Seriously this. Every single IC which has digital logic contains some number of undocumented test commands used to ensure it meets all the required specifications during production. They’re not intended to be used for normal operation and almost never included in datasheets.

Starting yesterday unfortunately Chrome and not Firefox. I just need a working web browser and haven’t had the time to figure out what is wrong with my Firefox installation. I have no clue why but after updating to firefox 135 it eats up all my RAM (20GB+) and uses a significant amount of CPU while idle with only the process monitor tab open. Attempting to browse is unreasonably slow. Refreshing Firefox did nothing, despite now having a Firefox installation which isn’t logged into anything and has no extensions. So I figured that if I’m going to deal with a browser not logged into anything it might as well be Chrome for a bit until I can figure out what the problem is since that’s what all of the internet is designed to work with lately.

This. I have a mobile workstation with a 12th gen i7, 32gb RAM, and NVME SSD but it’s not uncommon to be waiting multiple minutes for boot due to all the pre-installed spyware from IT. It takes up half the RAM at all times and severely limits the performance for many non-whitelisted apps to the point I can’t even run Firefox smoothly on it anymore.

Wechat will always be allowed overseas and is the main method of communication, but the account creation process is of course a little more detailed than simply signing up with a phone number.

Any China market tablet can install douyin even without a SIM, most even come with it installed by default.

Absolutely this. I’ve never seen a CEO golden parachute anywhere near being under $2m before. To most large company CEOs $2m is pretty much nothing relative to their regular stock options.

Exactly this, they’re best used as a tax free investment account rather than anything health related. If you’re on a plan with high enough a deductable to be eligible for an HSA and can afford it you should max out your HSA contributions before even a penny of unmatched 401k contributions. Personally I’d argue that you’re better off maxing out the HSA and using post-tax money to pay medical expenses unless close to the end of your career. It’s one of it not the single most easily taken advantage of ways to not pay tax at all on a long term investment.

The system is indeed stupid but the least you can do is take advantage of it where possible and for the middle class the HSA is one of the best ways.

The fingerprint sensor on the 8 series is really bad and battery quite mediocre. In my opinion pixels are rarely worth their asking prices relative to Samsung’s offerings. I have had an 8, 8 pro, and now 9 Pro XL and the 9 series really feels significantly more complete than the others despite relatively small difference on paper.

Relative to other Android phones the biggest difference with pixels is the lack of customization. The cameras are amazing but the rest of the experience feels pretty hampered in my opinion.

WSL is sufficient for many Windows users and developers without privacy concerns motivating them to switch to a full Linux distro.

If you check the article it says it’s the 2nd case, the girl’s parents notified the Dubai authorities

If Microsoft really wants people to switch to Windows 11 they need to retain many of the already few remaining customization options from Windows 10. Trackpad gesture support is worse, the only useful button in the new right click menu is the show more one which brings back the old menu but requires an extra click, and the file explore somehow got even more buggy. I hate every time I need to interact with a computer using Windows 11.

Luckily there’s been an initiative within my company recently to support Linux, so I’m hoping that all the network related issues are fully worked out before Windows 11 is forced on us so I can just jump ship to Ubuntu.

Surprisingly asking about Jack Ma’s resignation didn’t stop it, it mentioned that he was allegedly forced to step down for political reasons. When I probed further on what these were it didn’t error but did randomly switch to Chinese at one point in the answer.

It’s very verbose compared to any other AI I’ve used. Not necessarily all great but there’s some good parts in the responses. I’m more curious how it was trained behind the great firewall.

Unfortunately the next administration will likely agree with the ISPs on this. To an extent T-Mobile and Verizon 5G home internet has genuinely shaken up the industry. As long as low latency isn’t a requirement of yours they’re quite good. For me they offer higher upload speeds than my local ISP monopoly with similar download speeds.

FT asking is insane. I’m happy to pay for quality journalism but that’s simply out of reach for most Americans. I’d love to know how their management determined this was an appropriate price.

I don’t know what’s up with the algorithm pushing these lately. If it’s a video with 4 views from a channel with no subscribers I’m probably not interested in it. Sometimes they have a good thumbnail/title so I give them a chance but 9/10 times it’s terrible. Also often extremely right wing for whatever reason.

I thought that without blocking cookies the tracking is still active, even if you’re not being served ads from them. In those same LinkedIn privacy settings you’re automatically opted into having your data used to train AI models.

LinkedIn has some of the most obfuscated and complex ad targeting settings I’ve encountered. There needs to be a retirement to have a one click solution to disable ad personalization.

At the same time those Republicans who they’d hope to gain support from by allowing to vote by mail now believe that voting by mail will lead to fraud.

Honestly early voting isn’t too much of a pain. I already know I’ll be out of town for work on election day but because of early voting I’ll be able to get it done before then. It’s silly how complicated a process they make registration and how most of the polling locations are churches, but allowing voting by mail won’t fix the main issue here, registration.

Web browsers don’t integrate to a single account and payment system, nor do they preemptively load entire websites before you start browsing. So you’re always waiting for actions to complete or for images to load which feels slower. Mobile websites also tend to be very bloated slowing things down further than if the same functions were done natively in an app. There’s also no consistency between websites so you never know when something will/won’t work nor how far away you are from checkout. And then to top it all off there’s browser compatibility, which is typically pretty poor for anything that isn’t Chrome/Safari.

If a web browsers could really do the same thing all these companies wouldn’t feel the need to make their own device specific apps.

Even the best websites don’t feel as smooth as native UI elements, and somehow browser compatibility is still a very common issue. Signing in with Google and using gpay for checkout is kind of close, but each website has different design elements complicating the experience while giving up the same amount of your personal data as if using an everything app.