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Comment Re:Dang They dont get it do they (Score 1) 74

Quite the opposite. A strong use-case for a jack is low-latency audio, and tht's the kind of thing used by people who use their machines for audio and music production. I'm a heavy user of Logic, and would absolutely not let wireless headphones anywhere near it.

For "people who don't care the DAC sucks", there's wireless. For people who do care about the DAC but only for listening to music or conversation etc., then wireless also exists. For those who care about both quality and latency, and that's really only for specific use cases these days, then wired is the way.

Comment The UK blocked it (Score 2) 32

Long ago, the UK courts ordered all the major consumer ISPs to block The Pirate Bay along with various other popular services. Ever since, we've had to keep up to date on what the latest proxy address might be.

Of course, thanks to the new censorship laws introduced more recently, we're all on VPNs now, so as to avoid having to hand our ID to the wallet inspector for every last website we ever use. And once that was set up, it was nice to discover that the original is still in play!

Comment Re:So Google wins this round (Score 1) 56

Not especially. Remember, Google pays Apple about $20 billion/year to be the default search in Safari. The reports are that Apple pays Google $1 billion for Gemini.

And if we're honest, Gemini is not the clear-cut best model, it's just that Google and Apple already have a pretty good relationship. Given the amount of Capex Google is putting into AI/Gemini, they need to make money from SOMEWHERE, and Apple is a reliable partner. I'm sure they're extremely relieved that Apple is going with them instead of Anthropic. Though, indeed, there's no reason for Apple to only rely on one vendor.

This whole thing shows that LLMs and models are already being commodified. Who knows if some of these companies will ever make their money back.

Comment Re: Battery empty ... (Score 1) 56

There's no such 'well known fact'. Apple Phones have historically had some of the best battery life in their generations, with occasional outliers. (If we compare the latest Samsung vs. the latest iPhone, for example, the iPhone has significantly better battery life.)

On the other hand, there are occasional Android phones with absolutely absurd batteries that last a couple days on a charge with the tradeoff of looking like a pound of butter. The fact that these have better battery life is not surprising and is the actual outlier.

Comment Re:Intent is the most important thing (Score 1) 85

Please, no. Often when writing code I need the API reference and only the API reference. I know what I want to do and how to do it, I just need a quick check of the exact order of arguments or exact symbol names. I don't need to try to sift that out of commentary. Likewise when I'm learning how to use the library I'm more interested in the overall view. I don't need to know the exact names of the options for a call, only what the options are for. I expect the code in the user's guide to be accurate, but I don't want the same things out of it that I want out of the API reference.

Comment Re: I'm I'm skeptical too. (Score 1) 85

I think a giant context is not going to be the answer. It's just got too many problems. Better will probably be parsing the context into connected pieces, and at a different level assembling the "lemmas" into "theorums". (Yeah, those aren't quite the right words, but I'm not sure the right words exist, and that's the analogy from math proofs. Code library isn't the right concept as the "lemma" will often be quite specific to the current task.)

Comment Intent is the most important thing (Score 4, Insightful) 85

Something critical to note: intent is the most important thing to document when it comes to software. You can see what it does by reading the code, that's straightforward. What I need to know most, both when writing software and maintaining it later, is why it's doing that. What's it supposed to be doing? Why is it doing it in that way? What were the alternatives and why weren't they chosen? How is it supposed to be used by code that calls it? An LLM can't generate any of that just from the code.

This is why traditionally software libraries have had two separate pieces of documentation: an API reference that details every call and it's arguments and results, and a user's guide that lays out how and why to use the library.

Comment Re: A beautiful resurgence (Score 4, Interesting) 91

The jokes about Darth Jar Jar were everywhere of course, but it could have worked. Star Wars lifted a few ideas from classic SF sources including Asimov's Foundation series - in which, we might recall, the terrifying, unstoppable galactic warlord known as The Mule was hiding in plain sight as a clown, who seemed to be merely a harmless entertainer at court. His military success was chiefly thanks to his psychic ability to manipulate others' minds to his liking - Darth Jar Jar could have done very well that way!

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