Posts by roeltz

OpenAI reinstates ChatGPT's internet browsing privileges

Yes, for many sites, curl or some browser extension might be enough.

I'm guessing that many paywalled sites still let you see a snippet of an article, but they achieve this (from some examples I've seen in the wild) not by providing a proper fragment, but by visually hiding most of the content with an overlay, which any user can already remove if they know their way around their browser's developer tools. So the page still delivers the whole text to the browser (or any web client, for that matter) but it relies on stylesheets being applied to properly overlap the content with a subscription prompt.

I guess this type of solution is born out of many sites deciding on monetizing their content later on, and developers just putting out a very hacky solution to comply just enough to get their non-technical project managers off their backs. For other sites, they might actually want Google to cache their whole content to be able to provide useful snippets in search results, but then pull the rug from under their visitors after they realize the information they need requires a subscription.

With something like ChatGPT, that can get through the whole text without any visual obstacles, this approach backfires.

Google's browser security plan slammed as dangerous, terrible, DRM for websites

I hate these proposal that have these particular words, like "attestation" or "cohorts". It's like Google just wants to look academic while trying to fuck with us.

No more feature updates for Windows 10 – current version is final

I've tried every Windows since 3.1, and I must say that life is easier if you just get the latest one, try it and get on with it. If you really like or need Windows, every new version is always better in many ways (and often in ways that matter to both everyday use and advanced use cases). Although the Start Menu is the entry point for any task you need to accomplish, it's not the only thing the OS is about, and for power users (like the audience of The Reg) it's probably something secondary to typing on it instead of clicking things on it, Win+R or already having the required app pinned (and started with Win+1..9). I've always felt that the people that complains the most about Windows UI changes are the most able to reap the benefits of new UI *and* under-the-hood changes if only they just put 5 minutes to recalibrate their muscle memory for the next 5 years.

I know people are averse to change for many valid reasons, but deciding to stick to an older, unsupported, vulnerable system just to... I don't know, be able to click on the same places(?), seems the argument of a 5 years old that always wants to eat the same chicken nuggets for lunch forever.

And yes, the Control Panel/Settings situation is a real pain in the ass, but what is the motivation for Microsoft to keep improving and porting more configuration sections if most people insist on staying behind and disabling telemetry? It doesn't make sense.

If you're still on Windows 7/8.1, it's time to say goodbye to Google Chrome

Re: Upgrade to Linux

What stuff are you doing with your Windows boxes that needs so much fixing all the time?!

GitLab plans to delete dormant projects in free accounts

I remember they were super happy of welcoming those paranoid users from GitHub that wanted to flee the platform after the Microsoft acquisition. Now they complain about server costs?

VS Code acknowledges its elders: Makefile projects get an official extension – and VIM mode is on the backlog

Finally, someone that knows their own editor shortcut keys and doesn't let those marginally-more-efficient-examples-of-typing-as-proof-of-superiority go unscathed.

I have always thought the vi people were pretty smug about their single key commands, but actually, in day-to-day usage, no other productivity app have the same command key bindings, so all that muscle memory and "efficiency" is lost after pressing Alt+Tab.

Forking hell. It's summer, and Windows 10 is already thinking about autumn

Re: Why use Edge?

Edge does indeed open PDF files. I wonder what could be wrong in your setup.

Microsoft commits: We're buying GitHub for $7.5 beeeeeeellion

Just when I was getting cozy with Atom...

Microsoft to overhaul Windows 10 UI – with a 3D Holographic Shell

These guys started to work into this radically new shell, and have partnered up with Intel to make specifications, and I'm still waiting for them to finish porting the Control Panel into the UWP Settings app.

They just seem to be procrastinating the really important stuff.

Gravitational waves: A new type of astronomy

Re: How powerful is a gravitational wave close to the source?

I want to know this too.

'No regrets' says chap who felled JavaScript's Jenga tower – as devs ask: Have we forgotten how to code?

What happens if I just delete the github repo the npm package is pointing to?

That's what I thought.

Mobile dev toolkit biz Appcelerator gobbled up by Axway

They just took Aptana and turned it into a bloated mess. Their superb JavaScript editor, which autocompleted almost anything (it even recognized nested properties inside object literals in a closure) was replaced with something else that even failed to suggest basic DOM properties. Their excellent PHP plugin, which also had very good support for the then-new PHP 5.3, and provided complete inline documentation for built-in functions/consts (because, I will concede, PHP naming and parameter order conventions just don't exist), was replaced with PDT, which (still) sucks a lot. Even the Eclipse Monkey-based extensibility was swaped out with some Ruby-based garbage, for those fascists hipsters devs that think their favorite language should be thrusted upon everyone else's throats.

So, I hope they just die.

Mozilla confirms its Firefox OS phones are dead

Re: Lesson learned?

He's the Unsinkable Molly of phone OSes.

It's come to this for IBM: Watson is now a gimmick app on the iPhone

Re: Arggggggg

Wouldn't they be "Stevens"?

The battle of Cupertino: Jailbreakers do it for freedom, not cash

"Wang and XiaoBo say they like Google's Android operating system saying it is catching up to the quality of iOS, and plan to begin working on developing exploits for that platform."

Well, it seems they are lowering their aspirations.

TypeScript 0.9 arrives with new compiler, support for generics

So, JavaScript as a target for compilation is what everyone is doing today, but then Microsoft makes something about it and is suddenly uncool.

I guess all other commentators are CoffeeScript users and anti-semicolon hipsters.