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it always depended on the hardware (being stable, security is another matter).

I've got friends who ran Windows ME and it was rock solid. My experience was very very different, same with Windows 98 SE.

With that being said my PC with Win95 OSR2 was super stable.


From what I can tell, Windows Me was the most stable version of 9x for computers that were made with Windows Me in mind while older hardware with old drivers upgrading from 9x to Me was a minefield.

Windows XP forced driver development to a more modern standard that made things more stable. Still not stable enough (Windows Vista and up enforced that more and more in their APIs) but with XP the days of drivers assuming they could take complete control of the CPU and various buses were over.

Of course the companies that made shitty drivers for 9x also made shitty drivers for XP, so old hardware and hardware with shitty drivers was still less stable than other new hardware available, but things were moving forward.

These days, it's rare to see a full BSOD in Windows on any hardware but the very shittiest, especially with Windows 11 thanks to its artificial hardware support cutoff.


Same! I did notice, a couples of months ago, that same prompt in the morning failed and then, later that day, when starting from scratch with identical prompts, the results were much better.


Claude Code is down :( too lazy to do manual conversion from Cocoapods dependency to SwiftPM


I've vibe coded small project as well using Claude Code. It's about visitors registration at the company. Simple project, one form, a couple of checkboxes, everything is stored in sqlite + has endpoint for getting .xlsx.

Initial cost was around $20 USD, which later grew to (mostly polishing) $40 with some manual work.

I've intentionally picked up simple stack: html+js+php.

A couple of things:

* I'd say I'm happy about the result from product's perspective * Codebase could be better, but I could not care less about in this case * By default, AI does not care about security unless I specifically tell it * Claude insisted on using old libs. When I've specifically told it to use the latest and greatest, it upgraded them but left code that works just with an old version. Also it mixed latest DaisyUI with some old version of tailwindcss :)

On one hand it was super easy and fun to do, on the other hand if I was a junior engineer, I bet it would have cost more.


I do have Windows 2000 installed with IIS (and some office stuff) in a ESXi for fun and nostalgia. It serves some static html pages within my local network. The host machine is some kind of i7 machine that is about 7-10 years old.

That machine is SOOOOOO FAST. I love it. To be honest, that tasks that I was doing back in the day are identical to today


Same thing happened to my wife, while driving at about 110km/h…luckily no one was behind her.


Braking at any point is safe with a competent driver behind. There's a reason we know our stopping distances and don't follow excessively closely.


Alas half of drivers are worse than average.

I'm one of them. Yet I still haven't had a situation where "lane assist" or "front assist" has actually been a good thing.


That is unrealistic. If you expect the brake perhaps but the most competent thing to do in case of an emergency brake is doing nothing.


Not on a hard curve with oncoming traffic.


Absolutely. All models ar terrible with Objective-C and Swift, compared to let's say JS/HTML/Python.

However, I've realized that Claude Code is extremely useful for generating somewhat simple landing pages for some of my projects. It spits out static html+js which is easy to host, with somewhat good looking design.

The code isn't the best and to some extent isn't maintainable by a human at all, but it gets the job done.


I’ve gotten 0 production usable python out of any LLM. Small script to do something trivial, sure. Anything I’m going to have to maintain or debug in the future, not even close. I think there is a _lot_ of terrible python code out there training LLMs, so being a more popular language is not helpful. This era is making transparent how low standards really are.


> I’ve gotten 0 production usable python out of any LLM

Fascinating, I wonder how you use it because once I decompose code to modules and function signatures, Claude[0] is pretty good at implementing Python functions. I'd say it one-shots 60% of the times, I have to tweak the prompt or adjust the proposed diffs 30%, and the remaining 10% is unusable code that I end up writing by hand. Other things Claude is even better at: writing tests, simple refactors within a module, authoring first-draft docstrings, adding context-appropriate type hints.

0. Local LLMs like Gemma3, Qwen-coder seem to be in the same ballpark in terms of capabilities, it's just that they are much slower on my hardware. Except for the 30b Qwen3 MoE that was released a day ago, that one is freakin' fast.


I agree - you have to treat them like juniors and provide the same context you would someone who is still learning. You can’t assume it’s correct but where it doesn’t matter it is a productivity improvement. The vast majority of the code I write doesn’t even go into production so it’s fantastic for my usage.


