Yep, I’ve done that. Hardware changes are more effective than software changes, though. Every time.

Well, it’s not an LLM, but “AI” doesn’t have a defined meaning, so from that perspective they kind of already did.

I mean, it’s probably fine. I’ve just had a Pixel for long enough that my standards are too high. I have kids, and we just moved across the world, so I take a lot of photos.

Yeah, that one too.

According to Wikipedia, Russia has 143M and Ukraine has 33M. So not too far off!

hmm. That’s true. And dangerous, lol.

I don’t really want that much control removed, though. I just want to have a little bit more friction between my serotonin-starved brain and the cortisol river on Facebook.

I think the main purpose is probably to provide a more-usable “dumbphone” experience. I know a lot of people (myself included) who would love to doomscroll less, but need a more full-fat version of Android for work or family. Using Digital Wellbeing and the like gets part of the way there, but not the whole way. With this, the weird aspect ratio means that pretty much all video is going to be letterboxed to a crazy extent, which could be enough to make bypassing those controls feel pointless. And then they used that extra space for a physical keyboard, which is genius. If this thing had a better camera, I’d be all in.

People often don’t know that they have a choice. It enables itself.

Agreed, good catch.

For me it’s the text (too regular and perfectly-ruled to be hand lettered, but too much variance between the letterforms to be a font) and the little AI artifact on the random doohickey directly under the bottom left corner of the AI computer monitor:

Aside from that, it’s just the weight of unmotivated choices. Why is the “good” side of the image grayscale while the “bad” side is in color (a human probably would’ve done it the other way)? Why are the desks drawn slightly differently while the person, chair, and computer are drawn the same (a human would’ve probably made everything identical to better illustrate their point)? Why all the random clutter on one but not the other (if the point was to make the AI computing experience look scattered and cluttered, surely they would’ve made it more overwhelmingly cluttered, but if it was for verisimilitude they’d have put clutter on both desks)? Also, subjectively, the “AI” logo on the screen suggests a pleasant experience, not an oppressive one.

An unmotivated choice on its own isn’t necessarily an AI calling card, but enough of them together alongside one or two smoking guns can definitely make the case pretty strongly.

Or with water, frankly. Is the only option for the switch inside the bathroom literally in the sink basin? There shouldn’t be that much splashing in a work bathroom.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it depends a little bit on the model of the e-reader (color takes more out of it, etc), but I only charge my Boox every other week, and I take notes on it, read on it, the works.

E-paper is easier to use outside or in bright light, and the battery tends to last longer. Anecdotally, it also doesn’t hurt my eyes as much.

This news is about lobsters, specifically.

But how would it slow their metabolism down? Unless they’re just eating non-stop at room temperature, that colder weather is what they’re adapted to.

I’m totally unfamiliar with how to cook a lobster, but “chilling them” doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. They live in the North Atlantic, where water temperatures tend to hover in the “refrigerator” range most of the year, and with salinity lowering the freezing point, probably goes even lower over the winter. Seems like chilling a lobster would just make it feel at home.

I’ve only ever had it work for me once or twice, and it was always near the very beginning of a project when I was only losing a few days or a week of working code at most. When I discover that I fundamentally misunderstood or misjudged a core assumption and everything needs to be reoriented. Never when I already had code in production.

That’s fair, but even with that, it’s got to be easier to shove it into existing code. Especially if you’re trying to do it in a way that people don’t notice!

And actually, the Windows 10 start menu infamously had ads, too. So it can’t be that.

But this was four years ago! Actually it was released four years ago. This decision was almost certainly made before there were widespread code assistance AIs.

Tali Roth, the then product manager working on the core Windows user experience, including the Start menu, taskbar, and notifications, took up the question and talked about how building the taskbar from scratch meant that they had to cherry-pick things to put into the feature list first, and the ability to move the taskbar didn’t make the cut, for several reasons that Microsoft values.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!

If you have working code, why would you rewrite it from scratch? Refactor, sure. Overhaul, maybe. But why rewrite the whole thing?! You’re gaining nothing but unnecessary bugs.

I know all the joke answers. To justify a product manager’s salary, because Microsoft gonna Microsoft, whatever. I want to know the real reason. Why would you ever rewrite working code from scratch if you don’t have to?