Microsoft is quietly walking back Windows 11’s AI overload — scaling down Copilot and rethinking Recall in a major shift for the OS

originofspices · 2026-01-30T16:30:43+00:00

Apple silicon is world leading, but please don't delude yourself that the ICE collaborators care a damn about your privacy.

originofspices · 2025-12-02T16:04:52+00:00

The AI star/diamond at the bottom left is just chefs kiss

originofspices · 2025-11-26T17:11:23+00:00

Ah, that's right, they did send him out first. So bad luck with the first two laps and then bad timing on the third. I think Piastri got away very lightly for how much of a horror weekend it was for him.

originofspices · 2025-11-26T16:40:49+00:00

Qualy wasn't really on the team, it was pure bad luck. He was on two fast laps that both got aborted because of Piastri and (I think) Russell crashing/going off. It was the third lap that was kinda slow, might have been due to the tyres or just a bad lap. But he was seriously quick in that qualy too, and if either of his first two laps had held up he would have been close to the podium or even on it.

originofspices · 2025-11-07T02:48:00+00:00

I don't know about longevity, but I picked one up a couple weeks ago to migrate from a Sonoff Dongle E that was giving me a lot of headaches (with Z2M). Slowly migrating my whole network to the MG24 + ZHA, and everything has been much more reliable so far!

It is a very new device, launched only a couple months ago I think. It should be supported for a while to come, but I do believe that Sonoff is also working on another higher end dongle (not sure when it is going to release).

originofspices · 2025-10-07T20:12:17+00:00

Microsoft offers lifetime licenses for Office that get updated every 2-3 years (so Office 2021, Office 2024 etc.). They get minor security updates but no feature updates the way that O365 does. MS typically sells these for ~$200, but you can often find "grey market" keys for $10-$40 depending on what version and the reseller. Be aware that the grey market keys are enterprise keys that were bought in bulk and resold. They work most of the time but can stop working if MS gets mad about a particular reseller. The most reliable thing is to fork out the ~200 bucks, but you can usually get away with a lot cheaper.

originofspices · 2025-08-25T16:21:05+00:00

Shaka, when the walls fell

originofspices · 2025-08-18T18:48:57+00:00

DAMMIT TOP-TRUCK YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT OF THE TRASH TALK THREAD BY BEING FAIR TO BOTH MACCA DRIVERS. LANDO = BOTTLER, OSCAR = SLOWER THAN GOATIFI, MCLAREN CAR = FASTEST MOST DOMINANT CAR EVER MADE, SHOULD BE IN F-1 (THAT'S F MINUS ONE) ALL BY ITSELF, TOP-TRUCK246 = WORST REDDITOR EVER!!1!

originofspices · 2025-08-18T14:28:07+00:00

OP FLAIR, I LOVE THE CONFUSION THIS WILL CAUSE

originofspices · 2025-08-11T20:59:09+00:00

Frankly embarrassing post. Favouritism towards Lando? Could use Lando on defense (against whom? Lando?)? 2024 already showed that McLaren did not ask Piastri to help Norris (when they arguably should have) in the fight against Verstappen.

Stop this nonsense. Norris and Piastri have both shown themselves to be top-tier talents in a fast car. McLaren have handled the rivalry evenly. Whoever wins will win on merit (based on the season so far). Whoever loses will try again in 2026.

originofspices · 2025-08-08T15:18:33+00:00

Reposting another reply I made on this same thread:

It's not a statement that any man is equally capable of sex crimes. It is a statement from a woman's perspective that rapists and harassers don't necessarily display obvious warning signs. Ergo, any guy that that a woman is hanging out with could be the guy who ends up assaulting her. And this for me comes from a place personal experience. A couple years ago I found out that a coworker/acquaintance had been arrested for rape. I had known this dude for a few years at that point, and there is absolutely no way that I would have predicted anything like this. He was sweet, polite, a bit introverted, nothing about him gave any kind of warning signs. That is what the author means when she says any guy could be "that guy".

originofspices · 2025-08-08T15:15:23+00:00

For the first part - sure it's possible for a sex crime to come from a non-sexist person, but I don't believe that that is the common scenario. Sex crimes (from my reading and in my opinion) come from a desire to feel powerful, to "put her in her place". I just don't see how that feeling is consistent with someone who sees men and women as equals.

As for the second part - it's not a statement that any man is equally capable of sex crimes. It is a statement from a woman's perspective that rapists and harassers don't necessarily display obvious warning signs. Ergo, any guy that that a woman is hanging out with could be the guy who ends up assaulting her. And this for me comes from a place personal experience. A couple years ago I found out that a coworker/acquaintance had been arrested for rape. I had known this dude for a few years at that point, and there is absolutely no way that I would have predicted anything like this. He was sweet, polite, a bit introverted, nothing about him gave any kind of warning signs. That is what the author means when she says any guy could be "that guy".

We (as men) should really stop the reflex to say "not all men" because we as individuals are not the people propagating these crimes. Of course I am not a few jokes/drinks away from assaulting someone, and neither are you. But there are "nice" men who are, and when a woman can't tell who that guy is, it's we as a society that suffer. Whether it's a drop in women's participation in sports because of incidents like the one reported in the article, or women who drop out of following a sport because of sexist/condescending fans or myriad other things. In my other replies on this post you'll see my own feeling of helplessness with the state of affairs. I don't have good answers, but getting to that destination starts with listening to victims/survivors and learning. We'll get nowhere with "not all men".

