If youâ(TM)ve used it for any length of time, you learn that itâ(TM)s inconsistent about its capacity but always consistent in its desire to convince you of its capacity.

Itâ(TM)s better than a search engine for getting concise general answers but itâ(TM)s confined to what it was trained on.

Which still relies on human effort.

The âoethinkingâ features are primarily about having it create its own guardrails but it still doesnâ(TM)t know how to ask questions or communicate assumptions or shortcuts.

At least theyâ(TM)ve mostly stopped telling me how to execute the throwaway scripts Iâ(TM)ve asked them to generate.

I donâ(TM)t know, ultimately, but I think that anyone who thinks AI is unquestionably good are incapable of reading or writing with depth. Canâ(TM)t miss something you donâ(TM)t know is there.

Combine that with the tech money hype cycle and the investment ouroboros? Itâ(TM)s hard to trust anyoneâ(TM)s motives if theyâ(TM)re pushing AI. Seems like marketing minds caught up in their own verisimilitude.

That apology seems like it was generated by an LLM

Also kinda seems like they saved a lot of time by rushing /s

They consulted with ChatGPT for legal advice /s

HDF5 looks amazing. I was unfamiliar. Thank you.

I think the short answer to "why?" is educational hegemony.

MS Office is often available on academic computers, and when a biology undergrad, it was what I and the rest of my cohort were expected to use. Granted, that was a moment ago, but I can’t imagine the prevalence of Excel in education having changed all that much. What would schools replace it with? LibreOffice? No, I can’t imagine that, either.

I get that CSV is an option in Excel, but it is not what Excel makes easiest to use by default. Being an expert in biology does not make one an expert in how to use software or choices in what software to use.

And itâ(TM)s temporary. What a relief.

Wow, I wouldnâ(TM)t even be breathing heavyâ¦

It's okay. I only read the headline anyway.

I just got my invite the other day. I've chosen to ignore it.

As far as I'm concerned, Diaspora is DOA.

Thank you. I actually have to agree with you, INI files offer no consistent syntax, format or location. But I definitely found comfort in the fact that I could just open them with edit and go to town.

No, I hadn't. I'll look into it next time I get to play with Mac OS X.

Okay, I'm not getting it. How did MS-DOS lead to a registry? I thought that was a torment that came with Windows.

I actually think GoboLinux had it down pretty well. I think I liked the filesystem as package manager concept most.

Unfortunately it hasn't updated since the last time I tried it.

If they did that, it wouldn't be beta enough.

Really, I love gmail, but I'm definitely looking for good alternatives for a number of Google services.

Parents are also a handicap if they feel that their child put in the effort to make the grade, and that they deserve appropriate marks for the effort.

I'm of the opinion that schools need to maximize the number of C students, not A students. If you push the bell curve of scores toward the middle, then you are challenging the majority of the students, and not neglecting the people who should be at the high end of the curve. People need to stop thinking of them as an statements of worth, and start thinking of them as an evaluation of challenge. Winning all the time does not lead to success. Even video game designers know that.

(I would probably be somewhere in middle of that curve, honestly)