True, but because you've already got to take care of a mound of crap doesn't mean it's okay to add more to the pile. Everything you're describing still takes someone some time to setup and test (and deploy). Likely they'll spend that time all over again if there are some major updates too.

Xbox on Enterprise has to be the least likely place anyone would want it. Why can't it be an install-it-if-you-want-it option, rather than forced on you and you having to find ways to remove it?

> You'd think...

Yes, you would, as would I. Sadly, it seems *they* don't :-(

Oh don't be so dull. My employer would especially like us all playing xbox games on their carefully compliance-crafted laptops. I mean, why *wouldn't* you want this? /s

Just how far do they have to go before some 'estate owners' decide enough is enough and ditch them completely? The average home user will probably live with it, but surely this has to be the exact opposite of what corporates want?

> The report cites a recent compensation submission from a software engineer that listed "Copilot subscription" as part of the pay and benefits.

That sounds more like a punishment than any sort of perk or compensation. I wonder what the engineer in question did to suffer such crappy AI?

At $300 or so, it's a long way from the typical arduino pricing too.

FWIW, it looks like a reasonable SBC for embedded projects - BUT it all depends on how usable it really is. The Raspberry Pi is probably the most usable SBC there is, not least because they've spent a long time making it easy, but also because there's a massive community of people ready to help others, or try out some of the edge cases or whatever else.

SBCs are nothing new, and actually there are loads of good looking ones with all sorts of nifty features, and some of them even come in at around $300. Just don't bother trying to actually use one though, because unless you've got a decent corporate relationship and (probably) a support contract, you'll struggle to even get an OS to boot, much less upgrade the kernel or even to load something like the ip filter module into the existing one. The more features it has, the worse this problem gets too, and you can bet there's something horribly proprietary in there somewhere which means you need a binary kernel module which is only available for some ancient kernel version. That all means that whilst it says "supports Ubuntu", it really means "supports an ancient version of Ubuntu", which probably doesn't get security updates. We'll see how well Qualcomm do at all this - it'll cost them a fair amount to be good at it, which somehow I doubt they're looking to spend.

> The reason why is node accepts pedantic breaking changes nobody cares about.

It's because right at the start, the "wizards" and "rock stars" that wrote node.js quite clearly wanted to do it all themselves without any need of those stinkin' sysadmins, or even any of those annoying dweebs that know all about the backend. As a result, they designed all sorts of crappy solutions to long since solved problems, and somehow also ended up with a hot cesspool of malware infestations in their package repository as well.

node.js in production is a mistake. It won't look like one on day 1 because of course the JS devs will proclaim it's a masterpiece, but just as soon as they look the other way, you'll be into making updates that break all over the place.

And for whatever reason, JS packages seem to go from "okay" to "critical security vulnerability" faster than you can say "stwike him down centuwion".

If you run node.js in production, you need to be *on it* constantly, because that stuff goes wonky really, really fast. It's one of the reasons I always advise against any sort of node.js server-side. It works great for developing Vue/React/etc, but sucks balls at running in prod.

However, even if you start with all the permits and land in place, the actual building of the shell of a house isn't the slow or expensive part of it. You Americans like to build your houses out of cardboard, so the outer shell goes up *really* fast. Here in Europe where we use bricks and blockwork, it still goes up super quick. It likely takes longer to render it properly than it does to lay the blocks. Hell, in the 60s, we used to get brickies to lay bricks and we'd then just go around and buzz-saw out the windows because it was easier than having to calculate all the stops and whatnot.

The things that take the time are putting in all the services. Plumbers and electricians seem to be hard to find, and yet their work takes more manpower than anything else. Just putting in a sink, taps and waste are all a sort of "custom" job - and it's really hard to automate it away. You could deliver the sink unit pre-constructed, with taps in place, waste trap, and even some 'tails' of pipes (which would save a bit of time), but it's all got to get connected up in situ - and every job is different.

The only way to beat all of that is prefab the house in panels, deliver them to site and put them together. We already have that option available, and it proves to be rapid on site, but takes just as long overall, and is actually pretty expensive because you end up connecting up pipes and cables across every panel as you construct it.

The other thing I'd say is here in the UK, at least, every new house seems to be a hot-bed of snagging issues for at least 5 years from construction. It's usually a leak here or there, or it's some missing insulation, damp and drafts or it's that some of the fixtures and fittings were really cheap so fail really fast.

None of this has anything to do with the speed of the brickies though.

"We're going to collect our money back in the IPO. We're going to be keeping that money, because at least one of your companies will probably not exist in 12-24 months time"

The other thing not said is that post IPO, only really, really big investors that can swing votes in the AGM get much say in the way the company operates. As such, any future investment may not guarantee they purchase nvidia chips, and so would be a far less lucrative investment for nvidia to make.

> I guarantee that 99% of LibreOffice users rely on the default drab, "looks like Office 95" appearance, simply because they have no idea that the customizations are available.

