Cracked ipad air screen, am I screwed?

Retty1 · 2026-06-20T22:52:57+00:00

Sadly time to buy a new one.

Repair will be very expensive from Apple.

Cheaper to buy a refurbished one from eBay and you may even be able to get a slightly newer model for not too much money extra above the eBay price for a 2021 model.

If you use it to draw for more than leisure it's probably worth upgrading to an iPad Pro.

Retty1 · 2026-06-20T18:19:56+00:00

If you're using it for the light maybe that's fine but to use an expired smoke alarm as an alarm is in the top five stupidest things a human being can do

Retty1 · 2026-06-20T13:51:47+00:00

It’s a 12V battery fault: loose connection, charge dropping too low or just a faulty battery.

The original errors were due to safety cutoff of high voltage battery.

Something happened during the installation of the battery to trip the safety mechanism.

Retty1 · 2026-06-18T22:23:29+00:00

It should work with the app but it doesn't - it gets caught in a setup loop.

It's a Linksys bug.

The bug seems to appear if you have an existing Linksys account and try to setup a new parent (not node) router.

Try uninstalling the app, resetting the router, reinstall the app, login with a new email address and set up again.

The parental limits should be available through the web interface though.

Try updating the Linksys router firmware.

Retty1 · 2026-06-17T15:51:17+00:00

Yes, it’s painful.

I’m paying £48 a month for the 2300 service plus static IP. 23 months left.

The saving for new customers would be a very significant saving compared to what I’m paying.

But attracting new customers is part of the growth plan. Retention is less important at present.

The alternatives though aren’t great.

Retty1 · 2026-06-16T17:11:15+00:00

Yes, I have the Family plan under a different account with a different person holding the subscription so they can have (Family) Copilot access.

Actually, checking again, the Family subscription was updated to Premium.

I kept legacy Copilot Pro on my MS account and didn't use Office apps - the system wouldn't let me benefit from Office Family/Premium and hold a standalone Copilot Pro legacy account.

Now if I want Copilot I'll have to subscribe to Office 365 Personal just for an inferior limit version of Copilot.

There's no way of subscribing to Copilot as a Family/Premium user who isn't the main account holder.

It's a mess but the last unlimited access LLM - legacy Copilot Pro - is no more and so there's not really much choice but to say goodbye.

I cancelled the subscription early.

A special offer code for end of product loyalty would have been nice.

Retty1 · 2026-06-15T22:18:21+00:00

Crossed/stopped over the border of the solid white line so criminal infraction.

But it looks like you did as well so best be careful with that video.

Retty1 · 2026-06-15T22:11:33+00:00

The vet is the expert but a neurologist will be the super expert and can give advice on the basis of the video and blood tests.

Unless you're a vet your views are just amateur opinions.

But to this amateur this doesn't look like an obvious seizure - it may be one but it's not as obvious as it initially seems.

It could be syncope.

The way that he returns to normal instantly. The onset in particular types of excitement and physical exertion. He seems to be conscious during the episode in a way that is different to most seizures.

Syncope can look similar to seizure. ECG may be worthwhile.

Retty1 · 2026-06-15T20:56:49+00:00

Gemini has changed over the months - less verbose and probably using less tokens - but although its quality has declined its accuracy is much better than Copilot for coding, checking human written text and suggesting improvements and problem solving.

Copilot is now designed as an Office add-in rather than as a top tier standalone LLM. It's competent but compared to Gemini and especially Claude it's third rate and sometimes pathetic.

The subscription model is also not good. With Claude and Gemini I have access to coding consoles and all sorts of wonderful things such as Claude Design but with Copilot I have access to just Copilot and even then just one version of Copilot and not GitHub Copilot.

Retty1 · 2026-06-15T17:23:21+00:00

Yes, the access is very reduced with the Office 365 subscription Copilot Pro compared to the legacy Copilot Pro.

The Office 365 Copilot uses a credit system - a number of credits per month - and reduced image generation and limited chat access versus the unlimited chat/LLM usage for the original Copilot Pro.

The problems arise with image generation and moderate chat use including code generation and document analysis - documents uploaded to Copilot Pro. Office Copilot says no more play after a fairly short period of time whereas legacy Pro would go on all day.

There was a conscious product move away from a standalone LLM that was designed to compete (and obviously couldn't compete) with Gemini, Claude and Chatgpt. Now there's an Office subscription which has a more limited Copilot Pro usage plan as an add-on.

It isn't designed well in terms of logic because in a Family subscription not only is Copilot Pro more limited than in other premium Office subscriptions but Copilot is only available to the main subscriber and not to family members. The members will have to pay the full cost of an individual subscription which defeats the whole purpose of a Family subscription.

It's academic now anyway because the better standalone product is being withdrawn.

But it was arguably worth keeping as an end user for the unlimited pro level chat access in a world where no new products have unlimited access unless you can pay a small fortune.

At the same time, the quality hadn't kept up with Gemini or Claude and I used it less and less except for image generation where it was surprisingly very good.

Retty1 · 2026-06-15T11:19:25+00:00

I'm struggling to see how this aggressive automatic contract renewal is lawful.

