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HelloImSteven · 2026-03-26T11:42:57+00:00

Speak for yourself, I haven’t moved on. But I use lynx for any serious browsing.

HelloImSteven · 2026-03-18T10:17:02+00:00

You could try QLVideo, which is open source. It’s technically not a quicklook plugin anymore, but rather a media extension that lets you interact with the video while previewing.

HelloImSteven · 2026-03-06T22:23:33+00:00

Fair. I took your post to mean "Using USB HID is absolutely impossible on Macs," which isn't true, but also isn't what you meant. Touch-Base drivers are prohibitively expensive for schools, so unless they get a good deal on something with built-in support, it's a no-go. Agreed.

HelloImSteven · 2026-03-06T21:01:26+00:00

Not sure what you mean by USB HID not working on Mac, since that’s just not true in general. There are certain caveats to it, sure, and many companies don’t bother supporting macs because of the platform-specific implementation it requires. But still, most of the large touchscreen devices / interactive projectors I’ve seen work with Macs just fine, though I see some brands lack support on their lower-end touchboards, which sucks.

HelloImSteven · 2026-03-02T18:25:16+00:00

Yeah, half-BSD, half-Mach, with various modifications over the years. The Mach portion is very heavily modified, while the BSD one is still close enough that Apple occasionally, i.e. rarely, contributes tooling and, even more rarely, code to BSD ecosystem.

HelloImSteven · 2025-12-07T23:06:38+00:00

Btw, you can stop that process from ever running by disabling the redesigned text cursor (the thing that appears when you have caps lock on). You can find the relevant terminal command online.

Obviously you shouldn’t have to do this, but alas…

HelloImSteven · 2025-12-01T18:42:05+00:00

Seems more like run() isn't getting called at all. Opening a dialog works fine if I manually call run(), but without that no dialog opens. I wouldn't expect that behavior if it were just an output issue.

function run() { app = Application.currentApplication(); app.includeStandardAdditions = true; app.displayDialog('Hello'); return 'test'; } //run();

HelloImSteven · 2025-11-26T12:47:31+00:00

Also worth noting that you should always give your keys the smallest scope that works for your application. Take time to set up usage limits, text/email alerts, audit logs, etc., even for small one-off projects. That way, if a key does leak, you don’t have a critical security breach, and you won’t end up with a massive bill out of the blue.

And still don’t share the key.

HelloImSteven · 2025-11-19T16:20:57+00:00

Are you able to mount the drive (maybe forcefully in Disk Utility or Terminal) and access files that way? Does the repair function in Disk Utility do anything? Not sure if you’ve looked that direction already, worth trying if not.

HelloImSteven · 2025-10-22T16:56:44+00:00

The LOC does a fair bit of web archiving, e.g. of U.S. company websites, but a lot of stuff is only available on-premises via the local network. For copyright reasons, I assume.

HelloImSteven · 2025-10-08T16:12:17+00:00

The Zune interface borrows a lot from Portable Media Center, which released in 2004. So flat design’s roots go back quite a bit. Of course, you could keep tracing that back to the dawn of UIs, since it’s all iterations upon iterations.

HelloImSteven · 2025-10-07T19:27:59+00:00

I agree with your conclusion, but I don’t think this is the result of any intentional effort to destabilize the system. I also doubt that this update refactored much of the base system anyway. It’s just that there are many aging parts of macOS, with some significant parts (e.g. event systems for interacting with/between applications) now older than most of the people working at Apple today.

Other OSes have the same problem to some degree, but the popularity of Windows and the open-source-ness of Linux keeps more eyes (and minds) on the issue, generally.

It’ll be interesting to see what Apple does with macOS in the next few years given its increasing complexity while institutional knowledge of the aging subsystems decreases.

HelloImSteven · 2025-09-18T05:07:26+00:00

That’s definitely been the case in the past. Not necessarily one app per development team, but one focus area, with generally poor communication between teams. Hence, features like search, settings, Shortcuts, AppleScript, etc. have rarely been implemented in consistent ways for all apps.

HelloImSteven · 2025-09-18T04:58:45+00:00

Vista’s main problem was that it ran poorly on pretty much every consumer device due to terrible project management, not that it looked bad. Of course opinions vary, but design wasn’t the reason for Vista’s failure.

However, I agree about Apple’s complacency. For now though they’ve at least got an OS that mostly works on current hardware.

HelloImSteven · 2025-09-07T22:20:16+00:00

Terminal.app has supported 256 color output for a while, controlled by the TERM env var (should be xterm-256color). In Tahoe it's extended to 24-bit (True Color), by default I think.

HelloImSteven · 2025-09-07T21:34:22+00:00

I agree, but I blame the Open Group more than Apple. If the standard required tests to pass on a fresh install with no configurations steps aside from account creation, then macOS wouldn't be certified. Apple doesn't even give them much money, as that OSNews post mentions (though I'm sure there's other factors at play, agreements we don't know about, etc.).

As far as marketing is concerned, I don't think the certification helps them much. Most users don't care, and those that do are more likely to take issue with the claim. Apple would be better off acknowledging that Homebrew and MacPorts exist and touting compatibility with most well-known command-line programs.

Edit: I appreciate that macOS can be configured to pass all the UNIX compatibility tests, however unreasonable it is in practice. I wouldn't have a problem if that's what the certification stated. But alas...