What happens to the vast majority of code you write


Different experience here. Production code in banking and finance for backend data analysis and reporting. Sure the code isn't perfect, but doesn't need to be. It's saving >50% effort and the analysis results and reporting are of at least as good a standard as human developed alternatives.


Try o4-mini-high. It’s getting there.


Maybe with the next got version, gpt-4.003741


Interesting, I'll have to try that. All the "static" page generators I've tried require React....


Building a basic static html landing page is ridiculously easy though. What js is even needed? If it's just an html file and maybe a stylesheet of course it's easy to host. You can apply 20 lines of css and have a decent looking page.

These aren't hard problems.


A big part of my job is building proofs of concept for some technologies and that usually means some webpage to visualize that the underlying tech is working as expected. It’s not hard, doesn’t have to look good at all, and will never be maintained. I throw it away a few weeks later.

It used take me an hr or two to get it all done up properly. Now it’s literal seconds. It’s a handy tool.


> These aren’t hard problems.

Honestly, that’s the best use-case for AI currently. Simple but laborious problems.


Laziness mostly - no need to think about design, icons and layout (responsiveness and all that stuff).

These are not hard problems obviously, but getting to 80%-90% is faster than doing it by hand and in my cases that was more than enough.

With that being said, AI failed for the rest 10%-20% with various small visual issues.


> These aren't hard problems.

So why do so many LLMs fail at them?


And humans also.


I like using Vercel v0 for frontend


I do have this[1] one (product code: 43888 not 43889). Ripped a bunch of CDs perfectly.

AFAIK, 43888 is preferred by makemkv forums as it's internal drive can be flashed to support ripping blu-rays as well.

[1] https://www.verbatim.com/prod/accessories/disc-drives--burne...


I use tello.com. You can get eSIM and activate it while you are outside the U.S. If you won't activate roaming, sms and calling will use wifi calling.


Tello costs at least $5 / month though. Skype was jusy pay as you go.


I pay $6.5/month for the number. It is pay as you go for calling but you have to pay for the number.


Do you know how providers detect your country when using wifi calling? Mine says it's only valid while you are within the country, wonder if VPN would work around it.


No idea, but Tello always worked outside of the U.S - Lithuania in my case.

I guess, provider will always consider your country where the phone number is located. Funny thing, while I'm roaming, my IP address will always be Lithuanian. It does not matter where the world I'm currently staying.


This is the major way roaming is implemented, transferring all data through your home network greatly simplifies things.


They can detect your country by IP address. Also AFAIR your cellphone sends CellID and/or location with every wifi calling connection attempt.


Sounds like nano texture from Apple. Much less reflective than standard glass, but with added graininess, which is clearly visible to me :(


The grain on the DC-1 is quite a bit more noticeable than the grain on Apple's nanotexture displays. I don't find the latter distracting, but I found that I couldn't really read PDFs with small text on the DC-1 because of the grain. (Some of that is probably resolution-related too, to be fair.)


Thank you for saving me a nice chunk of change by closing out my eternal debate about whether or not to pony up for a nano texture screen.


This topic is very subjective IMO.

Some love the glossy screens, others the matte ones. And this is really what it comes down to for me.

I would try getting a chance to view the difference in person before deciding.


Yes, I find that there are differences in eye strain between the regular and nanotexture displays, even in a dark room with no reflections. It's worth trying both. One interesting difference between the two that not a lot of people realize is that the light emitted by the regular screen is circularly polarized, while the nanotexture is largely non-polarized.


Can you explain more about what that means / share a link to further reading? Tried searching but couldn't find much online about the light polarization specifically, and am interested in the nanotexture for reducing eye strain.


There's some evidence that CPL emissive screens cause less eyestrain than linearly polarized emissive screens (e.g., https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9010255), although the evidence there is not wildly strong. If you have a pair of RealD 3-D glasses (CPL filters) and look at a nanotexture iPad, you'll see that the nanotex layer decoheres the polarization of the underlying display, which is more like how normal (reflective) paper behaves.


Very helpful, thank you!


Sure. I just wish I could buy both, test for a month or so and then keep the one I like more.

Visiting Apple Store every other day, when I was visiting the US did not help much. So I stayed with standard glass.


Indeed: only trying them both side by side at home would yield a useful conclusion. Trying to gauge which would be better for you from the Apple Store display would be about as useless as trying to decide which big TV to buy from Best Buy based on how they all look in the store, with settings completely other than those you'd use at home.


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