It’s called Hey Ash, Watcha Playin?

Announcing the Xbox One 2 SL XLS SE Pro, which is the basic version, and the Pro version, the Xbox Two 1 SE SL XS SLB Enterprise, both of which are vibe-coded Windows apps that stream Gamepass games without installing anything but take up 100GB of hard drive and still run your GPU at 100% somehow. The latter costs twice as much and you get a different Minecraft cape with it. They update on a completely separate schedule to the rest of Windows, but if you run either one and the updates aren’t in sync it deletes your Documents folder.

I can only hope.

The only thing that makes me think it might work this time is that for some reason Microsoft has this magical ability to take a bad idea, make the shittiest possible iteration of it and have it mysteriously become the most widely-adopted standard against all logic.

I hope so! But if the economy gets bad enough I can see people getting desperate enough that they’ll all scramble and under-cut each other into oblivion just to secure the work. Time will tell I guess.

I assume it’s just because when writing about potential nuclear war, most people write about the bombs going off. There aren’t a lot of stories and articles about nobody doing anything and everything turning out fine, presumably. And LLMs are kind of just a glorified autocomplete so that’s what they go with.

Also in a few years when the AI generated nonsense code reaches a critical point and a ton of important systems grind to a halt, we’ll expect all of you that we fired to come back and un-fuck it for us so we can keep on making money. On temporary contracts and at reduced wages of course because times are tough.

I could do the various incarnations of the Doctor in Doctor Who. An example info-dump from memory without looking stuff up:

So the first Doctor was played by William Hartnell, and later Richard Hurndall and David Bradley after Hartnell passed away. Second Doctor was Patrick Troughton who (tangent incoming) originally pitched playing the second Doctor in black-face which thankfully got nixed. Third Doctor was Jon Pertwee, Fourth was Tom Baker who is still the longest-running Doctor by episode count, Fifth was Peter Davidson, Sixth was Colin Baker, Seventh was Sylvester McCoy although (tangent 2) he also played the Sixth Doctor for the regeneration because Colin Baker got fired and refused to film his last scene so the Sixth in that scene is just McCoy in a wig. Eight Doctor was Paul McGann who was the longest-running Doctor chronologically even though he’s only been in one full episode (the 1996 TV movie) because the show didn’t come back until 2005. He’s done some cameos in the show since though. Ninth Doctor in canonical order is John Hurt, although he was added in retroactively during the 11th Doctor’s tenure so he’s referred to as the War Doctor instead of the Ninth. Tenth Doctor canonically is Christopher Eccleston, who is referred to as the Ninth Doctor because of the aforementioned retconning. Then it gets complicated. David Tennant is the Eleventh, Twelfth and Sixteenth Doctor because he regenerated into himself and then came back again later on, which we’ll get to in a bit, but he’s referred to as the 10th and 14th Doctor. Thirteenth Doctor is Matt Smith, who’s referred to as the Eleventh. He was also supposed to be the Doctor’s final life because Time Lords are only supposed to have 13 of them, but then he got a new cycle of regenerations because it would be silly to end the show because of some arbitrary plot point from the 1970s. So then Peter Capaldi was the Fourteenth (or First if you want to start counting again from the new cycle, which nobody does) and is called the Twelfth. Fifteenth (or Second) was Jodie Whittaker, who in the show is called the Thirteenth. She then regenerated into David Tennant again (hence him also being the Sixteenth/Fourteenth) for a couple of specials, and then he split into two separate Doctors, the other one being Ncuti Gatwa who is the Seventeenth or maybe co-Sixteenth or maybe Fourth but is referred to as the Fifteenth in the show. He then (SPOILERS if you haven’t caught up to the last episode) regenerated into Billie Piper, who played Rose Tyler previously in the show and also a sort of sentient bomb called The Moment and who might not even be the Doctor at all, we don’t really know yet. There’s also all the Timeless Child stuff which throws off the numbering even further, and Jo Martin who plays the Fugitive Doctor who is possibly some sort of pre-First Doctor Doctor but the show never really explained it. There are also some other pre-First Doctor Doctors shown in flashbacks and things in The Brain of Morbius and The Timeless Child, but who knows if they’re even real or not. There’s also another David Tennant who is a sort of human clone of the Doctor who lives off in some parallel universe, and another Tom Baker who is a character called the Curator who seems to be some far-future retired version of the Doctor who revisits some of his old faces.

I could go on but you get the idea.

The AGI thing has definitely started already - I saw a video yesterday from some AI tech bro talking about how their AGI is going to disrupt something or other. Your vibe coded Claude app is not an AGI lol

Me too, and I really think we need to be less accepting of it in general. I’ve known lots of people whose job involves using computers, and they can’t use them and refuse to learn and expect others to help them constantly. I don’t mind showing someone how to do something if it’s a new thing that they don’t know, but I’ve known people who get someone else to do the same simple task for them whenever it comes up, sometimes for years. And I don’t mean learning everything there is to know about computers, but like basic shit necessary for your job like where files go when you save them, or how to format text in a Word doc.

Like… if your job is being a delivery driver and you don’t know how to drive and you refuse to learn, people won’t accept it. But for some reason it’s fine with computers. I get that you may not like computers, but again, it’s your job. Learn it.

And the inside of a fiber optic cable is sort of a bunch of tubes, if you’re feeling a bit loose about descriptions.

Also not from America, but I assume this is just the same sort of thinking as trying to ban trench coats after the Columbine shooting, IE: they have to look like they’re doing something, but they can’t do the actual thing that would solve the problem because there’s too much money involved and they’re greedy cowards.

Also it’s weird that Teen Vogue was the best source that came up when I searched for that lol.

Knowing the internet, I also assume that a custom firmware or some other workaround would be released in about a week anyway, making the whole thing utterly pointless.

I genuinely have no idea what Sandalwood is. Presumably a new type of tree developed by scientists to give men something to smell like.

Unless you find a really solid one that can then become the Master Box, in which you keep the other flat-packed ones that you will definitely recycle one of these days

My cat decided a mandarin orange box was the greatest thing ever created and that she should live in it pretty much full-time, so it sat in our living room until it basically disintegrated lol. The look of betrayal when we finally threw it out

Does building a guillotine count as working with your hands?

Yeah this is what these companies do every time they get some heat. They never actually listen and fix their shit, they just back off and wait a couple of months until people are outraged about something else, then add it back in when they think nobody’s looking. Rinse and repeat until everyone’s too sick of hearing about it/tired of fighting it to continue.

As a Brit who emigrated to Canada, I’d be delighted if this is how I finally get my EU citizenship back.

I worked retail for a decade. There is no bottom to the barrel. There are people driving around in cars who genuinely shouldn’t be left unsupervised with metal utensils.