upfront.

In my experience this slows down rather than speeds up browsing for the end-user, but it does save server bandwidth for the provider.

Knowing who is human would not stop AI slop. People copy and paste AI slop. This is just another step in the sudden storm taking away internet anonymity. The west has been envying China's level of citizen control too long, figures it's time to level up. Before long the free internet is going to be led by Edgar Friendly.

If I had known how much an .ai domain was going to rocket in price at renewal time, I might have thought twice before founding my business on it. Too late now.

I am getting tired of Slashdot's attempt to ensure the reader never leaves the site, by creating ridiculously long summaries that are usually written to a lower standard than TFA. Pick a damned lane - feeder summary or full write-up, and if the latter, please do a much better job, including illustrations as necessary (since these are often in TFA).

I moved the four Windows 10 machines on my LAN to IoT LTSC in February, anticipating this period, and it wasn't without incident. For instance, the need to install the Microsoft Store from a GitHub repo (the store has some driver-related items that I can't get any other way).

Excessively targeted ads is why I dumped Instagram over five years ago. If this comes to GPT and can't be altered, I'm out. I'll find alternatives, it's a deal-breaker.

...using protection of kids as excuse to join in the privacy race-to-the-bottom that China has been winning for so long. UK has shown the way, sadly.

Just read in this thread that iPhone 13 support set to end around 2028, vs 2029 for iPhone 14. I have a 13, and will keep it either til something essential refuses to update to anything that old, or support and security updates end. I'm hoping by then that some 'rebel' FOSS phone will be gaining traction, even if I have to live without Whatsapp and some other loss leaders that keep us all in the mainstream.

Opportunism. Not surprising a company would want to flood a market that has recently seen such an upturn in credibility and adoption. Right now, their shovelware is considered in that context of credible human output. Once they have created an impossible signal-to-noise ratio (which, at this scale, they can accomplish almost overnight), the noise will turn podcasting away from algorithmic recommendation and towards human-made reviews.

Headline is BS. Read the article - you can still use an answer file (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/update-windows-settings-and-scripts-create-your-own-answer-file-sxs?view=windows-11)

I saw this Johnson stuff develop over about nine months, and it was quite cool, though I doubt it ever got perfected. Ultimately, despite Trump's ban on states making AI laws, there is going to be a Hindenberg trial result that even the powers-that-be won't be able to sway, and that will be the precedent...well, not for the death of AI, but for a significant reboot away from systems benefiting from ANY non-licensed data.

I moved my whole LAN to IoT Enterprise LTSC in February, and be aware, it's no picnic. You'd be surprised how useful the Microsoft Store is for essential setup stuff, and you have to jump through hoops on GitHub to get it installed and working on LTSC. There are a lot of other caveats too, not least the price - I ended up paying about $100 USD per installation, but you can pay way more. I'm glad I did it, and I still recommend it, but it's not friction-free by any means.

Thank you, YES!

After all the 2024 shenanigans with VMWare, finally moved to Hyper-V, which has its own issues, but at least its a native architecture and works very well.