I’m almost exactly in the same boat, except even at my desk I want wireless. I often turn my camera off and get up to make coffee or go pee in big meetings. It’s great. Even when I’m presenting things, it’s usually only at a specific time, and I can still talk when I’m away from my desk (flip-to-mute microphones are great.)

I have several sets of wired headphones I used to love. I’d buy several sets at once so I already had a replacement when they inevitably broke But I literally can’t remember the last time I used a pair of wired headphones. I only miss 3.5mm on my phone for plugging into my car’s aux port.

Which you’re going to rip as .flac and .mp3 and share/upload somewhere for preservation, right?

I don’t think all Boomers are bad. Lots care about the climate, and (sadly) many younger people don’t care about the climate, too. Hence why I clarified:

a Boomer who doesn’t give a shit about the looming climate apocalypse.

The reason it matters they’re a Boomer is because anyone younger is going to be facing the reality of climate change regardless of what they care about.

I think you missed the bit that makes this sort of maybe make a tiny lick of sense: you use this to write code that you evaluate against tests, and put a maximum iterations counter in to make sure it doesn’t go infinite.

Yes, this is still going to melt the planet just a little bit faster every time it’s used. Yes, it’s most likely to completely fail and, even in cases where it eventually succeeds, it would likely have been orders of magnitude more compute efficient to vibe code it the usual way of actually, like, vibing the code. (Is that what re-prompting is called for vibe coding?)

But it could maybe, kinda, sometimes work. If you squint your eyes. And you’re a Boomer who doesn’t give a shit about the looming climate apocalypse.

Fuck Teams. The buggiest, most crash prone mess I’ve even been forced to use. They keep bolting on new, unnecessary “features” that only selectively work on some of their “supported” platforms.

I’ve copied and pasted other people’s Bookmarklets before. ;)

I’ve had a couple decades of eclectic, self-directed tech learning. There’s no money for technology in education, so I’m always kludging things together, and there’s nobody at any school I’ve ever worked at who can teach me much, so I need to figure shit out myself.

It’d have been nice to be a junior to a greybeard for a few years, but I’ve made it work.

Just FYI, ReviOS is a playbook (set of system changes) that strips all the crap out of Windows 11 while still being almost entirely functional (I believe it disables automatic driver downloads, but it still gets Windows security updates.) I use it in my VM.

It’s super easy—install Windows 11, run the ReviOS playbook, then a Ninite to install all the essentials (including Classic Shell I think? Although I prefer one called something like Start Back.)

I know enough to parse the code, especially with the comments. It was a logical algorithm, it worked, and it was just for reformatting a page to print cleanly, so there was basically no risk if it didn’t work. I code for work, I just don’t know JavaScript syntax or functions.

Anyway, I was impressed it actually worked. I’m an AI skeptic, which is why I thought it was noteworthy to get well documented, clean, functional code from vibe coding—even in such a trivial context as swapping a head tag and removing script tags.

I actually got really clean, well commented code from Copilot earlier this week.

I have no experience with JavaScript to speak of, but realized a Bookmarklet would be a perfect solution for reformatting a particular web app for printing. I already had a head replacement with CSS to do all the formatting, and I was using a RegEx to strip all script tags.

Anyway, I asked Copilot to write the Bookmarklet to replace the header, with full contents explaining the training behind the code, and an explanation of how the script functions below. When I got an error, I asked if to fix the error and or identified that Bookmarklets work better as single lines, so it fixed it. Then I added the requirement about replacing scripts, and it did that too, but for commented and a clean one-line version.

The one-live versions even up getting truncated, so I need to copy/paste from earlier (correct) endings, but otherwise it was an incredibly smooth experience.

I spent longer writing the guide for how to use it than the time it took to vibe code it and test it. I was super impressed.

(Granted, that’s a pretty easy coding task…)

Windows Search Service (or whatever it’s called). Every time my VM completely locks up, it’s that fucker.

Thankfully, I can then just switch back to butter-smooth Linux for a while to do another task while Windows un-fucks itself.

Way, way back (in the 90s or early 00s) one of my friends got involved in a project to systematically play every possible freecell game to find which ones were unsolvable.

That was back when the Internet was cool.

Which is WAY more economical.

Rebuilding packages takes a lot of compute. Downloading mostly requires just flashing some very small lights very quickly.

Most disable Windows Updates for that reason, afaik? You can manually patch security updates without getting automatic updates, I think.

I don’t really care about Windows Updates for my use case since it’s just a VM and I know how to prevent most virus vectors anyway, but yes; there are major trade-offs to “debloating” Windows.

In the longer term, I want to try getting all my must-have apps for work running in browser apps or compatibility layers so I can just stay in Linux.

It might be the version of Windows 11 you have installed, too. Enterprise has no ads (or can be configured not to have ads, at least). Same for Professional, I think?

You can also use a post-install “Playbook” to rip all the adware and spyware out of Windows. I used ReviOS in my Windows 11 VM and it works well for me, but I’m guessing that’s not what you’ve done since you’d know about it, lol.

I’m super happy with my switch to CachyOS. Canadian laws roughly mirror US laws, so it’s a breath of fresh air to not need to deal with Microsoft’s bullshit (well, outside of the VM I need for work, anyway.)

Yeah; the response should be that a “reject all” button must be displayed next to the accept all button with equal prominence, and define prominence to mean the same size, with similar contrast to the accept all button and clearly labelled.

Re: your last paragraph:

I think the future is likely going to be more task-specific, targeted models. I don’t have the research handy, but small, targeted LLMs can outperform massive LLMs at a tiny fraction of the compute costs to both train and run the model, and can be run on much more modest hardware to boot.

Like, an LLM that is targeted only at:

• teaching writing and reading skills
• teaching English writing to English Language Learners
• writing business emails and documents
• writing/editing only resumes and cover letters
• summarizing text
• summarizing fiction texts
• writing & analyzing poetry
• analyzing poetry only (not even writing poetry)
• a counselor
• an ADHD counselor
• a depression counselor

The more specific the model, the smaller the LLM can be that can do the targeted task (s) “well”.

There are, of course, open source licenses that don’t allow for commercial use without a license.

Also, there are lots of industries that need guarantees about the software, and even CC0 open source software doesn’t come with those guarantees; those come from a commercial use and support contract.

Can’t believe I had to scroll down this far to find this:

Here’s the gut-punch for the typical living room, however. If you’re sitting the average 2.5 meters away from a 44-inch set, a simple Quad HD (QHD) display already packs more detail than your eye can possibly distinguish. The scientists made it crystal clear: once your setup hits that threshold, any further increase in pixel count, like moving from 4K to an 8K model of the same size and distance, hits the law of diminishing returns because your eye simply can’t detect the added detail.

On a computer monitor, it’s easily apparent because you’re not sitting 2+ m away, and in a living room, 44" is tiny, by recent standards.

lol, high school.

Maybe, for “rec league” or whatever, but school teams are usually meant to be competitive, and non-gendered sports would mean girls wouldn’t have equitable access to athletics.

But even for non-competitive teams, girls are unlikely to be able to access shared sports to the same level as boys. At a party high school I worked at, there was a major challenge with girls being willing to access open gym time, feeling uncomfortable advocating for access to basketball nets for practice—even girls who were on the competitive team felt they couldn’t use open gym time.

TL;DR: Sexism runs deep. We need policies that recognize that and build equity, not just offer “equality” that perpetuates, or even magnifies, the problem.