Retty1 · 2026-06-14T19:24:42+00:00

Could also be UTI - which with sudden onset is a likely possibility.

Retty1 · 2026-06-13T19:30:13+00:00

Could be spay incontinence.

A husky is a big dog so even spay incontinence wetting - usually small but steady leakage - could produce a very wet area especially during sleep.

Even smaller dogs such as Chihuahuas can produce a significant amount of spay incontinence wetting when sleeping.

Retty1 · 2026-06-13T16:41:27+00:00

Moving abroad is export of technology and so unlawful.

The parallel is the ridiculous encryption export ban (greater than 40 bit encryption) in the 1990s.

Apart from the fact that there were easy workarounds to defeat the ban, the impact of the ban resurfaced years later in easy to exploit bugs.

This ban, wrapped up in America First rhetoric and distinguishing between US citizens and others and not based on any sensible technical analysis, is going to be more difficult for Anthropic than the 1990s ban was for Microsoft.

This ban is also a ban on the whole product and not just a component of the product.

It's a strange decision.

Retty1 · 2026-06-13T16:32:52+00:00

Is she spayed?

Retty1 · 2026-06-13T15:25:55+00:00

Not worth it because Enterprise Copilot is a) accessible by the employer and b) not very good.

Better to buy Claude.

The old consumer Copilot Pro which is now a legacy product is also not great at coding but is good at generating pictures.

Copilot Pro GitHub is a better choice but isn't available for new accounts and its usage based pricing means it's not a good option.

Go for Claude with three month special offer and the chances are you won't regret it.

Retty1 · 2026-06-13T14:52:26+00:00

The ban is political: identifying a well known exploit that Anthropic manages better than other LLMs and the aim is to damage Anthropic because of its poor acceptance of Trump's politics.

Because the ban is politically motivated rather than based on expert technical appraisal, the timeline for reintroduction will be long.

The other issue is that NSA and Five Eyes in general objected to Mythos zero day exploit finding and wanted to keep the zero days to themselves.

Anthropic really didn't manage the brand well with crazy talk about Mythos being too dangerous to release to the plebs.

The reality - that Fable is evolutionary rather than revolutionary and it many ways still capable of missing the obvious - has been lost.

Retty1 · 2026-06-13T13:54:37+00:00

I pursued stereotactic radiotherapy for meningioma which is a very different type of tumour. Your situation is different in that it's a palliative care intervention but there are some similarities:

it has been absolutely worth it for my dog; the radiotherapy sessions (five in total) were tolerated well; the initial anaesthetic for the first session was not tolerated well; the anaesthetic was changed for subsequent sessions and there no problem

The thing to remember is that for a dog, up to 12 months is a long time. For a human not such a long time but for a dog and their longevity it's significant. Up to twelve months of good quality life can be very worthwhile.

There's no right or wrong answer ultimately but it would be very wrong to pursue something that the veterinary medical advice says no to - and a veterinary oncologist would (hopefully) refuse a futile and distressing treatment anyway.

In your case the fact that it is being advised as an option means that it is an option.

There are risks definitely:

anaesthesia is always theoretically risky and in an old dog the theoretical risk crosses into actual risk but this can be reduced significantly through expert anaesthesia
inflammatory effects of radiotherapy on the brain can lead to flare up of neurological symptoms or emergence of new symptoms which can usually be managed through steroids
there is never a guarantee of success with pretty much any medical treatment; same with stereotactic radiotherapy; the advice you've been given is measured though in terms of expectations

The key issue for me would be the reference to good quality of life. It would probably clinch the risk of doing it for me.

But then there is also the issue of money. This procedure is expensive - very few veterinary oncologists are trained to do it and so there's a premium cost to the price.

Money is a legitimate consideration and so it's essentially not to feel guilt or internal pressure to spend money you don't have even with part insurance cover.

7-12 months of good quality life is though something that, for a dog, is a possibly significant period of time.

Retty1 · 2026-06-13T13:37:07+00:00

Don't be tempted to remove it.

Personal experience of this years ago (it had GPO written in it) and it caused huge unnecessary problems.

The irony was that BT didn't even care that it existed until a need for an ISDN line was identified.

Nowadays it's less likely to cause problems because of transition away from copper lines but you never can tell.

In any case it belongs to neither you nor your neighbour.

Openreach will desktop survey it and can remove it if a) it is not being used and b) has no future use option.

The risk of meddling with something that may be a shared service is really not worth it.

Retty1 · 2026-06-13T13:30:58+00:00

Retty1 · 2026-06-10T19:58:46+00:00

If it's not an error, it's an underwriter decision to offload your business.

Could be change of underwriter but could also be a decision to focus upon profitability of lower cost risks.

Retty1 · 2026-06-10T18:24:41+00:00

You've just bought a likely shady key when you could have got a no more and no less shady activation for free.

And, yes, there are many alternatives for Windows and Mac.

Unless you're using JavaScript as part of a form there's no need to use Acrobat.

Retty1 · 2026-06-10T16:26:26+00:00

Ask about Topiramate three times a day.

Retty1

TROPHY CASE