You may have more music than me, but how much of it do you actually listen to? I keep that flash drive mounted in my car at all times unless I'm adding more to it and I've got a a wide variety that keeps it from getting dull. Various classical pieces going back to Bach, various arias, show tunes, TV themes and even different versions of a few songs, set so that they're not together. How much variety is in that 80 Gig of yours?

You clearly have not the slightest idea what the problem actually is. Well done, you are an idiot.

And you have clearly proven by several of your posts in this discussion that you are an ignorant fool who thinks that he can win arguments simply by insulting his opponent. Twit!

(might as well just have a USB stick with the same stuff on repeat)

That's what I do for in-car music. Of course, the flash drive has, at the moment, 252 different pieces of music on it, so it doesn't exactly repeat very often.

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.

Sugar is not harmful in sensible quantities, i would rather drink a small quantity of full sugar coca-cola than any quantity of coke zero.

I'm an insulin dependent (LADA) diabetic, thanks to Agent Orange. Unless I need to recover from hypoglycemia before I pass out, that is not an option for me. I'm sure that I'm not the only person reading this thread who has to avoid regular sugar except in very small amounts (Sugar in my morning coffee is part of my morning carbohydrates.) or in emergencies.

Prepared foods should in theory cost more because you're paying for not only the ingredients but also the preparation, the only reason they're cheaper is because they can hide all kinds of unpleasant or inferior ingredients in there.

You can believe that if it fits in with your particular set of conspiracy theories, but it's not true. The USDA is very big on inspecting commercial food plants and comes down like a metric ton of bricks on companies that try that sort of thing. No, what keeps the prices on factory food down is something called "economies of scale." I'll let you look that up for yourself because that way there's a slight chance that you'll learn something.

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?"

AI isn't a junior dev. It's an intern. Someone who doesn't much care beyond the current session, and whose skills can surprise you - in both directions, and whose primary focus is that you like him at least in the moment.

And like an intern, if you include the code in anything even close to production without review, it's your fault, not theirs.

My observation is the opposite. In my 20s tattoos were just common enough to be accepted as normal, but the majority of people didn't have them and most people who did had one or two fairly small ones.

Today, it seems everyone and their dog has them.