If you want to fight AI mediocrity, and more importantly, its weaponization by Google to steal traffic from other websites and become a one-stop-shop, you can force yourself to go click on results instead of reading the damn AI blurb.

This one is also on us refusing to slurp up what Google offers by default.

Did you read it? Your 'dumb things' is exactly what they would have become and work anyway - aux, hdmi and bluetooth. They weren't bricking the hardware, you could still use them as dumb speakers.

Throw in the open source bit and they're suddenly even more attractive.

'The Frame' is different to a standard TV because it's matt. That's the thing - it truly is designed more for static image than for moving glitz and glamour. I like them, and if it weren't for my distrust of online Samsung these days I'd likely have got one. I fully understand those who have done - it's a nice device that's good at its task.

- Teachers can be wonderful...in the moment. Regardless, they don't have to live with the consequences of failing their students, parents do, so it's not their responsibility.

- I'm not even talking about homeschooling. My daughter attended public schools, but I never blindly trusted everything was going well. I stayed on top of her grades, kept in communication with her teachers, made sure she had the extra tutoring she sometimes needed. I was glad to have great teachers supporting me, but that's what it was; they were supporting me, not the other way around.

An interesting note; I got a lot of push back from some teachers and administrators as she got older, particularly in jr high ( strangely enough ). They wanted me to back off and let them teach her, they didn't want me helping her with her education at all. Nor did they want me packing her snacks and a lunch ( school food was absolute trash ). It got so bad I ended up at school board meeting relating my experiences. Things got better after that, but it really demonstrated to me how much better off our kids and the education system would be if parents adopted my mindset.

Dear Educational System: It was YOUR FUCKING JOB to make SURE that students had either sufficiently long attention spans, or skills to cope with shorter attention spans. As one who suffers from ADHD and still has always been able to read and enjoy even long, complex novels, I tell you that you get ZERO respect or tolerance from me for caving in like this.

Point of fact, it is not. It is their job to provide such education/training/tools to students to utilize, but the job ultimately and always belongs to the parents.

To highlight this point, let me ask you this: if a student fails to achieve, who deals with the consequences? The school, or the parents?

It's past time for parents to realize our children's futures are our responsibilities, not the education system and certainly NOT the governments. Neither of them care, nor could they ever care as much as we do.

I do find it confusing, yes. What's the difference between the iPad and the iPad Air? Why is the one with the 'Air' monicker not the lightest and why is the Air not the Mini? What's with the Apple Pencil support being so strange, both in model and functionality? What is a 'Liquid Retina Display' vs an 'Ultra Retina XDR' display?

I believe iPadOS 26 may have sorted this recently, but even within the range when I was looking maybe a year/18 months ago you got different software functionality too, within the same model variation, purely based on screen size. Why could I run Stage Manager on one but not the other? In fact, what the hell is Stage Manager and why can't I just float a window? All this 'amazing' multitasking - yeah, I've been doing this that since the Amiga Workbench days thank you, nothing new except the weird insistence that it's somehow tied to screen layouts.

, As I say, I think iPadOS 26 has cleaned a bit of the functionality side up so some of my complaints on the OS side are now a little out of date, but I was literally standing in the shop with money to burn and I walked out since I was too confused and knew I'd always think I'd missed out somehow. These days I'm not so fussed about one anyway, though I do look in once in a while. I bought the original, iPad 2 and "the new iPad" (ridiculous name). Haven't bought any since, still have my iPad 2 but barely charge it - useful for a few hardware synths I have once in a blue moon.

Agreeing with you and pointing out their worse offender - the iPad range. I have absolutely no idea the differences between their products there, it makes very little sense to me. And I've been using Apple products for 40 years.

Feels like the new Amelio era to me - ship what we've got in the parts bin and call it a strategy. Too many products.

Windows is everything people don't want: a surveillance platform, an advertisement billboard and now an unreliable "agentic" piece of shit.

But worse of all, Windows is mostly what people have to put up with at work.

And finally, there's another negative factor working against it: Microsoft is a company headquartered in a rogue fascist country. My company for one is actively exploring option to ditch Office 365, Teams, WIndows and depend on Microsoft things as little as possible. I'm sure it's not the only one.

They go from 0 to 100% Nazi in less than a year!

Boycott products that make Musk money.

"Just accept mediocrity and don't resist, it'll be less painful, because we sure as hell won't stop trying to make money off of AI."

Nothing says "fact" like posting fact-checks from X.

Whatever it was you wanted to demonstrate, I don't have an account on this Nazi-owned platform so it's lost on me.

Sadly, the great country I've known for decades is but a memory.

On the bright side, this is Europe's moment: Europe is a much, MUCH better societal project than the US ever was - if they can get their shit together at this pivotal moment.

10 still had a host of issues. It's just moderately better than 11, hence it has a "good" reputation.

How low are our standards if that's the case? MS is worthy of such scorn, but they're hardly the only ones who's software continues to get worse and worse as time goes on.

Rare is the software upgrade that is actually an upgrade.

Series from when I was young(er): they're usually easy to find for download, and they're just as good as new stuff. And I found the funny stuff of the past funnier, but maybe I'm biased because of age. Probably actually...

Also - at least in the case of American series - it depicts an America that no longer exists, and it feels good to see it again.

Whatâ(TM)s interesting here is that as a professional musician, this guy is a public figure and the âoeactual maliceâ standard for defamation applies â" a standard that was designed when defamation could only be done by a human being.

This requires the defendant to make a defamatory statement either (1) knowing it is untrue or (2) with reckless disregard for the truth.

Neither condition applies to the LLM itself; it has no conception of truth, only linguistic probability. But the LLM isnâ(TM)t the defendant here. Itâ(TM)s the company offering it as a service. Here the company is not even aware of the defamatory statement being made. But it is fully aware of their modelâ(TM)s capacity to hallucinate defamatory âoefactsâ.

I think that because the tort is based in the common law concept of a duty of care, we may well see the company held liable in some way for this kind of thing. But itâ(TM)s new law; it could go the other way.