I’ve ordered various things from AliExpress before, I’ve never had any major issues. One item was DOA, and another never arrived, but In both cases I got refunded quickly and easily.

It seems no worse than any other online marketplace now.

I assume these 3DS units are some sort of refurb. Are they Chinese region units?

The window tiling and new continuity features like iPhone Mirroring and drag and drop look useful.

Some of the AI stuff seems to be have limited geographic availability.

Shareholders?

Some of it looks maybe useful. Other parts look gimmicky. The image generation stuff could be a powderkeg moment with creatives after the hydraulic press ad.

Ofc, Apple being Apple, I wouldn’t put it past them to artificially “break” things or arbitrarily introduce limits between RCS and iMessage

I’m guessing RCS support will be as barebones as possible while still technically functioning. All of the fancy bells and whistles will remain exclusive to iMessage.

Some iMessage features might not be possible to implement with RCS I suppose. Maybe RCS messages will get a different colour. All Apple said in the WWDC keynote was RCS would be supported, they didn’t elaborate any further.

The content is being uploaded to Adobe’s servers, they likely have the right and may even be legally required to moderate it to some degree.

This yet another reminder that the cloud is just somebody else’s computer. Somebody who might want to impose some degree of control with what is done with their computer, for whatever reason.

A lot of open source graphics software is made by programmers who also need to edit images sometimes. Both the lack of UI polish and featureset choices make more sense when looked at from that angle.

However, a lot of the criticism that gets thrown at these programs is also a bit unfounded. I regularly see people dunking on GIMP for not being a pixel-perfect clone of Photoshop for free. There is more than one way to design an image editor, and inability of some to learn another is really a user issue. GIMP could be better, but it still can and should be GIMP.

Just put the extra napkins in your pocket/bag, now you never need to buy tissues.

I’d say it’s more that parents (companies) should be more responsible about what they tell their kids (customers).

Because right now the companies have a new toy (AI) that they keep telling their customers can make thunder from clapping. But in reality the claps sometimes make thunder but are also likely to make farts. Occasionally some incredibly noxious ones too.

The toy might one day make earth-rumbling thunder reliably, but right now it can’t get close and saying otherwise is what’s irresponsible.

Seems a hard sell to go subscription on such a niche platform. I wish anyone luck that could challenge the Apple/Android duopoly though.

As an aside, can we get back into desktop cubes again? With all the upheaval in Windows land it’s the sort of eye candy that can win over new Linux users.

Any distro should be fairly stable and supported on an older Thinkpad.

I’m currently using Debian stable on my X220 and it’s rock solid.

I think it’s becoming fair to label a lot of commercial AI “scams” at this point, considering the huge gulf between the hype and the end results.

Open source projects are different due to their lack of commercialisation.

Might be worth looking into LoRa for longer range, it’s got quite cheap to play with now.

I have a ThinkPad X220 that recently turned 13, with SSD and RAM upgrades, basic maintenance, and Linux it’s still running great for plenty of tasks.

Plus it’s so well built I could probably stick it in a plate carrier and use it as body armour. Doesn’t seem to matter how much it gets dropped or dropped onto, ol’ Thinky keeps on chugging.

“There’s a snake gun in my boot!”

2018 according to Wikipedia, so 6 years ago!

There was a similar thing done as an art installation between London and New York called the Telectroscope in 2008. Apparently it was the site of a few marriage proposals.

Look how far we’ve come…

Platforms like Facebook have an incredible hold on some people. I remember a few years ago when the “Momo” hoax happened, an older coworker arrived at the office and started warning us about the danger of “Momo” they’d seen on Facebook. I’d already heard about the hoax (and was aware of the original creepyasta origins), and brought up a few news articles explaining it, including an official statement from the police. Everyone seemed satisfied by the truth, except for the Facebook addict. They just gave me a blank stare, and a few hours later I heard them telling another group of colleagues to beware of “Momo” getting to their children.

I have family members and longstanding family friends who have succumbed to this. Interestingly almost all of them were decrying the internet as something that couldn’t be trusted before the age of social media.

It’s that daft haircut, he’s adopted a different style recently and suddenly looked 10x more human.

No amount of barbers can disguise the blokes behaviour though.

Well it’s a step forward for efficiency at least. Now I can see the LLM generated crap straight it in the search page, rather than having to click through to an automated blogspam page.

If they are really going all-in on this, it almost feels like Google admitting defeat on search, having now been drown by the (partially self inflicted) deluges of SEO and now “AI”.