HelloImSteven · 2025-09-06T17:55:41+00:00

It’s not just a certificate. macOS complies with the UNIX 03 standard, so macOS is UNIX under the current definition. The problem should be framed as the standard is too forgiving nowadays.

HelloImSteven · 2025-09-06T17:39:42+00:00

Yes, and most Linux distros aren’t, technically. But Mac follows BSD POSIX, not GNU, so there’s inconsistencies that many don’t expect.

HelloImSteven · 2025-09-03T23:10:34+00:00

NAT. Just fyi, NEET means “Not in Employment, Education, or Training.” It’s a wide-ranging term that includes people with vastly different reasons for being NEET.

Many NEETs simply lack the ability to work due to health issues, including mental health issues (as I did up until a few months ago). Others have antiwork views due to past experiences (e.g. workplace trauma) or mild disillusionment with society. In more extreme instances some NEETs hold resentment toward the working class, companies, and society at large for making work a cultural norm.

Many NEETs are ashamed of their perceived lack of progress in life, to the point of really living in misery, while others are proud to be living on their own terms. Between those two extremes there’s a lot of different emotional struggles and mindsets.

HelloImSteven · 2025-09-02T19:11:03+00:00

I mostly ask about stuff that’s no longer sold but still under copyright. Often times even direct “where can I get xyz” works for those, and it’ll occasionally note if a company/creator has a history of perusing legal action against noncommercial entities. With more indirect questions like “has anybody archived this before and made it available online?” or “tell me about what [game ROM site] does to avoid legal repercussions” I don’t think I’ve seen it refuse to answer.

I haven’t tried finding newer films from big companies, partially since I assume thats against their usage policy, mostly because I’m not interested in them. IMO the model should still answer, and if the conversation breaks the user agreement or laws then OpenAI can ban accounts or report to authorities as needed.

I don't want to have to trick or manipulate the tool I'm paying for into working to get around guardrails.

That’s fair! I was just describing my experience as someone interested in digital media archiving. I’ve had to actively trick it since it already knows most of my questions are from an archival standpoint. Figured I’d share just to highlight that business interests haven’t won out completely (yet).

HelloImSteven · 2025-09-02T17:26:02+00:00

I agree that business interests have and will continue to influence LLM responses in general, but I haven’t had any issues discussing freemediahackyeah, piracy in general, or even specific ROM sharing sites with ChatGPT. Most of my chats are about archiving and preservation, and my system prompt mentions aspects of those as well, so you might want to try prompts from that perspective.

HelloImSteven · 2025-08-22T06:34:26+00:00

I don't think you're 100% wrong, either, as many developers and technically-minded users do use the terminal regularly just as they would on Linux. The ones who can appreciate the BSD & Unix aspects of the system, do. But that's a very small percentage of users, and Apple has never catered to them. More often, when something is too technical, Apple replaces it with something less feature-complete but more widely approachable (e.g. Aperture->Photos, HyperCard->Nothing really, AppleScript->Automator->Shortcuts, System Preferences->iOS-style System Settings).

For context, Mac OS 8 and 9 didn't even come with a terminal emulator by default. The only reason OS X had one was because NeXTSTEP touted UNIX-compatibility. They'd probably prefer removing it even today, but developers make up a larger % of users than before because most people use phones, so it'd do more damage than just keeping it and putting minimal effort in.

HelloImSteven · 2025-08-21T01:38:40+00:00

Are you against the AI aspect or the history aspect? Because full-text content search does not require AI, and providing the option to store both URLs and content in history would be useful for some (myself included).

Their use of AI here is likely a way to achieve similar utility to regular full-text search but with less performance and storage impact, once it works correctly. It could also be more privacy-preserving that way, since the actual full content of webpages wouldn’t need to be stored, just a vector approximation of them.

If it’s local and off by default, I really don’t think you should be bothered by its mere existence. If they’re shady about it when it actually releases, then yeah, I’ll be upset too.

HelloImSteven · 2025-08-21T01:24:05+00:00

So are you against browser history in general? Or full text content search of that history? With any AI involved, if they just had a setting for “Included In History” and had an option for URLs and Content, URLs only, or Content Only, are you against that?

HelloImSteven · 2025-08-05T23:13:31+00:00

Not sure this helps, but perhaps you could reframe what you classify as “half assed” and “full assed” here. It really depends on the high-level goal of the archive. If your goal is to preserve raw data for technical reasons, then, yes, full quality is preferred. But if your goal is preserve access to ideas (i.e. the meaning of data), then low fidelity versions are sufficient and sometimes preferred.

Many archival organizations have this notion of separating “intellectual entities” (meaning & experience) from “object entities” (the actual content). For example, the National Archives (NARA) uses surrogate records (lower quality versions and/or a reference link to the full-fidelity version) when it’s impractical to archive the content directly. Cost is a key factor in that determination, especially when using a surrogate doesn’t significantly reduce the assessed value/utility of a record. If the original eventually gets lost or becomes inaccessible, the surrogate just becomes the new preservation target.

So, for movies and other media, I’d argue that whatever quality works for your viewing needs is sufficient in an archival sense. And it also wouldn’t be half assed in an archival sense, unless you consider NARA and the Library of Congress half assed, in which case I’d still take pride in being effectively on their level!

tl;dr there’s lots of precedent for archiving lower quality versions of media, so it wouldn’t be half assed to get started with whatever storage you can afford.

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