I know you mean this is as joke, but oddly enough, Pitfall, by Activision is still available!

Not sure, but the blast radius is tremendous, even games from the Atari 2600, a console released nearly fifty fucking years ago have been taken down.

Been a Windows user for a really long time. A few times I tried to switch over to Linux, but it just wasn’t doable for a myriad of reasons. Windows 11, I have words with it. Many bad ones, but thankfully there are many users like me that for one reason or another did not switch and put time in to beat the badness out of it via mods.

Windows 12… I’m not so sure if I’ll even “upgrade” to it. It really depends on how much Microsoft decides to wire up the OS to their servers. Look, I wouldn’t mind at all if I could have “smart” tools with AI assistance, but the problem for me is the lack of choice. Currently, if you don’t use their crap software, what mostly travels over the wire is telemetry, and if you go offline no harm done. But make no mistake, useful AI models are too fat to run on most computers. Heck I built mine with AI in mind, but will Microsoft even give me the choice of using my own AIs? (Here’s a hint, it starts with N, has a V and ends with an R)

But what if the OS starts requiring it to be online only because of their AI features? Maybe we’ll have to start paying for Windows again in subscriptions to pay for the obligatory AI? Or what about scrubbing options away from the settings so you can’t “misuse” your own device and have to ask nicely to their AI to do it for you?

There is a road here, and I do not like it. Thank goodness Linux is better than it has ever been.

PS: As for the notepad thing, I’m completely in agreement that it should remain without AI. Such a simple tool for scribbling down notes should be kept lean, simple and fast. Things that Microsoft and their engineers have long forgotten how to do.

Tip for anyone over here who wants to ask GPT-4 questions on the cheap. Applying for access to their API will give you access to both chat GPT 3.5 as well as GPT-4 with a different interface. There you pay what you use, which is insanely cheaper with GPT-3.5, and… mildly affordable with GPT-4 so long as you keep contexts short and conversations brief.

Been making use of their playground for months now, probably paid 20 bucks tops for months of use. Worked for my case.

If I need creativity without intelligence, I’ll just use WIzardLM on my 3090.

Do note “Pirating AIs” is not really practical due to the extreme hardware requirements, you’ll hardly find someone willing to foot the bill for free.

Displaying images, truly a technological breakthrough for the modern era!

Pardon me if I may inquire, but how exactly does Xiaomi’s gallery fail, at being a gallery application? Morbid curiosity if you will.

Without any ratings for customer satisfaction. I might as well sack the entire support staff, don’t bother with AI and I’ll get a answered query to F off in 0 minutes and 100% savings.

While I’m not experienced enough to explain the full development stack of an OS. Let me throw my two cents.

It typically goes by writing changes. If its superficial ones, like modern UI in Windows 11, then all they need to do is relaunch explorer/the app etc. Every time they make a change in the code, they then build and try it out.

If its a more internal change, deep into the OS. Typically written in C or another low level language. Then its easier to test the changes in a virtual machine, you write your code, compile, build. And then load it up in the virtual machine to see if the OS doesn’t crash and burn.

Later, after it gets past quality control in the company, (but most often these versions sit in beta for a while to catch problems). It then gets put into the Update servers and rolled out in bulk for mass destribution.

Do note, updates don’t need to include the entire OS. Just packages including the file changes as well as general update busywork.

PS: If anyone replies, feel free to correct me. Details may be sketchy but this is the short of it.

Absolutely peeved that according to laws: Libraries in a digital format literally cannot exist without being illegal. Archive.org only managed to exist as a Library because they enforced DRM which limited available rentals to the books they “bought” and had copies of.

This is because physical Libraries allow you to borrow their own copies, thus you can even read copyrighted material without asking for permission from the rights holder. So they could argue in court that the DRM only emulated the real thing.

Come COVID and they decide to be nice to people by temporarily stripping the rental bullocks. Their reward for a good deed is a sledgehammer to the stomach.

It matters not, books shall be, and remain forever free (For those that need them). One way or another. All I know is that I’ll never buy a book if I’m treated as a criminal.

I use a couple .bat files that I pre-wrote. Good enough for 95% of my needs.