"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
"But don't worry. Our next update will include an agentic self-repair feature based on Copilot that will automatically take initiative to change your settings, delete unnecessary files and read your email. Nothing could possibly go wrong."
Incoherent anguished screaming
Actually, if that makes it onto the enterprise version of Windows, it could be fun. I'd love to pit Microsoft's dumbass AI against my company's dumbass IT policies.
"FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!"
"Man, you guys are bloodthirsty. Who are you hoping will win?"
"So long as someone dies in that pit today, we all win."
Remember when they announced native Android app support as a main selling feature for Win 11 and then quietly axed it later? The only thing actually drawing people to Win 11 is them pulling the plug on 10, and even that isn't working that well.
Maybe they should try making a good OS instead of all their other BS.
I was so excited about that, because running some Android apps natively on my Desktop PC would've been amazing. But it never really worked well, installing the PlayStore was not officially supported (and painful) and then it got canned.
The only "good" thing that improved with Windows 11 was WSL, and as soon as I found an employer that allowed me to use a native Linux machine I ran away from the Windows dumpsterfire as fast as I could.
And now Valve is claiming that Steam Machine will support Android APKs
If they plow half their profits into the Linux foundation and a new android/steam/open source OS AI free ecosystem they could destroy 🍏 and Microsoft.
They already did those shensnigans to force people from 7 to 10.
The 7 to 10 migration was pretty standard. MS has typically supported a Windows version through the lifetime of its successor, only stopping support about the time the release after that comes out. XP was supported until 7, Vista was supported until 8, and 8 was supported until 11 came out. By the usual pattern, 10 should have been supported until 12 came out, not two years after support for 8 was dropped.
Also they arbitrarily set which processors are compatible. I have a pretty fast machine with Athlon that cannot be upgraded officially
The acceleration of agentic coding and the plummet in software quality & reliability aren't two separate stories. They're the same story. Even if a particular bug/problem can't be traced back to a slop source, the proliferation of slop is itself a net drag on software teams and leads to overall deskilling and focus diversion.
We have a duty as industry professionals to fight back, say no, and make sure companies are aware this "new normal" is completely and utterly unacceptable.
But these problems took off way before code assistants were common.
As I alluded to, when that's the case it's still now agentic coding to blame because of the diversion of focus. Companies such as Microsoft, instead of improving their existing human-based craft, introduce literal roadblocks to the improvement of craft both in terms of time/resources and also in terms of corporate culture.
Maybe. But even if everyone banned AI instantly, the culture and (I'd argue) massive mismanagement problems aren't getting any better.
Hence I think it's iffy to attribute all these software problems to 'AI' so quickly, especially before it's really had time to affect old systems like Microsoft Windows.
This is now multiple times over multiple post threads where you've replied to literally whatever I have said that is critical of LLMs and directly contradicted it. I don't wish to continue such fruitless conversations.
Sorry. Coming off as a tech bro was not my intent, and let me be clear: these LLMs can, and do, do some shit to code in alien, difficult to trace ways. It's an existential issue.
...I just don't want it to mask a problem that's already there, either. Microsoft's dysfunction goes way beyond their code completion integrations.
OK that's fair. And also it's not my intent to blame AI for all problems of software culture. Just seems in many ways we're going backwards as an industry.
I'd argue its a leadership culture problem.
AI is a perfectly distilled example: pushing an underbaked, sometimes neat tool in completely dysfunctional time-wasting ways, from the top down, because leadership is infatuated with the dream of it, talking to other infuatuated leaders, and feeling FOMO... I guess that's why I came off so cynical when I read this:
We have a duty as industry professionals to fight back, say no, and make sure companies are aware this “new normal” is completely and utterly unacceptable.
...But this keeps happenening.
AI wouldn't be the infectious mess it is without underlying structural issues, and pushing back on 'AI' directly doesn't really convey "you shouldn't have shoved this down our throats in the first place, again!" I dunno how how fix that though.
EDIT: I'm definitely venting at this point, apologies.
Gee that must suck.
Linux keeps on Linuxing
Arch testing is more stable than windows.
Source: Have 4 on-prem, one cloud server and two Desktop devices with arch testing. And one company Windows 11 Laptop and Citrix machines.
After provisioning a PC with a Windows 11, version 24H2 monthly cumulative update released on or after July 2025 (KB5062553), various apps such as StartMenuExperiencehost, Search, SystemSettings, Taskbar or Explorer might experience difficulties.
Oh good. I had assumed it would effect something important.
Now I gotta run, I'm late having all my extra veins removed.
As always, no one read the very short article.
How to destroy a companies already horrible rep in one product.
It worked the other nine times so...
I wouldn't know. I use Bazzite
Cool.
Are there any Linux distros that are good with both touchscreen and fingerprint scanners? I have a laptop that needs a bigger hard drive, so might as well get a new OS, and its touchscreen with a fingerprint scanner. I use it to look stuff up when I’m using another computer, and to download stuff. That’s about it now that I have a “real gaming computer”.
I use Ubuntu on my other computers, and I like it well enough. I’ve tried mint cinnamon and did not particularly like it. I’m sure ubuntu would be fine to use again, but I’d like to try something else.
Fedora worked well with both before IBM took over. can't speak to how it is today.
Debian isn't bad on touchscreens but fingerprint reader support has been shit.
Mint was good on touchscreens as well, but fingerprint reader worked 50% of the time l though that could have been my ancient hardware.
CachyOS is en vogue. I’ve been using it forever, and it’s awesome.
KDE, and I think GNOME, have good support for touchscreens. You can pick either at the start.
For fingerprint readers, looks like you want this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fingerprint_GUI
Sounds more like a Desktop environment question than a distro one to me.
Regarding the fingerprint scanner, as long as it's supported by the kernel it'll work - at least via the CLI. To have it easily usable for login and whatnot, I'd prefer a proper integration of touchscreen login into the DE, which by now at least Gnome, KDE and Cinnamon support.
For the usability with touch, for what I know at least: Gnome and KDE should be pretty usable. Cinnamon does not do so well (at least the last time I checked; e.g. scrolling the start menu by touch does not work as expected) For other DEs I don't know, they all should recognize the touch, albeit only treat it as if it were a mouse click. The only DE that ships a proper "touch mode" that I know of is KDE, but Gnome (due to its design nature) holds up pretty well using touch also.
A distro that unites that all well and provides a solid allround package with little manual configuration needed has been Fedora in my experience, however I'm very confident that more or less all other distros (Debian, Arch, Suse,...) are shipped or can be customized to make it properly usable for your use case
I am also interested in this answer.
I have no personal experience with fingerprint scanners on Linux, from what I have heard it depends on your laptop with Thinkpads having usually the best support. Regarding the touchscreen, I use Fedora Silverblue on a Surface Go and Project Bluefin on a Thinkpad T480s. Touch works well on both.
False alarm, they only admit current XAML problems.
Its OK, just have AI fix the problem by first looking online for an AI who had the same problem and figured out some slop that hgrsa kjfsb the whole thing by ooh up! Dhdgbjtcdr hgdrbbkk!