cstross

cstross, 1 day ago

@mark Even if the recall data is stored locally, it's a horrible trove of data for abusers to strip-mine … and remember, Windows phones home with telemetry promiscuously.

cstross, 22 hours ago

@MadeyeTheCarnaptious It's not. It's not even on regular Intel Windows 11 yet; it's due to appear on next-generation Windows 11 on ARM machines.

cstross, 1 day ago

@grmpyprogrammer That looks ever so macOS-friendly, thanks, I hate it

cstross, 1 day ago

@neurobashing @sfoskett @panic Prompt is nicely designed but ridiculously expensive for what it is (given the price of the alternatives). Not sure I can justify something that works out about twice as pricey as my main go-to day job application!

cstross, 1 day ago

@neurobashing @sfoskett @panic I have no idea what "gist it" means. I am too old and decrepit (and memory-impaired) to start training new muscle memory at this point.

cstross, 1 day ago

@ross @root42 I'm complaining about iTerm2 precisely because of its other features (hint: AI Copilot just got added with no opt-out).

I prefer to mix tmux with byobu, myself.

cstross, 1 day ago

@angusm The iTerm2 release with OpenAI nonsense only dropped in the past 48 hours. The reaction has not been low-key.

cstross, 22 hours ago

@lain_7 Emacs is a non-starter for me. Any time I've tried to switch to it I've had horrible RSI pains within a week. Several times over three decades …

cstross, 1 day ago

@verge Impending M4 Macbook Air alert! (IIRC back in 2007-ish they introduced—then sunsetted—the first unibody aluminum Macbook Pro 13" in six months flat, replacing it with the 13" al Macbook, with a built-in battery rather than a replacable one, and no firewire. This, with the news about M3 yield shortfalls driving the move to the M4 iPad Pro, feels familiar.)

cstross, 2 days ago

@mhoye Sergeant Pepper has its batshit moments—to this day it's the only Beatles album I can stand to listen to—but it also has stuff that has aged very badly. (The lyrics of "Getting Better", for example: Lennon outed himself as an abuser.)

cstross, 2 days ago

@Nfoonf Not a Surface Laptop—this is a flagship product aimed at power users. (They previously did some low-end Surface tablets with ARM: they failed to impress the market.)

Suggests Microsoft, like Apple, is backing away from Intel CPUs in their pro/business market, leaving Intel only the server space (and even then multicore ARM servers are making progress).

cstross, 2 days ago

@Nfoonf Microsoft used to be an ARM licensee, acquiring StrongARM from DEC (during the HP merger) then selling it as XScale, but ditched it about 20 years ago. We'll know the war is over and the victor is ARM if Intel start selling ARM cores again (and not as a niche product).

cstross, 2 days ago

@shansterable @Lazarou They won't do that because it affects the menfolk—you know, the white male patriarchs of the family structure they want. (Gay men, in their eschatology, don't bother with vasectomies.) It's all about controlling women, 100%.

(They might mandate vasectomies, though, for "undesirables"—males who are non-neurotypical, queer, or non-white.)

cstross, 2 days ago

@felix Shut up and fondle your pocket magic mirror that gives you instant access to the sum total of human knowledge and (coming soon) can stream video internationally via comsat. Then buy a ticket for a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon (that's your flying car, right there). Fusion reactors would be neat, but what do you think a PV panel is powered by?

cstross, 2 days ago

@ovid @hittitezombie @glitzersachen ... But then Nixon in 1968 cancelled most of the Apollo Applications Program (all we got was Skylab and ASTP) and the Space Shuttle was a botched design compromise that killed more astronauts than any other space program, ever.

cstross, 2 days ago

@ovid @hittitezombie @glitzersachen I'd love to have seen the results from a pair of Voyager probes flying the Grand Tour ... launched from Saturn Vs rather than the much feebler Titan-IIIC. Could have carried much better instruments, and maybe sent Voyager 1 on a Pluto fly-by trajectory.

cstross, 2 days ago

@DrorBedrack Given that NASA is facing competition for the next boots on the Moon landing from China and now India I'd say … nope, it's entirely deserved.

cstross, 2 days ago

@ovid @hittitezombie @glitzersachen I hadn't seen that, but it's no surprise. STS was a horrible dog's dinner that wouldn't have been built like that except the USAF wanted a film canister taxi for KEYHOLE (a mission that was obsolete by the time the Shuttle flew) and this compromised the entire Shuttle design, introducing a new and exciting lethal failure mode that in fact failed lethally.

cstross, 2 days ago

@meltedcheese @ovid @glitzersachen The US political system's term duration makes sustaining support for long-term programs problematic. I'm astonished Artemis survived the Trump presidency at all (although if the original timetable had actually been possible and Trump had been re-elected in 2020, he would be in line to repeat Nixon's famous phone call this year).

cstross, 2 days ago

@FeralRobots @Tallish_Tom Superheavy has flown, and at this point it has completed two flight cycles as a disposable first stage. Even if it's not reusable (yet) it's viable. Starship is also viable as a disposable second stage. The hard part seems to be re-entry and landing.

Frankly, Starship/Superheavy is very close to being a Saturn-V class one-shot disposable launcher at a tenth the real-money price, which alone would be a triumph. Add reusability and refueling and it'd be revolutionary.

cstross, 2 days ago

@FeralRobots @glitzersachen @meltedcheese @ovid Most likely his plan was as crude as jacking the prices of hotel room nights at Mar-a-Lago during the launch.

cstross, 1 day ago

@glc @ravenonthill As the RN at that time held global maritime supremacy—they had more ships in service than the next two naval powers combined, and expected to fight and win two wars in different hemispheres simultaneously—it probably wasn't a bad bet circa 1900-1910.