Because for the past 30 or so years, it has worked very well for MS to keep their main products barely useable, rely on lock-in and chase the next big thing so they can get their dirty hands on it early and lock more people into more products.

That is exactly wrong. Beta versions are there to find bugs. If nobody complained about them, they won't be found. So if you try beta versions, please DO complain about bugs.

I guess "vibe-something" is going to be the anti-word of 2026. People are slowly waking up to what it actually means to let the AI do the work.

I'm not dissing AI, I'm using it extensively myself and there's a few AI whitepapers with my name on them. But like any tool, it can be great when used correctly and ruin your day when not.

That doesn't mean what they do is automatically legal.

I'm pretty sure there's a demand for "murder my husband", or for "can someone please drown my neighbour". And yet it's illegal to offer such services.

Also: Voters. Smokers are still a fairly substantial fraction of the population, enough to swing a vote, especially if, and that appears to be the trend in most western democracies these days, there are two opposing political sides roughly evenly matched.

I mean, does it not strike anyone as a very weird coincidence that we have almost perfect 50/50 splits in so many countries?

No, but they do everything BUT force to make it the most attractive option. Just as one silly example: With wages and prices as they are, having both partners work full-time is basically required unless you're in the top few percent of earners or inherited wealth. So who's going to cook? After a long work day? Convenience food is the obvious choice. You are not being forced, but unless food is a high-priority item in your life, you are very much steered into that direction.

Because the owners just want to sell Monotype. The long term prospects of the company do not matter to them. They just want to make the current sales numbers look good to a prospective buyer. This is probably why nobody wants to buy Monotype.

In the USA car companies are bribing politicians to keep fuel economy standards low because they do not want to spend money on R&D. Meanwhile the Chinese car makers are designing dark factories that crank out electric cars that are better and less expensive than anything made in the USA. Ten years from now there are going to be Chinese factories in the USA cranking out amazing cars. And it is going to be a bloodbath for the companies that want to keep living in the past.

China already won this war. They have robot taxis that cost a fifth of Waymo's. Xiaomi has a dark factory that manufactures a smart phone every second. There are already Chinese humanoid robots turning up at trade shows. They're years ahead of us and they have more research universities training more roboticists than the USA ever will. This initiative will fail just like Obama's attempt to beat China at making solar power tech did. Trump needs to pick fights the USA can win.

Remember the days when you could have a gaming rig with a killer Intel CPU, the best Crucial RAM on the market, a great Canopus GPU, Windows 2000 was stable and secure, and you still had money for pizza and beer? Now Intel sucks, Crucial won't sell to gamers, a great GPU is week's wages, and Windows 11 is almost as bad as Windows 95. We have lost so much!

On the up side, nobody is commenting about the Penis Bird anymore.

A Chinese company, Great Wall Motors, recently showed off the first motorcycle ever designed with a straight eight engine. It also has a touchscreen UI and a retractable windshield. They're years ahead of the rest of the world.

Can you let Tim Cook know that?

I'm an Apple fan, but the money they charge for internal storage is ridiculous, especially given that I can buy an external SSD with 2 TB for like $150 if I shop around a bit.

The cynic in me wants to say that they see "intelligence" and go "great, it has something I don't, let's just 100% trust it".

The social critic in me wants to say that it's due to the gigantic hype about AI and how it'll revolutionize everything, replace everyone and solve all problems.

And the tech/security guy in me wants to say "doh, people do dumb shit. What else is new?"

Monotype is the largest OEM font licensor in the world. Nobody knows more about font licensing. There is nothing about game licensing on their web sites because they negotiate OEM licenses on a case by case basis.

This will happen a few times because Waymo has to learn how to detect a small animal running into the road. But Waymo will figure out how to keep it from happening and then every Waymo car will be able to avoid small animals running into the road. Which is much better than millions of human drivers having to learn it on their own.