Most OEMs like to say that they have the very best. And unfortunately, software just keeps bloating, making it more useful to have a higher end chip.

However, this dynamic has changed somewhat in recent years as the price of flagship SoCs has skyrocketed by ~4x in 5 years. More high-end phones are releasing with not quite the best chip, like the base iPhone, the Pixel, and the Galaxy S25/S25+ (due to Exynos).

I have a few examples:

• Flight Sim 2020
• Windows Defender is the best antivirus, better than all those paid crapware antiviruses
• An attempt at an independent browser engine that wasn’t the dated IE
• This is a hot take but seamless integration of local file storage with OneDrive. Yes, they are way too heavy-handed about forcing this on you and it’s really stupid how it moves your files without telling you, but I’ve never seen a file manager that handles both local and cloud files faster than W10’s file manager (a big part of the reason why I was mad about W11, because that advantage disappeared)

The only useful thing I can think of after the pandemic is the CPU scheduling updates for Alder Lake, but that was pretty much a necessity. Everything else is AI overhype, rewriting programs to make them slower, and/or yet another way to invade people’s privacy

Thanks lol, I never use that word so I spelled it wrong

Lately I’ve been really annoyed by Microsoft products. For a certain work-related thing we were using Microsoft word to collaborate and it randomly would stop letting some of us edit, throwing warnings like “Allow access to your Microsoft 365 account” even though I was already signed in, and clicking on allow access would just bring the warning back upon refreshing.

Which would happen every 20 minutes because it gives me a pop-up to sign in, with three buttons on the pop-up. Two are cancel buttons, and the actual sign in button is invisible. I was already signed in, of course. I couldn’t continue working until a refresh.

Moving pictures is the biggest pain for some reason (and it isn’t even better in LibreOffice Writer). It’s been like this for years.

And then they have the gaul to start throwing AI everywhere when they can’t even make their basic systems usable. I’m starting to root for Microsoft’s failure these days, because they haven’t done anything useful or innovative since the pandemic.

Disgruntled, I suggested that we switch to Google Docs (yes, I know it’s Google, but we all already have Google accounts and we needed this done in a few hours), and everyone instantly agreed because I had just said their frustrations out loud.

Recently I was using Ubuntu and needed to recall a terminal command I had used a couple weeks prior. Luckily, my terminal commands are logged in the ~/.bash_history text file. Easy, convenient, customizable, and no AI needed!

This is even worse than I expected. I expected another delay, or a autonomous taxi with a remote driver constantly monitoring at best. This is no better than a regular taxi.

Vulnerabilities are flaws in software that may allow an attacker to gain control of or eavesdrop a system.

They are categorized into low, medium, and high severities based on how easy it is to exploit the vulnerability and how much damage a successful attack utilizing that vulnerability would do.

I was riding my motorcycle today and was gonna park in a parking lot. Nearby there was a 1-lane 1-way road, and I witnessed some car park there even though the parking lot was visibly not full from that road. An hour later it was still parked there, blocking the road. Idiot.

I’m hopeful for this! I’d be happy to pay for music if the price is reasonable and I know it’s going to the artists and not some dumb record label.

Wait, this isn’t satire?

I used “best brokers” back in the day

I’ve used it for many of my videos and it’s quite good. It’s amazing for simple edits and can handle more advanced stuff, but from my experience it bogs down with many effects. For complicated projects I recommend Resolve, but for simple to medium complexity video edits I fully recommend Kdenlive, as it’s better and more crash resistant than all the other FOSS video editors.

Keep it and wait for the applications to bloat up. You won’t feel like you have an excessive amount of RAM in a few years.

More like $126, if you know what I mean

I don’t care that enhanced Bitrate is premium only. I do care that you still need to click “advanced resolution settings” to access this even for premium users on mobile.

Take what I say with a big grain of salt because I’m just an onlooker, but from what I’ve heard housing is incredibly unaffordable in the desireable cities like Beijing and Shanghai, like $600000 for a 2bdrm when the median salary is $20000. It’s a speculative investment whose bubble has burst but prices are still super inflated.

We had most of this with Windows 7 and probably XP as well. Those used a fraction of the RAM, disk space, and CPU time for largely the same effect as today.

2024: What are you doing with 16GB RAM and 300% CPU at 5.4GHz?

• Running some random process introduced with Windows 11 that adds literally nothing to the users experience other than heat and fan noise

The problem is that if you actually have a fun spirited drive suddenly your insurance doubles because your car is selling your “hard acceleration and cornering” data to insurance companies.

This is exactly the reason why I want privacy in the first place. The surveillance tech kills all the joy and freedom of driving.

I hope this saves the world economy if the US defaults on its debt, which is looking increasingly likely in the coming decades…