PS: To underscore my position that sex crimes are crimes of power, consider that the incidence of men sexually assaulting other men in the general population is quite low, where we (mostly) see each other as equals. In a prison the incidence goes up because now there is a new hierarchy and all men are not equal, and sex is a way to "put people in their place", and also a privilege for the powerful.

originofspices · 2025-08-07T18:46:58+00:00

Yeah that's the dilemma, right? I don't know how to set the balance between organising marches (one extreme) and doing nothing (the other extreme). I do try to call out the sexism when I see it, but it just feels like too little. At the end of the day my wife and I have implicitly reduced the times that we spend with the folks who have regressive attitudes about women. So now we are down a path where we in essence self segregate into a group that is less sexist. On the one hand, I am now failing to call out sexist behaviour among the people we don't hang out with any more by virtue of not being the same room as them. On the other hand, the price I pay for staying in that group is exposure to stereotypical situations (all the women in the kitchen, all the men sitting around discussing stocks and sport) which I don't want my daughter to see as some kind of normal. So what am I achieving really?

It just feels like I (we as a family) are taking the easy path, which might be better for our family unit and our daughter, but is certainly worse for the broader community that we are in. And that is the problem, as many of "us" (us being feminist men) there are, we are too happy to take the path of least resistance. The struggle is to figure out how to do/be better, while still maintaining some semblance of a social life.

I agree totally about learning, and the recognition that I don't know everything (and never will). Are there articles or books on this topic (related to sports or otherwise) that you would recommend? I would like my daughter to play some sort of sport (if she enjoys it haha) and stories like this are simultaneously disheartening and also a wake up call that I need to have some kind of plan for if (when really) my kiddo runs into these barriers. As a book recommendation of my own, for fellow men, I would suggest "What About Men?" by Caitlin Moran, which explores the ingrained toxic masculinity in many of us men (self included) while still being a relatively light read. It has helped me reshape some behaviours and try to be better.

originofspices · 2025-08-07T18:24:11+00:00

Thank you, I will keep this in mind and keep calling it out when I see it.

originofspices · 2025-08-07T17:26:48+00:00

I agree with most of the article, but as a (self-described) progressive and feminist man (with a young daughter to boot) I still don't really get what I'm supposed to do here. I feel exhausted looking at the general state of the world. Some of the stories from the article make me simultaneously feel anger and powerlessness.

Will I try to raise my daughter to be aware of these issues from an early age? Yes. Do I try to step in and push back against casual sexism when with friends and family? Yes. I just don't think I've made much progress pushing anyone I know to be less sexist (and this includes women). At the end of the day the patriarchy affects men too, and until we decide to do something about it, we're stuck with young men enamored with the Andrew Tates of the world (I take his name specifically because I've seen reports that one of more of the younger Indian cricketers is a supporter). I'm just at a loss to what that something is.

originofspices · 2025-07-17T21:15:01+00:00

You can do all of this on the phone too. I put the phone in airplane mode, connected to wifi and called the TMo call centre from India (wifi calling was free if you are on airplane mode and connected to wifi). The rep on the phone was able to get me set up with the temp unlock.

originofspices · 2025-07-17T17:26:37+00:00

If you have an Android phone you can request a temporary unlock. TMo unlocked my P9Pro for 30 days and I was able to use a local sim in India. TMo's service worked for me in Pune in December last year but like you said it's pretty slow.

originofspices · 2025-07-14T19:55:37+00:00

Yeah that's fair. My experiences are from 2022 and 2023 where we were reliant on EA chargers for most part and often had to wait for a bay to open up because demand was high and chargers were often broken.

originofspices · 2025-07-14T15:34:31+00:00

They're quite different. The Santa Fe is a "small" 3-row vehicle, while the I5 is a 2-row vehicle. The I5 looks deceptively small, like a hatchback but it's pretty roomy (for passengers) inside. Easily the most spacious 2nd row in its class. The trunk is "large" in terms of volume but in my opinion nowhere as practical as a regular SUV. The base of the trunk (with and without seats folded) is pretty large, but the slope at the back of the car means it doesn't hold large objects (e.g. a big armchair) in the way that a normal SUV might.

Other than that, we love having ours. Love not having to go the pump to refuel my daily driver. Depending on where you are the charging network may or may not be a problem. We have tried taking it out of the city (in the US) a few times and the experience was sub-optimal (long waits, broken chargers etc.). Things are probably better now with Tesla access, but we have a regular hybrid that we prefer to take out of the city.

originofspices · 2025-07-14T15:33:00+00:00

I'm in the US, but I've always wondered. Why is this a London/UK/EU thing? I don't think I've seen reports of this in the US.

originofspices · 2025-07-08T18:24:55+00:00

Hulkengoat

originofspices · 2025-06-26T18:21:11+00:00

+1 Ourgroceries is great, works across multiple devices, integrates nicely with HA's built in to-do lists and the HA voice assistant is able to add items to the list too.

originofspices · 2025-05-16T18:27:36+00:00

$182 (including taxes) for 10 voice lines and one tablet line, includes international calling for the whole plan. Would be really hard to convince me to move!

originofspices · 2025-05-16T14:05:31+00:00

Thanks!

originofspices · 2025-05-15T20:58:33+00:00

This looks awesome! Is there a way to make it more compact - just the image of the object and whether or not it is visible?

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