For me, I leave it as it is so that I can google for answers when I can't find something or can't work out how to do it. FWIW, that's mostly successful when I need to do it. Differentiating between the wordprocessor and spreadsheet (etc) can be annoyingly hard though.

I don't really use Word, but somehow I can find what I want most of the time. Sure, it takes far too long, and I end up hovering over icons to see what they are, and clicking through umpteen ribbons, but somehow I can mostly make it do what I want. Googling for answers is a fools errand though - way too many half-arsed half-written questions with wrong answers all over the Internet.

I want to love Libreoffice, but somehow some things just seem to hard to do. Maybe my logic doesn't fit their logic, or being exposed to toxic Microsoft in my youth has permanently broken my thinking, but somehow, Libreoffice just doesn't quite 'gel' with me. I keep trying though, it's what I use whenever I have a choice.

Whatever happens though... let's hope they don't go thinking ribbons are a good idea ;-)

Slopdot, perhaps?

FWIW, that's roughly my experience too. I've yet to see "I vibe coded it over the weekend" actually turn into something, but in the meantime as an accelerator, it's been pretty good.

Lenovo doesn't know how to "improve" the laptop. They tried adding another screen just above the keyboard, but that is (a) not in a useful position and (b) makes typing harder because you can't rest your wrists on the laptop. It also means your trackpad is small and off to the side.

They've tried touch screens too - nice for about 5 minutes, but actually not something you need very often. It's one of those features we'll have if it's free, but otherwise we'll probably be just fine without.

They've tried making the screen flip about (in the Yoga) - nice trick, probably useful once every 6 months for most people, and definitely not something they can't live without.

Now they've tried adding a "cute" annoyance, because none of the above stuff worked. Can't see this one really doing much either.

Sadly, the best laptop is the most boring. You want a solid-as-a-rock design, very few "novel" features, and battery life to die for. Lenovo just can't do that because (a) it's not a differentiator they can make use of and (b) Intel/AMD chips just can't do long battery life, and they can't get away from Windows, so they can't really switch to Arm, nor can they somehow make the OS more energy efficient. The economics of laptop sales means the margins are tight, so they don't have the room to do anything that jeopardises their existing income streams, so can't piss off Microsoft, but also can't make Windows any better.

Agreed, but since Reddit bribed their way into the top slots on Google results, I have to say I can see the value in SO*. For any question on Reddit, there are some flat-out wrong answers, some people talking about something completely different, and if you're lucky, a two line answer in "kids speak" to the actual question, which is probably only half correct.

At least on SO, there's a question and the 'top' answer will likely be a good one - decently written, maybe with some explanation and probably correct.

AI might well do better than even that experience, but at least SO serves as something of a useful body of work for AI to vacuum up. If the company ever fails and all that content vanishes, it'll certainly be a shame.

* FWIW, SO is now read-only for me - like a lot of people, something tipped me over the edge a couple of years back, and I stopped ever logging on to contribute even a comment, let alone an answer, and heaven-forbid, a question. I doubt I'll ever go back, redesign or none, AI or none, and from their point of view, that's got to be a problem.

Indeed - and actually, the running of the thing is probably harder than building it - not least because you run it 24x7, forever, whereas you may mostly build it for (say) 6 months of 8x5, and then can drop to minimal development operations after that.

The "saaspocaypse" isn't really real. What is happening is that people are realising that a lot of the "big boy" SaaS products are pretty crappy, cost a fortune and actually aren't necessarily run all that well. They also need a load of full-time "devs" to make them do anything useful, and so the ROI on them isn't nearly as good as it should/could be.

If you're a small or medium sized business, you definitely do not want Salesforce, Servicenow, etc - you want a far, far simpler system which feels like you're going to outgrow it in the next year or so. In a year or so, you won't have outgrown it at all - but you will have saved a tonne of money. The really big guys might well build their own, and it might be a way for them to (finally!?) properly personalise what they do for their customers, but they sure aren't going to be "vibe coding it in a weekend" - it'll take longer than that, but it is perhaps more accessible now than ever before.

I've said it before, but I predict the opposite of the SaaS-pocalypse - actually, I see an explosion of SaaS apps coming - with the barrier to entry reduced significantly, a load of new products will come along. Sadly, 80% of them will be PoCs dressed as finished products, and will likely fail spectacularly within a year or two. The remainder though will likely be small going-concerns, but service a loyal customer base, "do one thing, do it really well" and hopefully properly nail the customer service to deliver some real value.

Someone on Linkedin was rattling on about how there are going to be a rash of single-person billion dollar companies because we're all going to be making apps now - I seriously doubt that. If it's easy to do, then it's not going to be worth the billion, but it could be a very nice living for a decent number of people, and maybe some "a few million" sales and IPOs for a very small number, followed by the requisite enshitification and exodus of the loyal users that made it, etc etc.